#31 How to Find Your “Why” and Achieve Focused Mastery with Corey Poirier

//  Corey Poirier is a multiple-time TEDx Speaker and multiple-time best selling author. He is also the host of two top rated podcasts, founder of The Speaking Program, and he has been featured in multiple television specials. Interviewing 4,000 of the world’s top leaders, he has also appeared / or been featured in Global TV, CBS, CTV, NBC, ABC, CBC, Entrepreneur, and is one of a few featured twice on the popular Entrepreneur on Fire show.

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Full Interview Transcript

Hey, hey it’s Andrea! Welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, I have Corey Poirier on the line. Corey is a speaker. He has spoken at multiple TEDx events. He is a podcaster with thousands of interviews already; the podcast is called the Conversations with PASSION. And he is an author. 

Andrea: So Corey, it is so good to have you today on the Voice of Influence podcast

Corey Poirier: I am super excited to be here, Andrea, and super excited to hopefully make some magic happen today.

Andrea: Sounds good! OK, so we met each other at podcasting conference a couple of months ago, and here we are finally getting able to really chat a little bit together. I’m really curious, why don’t you tell us, first of all, how you see your business and your kind of calling right now in life. What are you doing?

Corey Poirier: I would say what I’m hoping to do is create what I call an invisible impact or a positive ripple or dent in universe for other people, some who I directly met and worked with and some who I may never even know or me. But the hope is that I possibly impact more than one person’s life. That’s really at the core of what I’m trying to do.

And because that’s sort of my goal every day to impact lives, the hope is that I’m impacting well more than one person. But even I’m only impacting one person’s life; I think that’s still worth the effort. So that’s on a grand scale. If I stay it on, let’s call it more direct way, I’m sharing my message with people through various platforms, probably the most notable is speaking.

So I spent a large part of my time speaking at conferences, whether that’s for corporate clients, for associations, for nonprofits, or schools. So speaking to audiences, writing for various publications and I would add in our show. So getting the message in our show while also sharing the insights we learned during interviews in our show. That’s the direct way of doing it and that would extend to social media, as well.

So on one end, I’m getting the messages there to various people, to various platforms, and overall what I’m hoping to happen as a result to that is I’m creating some sort of positive ripple in the world.

Andrea: So what kind of positive ripple are you wanting to create, is it specific or is it just general positivity?

Corey Poirier: I’ll say it this way, it’s not necessarily specific as in I want this specific thing to happen but it is specific in the sense that I don’t want to just, let’s say, share positivity or have somebody go “I’m glad you said that now, I feel happier.” I want to actually change lives. So the speaking, of course, allows me to do that to some degree, especially the show allows me to do that where I’m actually offering more than just positive energy or let’s say inspiration. I’m actually offering tangible, “Here’s how you do it as well. So here’s how you can improve your business. So there are the things that will actually improve or enhance your life.”

And to give you an example, Andrea, just one little random of example; one of the things I work with people on is how to figure out who they’re spending your time with. So whether that’s in a talk, whether they’re reading an article about that, whether I’m working with them one-on-one, I talk to them about putting together an exercise that will show them who they’re spending their time with. And are these people adding positivity or extra value to their life or they’re actually getting toxic energy.

Ideally, if you figure out you figure out, you’re sitting most of your time with eight people and seven of them are negative, well I can say “dot, dot, dot,” I mean, you know you have work to do. If you find you’re spending your time seven with positive and one is negative and the one who’s negative is a family member that you’re not willing reduce the time with, at least you know you’re still spending your time with most of the positive people.

So the odds are good that you’re going to have a lot more positive energy than if the numbers were flipped and again if it was seven negative and one positive. So first is helping people figure out who they’re spending their time with. And then the second part of that will be figuring out who do I reduce the time with. Who do I leave it altogether and how do I bring in people to my life that would add more the positivity I’m not getting. So that whole thing could be a whole talk but that’s one tiny example of the fact that I’m not just trying to say, “ra, ra, ra, you could do it.” I’m saying “Here’s how you do it as well.”

Andrea: Interesting. When you do that one-on-one with people, do you consider yourself to be like a coach, consultant, or strategist; what would you call yourself, or do you call yourself something?

Corey Poirier: That’s an interesting question. I always tell people, because people say, what do you for a living? I always say “If I’m filling out an application for anything and it says career, what I’d put in there is keynote speaker.” So there’s no question to identify myself as a speaker first; however, it’s interesting you asked, because I just joined Forbes Coaches Council, literally today, literally just now.

