Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Making Sense of Rejection and living an extraordinary and epic life? With Corey Poirier - Episode 39

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

The Makes Sense with Dr. JC Doornick Podcast is your opportunity to wake up from your slumber and reclaim control as the dominant conscious force in your life.  Today's episode Makes Sense of both Rejection and its relationship to living an extraordinary and epic life. This episode is available on both Apple and Spotify Platforms. Our Guest, Corey Poirier is a multiple-time TEDx, and sought-after Keynote Speaker. He has spoken on MoMonday’s and PMx stages, and has shared the bill with everyone from John C. Maxwell to Deepak Chopra to Stephen MR Covey to General Hillier and has presented to hundreds of thousands of attendees since he began his speaking journey. Corey has interviewed almost 7,000 thought leaders and pays forward his most memorable and impactful lessons as well as how he overcame anxiety and hypochondria to become a world class public speaker and communicator. THis episode is available on both Apple and Spotify platforms. Author of new blockbuster book The Enlightened Passenger, Corey takes us all on a ride through the trials and tribulations of a life riddled with setbacks, let downs, anxiety, hypochondria, rejections and everything else that makes most people quit. Followed by his time tested, results driven insights and strategies that made him the dominant force that he is today.  A father to his young son Sebastian, boyfriend to Shelley and a father to 3 fur-babies, Corey is also a practicing Yogi and Rock Recording of the Year Nominee.   Makes Sense Academy: Enjoy the show and consider joining our psychological safe haven and environment where you can begin to thrive. The Makes Sense Academy. https://www.skool.com/makes-sense-academy/about   Connect with Corey Poirier:  Website: https://thatspeakerguy.com  Speaking Program: https://www.thespeakingprogram.com/ Enlightened Passenger Book: https://amzn.to/3LiZ8na  IG: @thatspeakerguy    Connect WIth Dr. JC Doornick “The Dragon” https://zez.am/makessense   Episode Highlights 0:00 - Intro 2:52 - How did you decide to engage in the number one biggest fear people have.  7:09 - Your true life begins at the end of your comfort zone 12:40 - Overcoming Hypochondria and Anxiety 22:47 - What it actually takes to be successful 24:08 - The blessing of Rejection 37:38 - The Enlightened Passenger 42:57 - How does one actually live an extraordinary and epic life? 56:16 - What does the future hold for the entrepreneur?   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hmm. Makes sense. Great morning world. Great morning humans. This is your boy, Dr. J.C. Dornick. And welcome to a special edition of the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. Dornick podcast. And today we have a very, very special guest, somebody that I've kind of been, and I'm going to use the word that we're going to get into later synchronistically, popping into and out of our field.

This is Corey Porier. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the podcast. It's been such a delight getting to know you. You know, we've, in a weird way, shared a stage together, you know, even though Corey came in virtually at our creative con. And that was kind of cool. He couldn't be there.

So we brought his talk up on a screen. You know, Corey's done a lot of things. And this episode is going to be about making sense of two particular pieces of work and experience. One of them is going to be making sense of rejection. Is rejection a good thing or a bad thing? Does it happen to you or for you? So we're going to get into that because I think a lot of people would very, very much be helped

by reorganizing their perception of rejection. But then also, Corey's got this amazing new book he's promoting and that's coming out. It's actually out now, right? Yeah, June 25th. So depending on a person's listening, but it's past June 25th either way. So June 25th was technically the pub they like to call a date where you could get it on the streets, basically. This book that we're going to discuss here is called the Enlightened Passover.

The Flight That Changes Everything. And it's a really, really cool concept and piece of work that has these 10 insights. But specifically for this show, he's going to talk about this idea of unveiling the secrets of some of the most world-class minds out there about how to live an extraordinary and epic life. So we're going to actually make sense of that as well. So we've got a lot to get into here. A couple things that you should know about Corey in case you've never heard of him. He's one of these guys that has like a huge following.

and a lot of people know about him, but then there's also a lot of people that don't know about him, so now you're going to know about him. He's a four-time TEDx speaker, Success Magazine, emerging entrepreneur. You know, he's a very, very successful, intelligent person.

So Wall Street Journal, USA Today, best-selling author. You know, this book, The Enlightened Passenger, is not his first rodeo. He's done a lot of, a lot of stuff. So we're very excited to have you and your brain on the Make Sense podcast.

Here's what I want to know first. Just to set some context without sounding like another boring podcast interview. You and I are kindred in this sense that we've somehow taken the thing that most people are afraid of and made careers out of them, you know, public speaking and stuff. But Corey's taken it even a step further. He's done all these TEDx things, but he's created actually platforms where he's helping people get out there and blue talks and stuff.

So what I want to know, because my story is my story, what's the backstory behind you becoming a public speaker to the extent that you have in a world where most people claim that that's their biggest fear? Well, first of all, JC, thanks for having me. And I will say on the public speaking side, as you said, it is a number one fear. Seinfeld has said that what that means is that for the average person, if you were at a funeral, you'd rather actually be in the casket than doing the eulogy. And I always love that visual. But for me, I will say I was that guy. I was the guy that was terrified of the idea of getting on a stage. It didn't, A, appeal to me, but I think it didn't appeal to me because I was terrified

of it. And so how it came to life for me, and I know, by the way, some people aren't like that. Some people are born speakers, born comfortable. I wasn't. For how it came to life for me is that I got tricked into performing stand-up comedy, which doesn't even sound real. How could you get tricked into it? But I had a stage play in a festival, and one of the actors sprained his ankle,

who actually closer to a break. He was the lead actor, though. And so he still wasn't in the play. He still finished out the show. You know, God bless him. He needed extra time for costume changes. So I had to write a character into the play, actually two characters that didn't exist. And I was the only other person that had room to take on parts because I was the writer-director and the only person that knew the lines.

