Episode 271: Corey Poirier: How Speakers Get on Stages

All right, you guys. Well, I'm excited. We have Corey, that speaker guy with us today. I have so many speakers in the group and people that have been podcasting that want to speak and entrepreneurs that are wanting to open themselves up more. So I figured we would bring Corey on to help us get booked on the stage.

So.

Hi, Corey.

Hello, Stacy. Thank you so much. Super stoked to be here.

Yeah, I'm so excited. So I'm going to just make sure people see us. You could feel free to just kind of say hi and maybe tell them about yourself while I'm doing that, if that sounds good.

Yeah, absolutely. So, well, I guess hello, everybody. As Stacy said, my name is Corey Poirier. I've been a professional speaker now for 20 some years. This has been my jam for a long time. And I started out as the person who did speaking on the side as a side hustle and who was getting bookings but was doing like after dinner talks for like trading it for dinner, basically. And I remember somebody saying one time when you're first starting, you'll pay $50 to get to speak. So I started in the trenches, real world, had no mentors and honestly didn't know where to begin, where to go. And so ultimately that was way back then. And I eventually, which I'll share tonight, but I eventually figured out some hacks I'll call them, or shortcuts, and that allowed me to start up, leveling really, really, really quickly. So that within the second year, maybe by the end of the second year, I had replaced my corporate sales income, which was a pretty decent income. So my first year was a struggle when I went full time. And then the second year I did quite well because I discovered these little hacks that nobody taught me. So one of the things that I was struggled with when I first started was that again, I had no mentors. And back then, by the way, no Facebook, no LinkedIn, none of those things. So I had really no way to reach a mentor unless I wanted to reach out to somebody who was halfway across the world and pay them enough money to build a fill in armory. And so I had to figure it out in the trenches myself. But yeah, so I started back then 20 some years ago. And then basically I jumped into speaking, learned the trenches, and for 20 some years put the food on the table solely by speaking at conferences and events. So for the most part I preferred, and I think it's a preference, paid speaking where I get basically by the end, you know, the last full year of gigs I did, I basically got paid 100% before I ever showed up. I like that. So we're talking thousands of dollars in advance. And the reason is, is because I had the background they could trust. They knew I wasn't going to screw them over for one speaking fee. And so I'd offer them a tiny incentive to pay me early. But basically, I say all this stuff to say I've been there, I've been in the trenches, and since that time, I've done four TEDx talks. I'm about to the fifth one in seven days, and that's my retirement TEDx talk. By the way, I founded a company called Blue Talks, where we actually do this. We help people get on stages. Our events run at places like Harvard, mit, Columbia, Oxford, ucla, Stanford, and so on. And we really try to help people become the instant expert by getting them the visibility and exposure they need. And we've been doing that for four and a half years. We've helped 500 some speakers take our stage, 400 some become bestselling authors. And next week, we're helping 10 get on the New York Times, Billboard, Nasdaq, Billboard. And so this is our world. Helping speakers up level and helping experts up level. Helping people learn how to land TEDx stages and leverage that, and then helping people speak on our stages and leverage that, and helping people get the right stages. So, Stacy, I hope that's a good enough dive through.

Yeah, well, let's just say hi to people that are here. And then I can't see where this one is, but I've done talks for dinner. Oh, I like that. So, yeah, I'd love to start with just kind of even the hacks. And I know you have a whole thing we're going to kind of go through. So let's kind of talk about who's here. We have some people that have been podcasting that haven't yet spoken. Right. And they're like, what do I even do? And then there's the people that they've been speaking. They've been maybe going through the programs, learning to speak and learning to improve all of the things. And then after actually want to start getting out there. And I'd love to see if we can kind of meld both together or just have different examples for both.