Andrea: Cool!

Corey Poirier: And so why bring that up is because in the coaching side, I certainly consider myself to be doing some coaching. So what really draws in for the coaching is my speaking program, and so what we do there is teach people how to become better speakers who can earn and income speaking so that they can get more time and freedom to impact more lives. And part of that involves coaching so it’s not just online training, it’s actually coaching one-on-one.

I have people that I sit with or that will come to me or will chat via phone or Facebook or what have you. I have my next talk coming up, how can I make sure I find leads from that talk? How can I make sure I knock it out of the park? Somebody just did it their very first talk through our program. And I said through our program, I mean they found their first talk, they secured it and they delivered it and they sent me a video. And the talk, they had four people showed up and it was a part of a bigger conference let’s say and of course you could see them with various rooms. So that’s not abnormal, it’s just like coaching when you first try it, you might have two clients and then years later you might have 50.

So they had four people in the room and they sent me the videos and see what I thought and they did a great job. But the first thing I noticed is that the way their camera was showing, you could see that every chair on the front was empty. So it made it look like it’s possible that they’re actually speaking to no one and they just put the camera up and they’re trying to send the video and let the people see this is one of my talks.

So the first thing I said is whether we do it for you or whether you do it yourself, you need to crop all those chairs. So if you take those chairs out, you wouldn’t know if there were 300 people in there. But if you leave those chairs in, whether it’s empty or not, you can tell that the front rows is not full which is a bad sign.

So going back to my point, Andrea is you know that’s obviously a lot more in the way of coaching and even to the extent that people would call and say “How would I launch my speaking career? I’ve been speaking for a while, how do I actually start getting paid fees to do this?” So we do a lot of one-on-one coaching. But again, if you say how do you identify yourself, it always goes back to speaker first.

Andrea: I know that you have some background in standup comedy and there’s something to do with that that got you into speaking in the first place. How did that start for you?

Corey Poirier: I guess it’s sort of an interesting story because it’s an interesting journey into the speaking world. But basically, for me, how it all started is I had a stage play in a French class. I guess it’s the better way to back that story up, if you will. One of the actors in the place said “Hey, Corey, I heard about the standup comedy workshop, how would you like to jump in with me? A university stand-up comedy workshop, essentially in two weeks, we’re going to learn how to do standup the comedy.

Now, the number one fear in the world above death is public speaking. Most people have heard that stat before. What that means is if you’re at a funeral, you’d rather be in the casket than do a eulogy for the average person.

Interestingly, I wasn’t too excited about the idea performing standup, but I realized that if I just go to the workshop that doesn’t mean I ever have to get on the stage. So basically, we went to the comedy club on the third week. They told us that people are going to entertain us. We get there excited; it’s going to be like a clinic in our minds. There were 15 of us showed up. It was five minutes to show time; we noticed the comics weren’t there yet. We asked him about it, he turned to us and said “You guys are the comics. Sorry, I didn’t let you know on it.”

I went to the bathroom trying to find the exit window and there was no exit window. I came back and eight of the 15 that showed up there that took the workshop and planned to do the standup, most of them were actors. They were already in the entertainment business; they literally walked out the door.

So over 50% walked out at the front door, I was one of the one last from the 15% who stayed. I had been to a Toastmaster’s meeting. Essentially what I learned is if you’re going to face the fear like speaking, do it first. When they were still debating who’s going to go up first by the side of the stage, I jumped on the stage, grabbed the mic, launched in my first joke. And I told my first joke what I thought was maybe the funniest joke that I knew at the time, delivered it too, dead silence!

And all of a sudden, the sweats were rolling down my face. I realized that the standup thing was not so easy. But I also knew, I was up there already, so it was easier to launch the joke number two because maybe it was just the joke. So I jumped on the joke number two and this time still no laughter, and this time still full of sweat. This time, I kind of heard the crickets at the back of the room. I saw the tumbleweed go past the stage.

So Guy, (his name was actually Guy), who pulled us into this whole thing, called me over to the corner stage, he gave me one of those smacks that I could have and said “You idiot, we haven’t even turned the mic on yet.” So my first joke I ever delivered in my life to an audience, my first time on a stage ever in my life, actually, I didn’t even have the mic turned on. I literally wasn’t prepared. I blamed him because he said he only taught us how to adjust the mic stand, but the truth is you should know to turn the mic on.