So I wrote the two parts so that I could come back to the audience with my back to the audience. And even then, I was still covered in sweat, even though they couldn't see my face. That's how terrified I was. And so I asked one of the actors, how do you think I can get over this feat? And he said, I don't know if this is the answer, but I'm going to a stand-up comedy workshop at the local university. And I said, that sounds horrible. Yeah, let's do it.

And my thinking was, at the very least, I'll learn more about writing because I want to be a writer. We went to two weeks of a workshop. The guy told us how to adjust the mic stand and told us why Steve Martin was an amazing comic. And that was pretty much our training for the number one fear in the world. Week number three, we went to a club. We filled the club, probably promoting it, being told we were going to fill the club, then we were going to watch these comics and then it'd be like a clinic.

We'd talk about what they did well and what we learned and what we liked. We found out five minutes to showtime because we asked where the comics were that we were actually the comics. So the guy all along never planned to have different comics. He planned to have us as the comics. But the problem with that is we didn't prepare material.

We didn't know we were performing. So there were 15 of us, eight walked out the front door without pause. I went to the bathroom. I always said to try to find an exit window that I couldn't find. I came back out. I was standing next to the stage. I was planning to leave.

And then I had this little vision of the fact that, you know, at some point I could be an older man sitting at that same stage with another old man or an old woman and looking at the stage at these young people performing stand-up saying I was going to do that one day. And I wish I would have and I regret that I didn't. And that regret was worse than the fear. So what happened was now by this point it's 10 minutes after showtime. I went up on the stage and grabbed the mic. Now everybody else is still debating who's going to go up first. We call that the sacrificial lamb. So I basically went up to grab the mic.

I launched into jokes, told two jokes to dead silence. And I jokingly now say, I think there was even a combo weed that went by the stage. There probably wasn't. But I told two jokes to dead silence. And the guy who got us into this mess called me over the corner of the stage at that point, gave me a schmuck on the back of the head. And he says, you idiot, what are you doing it there? We haven't even turned the mic on to start the show yet.

So that was my start. And then people often ask me now, what happened after that? Well, we turned the mic back on. I told the jokes again and they bombed again. And I always say I'm the only comedian perhaps that's ever told the same jokes within 10 minutes and bombed twice in a row. But that's how I got started. And then I went back the next week and realized I didn't die in that stage. And I actually liked some aspect of it.

People at work said, did you meet someone because you have a new energy? And basically I started going back week after week. Somebody brought me to a Tony Robbins event, told me he got paid and I said, I need to figure out how to do that. That's kind of the short version, actually. What's fascinating about that, and it leads perfectly, I think, into this thing that I want to get into about rejection. I'm first to ask you a question. What would you say, looking back, what did you learn from that experience? If I look backward on the experience, I can say I learned that Neil Donald Walsh has this great quote,

and this is what I learned about that experience is, and I'm paraphrasing at best, but he said basically something to the effect that your true life begins at the end of your comfort zone. To me, that night at comedy was me expanding my comfort zone, like, dramatically, and at the same time, realizing that it was a taste of what my life could be like if I kept expanding my comfort zone. So if I started my comfort zone was this tiny little piece, and all of a sudden, all the greatest things are outside my comfort zone, that night, I expanded it dramatically and experienced some of that, oh, wow, this is what I, this is what I didn't know I need it. and only by expanding my comfort zone I did.

So then what I learned is the fact that maybe most of the stuff that I'm meant to do is outside my comfort zone. So maybe I need to be willing to take bigger steps and start this journey. So that was, I think, that's easy to say I learned it, but that was a reflection. Like that's now knowing what I learned. And even probably a year later, but not at the time. And then I think what I learned as well is that which we believe to be true. isn't always true. So again, I thought I wouldn't be able to handle getting on that stage. I thought I would have passed out, turned shades of color, all these things that didn't come to life.

And so it made me realize, you know what, sometimes the things that we think are going to be the worst ever end up becoming the catalyst for the best ever. So there's so many nuggets in that. But, you know, when we get into your book, I'm going to be asking you questions that are correlated to the difference between somebody listening to this interview right now and say, he's right, you know, success and growth is outside the comfort zone. Like, everybody's read that, everybody knows that. But what is it that takes somebody from knowing it and putting it in action? So would you agree that in hindsight as well, taking that into account,

would you agree that what made you get up on that stage and handled a lot of the adversity you faced in the life was that you were probably more focused on what was on the other side of it that was maybe more powerful? Because I mean, everybody knows, okay, I'm freaked out about doing something right now. I've been backstage getting ready to walk on on a stage in front of 15,000 people. No idea what I'm going to say, blanking out, thinking I'm going to die, but I find myself still do it. Most people would not put themselves in that position. So what I've learned is that the reason why I do it anyways, because there's something on the other side of it that's more important than my excuses and all of that stuff.

So if you look back, were you just extremely focused and driven to succeed? Is that why you went through that? Honestly, I feel like... Are you just crazy? Well, you probably could make an argument for both. But I feel like, because there's two trains of thought there as well, J.C., there's the, today, you know, why would I do it? Which is different than why did I do it then?

And so today, why I do it is for that person sitting there. So I stand up I did for seven, like nine years, 700 shows, but I haven't done it in a long time. Actually, I did a few shows last summer just to get video to submit. to the Apollo because I've always wanted to perform there. And I got to perform at Second City, so I said yes to that. But previous to that, I was off for like five years. And why I did stand up, I know now, like why I kept doing it, was the audience, is the idea that somebody in that audience had a crappy day at work.