Yeah, I mean, so I guess what I would say is speaking. There's so much I can unpack. And so I'll give one quick hack. I'll say it this way. Here's a hack for anybody that wants to get into speaking in any way. And it's the hack that if you drop me in the middle of any city and said, you got to start over, build your speaker today, this is the thing that I would do 10 days out of 10, so I'll share that. And I will say the other thing is, here's some of the areas we can go to, because I get these questions often is how do I get paid to speak? Well, one of the things is you have to go to the people that pay people to speak. Now that sounds logical, but what I mean is a lot of times people now are saying, I'm not getting paid to speak, but they're booked on summits, they're booked on social media conferences, they're booked to, say, nonprofits, ones that don't book paid speakers. And so there are some areas where that's what you're focused on. It's going to take you a long time to get paid, or even men or women's conferences. But if you go like a woman's conference, you'll see like 120 speakers. The top five are getting paid, Brene Brown's getting paid. And basically what that comes down to is are you drawing people there? Are you filling the room? The only two choices are to be the name that sells the tickets or sell the crap out of the tickets over and over and over again and be the person that converts. So many people that eventually say, well, we'll just, we'll invite her because we know she's going to convert. To me, neither is easier. By the way, it's not easy to become Gary Vee and you want to sell the tickets. But I'm just saying, a lot of times people don't understand that's why you can't get paid at those events, is you have to sell the tickets for them to make money to pay you. So the other, and I didn't mean to go down this path, but I'll just finish the statement. This is great if you want to get paid. The two easiest, in my experience, there's three, okay, there's educational, which can be paid, or non paid. University, some pay, some don't. So that's one. And then the second one would be corporate, like corporate events where the reason they're paying is they have a conference, they have a budget and they want to bring somebody into their staff, like a TEDx speaker that they can say, we brought a TEDx speaker last year, didn't you love him or her? And so they have a budget usually to pay a speaker. And then the third group, which is my favorite. And here's a hack for you, but it's not the one I'm going to share. But here's a hack is associations to me is where the gold's at. Which is going to sound strange. So I'm not talking. Like I say, corporate usually always pays well. Now does can pay well. Corporate does pay, you know, in other words, they usually pay the check. Like all those things are great. Here's where the problem lies. If you do one corporate talk, the hope and best you could have is they refer you to one other corporate client. Or worst case scenario, they loved your talks. At best speaker we've ever had. Too bad we can never bring the same speaker two years in a row. Thank you. Your best client just became your last client and not your next client. And so that's a long road. And also when you first start, people are going to say how many gigs have you done? So you have to have done a certain amount. And next thing people are going to say is we need to see some testimonials. So if you've got one corporate talk and you knocked it out of the park, guess how many testimonials you probably have one like you might have. You could have multiple people from the same conference. But at the end of the day you still got to put the name. If it was a subway franchise or Subway head office, it's still going to be like Bob at Subways event, Jim at Subways event, Lisa franchise owner, might even be the CEO of Subway. But it's still one testimonial for one company. So here's I say associations are where it's at. And by the way, this gives me a segue which I didn't plan to the hack. So like the hack of if I drop was dropped in the city. The reason associations are good is first. So and I should clarify, association would be any time a person pays a membership to be a part of a thing, they call them association. Oh, that is a homebuilders association, funeral service association, which sounds crazy, but I built a niche there for a while. A plumbers association doesn't matter. But these associations and you can find this stuff out because you can go on their website and see this. But if they pay $1,000 to be in that room, like a yearly $1,000 for personal development, then that means they have a budget because they might have 100 people have paid $1,000. So that means they've raised $100,000 in their membership fees. They now have to allocate some of that to training and the speaker and what have you. So first of all, they have a budget when people don't think they do. But secondly, and here's the bigger one, usually, let's say a home builders association, you go deliver this killer talk. Hundred home builders in the room, usually 80 of those homebuilders, depending on the conference, could have their own home building outfit. So, well, you could go like the Homebuilders association of Atlanta. And in the room there could be the Georgia Homebuilders Group, or it could be John Smith Home Building. And so you could have all these separate people in the room. Here's the key thing that could all potentially hire you to speak. So when I talk to the funeral, I've done funeral service association conferences, the National Funeral Service association, and in the room, we're talking like in the the whole venue were like 3,000 funeral directors. Each one runs their own funeral home. And some of them have 100 employees. So maybe they could hire you and pay you to speak at their event. They. So the reason the home associations are great is you have multiple clients in the room instead of a corporate where you only have employees who can't hire you. But second, and I just have to add this one thing, the second reason it's so powerful is because when you hand out your evaluation form, which, by the way, this is going to tie into the hack, I'm going to give you that evaluation form. One of the questions is, can we use your comments in conjunction with our marketing? Well, guess what happens if I do an event where I have a hundred different owners of companies in the room that have names. Whenever they say yes, you can use our comments. And then it asks for their name and company name. It says john Smith at John Smith Homebuilding. And the next one says home builders are us. 80 people filled out your form because 100 loved your talk, and 80 said that on the form and said you could use that. That means you now have eight testimonials. That's like from one talk. Your first talk ever.

This is insane. This is so good because you're basically showing us how to really just multiply our time in so many different ways by what we're doing. Oh, good. Got such great information. Thank you, Stacy and Corey. And then I had a question. There's something here, but I had a question. Let me think about in terms of home builder. Let's just talk about that. So I'm actually, I'm excited about that because I have a construction background to where I staffed in the Construction industry. So that's really exciting. But if someone doesn't have any construction background, what would be something they would do at an industry like that or an association like that?

Great question. Because I don't have that background. And I picked one of those because of the fact that I've done, oh, my friend here is here. So I don't have that background. Interestingly enough, my father, grandfather, and all my uncles are carpenters. My grandfather said after the first few times I worked with them, this is not for you.

And so for me, I don't have the background that you even have. And so, by the way, one of the things I could do and in my stories, though, is I can leave in what I just shared with. You find that funny, right? Because yes, you. And they're like, I mean, that's an example of something that lasts at the beginning, your talk. And that's different because that's constructing your talk and what you say to kick it off and bring people in. But to answer your bigger question is what would you speak at? And so, for example, with me, I just listed four or five different ones. Mostly I'm listing ones I spoke at. So funeral directors. So let's look at it this way. Home builders and funeral directors associations. How can I go to the two of those and speak at those different events whenever? I have never been a part of either of those industries. So there's bigger answer, shorter answer to this. One of the things I like to do whenever I'm potentially working with a client is get an evaluation form or a questionnaire filled out. And on that questionnaire I start learning things about their industry. This is even before they hire me. And so what I really need to know is, what's your theme this year? What's your outcome? What do you want to have as an outcome? What are your challenges? And so here's why I'm bringing this all up is, let's say funeral homes. I'll give you the example that they were into, which is why I started getting a lot of bookings, is the funeral homes are into a challenge whenever I was working with them, that they had a younger generation that was starting and working there, and then an older generation that was still running things and they were running into problems because it was a different way of doing things. It couldn't be that the son of the director, but the son could be there and he's coming in with his pants hanging down and he's on his cell phone while a family's grieving and just came in and he's talking loud enough that they can hear him. And so they were running into a generational thing. And so what they brought me. And this is both cases, that's not as much the home builders, I'll explain that in a sec. But what they brought me in in that case to talk about, I had two different things that I would talk about. One is personality types. Four different personality types. And that allowed me to go in and help the younger people see it wasn't an attack on them. And the older people seeing. Just because you've always done it this way doesn't mean it always has to be done this way. Because once you see that we all have there's four different personality types. And just because you think somebody talks too much and they think you don't talk enough doesn't mean either one's wrong. So I would go on and talk about that as an example. And then another thing I would go on and talk about is how to create an A plus customer experience. So I called it how to get a Standing Ovation for every Customer. So interestingly enough, I could go into home builders and a funeral service associations and talk about personality types or customer service without missing a beat. And a real estate is another example. And yet I would customize it to some degree to them. But to do that, I didn't have to work in the industry. I just had to know their pain points and their challenges. When I say real estate, I never sold real estate, but I would go into real estate and talk about personality types and how do you sit in an open house with a husband and a wife who have different personality types and reply to each of them in their own personality type and adjust on the fly. So that would be an example that I would teach and that was very relevant to them. Yet I never. I didn't know a thing about real estate whatsoever. I knew a thing about sales, not real estate.

Yeah. Yeah, it does. Yeah. Let's say you speak about resilience. Then you could pretty much go in any association and have the same talk.

Right.

With some minor adjustments. So it's kind of figuring out what your core message is and then almost being able to tap into which ones that goes to.