And by the way, that has worked the way to my speaking ever since because now when I do talks, I’ll ask a question to keep going with my talk to see what kind of response I get to make sure people can hear me all because of that. Because when you’re a new speaker, sometimes you’re at the mercy of the sound people and if they haven’t turned it on…so now, I’m conscious about it all the time.

But to go back to your original question, Andrea, you said that that led me into speaking. Well that night, well not specifically that night, but that first performance opened up the possibility because I was terrified of speaking in public. So getting on standup stage was even obviously way worst than that.

And what happened was I saw Tony Robbins, and this was after I’d seen him on his infomercial, which I thought was a TV show. But I thought Tony was being paid by his products only and didn’t get paid as a speaker. And somebody ticked me off or I Googled it or something happened and I quote in “This guy is actually getting paid to speak.” And speaking has a lot of what I love about standup and not so much about what I don’t like.

So all of a sudden, I transitioned into speaking and the transition was an easy decision. I kept doing standup for another nine years. But of course, speaking is my main focus. I go for standup at first once a week but then eventually got to once every three weeks or a month. But I was obsessed by performing stand-up but speaking became my core passion.

And what’s interesting is most of the stand-ups that I was sharing _____ never went to speaking route so much so that a lot of them kept saying “Oh my God, you get paid to do what we do way more than you would get from the comedy club, how do I do this?” And then I would have speakers, they wouldn’t want to do standup but they were saying “Oh my God, dude, I could never start my speaking with that speaking stuff. I can never do standup.”

So one thing I learned really quickly is that what I was doing was very unique from all speakers and all stand-ups. I merged that two whereas most people never did. So that was a long story but that’s how my speaking journey, which again is my core focus and passion today, started. So I started with stand-up. I couldn’t have a better training ground. There was no better in my experience. No better training ground for communicating than getting on a standup stage and hoping for the best.

Andrea: Yeah that’s funny. So I’ve got a question though. You mentioned that at the beginning that you speak for students, you speak for corporate, and you speak at conferences.   I’ve heard it said, and I’m wondering if this is true from somebody that’s really experienced with this, I’ve heard it said that if you think that you can speak to any audience and say anything that you’re wrong, but I wonder if with the standup background and everything, has that made you more a versatile or what do you speak about and why?

Corey Poirier: So I mentioned that that was sort of niche that I started with standup and then transition. The other part of that I guess was sort of a niche or made me, let’s say standout a little better as well is I actually start it in business. And when I say business, I had my first business way before standup. In addition to that, I transitioned to the corporate world. So I was working first for Toshiba Canada, so Toshiba that makes the photocopiers, the laptops what have you. And then I work for Konika Minolta, which is the Toshiba’s competitors.

So for people that don’t know those names, it would be like the Xerox industry, so I competed against Xerox for 10 years in the corporate sales role. I worked for Hewlett Packard and SPC software. And so I did that after having my own business and my business was the business newspaper like a regional newspaper version of Success Magazine.

The key thing is, I had a business background to draw from way before standup. So for me making the transition into a corporate business speaker was much easier than of course a standup comic trying to make a transition into a inspirational speaker or a speaker that just decides to eventually speak and then figure out a topic.

So the benefit I had was that, I was already working in corporate sales so I could go easily to a sales group or company that had sales staff and go in as a sales trainer or as a speaker that speaks around the area of selling. That was my first, I’m going to say, my first niche topic area.

I went in doing sales, in fact, my first company in that realm as a trainer was called the International Sales Training Institute. I was actually doing sales training and speaking on the subject of selling. That eventually transitioned to customer service, so I’d speak on customer service.

Again, not a really big stretch because I have done, we figured over 10,000 cold calls to customers over my corporate sales period. So obviously, I get to learn a lot of a customer service making that many cold calls and then of course those turned into warm calls at some point and then you have customers as a result from that.

So I learned a lot of a customer service after doing that many sales calls and working with clients, you know, thousands and thousands of clients over the course of 10 years. Customer service again wasn’t that much stretch, I had that experience and then I guess what I speak on the most today; I still speak on customer service.

So I have a talk on getting a standing ovations from every customer, which evolved into a book a few years back and then a talk on winning and adjusting to personality types which is essentially being able to read four dominant personality types that we’re going to interact with every day in any capacity of our life, even on a radio interview. How do you adjust to those people, so you have that people that are social and talks a lot, the people who are very directed that don’t talk at all. You have the people that are very technical and have lots of questions and then you have the people that are standoffish and don’t like arguments and what have you.