And even if I bombed that night, like I'm a train wreck, but they're laughing at my train wreck, they're still not thinking about how am I going to pay the bills tomorrow. And so I know that's now what I was doing because as a speaker, now it's all about, okay, I think when I go out to speak, one of the things that helps me get focused is I think about something somebody said about how something I did change their life or impacted their life. Then I think, what if that same future version of them or that next version of them or that next person is in the audience today? And so that allows me to take the focus off what happens if this happens to me on the stage

and this is about them. So that's all today what I know and why I do it today. But if I go back to then, honestly, when you said about something on the other side, that spoke to me because it was about something on the other side, but not because it was driven as much as it was I was searching for something. Like I had a successful career in sales by that point. I sold photocopiers door to door, which I don't recommend for anybody. So the most familiar, most people would know what that was if I said Xerox. That's what most people know about selling the Xerox machine. But I sold Tshiba, photocopiers, and Conicaa menolta, which used to be

Manolta, which was also a camera company. I did that for 10 years and had a decent amount of success. I mean, I did a stage play, like I said, and I had already put it two music CDs. Like, I was driven, no question. But the stand-up comedy thing for me, I think what it was is I, deep down on a subconscious level, I was searching for something new or better in my life. And it was the thing that finally came to me that was like, maybe this is it. and that's what kept pushing me back is I need to do more than I'm doing.

I think life is bigger than I'm making it. I think there's more for me. And right now I'm not experiencing that. And I will say this is kind of a sidetrack, but it's really important, I think, is until that point for about four years, even though I was what society would call highly successful in selling photocopiers, like I was getting Presidents Club members, which put you like in the top 1%.

At the very same time that was happening, I was battling hypochondria for about two and a half years and anxiety, including the hypochondria, so four years total, but the last two and a half hypochondria, for those that don't know what that means, how it started for me is I read about Michael J. Fox being diagnosed with Parkinson's. Years after it happened, but he finally revealed it. And I was reading in a magazine and I was like, how has that possible? I thought it was only an elder person's disease. And so when I read that, quite honestly, and it's funny how your mind does not. and see that you're doing this.

I already had anxiety. It was just the hypochondria started then. All of a sudden, like the next day, I'm like, oh my God, I get tremor. Like, I literally start developing the symptoms I just read about. And the funny part is I didn't recognize that I didn't do much research on Parkinson's and didn't realize there's all these other symptoms I didn't get. I only got the ones that I read about and now knew about.

But what's wild is I went in, then I start going into waiting rooms all the time. I always say I probably had a check there every week and a mug with my name on it. But I would go into the doctor's waiting room. sit there thinking I had Parkinson's, and then I would go through all the tests that you go through, and then I knew logically, okay, I've gone through every test, I don't have Parkinson's, and I would literally go, well, maybe it's MS, it's similar to Parkinson's.

And then I would go back to the doctor and say, I wonder if it's MS. And I mean, it's got so bad. And this turned into some comedy as well. I was literally going for barium minimus. Like so colon examinations thinking I had something like at 20. And of course you can at 20, but I just mean like that's how far I was going.

I'm willing to go and actually ended up being a lot of pain. because they didn't tell me to take anything to soften your stool. And it was like I was on the floor hitting the floor, crying, tears coming out. I went through all of that because I believed that I had something. And I, you know, and I went after you can go through that, I would go back starting a new journey of I think I have this now. Well, I had that for two and a half years. I mean, I wouldn't recommend it to anybody. It's like I had a minor part of all those diseases in my head at least.

And ultimately, this is why I bring this up. That was still happening when I got on that standup stage that night. within three weeks, didn't have hypochondri anymore and no anxiety. And it's barely, like I may have had anxiety a couple of times come back for like a week. But this is like 20 years ago almost. And both of them almost disappeared. And I always say now, I didn't know then, that's the day I took vitamin P, which I say is purpose and passion. That's the day I took vitamin P.

And I always say it's the vitamin. You can't buy in any stores, but it might be the most important one you ever take. So that for me is when you say, why did I do it? I think it's because I unconsciously knew it was now. never like if I'm going to live a fulfilling life it needed to start that night on that stand-up one of the things that I love about what you just shared is we very often on the on this show speak about the idea that if you change the way you look at things things you look at change so for the most part most dis-ease that people are experiencing is correlated to their perception

that's the whole premise of the make sense podcast is if you can gain clarity and make sense of something you can free yourself very often you could actually just change the illusion of what it is that you're afraid of and make it something positive. You know, I know you speak about law of attraction and things like that. What's interesting for you to know that a lot of people don't know is the whole concept of me doing podcasts and also specifically doing live broadcast, which started with the Rise Up with Dragon Show years ago, was based on me suffering dramatically from anxiety and and panic attacks completely correlated with public speaking.

And I did all my books, and I didn't read about Michael J. Fox, but I read about Henry Fonda and all of this stuff. And I just unequivocally saw that it was a perception that I had, that it was something scary. So I just chose, rather than running away from it to head on, and that's how I healed myself. But just like you said, I wouldn't recommend that to everybody because even to this day, it's not an easy thing. One more thing on the public speaking front, because I know that you work with a lot of people.

And I would assume this is what prompted you to get passionate about creating blue talks to create a stage for people to speak. Am I right? Is that how that all happened? Yeah. I mean, honestly, I started my speaking journey in 2002. And when I started, I had no mentors. I didn't know how the speaking business work. I'll be honest with you, JC.