Absolutely.

Yeah. This is so good because the idea of going after what's giving you your biggest buck. Right. I mean, in terms of just your time when you're going into an association, you're having access to all these other people and then all these other testimonials. So what would you say? What's the Easiest way to go find the associations. Is it Google or is there some kind of special place that we look?

Yeah, so I'll answer that and don't let me forget to come back to the hack later.

Yeah, I thought that was already the hack. That's so funny. I love it when you're spilling nuggets and I'm already thinking that's the hack.

Is going to be.

Kind of leaned into it a little bit. So this one here is a little hard to explain visually without showing. But I'll explain it because it. It's harder to explain visually, but it's easier than trying to set up and do share screen right now. So I'll explain it as best I can. But basically here's how you find. Okay, here's how I found associations. What a lot of people tell you is do Google alerts. My problem with that is you're going to sift through so many ones that conferences where you have to pay to speak or buy the registration to ever find the ones that pay usually have to dig for any gold. And so you have to dig a bit for these. So ultimately here's how you find it. Now there's. There's different websites that list speakers. So if I want to book a speaker, I could go like, almost like a speaker's bureau. Let's say there's bigger websites so that list more than just the speaker's bureau amount. But even a speaker's bureau amount would work if you go into some speakers bureau. So I'll say what the speaker speaks on, that you're looking at how much they charge and a whole bunch of other little things you can find out. So what you want to do is find out speakers that speak on what you speak on. So let's say I speak on customer service, I want to go wherever it is on a bureau, let's say page. My ultimate goal is I'm just trying to find out the name of who speaks on customer service and charges what I want to charge. So let's say I charge 10,000. I speak on customer service. I go on a bureau website, I find Jim Smith who speaks on customer Service and charge $10,000. Then what I'm going to do, and you might not find it on every website, but on a lot of speakers websites, they're going to have a thing that says client testimonials or rave reviews. So what you want to do is you want to go find out who hired them and then basically you want to know how. So there's some science to this because you got to figure out how to reach that person properly, what to say to them when you reach them. But the bottom line is, whatever you do, even if you mix it up, you're still going to have a lot more success because you're reaching targeted people than what 99% of the speakers do, which is just keep throwing a coin in the water and hoping they get some luck. So what I'm saying is the great part about this is, you know, what they paid this person, you know, what they spoke on, you know they're fit for you, and their name is usually there and the company, but it's. How do you find their contact info? That's more of the magic sauce. But what I just shared with you to 70% of it all the up to that point is game changing. Yeah, that. Nothing else. You could Google their name and even probably find their LinkedIn page and then go on LinkedIn and find them. The only part I won't share with you because it would take me the rest of the call is how to actually find their name. Because that's a science almost.

Yeah.

How to find the email if you're emailing them, how to find their phone number if you're phoning them, what to say. So it doesn't show that you found them on somebody else's website. Now, there's nothing wrong with doing that. It's public. But most people won't like knowing that you found them by creeping them on a website.

Yeah.

So it's what you say, and that's a whole part of it as well. But that's. That's a happy accident that. Honestly, Stacey, nobody shared with me. One day I was just like, I kept for months banging my head against the wall saying, how do I find the person that hired? And then one day it just popped in my head. I'm like, they're sharing it with me publicly. They're putting on. You know, how it came up is that I realized I was sharing it. So I was like, well, I've put the names of all the people that hired me. And I was like, should I hide that? And I'm like, wait a minute. Other people put that. And then some of them then they said, well, but I won't know how much they charged. Right. They might speak for free. That won't help me. And then I was like, well, how would I ever find their fee? Because they don't usually share it. And then I went, oh, wait, but some bureaus put their fee on the website anyway. You see where I'm getting with this. I love it.

It's so my language. And one of the I have an audience accelerator program and one of them said reverse engineering. I love teach that the same concept. I just haven't done it with this. And it's so cool. Right. You find out who the people are, where they live, what it is, and it's. You're not waiting for an algorithm. That's my point. I think a lot of people are waiting for something to come to them, but you're literally showing people how they. Whether they work with you directly, you do it for them or they can go get it on their own. Which I love all of it. It's so good.

Yeah. I mean like I said, it was game changing for me. So I shared with you hack that you know these. There were some hacks that I started about the second year in two and a half years in that basically changed everything and started amplifying my revenue. That's one of those hacks. We basically figure it's responsible for about probably 20, 25% of all my paid bookings over the years. Wow. That one thing, it might be higher. That's because that's not including. There are referrals we got from the people that we get that way and all the other mentions how we got those people from start.

Incredible. So we have go after associations because you're getting access to all the people that are there and that sort of amplifies who you can be in front of. And then the other thing is looking up the speaker's bureau, finding out the people that are like you that are speaking under the same topic and then who have they spoken at, who's giving them testimonials, then going after those people. So I mean, seriously, this is so, so powerful.

Oh well, I mean, thank you. And it's what I wish people would have taught me when I started. And I also, I didn't mind having to invest to learn that stuff. And I always feel it's either you're investing time or money, you're either going in the trenches and doing it yourself or you're investing with somebody else. But I always said that I wanted to share as much as I could to help people. And I find people find their way to me anyway to work with me sometimes because they're like, I don't want to do this all on my own or what have you. But I shared this with you before we set this up. It's totally not one of those people that runs a webinar and then Shares five case studies about how people did it, we're working with us, and then says, sign up for a program and we'll help you do it too. I don't like, I don't know, best way to say this. I don't like wasting somebody's time. And these days I don't have time to go to have any webinars. So the only ones I'm going to ever make it to are ones where I know the people and I know that they're going to over deliver and I just don't go to the ones where I suspect that's what's probably going to happen. So I don't want to be that person is what I'm saying. I don't want to be compared to that person or that person that convinces you to get there only to try to tell you, but wait, you got to sign up here to get more.

I have that same belief and I just think it's. I love aligning myself with people and so I love that you said that even before we got on. What do you think else they should know. And I'd love to open this up for questions. And Minnie's here. I'm checking to see if she wants to pop on with us for a minute. But just curious, what else do you think is important for them to know? For people that are wanting to really get booked on stages?