So essentially I teach that and again that’s not much of a stretch when you consider all the sales experience I had selling to the corporate personality types. And then finally probably what I’m most known for is the talk called the Timeless Secrets of influential leaders and where my background lies there is essentially after doing, so now I’m up to over 4000 interviews.

So for people that have known Napoleon Hill, essentially what I’m doing is the modern day work of what Napoleon Hill did in the ‘30’s which an essentially interview of high achievers to figure out what they do uniquely and differently and share that with other people.

So the short answer I guess is that I speak on those three areas today. But every time that I was speaking on the subject, I never talk on a subject that I wasn’t very very much, I’m going to say, well-versed in and experienced in and stuff that I’ve walked on the path. I’m not a fan of taking on a talk to get paid money or taking on a talk because you feel it may increase your credibility if you’re not the right person be doing that talk. I really feel you need to be the right person.

There are so many people calling themselves the guru but don’t have any experience in the area they’re talking about. And so I need to be the person that has already lived it and been in the trenches before I speak on.

Andrea: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and it’s a good point. You know, a few minutes that we talked, it sounds to me like you have lived a hundred years worth of achievements and experience. But I know that you’re not a 100 years old and you’re saying that you’ve learned a lot from high achievers. I guess what I’m saying is that it sounds like you are a high achiever and you’ve been able to gain a lot of experience and things. You’re not that old, right?

Corey Poirier: I’ll say that I’m quite willing to reveal my age; I know that everybody is but I’m 42. What I’ll say is this; I mean there’s kind of two parts to answer that. The first part is by doing those interviews, which is why I’m so passionate sharing about this common traits with others so that, you know, people call it hacks. So I’ve learned the hacks in different areas. We might call it shortcuts for people who aren’t familiar with the term hacks.

But basically, by doing all this interviews, I’ve been able to realize a lot of shortcuts to achievement that I wouldn’t be able to probably discover without spending an extra 40 years on the trenches. You know, I probably wouldn’t be 70 or something before I could do these same things without learning from these highest of achievers.

So I’m the one benefit that a lot of people don’t have because not only do I learned from mentors and high achievers but I’m able to look at thousands and say “Okay, what are the common five? What are the common seven?” I have the research to back it up and then I go out and live it. So I don’t just kind of say “I know it works that I’ll just share it with other people.” I literally go out and sort of live it.

It’s funny when you said that, Andrea, about a hundred years; otherwise, it always fascinates me but I was on a show which you might be familiar, it’s called Join Up Dots with the host David Ralph. And we actually use this on my immediate intro because the way it started just, I don’t know, it made me laugh every time I hear it but it goes back to what you’ve just said. And you know, he’s opening was “You know, my next guest is 420 years old or he has managed to squeeze X amount of achievements in in X amount of time.”

And so until that point, I hear that a lot and so what I would say is it’s not that I started with any special skills that’s a given for sure. I was raised by a single mother, barely graduated high school. One of my teachers gave me 49 + 1 to let me know I didn’t officially graduate. He gave me the actual point to finish my last year in school, grade 12, so no special talent to start it with.

When I started music for instance, I still can’t tune a guitar by ear, I still use a tuner and I’ve been playing music for, I don’t know how long now, since I was 12 or something like that. I had a girlfriend and my girlfriend said “Stop playing, you’re hurting my ears.” And then fast forward, a bunch of years later and I released four CD’s and I have music videos and…

Andrea: Oh my goodness, music too?

Corey Poirier: Yeah, music too. And when I say that, Andrea, the reason I practiced the way I did is because I wouldn’t want somebody think when I say that, it’s like me saying “Oh look at me.” I say that because it’s the proof of the whole 10,000 hours that we hear. If we put in the time, we can master or at least learn any skills. So the music was one I definitely can back it up, my mother would tell you I was horrible. It took me like two and a half years of playing guitar before I could play one song from start to finish. And now I jam with people that were levels above me way from the day they started and I’ve had people working for me at my shows that really should be signed to a record label.

And so I say this because I’ve learned that we can truly get good any skill and do it much quicker than we’re told to believe if we’re able to learn what the shortcuts are. So if you can learn what the highest of achievers do well and figure out what they’re all doing and we can take that one thing, let’s say tenth of a percent that they’re doing differently than everybody else and we can incorporate that into our lives. I believe we can take and reduce; first of all, we can bring it down lower than 10,000 hours, but I believe we can actually knock off years from what we would spend learning the skill.

