Lessons Learned from an Enlightened Passenger with Corey Poirier

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Creator Science. Today, we'll be breaking down lessons learned from an enlightened passenger. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Corey Poirier and the EO Fire Studios. Corey is a multiple-time TEDx speaker and was recently announced as one of just 15 success magazine emerging entrepreneurs. And today, Foundation, we'll talk about a purpose statement. We'll talk about surrounding yourself with the right people, how to focus on the right 1 % of things and synchronicity, the secret ingredient to success and so much more.

0:43And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Corey and our sponsors. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly, make it work. A recent episode all about how Liquid IV is using marketing to shake up the beverage world, dives deep into the strategies that have propelled Liquid IV to remarkable success, a must listen. Listen to Marketing Makes Simple wherever you get your podcasts.

1:14Corey, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. First of all, hello, Fire Nation. And what I believe that I feel a lot of people disagree with is I believe it's about the little things that you do well and stacking up those little things versus the one or two big things, which I feel is actually a good thing because I think if it's about the big things and you get the one big thing wrong, it could be detrimental. But if you realize, again, it's about stacking all those little things and doing them well, then you can have a hiccup with one of those little things and it doesn't mean the end of the world.

1:55Fire Nation, wise words from an enlightened passenger. And we end every show, as most of you know, Fire Nation, by saying that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with, because you are, as a Jim Rohn quote, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. There are so many people, Corey, that talk the talk, but very few walk that walk. So how do you know if you're surrounding yourself with the right people? You know, I have to say, John, that I know a lot of what we're gonna talk about today comes back to the interviews I've done, as you know, with thousands of thought leaders, which actually inspired this new book.

2:33you know, The Enlightened Passenger, when you mentioned The Enlightened Passenger, which is a fictional character who's loosely based on my life. And so, you know, one of the things that I've learned in doing those interviews is that who you're surrounding yourself with both will dictate your success, but also on the flip side could indicate or dictate the challenges you have, the struggles you have. And so for me, where this exercise came to life was that I realized I was going in the wrong direction and I was reading the right books and I was doing the right things. So it had to be the people I was surrounding myself with.

3:07So I did this exercise, which will help you determine if you're surrounding yourself by the right people. And it's as simple as this, whether you use a flip chart or a pen and a paper or even your computer, but you write down the people that you spend the most time with. You put a plus sign beside the ones that are adding positive energy or bringing positive energy to you. And you put a negative or a minus sign beside the ones that are draining you or bringing toxic energy to you, and you add them up. It's as simple as that. So for example, if you're hanging around with 18 people, and you do that list, and you find that 14 of 18 are bringing negative energy, it's pretty easy to explain why you're struggling each day.

3:43If you do that list, and you're surrounding yourself with 16 positive and only two negative, well, obviously, you're going to have a more positive day. And then obviously, the add to that is that if you have that negative 14 out of 18, the next step is who do I remove, who do I reduce time with, and then how do I add more of the right people to that list? Fire Nation, this is a little pruning exercise that we all need to be doing in many facets of our life. I mean, there's a lot of things you should be pruning, you know, daily activities that don't serve you, et cetera, et cetera. And this kind of all comes back to a purpose statement.

4:18And a lot of people don't know exactly what a purpose statement is. So let's talk about it. What is a purpose statement and why is it important to have one? All these companies, all these major companies have either a great mission statement or a well-defined mission statement. You know, you can look at the Disney's of the world and it could be as simple as we want to make people, especially children, happy. It could be as simple as that. But mostly the staff know what it is at these solid companies. And of course, the managers know what it is. The executives know what it is. And so I started thinking, if it's important for them to have a great mission statement, shouldn't it be as important, if not more important for us to have our own, whether we call it a personal mission statement or I call it sometimes a purpose statement?

5:00But wouldn't it be just as important? And so I felt that it would. And I spent some time to craft my own mission statement, which I'll share. And I carry it around with me and I have for years. I wish I would have made it an acronym so it would have been easier to remember because I've helped other people and they made it a really cool acronym like SMILE and stuff like that. I didn't do that. But my mission statement is to be the guy who motivates, donates, educates, inspires, and entertains. And that's what I call my five-point personal mission statement. Why that's important, John, is that if you know that that's your mission statement and somebody asks you to do something or you're thinking about doing a project and you look at that list and say, you know what, that's only going to be one or that's going to be zero of the five things that my mission statement's about.

5:43Well, that becomes the easiest no without regret that you ever say. If you realize that four or five of those five things that are on your mission statement are going to be the case, if you take on this thing, like if you take on an interview, let's say, for a big show, or you take on a TV show, and it's going to be four out of five or five out of five, that's probably going to be the easiest yes without regrets that you'll ever make. So for me, that's my mission statement, but it's also I use it to decide what's a no and what's a yes. So this is a little side tangent, but I want to let Fire Nation in on a little secret.