One of the things that I didn't know early on and now because I know it, I've shared so often, is the power of positioning. So when I say the power positioning, what I mean is. So I, I want to, I want to try to be careful with this because my pet peeve, my rant and I maybe even share this when we were talking. But my rant is somebody who takes a picture of a Rolls Royce out that they see on the road or does a video that they don't own and then runs a Facebook ad saying, let me show you how to get this car that I never bought and make the million dollars to pay for it that I don't, that don't have and I've never made. That's my pet peeve. So I struggle sometimes with the balance between positioning yourself to look like somebody or not. So it's almost like a superpower. I feel like I scared to share sometimes because if people, let's be honest, we can position ourselves to look like we have 70 employees by having a freelance person, you know, having a network that has freelancers and just have different ones that juggle through who Answers the call, you go, my God, they're massive. We can create that perception. We can create the perception that we're great at speaking. If we locked our way into a TEDx talk or a friend convinced us to do one or gave us talk, and all of a sudden we post that everywhere and say, hey, I knocked out of the park on TedX stocks. What I'm saying is positioning scares me in one way, but it's also superpower. And so what I say that as far as positioning, I won't explain that now. So I said it because you're saying, what else would I want people to know? Well, I wish I would have known early on how powerful positioning is and made it more conscious effort to position myself. So how do you do that? An example. So I'll give you a quick example, another one that's a nugget that I wish I would have known was possible. And by the way, it wasn't even possible when I started. It is for everybody listening now. So another thing is, if you want to position yourself as the expert, so let's include speaker, a powerful way to do that is to have an as seen on banner. So it's on studies to show an as seen on banner, increase your credibility by up to 70%. And if you doubt that, think about Tony Robbins, Lisa Nichols, Jack Canfield, if you know who I'm talking about. Think about the fact that they could put anything they want, their website, they've studied this stuff for 50 years, in Jack's case, perhaps, and they choose to have an as seen a banner at the top, all of them. And over and over again they have an as seen a banner. Do you think all of these influencers are wrong? They know something that you don't necessarily know. So my point is, as seen on banners work. Just like remember the TV as seen on TV back in the day, they work and that's why they keep being used. So here's the cool part, Stacy. Even if you're starting to do media now, now you could have your own podcast. And by the way, this, I don't want to go down this path because it's a podcast tip. But I'll just say it's very easy to get other podcast interviews if you have a podcast, because you knew what we call a podcast swap, hey, I'll bring you on my show, you bring me on yours. But what I'm saying is if you do that route or if you go to, there's lots of services now that you can get for free, like radio guestlist.com where you list yourself as an expert for I think eight bucks. And then for free, you can get their newsletter every few days saying, how many all these podcasters looking for guests. The takeaway from this is get yourself on 10 podcasts. Even if I've never heard of the name, I don't care. Get yourself on 10 podcasts, ask for their logos, which they're going to be more than happy to do, especially if they're smaller shows. And then now you have an as seen on banner that costs you if you do one a day. You go like radio guests will say think shares it daily, but let's say they do five shows a day looking for guests. So I'm sure you can land one out of five. So you land one out of five. You do that for 10 business days. You now have 10 logos. You put on your banner on your website, as seen on. And then what the cool part is, is as you get on bigger shows, you just switch out the smaller one for a bigger one. Eventually your banner looks like Forbes Entrepreneur, what have you. But when I started, you didn't have that choice. It was either all in or nothing. I had to go for the big name, so I didn't have a banner for years. Now somebody can have an as seen on a banner. Cost them no dollars, no sense. If they don't know how to design. They can go to Upwork or Fiverr and get one for 20 bucks. Design with the 10 logos they just got from the sent to them directly from the podcaster whose interview they just did. And they can then leverage those podcast interviews for clients who say, well, speak on the podcast on what you want to speak on. So let's say it was customer service. Then you could go to that client who's thinking of hiring you and say, oh my God, Stacy. Oh, you asked me about doing the four tips for whatever. Here's a podcast where I just talked about this if you want to check it out. And now all of a sudden they see you as the expert. So maximize that podcast you were just on. Anyway, that's so good.

Oh my gosh, ask for more. So, yeah, it's great. And you guys feel free to ask questions. I've got a question here from Minnie. Do you have any recommendations on how to get the speaking engagement once you find the right group and association? It's a great question.