I mean, I go back to stand-up, I told you I bombed that first night. Well, I went the first two years and I didn’t have five minutes, no joke, five minutes of laughs back to back of material. I took me over two years to get five minutes and it took me nine years before I could do a 45 minutes set. So you know just to back it up and just to, I guess to just finish that, so it’s not just to build me. A good friend of my Tracy McDonald won star search and she was, I believe, the only female comedienne that ever win Star Search.

She won $250,000 a pilot show, and when I interviewed Tracy about being a standup. I asked about headlining and she told me, it took her five years to get her first headline spot and yet she won Star Search. And now that she won, you could call her the funniest comedienne in the world and yet, it took her five years to even get one headline spot. It’s important for people to realize and know that if you believe in something and you have a big enough passion and you can learn what the secrets are and the shortcuts, you can actually, as we just said, squeeze a hundred years of achievements into a shorter amount of time.

Andrea: OK, now everybody is sitting here going “OK so give me one at least one of the hacks that you have applied to your own life that helped drive you and move you forward.”

Corey Poirier: I’ll actually give you a few really quick way, because I tell you one super quick way. I won’t go much further than this and people want to know more about this.

Andrea: Yeah.

Corey Poirier: Well, first of all, you and I were talking about that I have a new book coming in that would help them with this, so I’ll tell you this is the number one. But the reason I want to give you at least one more is because a lot of people listening to your show may have already achieved this or maybe on track with this.

So the first one is these highest of achievers have discovered their calling. So whether we use the word calling, purpose, passion, or what I use now was their “why.” They figured out what it is. They finally tuned it so that they could say “This is exactly what I need to be doing almost all of every day if I want to be successful in what it is that I love.”

So for example with me, to go one step further and give you a how-to, you know, if your listeners are saying “How do I do that?” What I tell people, especially with their why, is to sit down, I mean this could take an hour or for one person and this could take five years to somebody else. But to figure out why, for example, we share mine earlier, my why is to create invisible impact, so I want to create invisible impacts.

For my mission statement, my personal mission statement for me that I created was essentially is “Corey is the guy,” or “I wanna be the guy who motivates, donates, inspires, educates, and entertains.” And so those five things if I’m doing four of the five of those at all times, I’m on track. I’m going to crush it. If I’m doing things that are one of those or less all the time, I’m going to struggle.

So first of all, you need to figure out what your why is and that’s the part of the book coming out will actually takes the person through that whole exercise that I’ll reveal to people of how to find your why. But even if you have already found it, what I suggest is you need to figure out what’s your first initial statement is and how that ties into what your why is. If you can figure out those two things, I believe that first of all, you put yourself already in the top 10%.

So if you look at Simon Sinek, he has a video called Start With Why, that’s another place people could start. Go watch that video on, it’s a TED Talk and he talks about how Harley is why being a lifestyle company and how Harley creates the ability for a 42-year-old accountant, the driver wearing black leather in a little town where no one has seen him before and had people be terrified of him. And that’s a lifestyle whereas Indian makes a motorbike and the result is Harley crashing it with market share.

Apple has a why that change the world, whereas Dell sells a good-priced computer and so Dell sells the why and Apple sells the why. What’s the end result, Apple is crushing it.

If you go to Disney, Disney wants to be the happiest place on earth. So Disney’s mission statement by the way is to make people happy. It’s that simple, to make people happy.

So basically their why is to become the happiest place on earth that’s what they want to do. They wanted to have people walk away happy and their mission statement is to make people happy. So that drives all their actions. They know of somebody who spills an ice cream cone at Disney, as an employee, you’re empowered to go on and replace that ice cream cone instantly because that’s going to make somebody happy.

So you need to figure out what your why is and what your mission statement to get to that why. And like I said the exercise on how to do it is longer than we have in the interview. I have a book where people can learn about that. It’s actually called The Book of Why (and How), and we and could talk about that and I can tell people how they can learn more about that if you want, Andrea.

Andrea: Yeah, definitely.

Corey Poirier: OK perfect. Well, I’ll jump onto the second one, but remind me, maybe at the end I’m sure we’ll talk about the details.

Andrea: Oh yeah.