And I admit it now openly, but it was hard at the time to admit this. but quite truthfully, I thought it was going to be easy. The speaking side also wasn't super easy for me, but I could see the growth. Like in other words, I invested the time. I put in the 10,000 hours. I could see immediately I was improving.

So I knew that was going on the right path. What I thought was going to be easy, aka easier, was getting paid bookings, like actually building a speaking career. And everybody led me, everybody that was doing it led me to believe it was easy. And I had no mentor showing me how to do it.

So I was like, what am I doing wrong? Until, by the way, I got four or five years in, which ties into why ultimately I started helping other speakers is those same speakers that made it sound easy to me, started reaching out when they noticed I was getting booked all the time when I figured out the shortcuts and hacks. And they said, how are you doing this? And in my head, I'm like, wait a minute, you led me to believe. Like the things that sought after speaker when I said, should I go into speaking? Oh, you're going to love it.

And you know, it's, you get to travel all the time. And I'm like, well, if you're coming to me, saying, how do I get paid to speak? and how do I get more bookings than one every three weeks? Then how are you traveling all the time? But they said we're traveling all the time. And then I listened to this national, was it the National Speakers Association, a CD by this couple, a husband and wife,

and they're like, if you build it, they will come. You know, just like everything sounded so easy. And I jokingly now say I started building and nobody even heard the hammer. Nobody even cared that I was building. But the point is I started out with no mentors. Everything was hard. And so what I did make kind of a declaration,

we'll call it to myself, that if I'm ever in a position to make this easier for other people, that's what I want to do. And to your point, that I think always became the catalyst for BluTox four and a half years ago. But I think Blue Tocs was, you know, like all things I guess, Destiny, was meant to be 20 years ago. Like I think it was what I wanted to create when I said, if I can. But there was a big journey of dots, as Steve Jobs would have called them, that joined up to make that happen. And so for instance, the very first start of that was that those people reaching out saying, how are you doing this?

So it went from once every month to once a week to once a day to sometimes five times a day, people saying how. And so I kept telling. Like I'm one of those people that if I do a webinar, I give away too much. Like I just go all in and I over deliver and I, you know, people will say you're giving away too much. You should be charging for that. But I kind of subscribe to the Brendan Burchard approach of marketing.

Like people say to me, why do you think Brendan rose so quick? I think it's because he gave so much away that you're like, if he can give me that in an hour and teach me how to launch, do a launch at an hour that I can do on my own. What could he teach me if I worked with him? And so I kind of subscribe to that versus the people that are always trying to like tease for five minutes and then convince you to sign up before you get anything else. And so I think that ultimately played a big part in my approach, which was I originally was just telling everybody.

They come to me and say, how you're doing this? I say, here's how I'm doing this. And what I found, to be honest, is it wasn't like, let's make money off this. It was more so, I'm getting tired of telling people over and over the same thing. Why don't I put this in a program? And then I can say, here's the program and you can watch it all. And so, of course, we made a lot of free stuff too that they could watch. But yeah, we put it into a program, launched the program.

It was called the speaking program. We can say either not creative or very creative. Super creative, yeah. Yeah. Well, it's like people notice that's a theme, common theme with me. Like the book, the website for the enlightened passenger book is this is the book.com. Right. I have a book called the book of why, book of why and how.

For it to get the audio, it's called the book of why audio.com. I was known as that speaker guy. Like it is all intentional, but somebody could say it's lazy, but it's actually good because it's like, oh, this is the only program on speaking I need to take. The point is I launched that since then we have had over a thousand people go through it. But even though that might sound like a big number, the fascinating part is we literally opened it a few times back then, but I mean, I haven't really opened the doors or done a launch in like seven years with that. And it's only like 12 years old. So we had a thousand people go through meaning there was

that much hunger. But what changed over time is I realized a lot of people don't want to do the work. And when I say that it's not a knock on them, I just mean these days people are like, can't you do it for me? Can't you help me with it? And that was a self-study program. So like, good luck. You know, log in, hopefully. And so I moved away from that. People started asking me how I landed three TED talks at that point. And again, same thing happened. I kept answering and eventually I'm like, I need to start teaching. We launched a program around that.

It became really popular. And then to finish this whole thing off, we literally launched Blue Talks, like I say, less than five years ago because people started saying, hey, you have a gun for you. So can you create all the stuff I need to actually convince people to hire me? Because the thing I found, JC, is when I started, the things I was missing was like a sizzle reel. Or being able to say it was a bestselling author. or being able to say I was featured on today, it would be like Apple TV and Roku.

And I'm like, in this day and age, I can create those things for people, not manufactured, not manipulated, like truly get them on stage at Harvard through our blue talks, get them on stage at MIT. And so I was like, what if we started doing that for people?

And then while we're doing that, we teach them how to speak on our stage. We groom them to get there. We have a thing called the Bureau where we teach the TEDx and then we let people know what TEDx is they're looking. So what I'm getting at is we figured out a way over time that now we can actually do the work with and for the person versus saying here's a program, good luck. So that's how it's evolved.