Yeah, so there's a couple of things I would say there. So one. Okay, I didn't say this one thing I would do. Okay, so this is the Big hack. But it answers the question. So. And it's not the big hack, it's a big hack. Cause I'll say it that way, what I would do if I were start. So if you drop me in the middle of nowhere today, I would pick up a phone and. Or email. But our phone's going to get you better results. We don't like hearing that because email is easier and you can do that system I mentioned earlier by hiring a va. That's probably going to be via email. But my experience is the best way I can say this is you might be 1 out of 100 on email. Finding an opportunity. You might be 1 out of 10 on phone. Problem is you got to reach the person. But the point is what I would do is I pick up a phone and I would call a chamber of commerce or something similar. So Chamber of commerce is going to talk to you because they need members. So they're going to actually answer the phone and talk to you. So you want to talk to event coordinator, event, whatever their title is. It's going to be a different title but basically they are responsible for the chamber events they run for members. And what you're going to say is some form of I normally charge whatever you normally charge, but I love what chambers do believe in it or whatever that. And I don't mean make this up, I mean whatever it is true for you. And so I would be willing to come in and do a no fee talk. Remove the word free talk. There's a great. Well, I don't know if this is my quote or if I heard from somebody else. So I'll say it as mine, but I'll say it could be somebody else's. But there's plenty of good reasons to speak for no fee. But there's never a good reason to speak for free. So you get the word of the word free because then you're going to devalue yourself. Also people ask me what they should charge, I say either nothing or $1,000. And the reason for that is if you're under a thousand, you it's considered an honorarium. Now I better make it clear. I'm not saying don't take a talk that you do for no fee. I'm also not saying don't take a talk where you charge $100 if it's the right audience. I would do talk for free if it's going to get me in front of the right audience. What I'm saying is if you want to start charging and you're asking where should I start? Besides the ones that you want to do, if it's one that you don't necessarily want to do, or you, you know, it doesn't matter if you do it. A thousand dollars is where you start. But go to the chamber and say, I normally charge $3,000, whatever the number is, but I'm willing to come in and do a no fee talk. And all I want in return is a testimonial, if you like my talk. And I want to be able to hand out my evaluation forms. The key is the evaluation forms. And there's now a thing called talk, a dot you can use to do this digitally. I'm still old school, so I still do print it. But basically you bring your printed evaluation forms, you get permission to do this, you hand them out and ideally you're there before everybody else. You put them on the seats or under the seat. And then at the end of your talk you say, hey, I want to ask one favor. The only favor I want to ask today because if I don't know, I don't grow. And you're also helping the next group. You take three to five minutes to fill out my evaluation form that I left there. It'll take you three to five or less. And what I'm going to do in return is if you write your email address on the form and put book, I'm going to send you a free digital copy of my book. So what I found, that takes me from about 80 to 85% to 95 to 98%. Fill them out. And then the reason for this is you're always going to get the best response when you're in the moment on the spot. Secondly, I go to events and they say, we're going to do it via app. And I'll say, let me know how that works. Because my experience is they get about 5% back, I get 95%. I'll show them that. They're like, okay, next you're using the print at once. But the point is you want to get them filled out. And here's the part I can't go and do in a short call is what's on that form. There's like eight or nine key questions, but one of them is, do you know of others who could benefit from a similar talk to the one I presented today? And if so, can we follow up with you? That's the question that's responsible for another 25 or 30% of my bookings. Now I have questions that lead into that question to make it so they answer it. Why? I will say, I think that question works so well, is because people have just watched your talk, and then they go, oh, I got to get back to the office. I'll get back to her later and hire her. Or there's 10 people in front of her. I can't wait. Or I'm scared to approach a speaker. But when you have that form and it says optional under name, that's intentional. Almost everybody fills their name out anyway. And then if they don't, but they put you can reach out to me. They'll not put their name. And then they'll put Stacy Lauren at. So I still know what their name is. Yeah, but make me feel more comfortable. Do it. And what I found is if I deliver a killer talk out of 100 people, I might get three people that'll come up, say, here's my card, reach out. We might hire you. I might get 30 responses on those forms. People even start thinking, oh, my cousin works at an association. Maybe they could hire you. Or, that's right, I'm a part of Red Cross. We pay the speakers. And so then I have 30. And then to finish this off, I would say, then I got to go and qualify and see who's really a client and all that. By the time I'm done, I might have five real clients and three might pay me to speak. I'm just talking aloud. But all that is one chamber talk. And then here's the great part. Then I go to those three events and I enter evaluation forms again. And then I build a reverse pyramid, like a network marketing thing, but it's the team. The other thing we do is if you're going to do that, you need video. The number one reason people hire speakers is they've seen them themselves. Number three is that they've been referred. Number two is a video, which is basically, they've seen them themselves. It's just they saw them in a video. So you need video. So here's the cool thing in today's world. Grab two of these iPhone 15s or whatever one you're using mostly a 4K cameras. Now get your friend to film you on two different angles on tripods. You got high quality footage as well. And so that's what I would do to start from scratch. And that's how I kind of built this big thing when it started building. But to answer Minnie's question, because what would I do to get hired? Well, obviously the chamber, when I mentioned you're less because you're offering to do it no fee. Now, don't think that means a chamber will hire you because you're no fee, because chambers can get in politicians and heads of companies. But what I'm saying is if you have a good enough compelling proposition, then it's easier and you're in front of the right audience. Now, having said that, to get hired, there's a whole bunch of things around this, but one thing I would say is you need to stand out, because this is a scenario, let's say you're already talking to the client and they're saying, why you. So obviously things like having a TEDx talk or a Blue Talk, what we help people with, because the Blue Talk, you might be at Harvard or something that has a lot of cash. Having that video is going to help because you need to stand out. And them seeing you speak is going to be a thing that lets you stand out. And it doesn't matter to me. Again, if you film this on your own, as long as it's high quality. But you need video to stand out. But that's still probably not going to make you stand out as much if you're competing with five or six other speakers that have maybe really high quality video. If you do a TED talk, it'll be. Even if it's not high quality, TEDxS have a certain prestige. Our videos are always 4K, so it's that high quality. But even if you don't have that, the other thing I did early on that I found other speakers were doing is I offered things that nobody else offered. So if you want to stand out, offer what nobody else will. So, for example, one of the things I said, which I never seen another person ever say, oh, the other person offered us this too, is I would say what we'll do is in 30 days after the event, we're going to do a virtual zoom with all your staff and do a refresher because most of your employees will stop doing what I showed you two or three weeks in. So let's get them back into it again a second time and at least get a second kick at the can. And so I'm going to do that at no extra cost. It takes me 45 minutes. It's virtual. I don't have to leave my home or office or wherever you work. So that's one thing. And another thing I used to do often was I would offer them takeaways, like stuff you can do for free, like a free copy of my digital book to all your attendees. Another thing I often did was a big thing you're going to get is why would I pay you insert number here, $5,000 for 45 minutes of your time. Why would I pay you $25,000? Why would I pay Tony Robbins $1.1 million to do a 45 minute talk? And there's various ways you can answer that. One, why you do it? Tony Robbins is he's going to sell 5 million tickets for your event. Like $5 million worth of tickets. I mean not 5 million tickets. That's why you like Gary Vee. Why does Gary Vee get paid 120,000? Because he makes that either makes it back in money or the credibility as a company. One of the two. That's why Cindy Crawford to speak. It's because they want to be their staff. Say we met Cindy Crawford. Either it's that kind of value or it's the other side, which is that, well, the other option is they need your topic desperately. I had association that said we never pay speakers. And I said, sorry, well, I don't speak for free. And we're on a stalemate, I guess and why they still paid me and I was the only other speaker beside like John C. Maxwell and two other speakers when I was just early on. It's because I had a topic that they're employed and I knew this. Their association members had voted most they wanted needed to hear over everything else.

Wow.