Corey Poirier: OK, so the second one and this is the one that ties directly into the first one I just shared so that’s a good segway, is the power of ‘No.’ And so what do I mean by that? We hear people all the time say ‘Yes’ in everything and figure how to do later. I heard a quote one time by Richard Branson that said that and it really stuck with me because I was like “OK, this is confusing me because Richard Branson is saying say yes to everything, but most of the high achievers I’m interviewing say no to almost everything.”

So what I had to do is I have to dig a lot of research and figure out of what Richard Branson said, which is misquoted, which we see all the time. And again, I’m paraphrasing because I’m going by memory of the exact quote, but he said “Figure out how to say yes to everything you love and then figure out how to do it.” So the key thing is you love but the way the quote is presented was like say yes to everything that comes your way.

We all know that Richard Branson is running 200 some companies and he’s not running every aspect of those companies. So we know he’s saying no to a lot more that he’s saying yes to. Like I said that conflicted with me, but I grew up in a small town, meat and potatoes, and I was kind of taught you’re supposed to say yes to everybody. So it was a struggle for me to get around this idea of saying no. But it was a glaring statistic when I look back at these interviews that most of these highest of achievers were saying no to most things.

The second thing I’ve learned from high achievers is you need to figure how to say no to all of the things that won’t move you closer to your goal so that you can say yes to the few things that will move the needle as fast as possible. And tying that back into the last point about your why, here’s the cool thing; if you can put together that mission statement I mentioned, so I mentioned motivate, donate, etc.

So what I do is if somebody offers me an opportunity, I kidded against those five and if it’s going to be four of those five, in other words if it was a TV show that would allow me to reach four or five of those that’s going to be the easiest yes I’ll ever say. However, if the show is going to hit only one of those or zero, it’s going to be an easy no that I can walk away from with no regret. Now, why is this significant, it’s because I was able to turn down a couple of television shows opportunities that when I first started my journey, I would have said yes to _____.

But because I realized that they won’t be going to help me get bucks to donate, they were paying me. They were going to let me entertain. They wanted me to be fixed around their script. And by the way, I’ve even turned down where people wanted me to use their script to develop my talk because it’s going to allow me to any of those five things or especially not many of them.

So what happens is by knowing my personal mission statement, I can apply this power of no because it helps me decide what’s a Yes and a No. So the high achievers if we get to the second common trait, is they say no more often and they know what to say no to so that they can say yes to those few things rather than getting bug down into the ones that won’t move them closer to their goal. So that’s number two.

The other one that I will add in them is life-long learning. So something that we discovered is that life-long learners are leaders. So what do I mean by that is that people that figure out how to keep feeding their minds and that could be by watching a TED Talk every third day, that could be by reading 20 minutes in the morning every day, however they figure to do it. The people that keep feeding their mind long after is done are the ones that seem to rise to and stay at the top.

So you think of all the top achievers from years gone by of what we call had been called thought leaders, you know your Zig Zigler, your Jim Rohn, or your Tony Robbins, these people even though they’re at the highest level, they’re still going and attending seminars. They’re still watching other speakers. Jack Canfield that we’ve had in the show is a great example.

Jack was 69 I think when we had him on the show. For the listeners who may not know of Jack, he created this highly successful Chicken Soup for the Soul. He created The Success Principles and Jack share with us that he still goes to Tony Robbins’ seminars even though him and Tony are buddies and sit at the back and take these crazy amounts of notes.

And somebody then told me when I shared that story, they’ve been there and seen it and said Jack is taking his pages of notes and there was this 19 year old sitting beside him and he’s looking at his phone. So you get my point, right? The 69 year old who doesn’t probably need it anymore, he truly doesn’t probably need it but he believes he does. And because of that, he keeps feeding that mind and he’ll probably be reading a book until his last day.

So powerful message is you need to figure out, first of all, how to feed your mind and do it efficiently, and the second thing is you need to have learning plan whether it’s formal or not to make sure that that happens. If I give you three, there are three of them, Andrea, but I’ve discovered from these high achievers and the degree in which we practice them. In other words, the more you practice them, the better chance you’re going to join that club yourself and do it a lot sooner.

Andrea:   Those are really good. Thank you for sharing those that was very generous. Yeah, we’ll definitely link to your book or whatever you want us to link to in the show notes for sure, and you can tell us again where to find that at the end so that the listeners can write it down. But I do have another question related to this. I’ve heard you mentioned on the recent podcast episode that you would like to try to focus more on one thing but that’s hard for you because you’re multi-passionate. So I’m wondering what does multi-passionate mean to you and why do you want to focus more on one thing. Is it related to this why thing, this book that you’ve written?