But honestly, none of that would have happened without the first. How are you getting paid to speak and how are you doing it so often? And me creating that first program. So I believe this was all the dots joined up to become blue talks. What's so fascinating and I just want to point something out, call it like a little bit of a disclaimer. When I put myself in the shoes of somebody listening to somebody like Corey speaking. right now, their brains are starting to say, oh, great, somebody's figured it out for me, and I'm going to go go do that. But I just want to make sure everybody understands that all of these

things that are out there where people are, in essence, paying forward something that they figured out. Keep in mind that they figured it out without any help. This is a really important distinction to make because it unveils the fact that anybody can do anything if they decide to go do it. But there's only a certain amount of people that will trudge through the mud to find the lotus. So swinging into that, Corey's done amazing things and he's got a lot of great value to pay forward to others so that they can shine. But at some point in everybody's life, you're going to face adversity. There's no such thing as success without adversity. It's actually probably the number one ingredient. So the first time I met Corey, I was just kind of, you know, figuring him out.

as I always do, arms crossed at first. He was just sharing, you know, story about how he's failed like a million times. And I always looked at my formula for success is that I've failed my way to the top. And I look at failure as that main ingredient. So I love that. And I very, very openly boast that I think I've failed more than anybody until I met Corey. So tell us a little bit because I want to make sense of this concept and I don't want to spend too much time because I want to get into this book.

But when we look at this idea of rejection, share a little bit. more about this voyage that you took where you just experienced rejection probably more than most people and specifically how you turned that into something that didn't turn you away. Tell us what your impression is of rejection and this story of how to happen and what you learn from it. There's two ways you can build something either by yourself. And of course, there's ones in the middle as well, but by yourself kind of with no help in the trenches. And that's how I did a lot of this stuff, or you invest with somebody else who's done it and they help guide you. And I will say, I want to add this JC as a caveat before I jump into the rejection side. I think we all have to

face rejection because we're going to face it at some point. We all have to face it. It's like almost like fail fast. We all have to face it sooner rather than later because it'll help us and strengthen us. But I feel like no matter if I'm helping you or somebody else is helping you in your journey, you're still going to fall down manholes. So what I always say is let me show you the manholes I fell down so you can just fall down the ones in your own. So I will say we're all going to face either rejection or what we might call failure. But for me these days, and this is what I recommend to people, if you can find somebody else has done it, sometimes they could become a mentor. There may not be any investment of money. Sometimes you may have to invest some money. But every day of the week,

I would rather invest a little money than a lot of time trying to figure it out myself. That's the caveat. But then to go into the rejection side, where it started for me, and I honestly think this was probably the biggest blessing, which I didn't think at the time. Started a newspaper when I was 19, 18, 19, where I was selling advertising. So it was, actually, I got to try to sign. I want to frame some old copies of it, and I got to find it soon to track down some old copies. But we ran this newspaper for a year. The idea was let's focus on a profile, business owners, leaders, cockpit entrepreneurship.

And so I always kind of say now it was almost like Success Magazine or Entrepreneur Magazine, but a newspaper version in a smaller region. And so launched this when I was 18 slash 19. And I didn't know when we did it. I was planning to sell copies at the store. So almost like your daily newspaper, people go in and buy it for a dollar or something. That's how we thought we were going to make money. Found out from the stores that, first of all, there wasn't enough stores.

We would never sold enough volume. But secondly, they said nobody's going to buy this. And so then we realized pretty quickly, the only other way we were going to make money is advertisers in the newspaper. So now you get these two young guys who've never sold a thing in their life, walking through the door with this newspaper that's a week old, trying to explain to people that this newspaper that doesn't even exist, they can't physically show it to them, is going to be successful, and they should invest money in it. And my business partner, after a month, said, you know what, this is not for me. And ultimately, he left the business, moved across the country. I bought him

out, which kind of sucked a month into the business. I had to actually buy him out and still carried the debt. But the point is that without me realizing it's so important on my journey of rejection, because he walked away from it. I kept going for about a year. And what that meant was I went through probably conservatively four or five hundred doors in that year, maybe a thousand doors as a 19 year old who never sold a thing, walking through doors of a business who don't want me there because they're in the middle of business and don't even know what I do. And I'm going in to interrupt them and now try to sell them something. So even by just the law of averages, I got rejected way more than I sold stuff. So I started facing rejection at that young of an age through sales. And where I was originally going to start this and saying that it was the most important part of my journey was the next stage, which is whenever I left that newspaper, maybe a year later or six months later, moved across the country and started selling those photocopiers.

The rejection I faced in that respect was even another level, even though the newspaper was new and self-published and all those things. So it was unproven. Even though that was the case, it was a small region or area, so people wanted to support me. But when I started selling photocopiers working for a giant 48 largest company in the world, company, people didn't care to support me or not because they're like, your company's doing A-OK. They don't need the money. And not that they knew this, but I was getting a little bit. I'll call it, I call it a baby salary to get me by.

So you could make the argument, the salary was more than I would have made in a small town I lived in. Basically, nobody felt sorry for me. And it was for me on my own in a new city where I never lived, which had 800,000 people. And I grew up in a town of 3,000. I never lived there before and now I'm driving around this town, selling, walking through doors of people I don't know, and really high-end corporate offices could have 5,000 employees and I'm going in trying to reach the CEO to talk about the yellow photocopier in the corner. And so, you know, to say rejection, that I think is what kind of built that backbone in me and allowed me to tackle a lot of other things. And also realize, again, to the earlier point, I didn't die during it.

So maybe I'm growing. Like maybe I'm learning stuff. maybe I'm becoming a better version of myself because I've went through that challenges and the obstacles. And so to kind of bring this all back in, basically I felt that faced a lot of rejection very early on. And then I decided to write screenplays and send them and books, you know, early on and send them to publishing houses, agents, etc. And you either get no reply or come back to say, we loved your script. Unfortunately, by the way, that still exists. Like, I've done five, 10 talks. And if I were to apply to three,

TED talks this week, probably in three months or now, I'm at least going to get one that will say, we loved your talk. We had so many great missions. All were great. We wish you could take everybody, unfortunately. As soon as you hear that words, you know, okay, you weren't selected. Well, what I'm getting at, JC, is that became kind of the story of my life. But what the frame of references, I saw that all those rejections led to the next thing. So when I had the newspaper and I got rejected so much, ultimately having a newspaper that I could hold my hands that I started at 19 years of age and locally in the small town. They're like, oh my gosh, you're an entrepreneur at such a young age.