But anyway, back to that point, the one other thing that I did is people would say, well, I'm paying you. I'll just throw a number $5,000 for 45 minutes. And I would say, no, you're not paying me $5,000 for 45 minutes at all. I'll do the talk for free and I'll let them go. What do you mean you do it for free? Yeah, if you can find a way to get me there without any travel, any spent time and not doing it virtually. Because of course that will be their answer and we'll do it virtually. Not to the virtually, but I can be there live and you can find a way to be me there. If you have that technology, I'll do it for free. So let me answer why I say that what you're paying me for is leaving the family for three days, dealing with airports, airplanes, rental cars, all that other stuff. But you're also paying me for is the 25 years or whatever amount of time. But my case, 20 some years that I spent learning this. And I tell them, you know what, if you paid 50 bucks for me my first speaking talk, you're paying More and wasted more money than you would be paying. 15,000 now, based on what I know now. So what I'm saying is you're not paying for 45 minutes on the stage. You're paying for me to personalize it for you, prep it, travel to get there, travel back home, and so on and so forth. Then the other thing I would say is, how much did you spend on the cookies? What do you mean? The cookies for your event. Oh, we. And they might not get into that detail, but what did you spend for catering or whatever? Right. Thousand dollars. Okay, let me ask you a question. If I can make a difference at your event, are you going to remember me or the catering more so. And then what I would also do, and I'm not saying I would be like that. Yeah. But just that that's the stuff.

Confident, though, like, you're going in. You're not like, oh, I wonder if they're going to pay me. Literally, you have your worth before you even go in, which is probably where it even comes from.

I hope so. And then the other thing a person could do if they want one more tip, allowing that, and it's an easier one than what I just said, how much you pay for the cookies? Because that can get. That might not go well, depending on the type of personality you're dealing with. I would say the other one. Like, you're not paying me for that. You're paying me for all the other things. But the cookies one. I only say to people that I know. I can say it. Yeah, I can read that situation usually. The other thing you can say, though is let me ask you this. And you want to know this Anyway, how many attendees do you have? Oh, a thousand. Okay. And my fee, I'm just talking out loud. My. My fee is $1,000. Let's say it's one of your early talks. So really, if we weren't crunch the numbers. That's a dollar per person.

So let me ask you. It's once a year and you're bringing me in because you think I can make a difference. Do you feel that's worth a dollar a person for your staff? It's like basically, would you buy a coffee for your staff once a year if it would make them more productive? So to answer Minnie's question, those are the things I would now interview. Plus also offering those things I mentioned to try to allow me to stand out from other speakers.

And when you're getting their pain points ahead of time, it's just you looking online. Right. In terms of seeing what that association or that organization's struggling with.

So it depends on how the reach would happen. Right. Sometimes people find me online. Some people find me through a bureau. Some people are referred from another client. Some people vote for speakers they've seen in the past. Some people I did reach out, like I said, outreach. So it depends on scenario, but for the most part, it's kind of a little different. So what happens is 90% of the time, until there's an opportunity there, it doesn't go anywhere. So in other words, they don't have an event coming up if they're not looking. They don't have a budget, they don't like the idea of hiring a speaker, all those things. It's probably not going to go anywhere. So by the time I'm finding out their pain points, I already know they're hiring a speaker. The only question is whether or not it's me or not. And so. And by the way, there's a lot of times they don't think I need to know the pain points as much as I do to deliver a great talk for them. So sometimes they might say, we want to hire you. We know you speak in customer service. Three people on our staff recommended you. And then I'll say, that's great, but I'd like to send a questionnaire because I want to make sure I'm hitting all your pain points. And I might not say pain points. I'm hitting all the things you want to make sure you accomplish. I don't go down this rabbit hole off or really too far. But what really gets fascinating is whenever a meeting planner has an agenda that's completely different than all of their staff. And that's where it gets tricky, because you have to make a call. How are you going to deal with that? For example, they could be downsizing and firing people left and right. And so the employees want security, and they want to know that there's a comfort here and we're going to be around tomorrow. And they might say, we want them to know that they need to continue to produce more. That's two different agendas. And so then it depends on the meeting planner's personality. But I think it's important to bring it up to them. Like, I just want to let you know, you did a questionnaire, you said this. They did a questionnaire, they said this. I'm okay with taking either approach, but I need to know, is this really the approach you want me to take? Because I think they're going to be unhappy with me and you because there's most times the meeting planners have like the CEOs. And this is another thing that people get lost on. CEOs very rarely ever hire the speaker. That makes it hard because when I was in sales selling photocopiers, our thought was always I need to get to the CEO. Because they make the decision and they can decision most cases with a speaker, unless it's a celebrity speaker, if you get to the CEO, they're going to be so pissed off that you found your way there, they're not going to hire you anyway. And I, I've had people come to me and say, oh, I was told not to go do HR conferences. They don't hire speakers. And I say, well, I guess I better throw my career in the garbage then. Because 20 years says they do. Like my point is they have people in certain positions and they, if they're looking through 10 speakers, the CEO does not have time to look through 10 speakers on customer service when they're managing maybe eight different departments that don't even affect customer service. So that was again a way to say that the meeting planner, at the end of the day, you have to understand that her goal is to look like the hero. So if you notice a big discrepancy in what she wants and what the staff wants and you can help her show that to the CEO, you become the hero. So that's another way you can stand out. But to answer your again, you see, I go further into it than I have to answer your direct question. Typically speaking, the pain points, usually I'm finding those out once I'm either engaged or hired or it's down to me and five other speakers. But it's, I'm not finding them before I reach out to them.

Gotcha.

Often they're not on the website. You think of it this way, how many companies are, let's say, on the verge of bankruptcy or downsizing that put on their website we're downsizing. She's something they're hiding. And so they don't want people to know on the outside. And sometimes you even have to sign an agreement, a non disclosure agreement, saying you won't say what their pain points are. So usually it's hard to find those elsewhere. Unless you're talking pain points. Like if I spoke for, let's say AT and T and their competitor wants to know what I delivered there, they might say we'd like to hire you for customer service because they seen that I deliver one for their competitor. Your pain point is they just want to they want to be doing as good as their competitor. But yeah, most pain points, you got to get that directly from them. So I speak up and say if I'm really going to knock out of the park for you, I got to get at least a feel for what's going on in the company.