Corey Poirier: Yeah, it’s a great question. I did an interview recently with the show called the One Thing, which is kind of interesting you mentioned that and there’s a book called the One Thing. And this is what sort of trigger for me. I started reading this book and recognized, again going back to the high achievers that one of the other traits and this is the very quick one, but basically they go all in so they know how to avoid distractions. They go all in with their phone when they’re with their phone. They go all in with the person when they’re with the person but they don’t try to overlap the two of them.

So I believed for a long time that single task should become the new ‘sexy.’ I believe single tasking is much more efficient than multitasking and that’s been proved statistically. You know, people love the idea of multitasking. It’s seems like a hack or it seems like something sexy but the truth is that they’ve proven with statistics that multitasking isn’t as efficient. In fact, Robin Sharma who’s The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari author, I heard an interview with him where shared that he was involved in a study where they showed that for every one minute you get distracted, it gets you five minutes to get back to focusing in whatever you’re doing.

So in terms of this one thing, I’ll answer in two ways; one I want to continue to get more focused because I know single tasking is way more beneficial in every way even in your health, your personal life and so on and so forth. And the second part is in terms of what it means to me so what I had to do, Andrea, and I’m trying to get this constantly more finally tuned is to figure out what my one thing is.

So this work in two ways; one is I want to make sure I’m only doing one thing at a time that one is a little easier because even though you’re multi-passionate, you can truly say, “Okay, I’m doing an interview with Andrea right now, I’m not gonna check my messages.” So there are two things to separate there, when we talk with doing one thing. First of all, I mean I want to be doing one thing at a time so that means you could be blocking your time and say “OK, these hour is for interviews, these hour is for social media, and this hour is for Facebook live, whatever that means so that’s time blocking where you can say “OK, I’m doing one thing at a time.”

But then there’s a bigger thing we could talk about which is doing one thing in my life. That’s a whole different thing. So when I talk with the one thing, I believe I was talking about the one thing at a time where I’m trying to juggle a bunch of things; however, I will answer the other part. What I’m trying to constantly fine tune is what is that one thing in the center of all the things I’m doing that they all tied to so that I make sure that everything I’m doing filters back into one major thing.

So to explain what I mean by that is I could even use the example ripple that we talked about. So how am I getting my messages or what are the platforms? So the platforms are just different ways but the one thing I’m doing is trying to create a ripple or invisible impact. So that’s my one thing but then to do that I have to do maybe multiple platforms so that could be interviews, talks, and what have you. And then to go back further in this one thing, but when I’m doing them, I need to be doing only one of them at a time.

So I can’t be checking my messages while I’m speaking. I can’t be working on my book and writing my book while I’m listening to a podcast.

So I have to be doing one thing at a time, whereas you know the norm today is to try to figure out how to juggle multiple things. I guess, I have to also add in, there is a time whenever multitask can make sense. I did a talk the other day and I was in this rural community, and a person came up and he said “You know, I think you’re talking about multitasking. Well, if I never multitask during my day, I’d gonna get anything done.”

And then he went on to explain that, he’s a farmer and he drives the tractor all day and he said “So it’s abnormal for me to pick a call from my wife talk around driving a tractor.” Well, I’m pretty sure you can probably multitask enough with the headset on and drives the truck. So when I say multitasking, what I’m getting at is the things that need to focus, something you can’t do an autopilot.

So like a mother holding the baby and talking on the phone that’s multitasking but it’s not like either of those things unless she’s endanger of dropping the baby. She should sit down and she can probably do both of those things at once. Mothers multitask all day but usually the things they’re doing isn’t going to be a thing that that requires so much attention that if it’s not done right, it’s going to impact their personal professional life.

To clarify this whole thing what I’m getting at is there’s time for a quick multitask because neither one of them has to do with something that is your genius area or your most important time where you should be focused. When you are in that area, I believe you should be doing one thing at a time and avoid many distractions.

And then I also think that whether they’re trying to serve four or five, let’s call them bees, you know four or five things, you should figure out where is the one thing I’m trying to do here. Like you could say, who am I trying to reach as an audience with our show and what’s the one message I’m trying to give to them versus trying to give them 13 different messages. So that’s what I mean by the One Thing, does that make sense in terms of how I define it because it has various different levels of the one thing for me.