All that stuff made up for the rejection. But I knew quickly if I didn't go through that rejection, I couldn't get what you said earlier to the other side or what's over there on the other side. And then that helped me when I got to Shiba and started selling photocopiers because I recognized the reason they hired me, which they verbally told me, was because of that newspaper. So all those rejections led to me getting a corporate position with a Fortune 500 company, which didn't know at the time, but that's great on your resume.

But the point is, is that that wouldn't happen without all the rejection. So I think the answer to your question is what I learned is the rejection was a necessary to get to the good. But B, on top of that, it built so much character. Like I learned so much about life, like even communication in those sales roles, which again, I thought I was just going to try to make a living. But that carried on to the stand-up stage when I finally got there. That helped me in the speaking world. That helped me sell myself as a speaker. To this day, as a person in a small town who grew up believing you should never talk about your achievements,

it's a challenge for me to say multiple-time TEDx speaker, but being in sales for so long, getting rejected, it built the bone of me that made me realize if I don't tell people, they won't know, and likely then I can't serve them and change their life for the better. So it's almost like I'm doing a disservice if I don't tell people I had the achievement, because the achievement gets me to them listening to eventually say, okay, maybe I'll work with him. That gets me to that person saying, you change my life. It's so fascinating because if somebody meets me and their perception is, is that I'm a knowledgeable, successful, wise guy that has what they want per se, as many people will see when they meet you.

That's all they can see, but they don't see the mountain because nobody like advertises the mountain of failures. So kind of in a funny way, what I like to explain to people, because I look at this concept of the hard work that's filled with rejections and setbacks and failures. I've learned to interpret that as training. Like you said, it builds character. So I don't look at it as a negative thing. But when you're in the front end of it, you have to admit everybody would love to get some sort of a shortcut or a secret.

In fact, a lot of people are going to get that from your book, which we're about to get into. So what I find fascinating about rejection, it's one of those things that every single human being, there's never been a personal growth book that's been written that says, you don't have to fail ever. So everybody knows that, but they still find themselves trying to see if maybe they can avoid it. What I always explain to people, and this is that old age formulas, you know, when the why is strong enough, you know, the how no longer matters. So I just want everybody to recognize that if you see somebody that's never quitting and you're kind of hoping they do quit so that you won't look so bad, what you're seeing is somebody

that is focused more on where they're moving towards than what's happening. Because I always share with people, I say, if I really transparently tell you what my model for success is, you'll see that it's a very ineffective model because it's riddled with 98% failure and 2% success. But the 2% success is pretty nice. And that's what you're seeking. The question is, will you go through the 98? When I first started interviews with, we'll say, luminaries, thought leaders, achievers, influencers, what have you, I made a list of 100.

And to this day, when I started, people said, do you be lucky if you get 23 in your life? And I say 23, the reason I picked that number is that was the highest anybody guessed. But the point is, I've now interviewed 97, two have passed away that I never got the interview. So I can only interview one that's on that list. And I haven't got the yes from him yet. And I don't ask enough. I probably only ask once every year and a half, but it's Seth Godin. Seth Godin.

And he's the holdout. Hey, just why don't you come at him and just say, hey, we have the same haircut. I never tried that angle yet. I've tried the angle of, you know, you're the last one, but that might even entice him to say no more, right? Like, oh, I'd like to say in the last one. But the point of that is, I bring this up because every time I reach out, it's still a no at this point.

So it's still a new rejection. Well, what I'm getting at is life to me wouldn't be fascinating if every one of those hundreds said yes on the first ass. Like, life would be boring in a lot of ways. Like I tell the story often about Jack Campia was the first big yes. And I had zero listeners on my show and I went to his team and they didn't. didn't know that, but they went to his team and he said, Corey has nothing to promote. He's like turning down

nine in every every 10 interviews, probably going to be a no. What I did four months later, I took a while, I kept trying different angles. What I finally did is I went to his website, saw who was endorsing him, said he probably respects them, found a guy named Dan Sullivan, was strategic coach, reached out to Dan's team, notice he did an interview with Success Magazine that he said he loved, similar style to me. So I sent the clip and said, hey, I think I should interview Dan, same style. By the way, I probably wouldn't even be able to get Dan now. Like he's never been a flashy I'm going to be out there, influencer, and he's so busy now.

But they said, yes, he came on the show and I brought up Jack a few times. And eventually he said, you know, Corey, Jack should be on the show. And you tell him Dan said so. So then I took that clip, sent it to Jack's office and said, even Dan, Jack's coach thinks Jack should be on my show. And they sent an email back to Corey, you've beaten us into submission. Here's the link. My point of all that, JC, is that life wouldn't be fun if Jack's team would have said,

yep. I should say it wouldn't be fun. It wouldn't be as fun. So I actually embrace the rejection now. And to a point, I'm actually very uncomfortable now being comfortable. So I do believe you can get to the other side where rejection is not exciting, but at the same time, it adds more to your life and actually makes it a bigger win when you finally don't get rejected by a certain person or a certain situation. So I just want to add that it before we jumped into the book. So funny.