Hmm. And Angela just asked, how is the survey of the attendees done ahead of time to know what they want or need versus the meeting planners agenda?

Yeah, so that's a different survey than the evaluation form I mentioned. The evaluation form is what I hand out at an event. And again, that might not even be employees. So in this case, for the most part we're talking corporate because associations have agendas too. But it's a little harder because it's, you look at home builders, it could be like 50 carpenters that all have their own different agenda. Like it's harder to rein that in. But like corporate is where I really am focused on pain points to a large degree. And when you come to association, usually it's the industry pain points and that's stuff you can find from a firm. In other words, subsidized housing has changed, so that's going to change how home builders build or whatever. That stuff you can figure out beforehand. But as far as the survey of attendees, what I typically do is if I'm working with a corporate company and I'm working with the meeting planner, I'll explain to them why I want the forms done and how I feel it can help me personalize more for them and, and also make us both the hero to the CEO or what have you. So what I'll say is, can I get either if it depends how many employees, but if you have 50 sampling of that or can you send it out to all of them and let's see who fills it out and basically we send it out digitally. So I send it to them as an attachment. It can be done that you can fill it out online, but I'm just saying old school, we would do it. I would send it as an attachment. They'd send to that person. That person is a Word document. So they would just answer their questions in word, send it back and they'd send all the answers back to me. That's typically how we do it. So the meeting planner, I would get them to obviously fill one out and then if it's a big company and let's say a thousand people are going to be at the event, or 3,000, then if we can get 20 answers, it's probably going to be you Know Nielsen ratings whenever they study 100 households to see what a million is doing. Same idea. If we get a sampling of 20 and 18, say, I'm sick of them firing people, that's probably an issue. Answer the question. But I actually work with the client to get them to send out a survey.

Yeah. And Minnie asked perfect question. Minnie, can he tell us about his organization? What does he offer? What is his success rate?

Wow. So, okay, so that it's funny because.

As Stacy, you and I talked about, we do different things. So it's like, I'll tell you about it, but it's one of those things where I can't just say one thin line. But based on what we're talking about today, here's essentially in a nutshell, what we do. So we help people land branded talks like a TEDx talk. And on that side, her success ratio is really, really, really high. So when I say really high, just to put a number on it, since January, So now we're to what, April? Since January, I think we're at 29 people that we've helped. In fact, the one I deliver next week, we pitched one of our clients. And then the. So I get to know the organizers. There's a whole. That's whole science behind this too. But I get to know the organizer. But the organizer said, well, we want her, but we want you too. And I wasn't applying. I was hired. And I did my fourth one by accident. I was helping somebody else fill theirs out, but using me as the example, they said, well, you might as well submit. You've done all the work. I said, no, I do this all the time. I'm retired at 3. That's it. And then I press submit. They convinced me as a good friend. And then I got a message three weeks later and said, good news. So I was like, oh, crap, I don't want to stop at four. Four is not my number five or three. And so I wasn't planning to do this one right away, but I sent it for a client. And then they said, hey, we want you to do one too. Both I say that to say on the TEDx side, we've reverse engineered, as you hit the nail on the head earlier, we reverse engineered that whole system again. I've done five. I've only ever applied for, I think, six. And so our students, a lot of our clients landed on the first try, which is not. Result's not typical, I have to say that. But we have a lot that landed on the first try. People, sometimes they come to us and tried 30 times. And the reason is is because. And I won't go to all the things we do but I'll just say one example is we're going to the organizer. Now most people how to find the organizer. We're going to the organizer. I'm building a relationship with them, I'm saying the right things, all that kind of stuff. As she would say this curious her first name. The person we just helped land one. She never seen the application and never heard the person's name until I said, you're it.

Wow, that's incredible.

That's not normal.

You've heard of that? I've never heard of that.