6:17and it's just such a reality because I have tested this over and over again and I've had so much fun with it in a very good-natured way, but it's just so true because so many people would answer the question when you say, well, you know, how do you get people to like you or how do you get people to like feel good about you? And a lot of people might say something along the lines of, well, make them laugh, like make them laugh. And I'm like, that's actually the exact opposite. What you want to do is to make them feel funny by laughing when they say something even remotely funny. If they say something that's a little bit funny, you need to intentionally laugh and like really chuckle at it.

6:56And then guess what? That will embolden them. And before too many minutes go by, they'll say something else that's even a little bit more funny. And you will laugh again. And you will, by the end of this interaction, number one, you'll have this person thinking that they're just like this stand-up comedian. They'll be cracking these jokes and you'll be laughing your head off because it will kind of be funny for a lot of reasons. But number two, they will leave that interaction saying, oh my God, I don't really know why I love this person. I don't really know why I love John, but I freaking, I love him.

7:27Like that was just, I just feel so good about it. They won't like think that it's like because you're laughing and everything they're saying, but it's going to be because of that. So just give it a try, Fire Nation. I promise you, I've tried it with people that are such curmudgeons. And by the end of the conversation, they were like comedians. It's such a fun thing to do. And again, good naturely, because you're making them feel good. You're not laughing at them. You're not laughing at them. You're laughing with them as they're saying something funny and you're nudging them along this comfortable feeling of being funnier and funnier.

7:54So I want to shift now back to synchronicity. You believe synchronicity is a secret success ingredient. Why? I guess for also a little bit of context for those that maybe don't use that term often. To me, synchronicity, you could call it a meaningful coincidence or a mysterious coincidence. It's that thing that some people say is a coincidence and other people feel has some sort of meaning to it. And so for me, years ago, I did some interviews with and started working with James Redfield, wrote the book, The Celestine Prophecy, which he kind of coined the synchronicity term or at least helped make it famous.

8:33Carl Jung, years before that, really focused on it, but James took it to another level. and so I started working with him and I started practicing it in my life and what I mean by that is when things would happen that I said you know that doesn't seem like a coincidence and how could two of those things happen in one day I actually started writing in a synchronicity journal so I started making notes of the things that would happen like maybe one example is I was interviewing a guy named Ami James from the reality show Miami Inc and I was going in to do the interview with him and he was working at the time with David Lee Roth from Van Halen and I never turn on the radio when I'm traveling, it's always satellite radio, a serious satellite.

9:08And I turned on the radio and Van Halen was playing. You know, so I just look at things like that where they might have two or three in a day and I say they can't be all coincidences. So I made notes of them, about them, John, in my synchronicity journal. And what I noticed is when I started making notes, more of them happened and or I started noticing them more. You can debate which of the two it is. But the result is those synchronicities started allowing me to know what to lean into, how to make decisions, how to use my intuition. And what I found fascinating is some of those synchronicities ended up becoming the biggest successes I've had in my business solely because I paid attention to them.

9:43I expressed gratitude. I wrote them down and I leaned into them more. Fire Nation, wise words from a seasoned entrepreneur. And we have a lot more to talk about around these topics when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Things change fast in the online business space. And when you have a team to manage and a business to run, it can be tough to keep up with all the latest and greatest marketing trends. That's why HubSpot created the 2024 State of Marketing Report to pull together the top marketing trends that you need to perfect your marketing strategy this year. The report consists of input from more than 1 ,400 marketing pros from all across the world.

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11:33Claim it today by texting FIREFOCUS, all one word, to 312-345, or go to braingains.com slash fire for more info. That's B-R-A-I-N-G-A-I-N-Z dot com slash fire. Corey, we're back, and so many people, and I mean so many people, They focus on the 99 % of crap that's out there in this world. But you choose to focus on the 1%. What does this mean and why do you do it? I'll tell you how this came to life. I was interviewing an elite skating coach. His name is Doug Shepard. And Doug has worked with Wayne Gretzky, Sidney Crosby. And I remember at the time, Sidney Crosby was coming back from an injury and Doug was helping him get back into form and shape as far as getting back on the ice.

12:24and I said to Doug I said I don't even understand this how can you take somebody like Sidney Crosby and you could use the example of Wayne Gretzky or Mario Lemieux how can you take somebody like that and even show them anything you know like Doug has played at the elite level but not in the NHL and it wasn't a knock on Doug but I'm just like how do you teach somebody who's already doing 99 % of it amazingly and very well and he said that's the thing what you just said Corey that's the thing is he said I'm not focused on the 99 % he's already got that covered what I'm focused on is that 1 % that he wants to elevate and he wants to find the little weaknesses in.