One of my favorite ways to get the big speakers on my list is, you know, let's, you know, let's, you know, let's say it was you. I would, you know, try to send you a message, whether you would indicate that you saw it or not, is I would say something in the realm of, hey, Corey, you know, you and I, you might not know this yet, but we're going to have this awesome interview on our podcast. And I just want to get through the first 50 knows. So just wanted to introduce myself and let's just call this number one. But just know that, you know, I'll be dead before I stop getting you on my show.

And sometimes I'll get a chuckle out of it. And like you said, if the timing is right, everything's great. Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor. The Make Sense podcast is sponsored by the Make Sense Academy, co-created by both myself, Meeker, aka The Chicken, and The Dragon, the Make Sense Academy is a live interactive community where like-minded, solution-focused, curious seekers of expansion, gather daily in a mastermind setting with both chicken and dragon,

where they have access to premium content, online courses and powerful collaboration and networking, all for $24 a month. The Make Sense Academy and its members are solely responsible for funding the Make Sense podcast. So feel free to reach out to us at www.org. Rise UpwithDragon.com and check out the Make Sense Academy, risk-free, with a money-back guarantee. Now, back to the Make Sense podcast. That actually leads perfectly. This concept of rejection, I believe.

believe that maybe we've made sense of it, but I think what we've just done for the listeners is reminded them of what they have a tendency of forgetting. And I get it. You know, it makes sense how I still see myself trying to find an easier way to do things, but there is no easier way. You get the right book, you get the right mentor, and you can eradicate their mistakes and then just make your own, which would probably be a smart approach. So this book, the enlightened passenger, the flight that changes everything. First and foremost, I would love to know why you chose that as the topic, because I love the word enlightened and perhaps in that, do your best to explain why you wrote this book. Because it seems to be another version of Corey Porier taking things that he

has acquired and sharing them with others. I don't know if I'll say why I wrote the book, but it's a part of me. So I think it's a part of what the book represented in the way. But it's far as the why behind the book, ultimately, and I don't want to share too much of this one little nuance because it'll give away something really big in the book. But I'll just say there's a question I asked frequently. And the concept of that question, one day I was like, why can't I put this in a book? And then I was like, I wanted to write a fictional parable for a while. The Alchemist changed my life. Celestine Prophecy changed my life. Augmandino probably inspired this even more than most. And I was like, I want to write in that style. And I have this concept.

So that's kind of where it's sort of triggered. But having said that, it was like, what do I do with this? And the concept stayed with me for like a year where I didn't do anything except for go, oh, this is who the character should be. Oh, this could happen. Oh, this could happen. And then eventually we went to a cottage for a getaway. And my wife said to me, she said, you know, you don't swim, my two sons and her swim. So you just come to the beach usually and sit there and watch us or whatever. And there's different things you don't do that we do. Why don't you take those times and either stay at the cottage or come to the beach with your laptop

and start working on that book you keep talking about? And so that's when I wrote the first half of the book. So that's kind of a little bit of when it started. But I wrote the first half. And then the second half took about a year, almost a year longer, which was me writing like four or five pages at a time in between work. then I finished the book. So it took almost two years or around two years.

And then it was about a year from then until now to holding it my hand, which is actually record time because I did it with a traditional publisher. But as far as the book itself, again, it was built around this one concept. But as I started writing the book, I realized it was about helping people become the best version of themselves, helping them become more fulfilled in life, really at the end of the day, becoming more enlightened. We had this speaker one time, Demo Casanova. He's a Grammy winning producer. and he was talking about enlightenment

and somebody said, when did you finally become enlightened? And he goes, I'm not there yet. He said, in fact, anytime I've thought to myself, oh my gosh, I'm finally enlightened, he said the universe kicked me off my high horse and reminded me I'm not there yet. And so it's not that I think somebody's going to reach this

a moment, this pivotal moment that now I'm enlightened, but the idea is becoming more enlightened. And honestly, JC, more enlightened could be, you never heard of synchronicity yesterday, now you have. You're enlightened now that synchronicity exists. So it doesn't have to be granted. EOSA, my idea was almost like, because I thought about writing a book about this, almost like spirituality for the rest of us. So in other words, introducing concepts that the average person is like

never heard of that before or don't understand what that means. And I will say, this to me was the epitome of, okay, I'm on the right track. As I sent it an email to my email list and I said, do you believe in synchronicity? I think was the header. And the reply from one person was, now that I've read your book, I do. And I was like, wow. So having said that, that's, that was kind of book was like how to teach these lessons I've learned during the interviews. They help me become more enlightened, how to teach them to other people in a story that you'll actually read so that you can become more enlightened in the process. That's kind of the summary of that. I like it because the first thing that comes to my mind from the perspective of somebody that's going to read it, I can see how

I am a passenger becoming enlightened. And what's what's interesting about as I have this light shining in my face right now, there's another version. I love how you said, you know, you'll never like be enlightened and be done. I don't even think Buddha. you know, could say that he was like enlightened and done. Becoming enlightened means starting to see light. You know, I, in my book, I have my own version of that, and I refer to the fact that the universe provides road signs, you know, which direct us to places where we find the ability to create insights.