Andrea: Yeah, right. No, it does. It does make sense. I tend to call it alignment and making sure that everything is aligned with that core message or as you put it “the why,” and yeah it makes a lot of sense and then it comes out in this different what I call creative contributions. So whether it’s speaking, your writing you’re your podcast whatever, like you said different platforms or these different offerings that you have are aligned with that why, with that message that you’re wanting to share. I think that makes so much sense and it’s so powerful. I totally agree.

Corey Poirier: Yeah, like I said that book by the way, just an FYI and if somebody is looking for resources maybe they love reading, grab that book if you’re looking for a way to get more focused or if you know single tasking makes more sense and you want proof and you want also a strategy on how to do that that’s one of those books. There are not so many modern books for me personally, like in the last five years, I can put up there for me with How to Win Friends and Influence People or Think and Grow Rich, you know, those classics that changed millions of lives.

The One Thing is one of those books that I believed has that ability. I think over a million people bought it so I can’t speak for how many lives that has changed but what I can say, for me it’s one of those books that should be in that classic genre. It might make it there.   Another one just an extra is that The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. So if you’re looking for books that I can literally say modern books in the last five years that have changed my way of thinking and changed my way of doing, those are two books I would say, “run, don’t walk.”

Andrea: Cool. Now Corey, tell us where we can find your book Why?

Corey Poirier: Interestingly enough, Andrea, depending when the listeners are hearing this, and I’m saying this because it could be either or. But in the next few weeks, we’re going to be launching the book in a full scale. We’re using a Kickstarter campaign. So we’re taking a very modern and different approach to launch. We’re going to be using a Kickstarter campaign, so people are going to be able to support the project while getting the book or audio version of the book and the book or various different prize levels if you will.

But basically, where you find that is the bookofwhy.com.

What I will say in my opinion for the sake of the price of the book, we’ve already seen it with the three digital books; we have people that have changed their whole life patterns based on it. So this is thousands of hours of research where you packed in all these quotes and everything.

So whether you go there and get it for free as the shorthand book or you get the full book and grab a copy, I think it still worth it. What you get from it is you learn how to find your why, you’ll learn how to tap and do it, and then you’ll learn more about these traits I’ve been sharing. You’ll learn how to run a meaningful business and become more lightened and then you’ll get access to 450 quotes of which even just one of those could possibly change your life or way of thinking.

Andrea: Cool. Well, that’s exciting. Congratulations on this endeavor and good luck on it!

Corey Poirier: Oh thank you so much!

Andrea: Alright. Well, thank you for being here Corey. Thank you for sharing so many really helpful insights and you’re inspiring story with us today.

Corey Poirier: Oh thank you, Andrea, and I have to add, thank you for all the work you’re doing. I would say you know that both from show host and from listeners, so thanks for the listeners as well. But without listeners of course, we don’t really have a purpose so talking about your whys. I want to thank you first of all for making it so that listeners give us a purpose, you know, more of us to out this out there that means more listeners are going to discover, podcasts and shows in which they find ways to change their life and then of course to those listeners, I want to say thank you for giving me and Andrea both a purpose.

So just thanks for helping me some magic happened today all the way around.

Andrea: Awesome! Alright, we’ll talk to you later.

Alright, so depending on when you listen to this, thebookofwhy.com will have something different. If it’s asking you for a code, add ‘why’ as the code, otherwise, you’re going to be able to have the opportunity to see all the different things that Corey is doing with his book.

Now, we really dig into a lot of really good, good tips and strategies. I’m in particular really fascinated by this idea of why. And I would just encourage you to make sure that you dial down on that why as tight as you can get because if you end up living it really really broad, it might be hard for you to really feel like it’s a tight alignment with all the things that you’re doing.

But if you get really clear, really focused, really dialed down on your why then everything else is going to feel tighter like it’s a power packed kind of presence that you have. When I say presence, I’m talking about whatever you’re doing and whatever you’re offering. So I would definitely encourage you to do that, to get really dial down in on your why.

If you’re looking for additional help with that, I do have a guide. And you can go find it at voiceofinfluence.net/focus, I think that that will help you a lot too.

Alright, thank you so much for your time today and for your attention. If you have it already, please go subscribe the Voice of Influence and I really look forward to seeing you next on our Voice Studio. So dial in and dial down on that why and make your voice matter more!