That's not normal. We have another one recently and they unfortunately didn't follow through. His name was Lawrence and he said Corey, give them my cell number and I'll talk to them about it. So they were going to bypass the application to be on the phone with him but he never answered his friggin phone ever. And then he messaged it. They never called me and it just got tiring. But my point is that I've never heard that before and I've never seen this before. The one that I'm speaking at, there's only six speakers and they're so chill. I love it. It's not good for somebody who wants more support probably, but I love it. But anyway, yeah, they didn't do it the normal way but it was a outreach I did and I got her book and I. And yeah, anyway, long story short, success ratio on that is pretty high because again we figured out the process essentially. So that's one thing. The other thing we do, which started about four and a half years ago, which is why I don't talk about me speaking daily as much as I used to, is because I switched my focus to founding this company and helping other speakers. So I said I used to be the surfer, you know, the speaker with the mic, the surfer who said look at me, I'm doing stuff. And now I'm the guy behind the waves of 250 other surfers creating waves for them. So the wave maker and so do that. I finally realized I can't do both. I can't be out speaking on the road and also running blue talks. So we launched this thing called Blutox Blu, which stands for Business Life Universe, which I've said basically if you want to know what it's like, it's like if Ted and Chicken Soup of the Soul went off and got married on the honeymoon, had a baby, we'd be the baby. And so what that really means is business Life universe. We're a mix between the idea that can change the world, the idea we're sharing, the business message that can change everybody's life, the life story we all need to hear, and the spiritual message that isn't shared on many stages. So kind of, you could also mix in mindvalley and Goldcast as well. And so. But what we do. So that's what Blue Talks is. But what we do and why I started is when I started, I had no mentors. I told you guys, I struggled with how to get paid. So what I did was I wanted to launch a platform that would allow me to change that. And so what I wanted to do is launch a platform where we could focus on the speakers and experts first and the audience second. That's calendar. TEDx focuses on the audience. Mindvalley focuses on the audience. That's. I mean, there's nothing wrong with it. But on TEDx, your name goes on there, but your website doesn't go on there. Nobody knows how to reach you. It's focused on the audience. And that it's great because that's part of their motto and their brand. But for us, we wanted to focus on the experts. So there's a great customer service book called the Customer Comes Second. It's everything we think, but the idea behind it is if you take care of the employees, they'll take care of the customers better than you could anyway. And so our thing is, let's take care of the experts, and they'll take care of the message. And so what we do, in essence, is we're basically providing the stage. We're providing the anthology book series, I got a bunch over there, the podcast platform, and the virtual stage. So live stage in person and virtual stage, we're providing those four platforms that feature you. And so we'll run events. The next one we have coming up next week is at Columbia University. One after that is at University of Miami. One after that is at mit. After that, we're at Oxford, Cambridge. And so basically, we do everything. It's done for you. So you show up to speak. We have a guy named Tyler now who films all the talks. He works with HBO just to give you an idea of the level. So you show up to speak. You just have to have your talk ready. We run the event. We do everything. Audience in front of you. So it's not just you and speakers. It's an audience in front of you. Real event. We run the event. We Film it. We then broadcast it on platforms like Apple tv, Roku, Amazon, Google Play, United Airlines, C suite network, Connect TV out of Hollywood, AM FM 247 syndicated radio, which is 22 FM stations 2 million listeners. And basically yes, we're focused on getting you in front of people like TedX, but we're also focused on branding you as the expert in your industry. So to explain what I mean by that is somebody works with us for four months, it's not abnormal for them to have a video of them speaking at MIT on their website as seen on all those things. We talked the big ones flyer saying this year co wrote a book with Joe Vitale and then a flyer virtually showing they share the bill with Les Brown and Lisa Nichols. I would say is imagine your website for four months. Took me 15 years to get that. Imagine your website after four months looking like that. And I describe it like when an actor wins an Oscar, what happens? They get more clients paid, more, more sought after. What we're trying to do is make you the Oscar winner of the expert industry. Now I have to clarify. We don't make you the expert, we don't manufacture that, we don't make you look like you're better at what you do. You bring that stuff, your special sauce. But what we can do is help you become the expert so that when I go to your website versus somebody else, I see is my person. Look at all the stuff she's done. Wow. She spoke at mit. Wow. Co authored a book with Joe by Talley. And just to finish that off, our books are always the forward's always written by a big name thought leader. So I brought up Joe because he's been one. Ken Honda from Mindvalley has been one. James Redfield wrote Celestine Marie diamond from the Secret and yay. Exciting. The late Bob Proctor is our next one. So the late Bob Proctor. I interviewed Bob before his passing and got permission from his widow and his son to turn it into a forward for the next book. So it's like a once in a lifetime legacy book. But yeah, so that's what we do with Blue Talks. But ultimately we're helping you with the platforms. Also at the end of our Blue Talks live talks, it'll say to find out Stacy's three tips for writing great books, go here. And then the idea there is we're directing people to build your email list so the is on the video and actually you're now the expert. You can actually leverage that to drive traffic. And then as if that weren't enough. The last thing that we're doing, not the last thing, but one other thing we do is a thing called the Blue Talks Experts Bureau. And if say that quickly. That's a mix between speakers Bureau and a PR firm on steroids. Basically hired multiple VAs virtual assistants and they outreach to find opportunities Media, Fox, NBC. Well, the newest thing we started doing now is pitching people to a hundred producers. And we're talking like Good Morning America, the View, what have you that I had got the producer's info. We're pitching each expert to a hundred of those producers once and then every day we also find shows for you to get on podcasts, speaking opportunities and so on. So the Blue Talks, we get you on the platforms the Bureau, we actually help you get other platforms beyond ours and start building your business.

Wow, that's incredible. Oh my God.

I know.

Minnie just said wowza.

Could do this in an hour or so.

That was really good. Oh my gosh. Well, you guys feel free to share some love for Corey because that was beyond. I cannot even imagine. And share your. Your website and how they can get in touch with you too, please.

Okay. Yeah. So I guess probably the easiest path is if there's different answers to that. So people want to learn more about Blue Talks or TedX, like planning a TedX, what have you. They want to learn more about that stuff. What I just talked about that we do the easiest path. And I know this is different than usually we give a website, but I don't want anybody that's on here. I know shouldn't say this, but I'll say it. I don't want anybody that's on here to necessarily have to go through our team. So I'm going to give you my email because I'd rather you should come directly to me. And our team's not massive, but we got like 14 people and we have five on our sales team. But I'd rather you go directly through me for this. So it's easy. It's Corey, which is C O R E Y. He's important there@bluetox.com and the E is not in blue so it's not important there. So Corey at Blue Blue Blue Talks with an S on the end com. If you send me an email there, I mean, no matter what, just to make the connection. But if you do want to know more about the stuff we do to help people become the instant expert, definitely send that email and I'll circle back and then I don't want to confuse people because sometimes when you give two links. People don't go to either. But I'll just say we didn't talk about it all today, and I'm not shamelessly promoting it. But the newest thing that I'm doing, in case anybody is curious, is I have a book coming out called the Enlightened Passenger. It is a fictional parable similar to the Alchemist or the Celestine Prophecy or Augmentino's books. And it's literally available now for order. But I will say it, but I don't want to confuse people, but there is a website for it, which is thisisthebook.com. so this is the book dot com. The cool part about that site is you still go and buy it from your favorite retailer. So you're not buying it from us, but what it shows on the site, the steps. But you go and buy from your favorite retailer, you come back and put the order number in, and then what happens is you get five cool bonuses. Oh, but if you don't do that, where you just go buy it off Amazon, you don't get the bonuses to me, either way, it doesn't change my sales. I don't get more money. But it's just that it's one place. And like I said, it allows you to get some bonuses. So either send me an email at Corey@bluetox.com or go to this is the book.com and find out more about the Enlightened Passenger.

Thank you so much for doing this with us. I really appreciate it. There's so many people that are just aching to get out there and get their voice out there, and I feel like you gave us an immediate path to move forward.

Well, thank you. And I apologize in reverse for how quickly I had to speak to get all that to you guys. But just know it's from the heart. I wanted to get more in. I could have spoke slower and only shared one act for the whole hour. But I really. It's important to me because I wish I had these things when I started, so I wanted to share them. And like I say, sometimes it means I have to ramp it up a bit.

It was incredible. Yeah. Thank you. And thank you guys for coming. Good to see you all. And yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. And do the thing. Don't wait for opportunity, create it.

Absolutely. Hope to hear from you. And thanks so much, Stacey. And thanks, everybody. Truly appreciate it.