12:55And if we can just get a 10th of that 1%, we can move him a 10th of that 1 % closer to the 100%, then that could mean a goal a game for the rest of his career, an additional goal a game. And so it really struck me as the idea is, are we focused on the 99 % we're already doing well? Or are we truly looking at what's that 1 %? And if we were able to just hack away at that a little bit, we could see almost as I know you're a fan of it and I am as well, the book, The Compound Effect, we can start having the compound effect by focusing on the little nuances in that 1%. And so that's what it means to me is being willing to do an inventory could mean asking on Facebook, hey, what does everybody think that I could do better at?

13:33And finding that 1 % for you and then also figuring out how can I improve on that 1%. You know, somehow I knew that you were going to bring up Wayne Gretzky in this interview. It was inevitable, as they say, Fire Nation. And Corey, you believe the word no is actually more important than the word yes for entrepreneurs. Tell us more. Well, as you know, I kind of referenced it earlier, John, but I've interviewed now. The number is getting a little insane at this point. It's over 7 ,000 thought leaders, which, again, I know is insane. It's a very large, I'm going to call it, influencer study that I've done at this point.

14:08and what I've discovered is that, so when I take it back a little step, is whenever I was growing up, I grew up in a small town and my grandfather always said, just say yes to everything, that's the secret in life and then I saw this Richard Branson quote that said, say yes to everything and figured how to do it later and this was early on so that kind of got me, it was easier to say yes all the time than to say no, that's hard to say no, so I started saying yes all the time and especially when I heard that Richard Branson quote until years later after I started interviewing all these influencers and noticed that they were saying no.

14:39And then I finally heard the full Richard Branson quote, which was say yes to all the things that you love to do and then figured how to do them later. Keywords there that you love to do, which implies you're saying no to all the things you don't love to do. And so that changed everything because then I really said, you know what, what Richard is saying is exactly what I've been discovering. And I was wondering why there was a disconnect between highly successful Richard Branson and highly successful insert name here. And so what that made me realize is that what I was discovering about people saying no was true.

15:09And what I discovered is that influencers say no on average 50 times more than the average person. And I'll tell you one thing that helped a lot along the journey is I was interviewing Shaleen Johnson from Turbo Jam fame and also mega influencer in the Instagram world. And Shaleen said that one of the big lessons for her was learning to say no. And I wanted to know from her, well, how do you say no? And how do you do it without burning bridges? And she shared this great story. She said that what she realized is that her business is very family oriented and her staff knew that. And this is when she was running turbo jam classes all over the world and people were asking her to fill in for them.

15:45And she said, what she finally started realizing is she could tell them, which is true, you know, we're very family focused in our off time. And so I need to ask my husband, Brett, if we have anything going on with the family before I answer the question. So are you okay if I get back to you in a couple of days to confirm if I can do this or not? And if I can't do it because we have something going on with the family, what I'll do is I'll do my best to try to find somebody who can help you. And what happened, she said, is more often than not, when the two days were done, they'd already found the solution and it was already taken care of.

16:13But if she had to say no, as you can imagine, John, it's pretty hard to get mad at somebody who says, I need to check with my family. If it's okay, I give up this time. And so that's a really big discovery around how to say no without burning a bridge that I started using right after that. But the bigger thing to your question was I discovered that influencers say no way more than the average person. And what they tend to do is say no to all the things that won't move the needle so they can say yes to the few things that will. Fire Nation, I hope this really makes sense because I do have that phrase and that saying that I love, which is when you say yes to one thing.

16:47You're saying no to everything else you could possibly be doing. And that's okay. but just make sure that thing you're saying yes to is with intention, is with focus. It's really something you want to say yes to because, again, you're really taking everything else out of the equation you could otherwise be doing during that time. What, Corey, is the platinum rule? I'm certain most of the listeners of Fire Nation would have heard of the golden rule. And the golden rule loosely stated says, do unto others as you would have done unto you. So what I've learned over the years, John, is that that rule, while you still can apply that, it'll still treat you well in life, you'll still have success.

17:29But I feel in the world we're now where everybody wants personalization, that's the new, I think, new phrase of the year is personalization, phrase of the decade maybe. Everybody wants stuff personalized to them. So what I've discovered, the platinum rule is, is do unto others as they would have done unto themselves. So in other words, the difference is that I might be somebody that's super high energy, and I might run into somebody who's very casual and chill. And if I practice the golden rule, I'm going to try to treat them as I'd want to be treated, which is super high energy. But that's not going to fit for them because they're not super high energy.

18:02So the platinum rule would say that I would notice that they're not high energy and they're pretty chill, and I would adjust to them. And that's doing unto others as they would have done unto themselves. And I believe this can apply to anything you do, meaning if you're selling something to somebody, think about how they would want to be treated versus how you would want to be treated and treat them, again, accordingly to how they would want to be treated. So it's only a, I'm going to call it just a slight adjustment from the golden rule, but I think it's an important adjustment and I think it can make all the difference.

18:29The platinum rule, Fire Nation. Wise words. And Corey, we've talked about a lot of value today. What is the one thing you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our conversation today? I want to share something, John, that I think is also what I would love people to get from this conversation, which is that in those interviews that I've referenced a few times, the thing that I discovered that the most, well, the thought leaders of the world, the influencers of the world, the best of the best, the top one percenters, what they share and have in common is that they live on purpose. And so what I mean by that is they figured out what they're called to do and they find a way to spend almost all of their time doing that.

19:09There's some great quotes that kind of references Bob Dylan. I love his quote about his definition of success, which to me also ties into this whole living on purpose thing, which he said to him the definition of success is when a man or a woman goes to bed at night, wakes up in the morning, and in between they spend their time doing that which they love. So to me that's living on purpose. So figuring out what you were called to do and spending most of your time doing it, that's what the highest achievers have in common. So I would love to see people make sure that they're doing that. But as a side note, the benefit to this is there's a great study called the Blue Zones, which I'm sure, again, some of the listeners may have heard of.

19:44And that was commissioned by National Geographic. It's like a 25-year study. And Dan Boettner, hopefully I'm pronouncing it correctly, did the study. And what he discovered is, I think it's nine for each, the Blue Zones of Happiness and the Blue Zones of Longevity. I believe it's nine things he discovered that the happiest people have in common, and then a separate nine, separate study, the longest living people have in common. Interestingly, John, the most common one that overlaps is living on purpose. So on both those lists, it's living on purpose. So to me, that would be the takeaway is make sure you found your purpose and that's how you're spending your days.

20:14Fire Nation and how you spend your days is how you spend your lives. Corey, what is your call to action for Fire Nation today? I now officially have my new book coming out and well it's out now actually it's in the pre-order stage depending on your list of this because I know it's evergreen it's either in the pre-order stage or you can order it and have it at your door tomorrow and so my call to action will be for people to check out the book there's some amazing bonuses with it and quite honestly John what we've been talking about today I just scratched the surface of what's shared in the book So it's a fictional parable based on two characters sitting on a plane, older, wiser man teaching a young person these 10 life lessons.

20:56It's loosely based on my life. I reference a lot of the thought leaders we're familiar with, like Lisa Nichols and Les Brown in the book. And it's actually insights I've learned from them shared through the character's eyes. And by the end of the book, you'll learn the 10 lessons that I've learned after interviewing the world's top thought leaders, again, to the tune of 7 ,500 roughly now. So to me, for the price of a book, including the fact that you get some bonuses with it as well, I think it is definitely a can't miss. And not to kind of toot my horn, but I'm definitely humbled by this. But some of the people that have already endorsed the book include James Redfield, who I mentioned, who wrote The Celestine Prophecy, Lisa Nichols, Michael E.

21:34Gerber from The E-Myth. I know some of these have been on the show. Richard Paul Evans, who wrote The Christmas Box, 46 times New York Times bestselling author. Neil Donald Walsh, Conversations with God. So I really believe if it's hitting a nerve with a lot of people, it does have the ability to impact lives. And so I hope people will check it out. And hopefully I can give the website, John, but it's thisisthebook.com. So again, thisisthebook.com and people can find out the bonuses and grab their copy there. Fire Nation, you're the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with CP and JLD today, so keep up that heat.

22:06For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Type Corey in the search bar, C-O-R-E-Y. And the show notes page will pop right up. Corey, one more time, give us that URL. Yeah, so people can grab the enlightened passenger at thisisthebook.com. Corey, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Always a pleasure, my friend. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Corey for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation's successful entrepreneurs are great at three things, productivity, discipline, focus.

22:42That is why I created the Mastery Journal so that you can master those three things in 100 days, step by step. Visit themasteryjournal.com. I'll catch you there. We're on the flip side. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy, and more importantly, make it work. A recent an episode all about how Liquid IV is using marketing to shake up the beverage world, dives deep into the strategies that have propelled Liquid IV to remarkable success, a must listen.

23:16Listen to Marketing Makes Simple wherever you get your podcasts.