So I love that. There's so many things about this, but the, my listeners, myself, my brain, what's most fascinating is, once again, kind of like we're, objection, there's this idea that I say that all people are seekers of the er, that people want to be happier, healthier, and wealthier. So the idea of saying, like, I can teach you how to live a more fulfilled, epic life, live your best life, that's a common one. You'll never meet someone that says, oh, I don't want that. So it's one of those things where everybody would agree that we all want the same things. We're all seekers of the er. But I just noticed that progressively, and a little bit of

it is your mother, father, teacher, preacher, but now we have society knocking everybody down. But it's one of those things where human beings progressively develop concepts that maybe it's not for them. And what's interesting about human beings is if I all of a sudden move from saying, I want to live an epic life and then all of a sudden I develop a concept that I can't, I'll start to justify that. So I would if I wanted to, but I've decided to do something else. So I want to make sense of this idea of living an epic life. Here's the promise that the book makes, because I read this from his website. When I say promise only because I know that's his intention is to share the timeless secrets

of the world's most influential leaders. That's sexy right there, because you heard that Corey has spent his whole life being rejected, but finally speaking to these amazing people. Most influential leaders live a world-class, fulfilling, abundant, fantastic. and epic life. So there it is. Who wants to live an abundant, fantastic, epic life? Me, me, me, me, me. But I want to make sense of that. I want to make sense using your book because I know you have these 10 insights and some of them are really, really attractive to me. But how does the book work? Tell me that. So I want to live an epic, fantastic life. I can see that I'm going to learn the secrets from

these people. But what's unique about the book that makes it different from another book that's promising the same thing. Well, and you know, this is a great point, JC, because one of the things I struggle with when I'm, it could be a client, it could be somebody I know, but that'll say I'm a life coach, okay, well, what do you coach people on, how to become more successful? Well, your point, everybody wants that, but why do I hire this person versus the next 50 coaches right behind them that says, I want to make you more successful? And you could use whatever word you want, better life, abundant, what have you. And so I feel like what makes this book unique to allow a person deliver that. A, I think I'm in a unique situation. I don't know many people that I can say,

and document it. That's another important note of this, that they've interviewed over 7,000. Like, I just, when I, when I say that to people, it's usually shock and awe. It's never usually, oh, me too. Like, usually, and I'll tell you when I do run into those people, J.C., it's usually somebody that's been in broadcasting for 25 years. Like, it's almost always somebody that was their career. So I don't know many people that can, like, it's almost like the Nielsen ratings, you know, they do on TV. They do it with a whatever number of homes, like 3,000 homes. They're based it on? Well, I've done more than the Nielsen rating in a study or the studies they do at Harvard is sometimes based on two or three thousand people. So I feel I've done one of the bigger

independent studies of successful people. So first of all, you're getting it for somebody who studied it and then cold it and then said these are the 10. And by the way, when people ask why those 10, these are the 10 that I sat down with and logistically and honestly could say if I was locked with my kids in a room for 24 hours and can only teach them 10 things, these are the ones that would teach them. So that's how much thought I put into what. And I will say what's fascinating about that is that, you know, you had to discard 6,990 that didn't make the cut. So it's not a cliff notes, but it's your top 10 from that experience. So that that's exciting. How does it work? Just to also add that so that what makes it different to I think is it's done in the in a story where

you don't feel like you're learning. That's a key thing to this. So most people that are quote unquote teaching how to live abundant life, we're saying, here's step one, here's step two. Now, the irony of me saying that is we actually opted to put in the book lessons at the end of each chapter. And the character actually says, okay, so let me tell you the second thing I want to share. So we do actually kind of tell you the numbers, but it's done in the same way if you and I were talking and you said, Corey, you know, you're on a plane. And you said, what are the three things you've learned in your life that you would tell your younger self? Well, me telling you those things and I say, here's the first one, here's the second one.

To me, that's not like teaching as much as a how-to book that says, you know, step one, and here's the five things within step one. The reason I did that is Og Mendino really influenced me. And one of the things I liked about Augs books, and I thought this was even more important for the average person that isn't spiritual is that at the end, he had 10 scrolls in one of his books. And what I loved is that I could say, oh, that's what he was teaching. Because if it's just the story, you could leave the story and say, but what did I really

learn or what were those lessons? And so I struggle with this because part of me want to leave it all in and just kind of say you'll learn what you'll learn. Like think and grow rich at the first says, I'm not going to tell you what the secret is. You'll figure it out as you read this book. And a lot of people by the time of done said, but what was that secret he was talking about? And I think, and I mean, people have argued what that secret was. I think it was that the grow rich part isn't about financially growing rich. It's about becoming so rich as a person, that will take care of itself. Like Jim Rohn said, you could throw all the money away after you become a millionaire. It won't matter because it's about who you became in the process of becoming the millionaire.

And so I guess the thing for me with the book is, yes, I wanted it to be like sinking in as a story. And maybe when you say, here's your lesson from this chapter takes away from the story aspect. I still felt for those that I'm introducing to this concept of synchronicity, let's say, they're not going to know what to do with that. A great example is the secret, the movie, the secret. And I've interviewed nine, 10 people from the secret, asked them the same question JC is what do you think the secret was missing? And by the way, I'm not leading them to their answer, but I know what I feel. And almost everyone said verbatim the same thing. It was missing the law of action. What do I actually do with this? Lisa Nichols said, I went around for two years

after the secret and said, okay, I was in the secret. I loved the law of attraction. But if you sit in a couch and look at a vision board for a year, but never get off the couch at the end of the year, the only thing you're going to have is a lump in the couch. I have a philosophy of why they left that out of that book. And that is because it wouldn't have sold. Think about that. You know, I mean, somebody had to come up with that idea that most people, one of my favorite quotes is that learning is nothing more than a distraction in the absence of action. However, people love to learn and do nothing.

They like to know, but not go. So when I look at the secret, I say genius, genius that they left out this idea that you have to do something about it because I don't think anyone would have bought that book. I love that idea because a lot of people like to say, if they were, ran at a time. And that's the whole other discussion, but I don't know that it was an hour and whatever 20 minutes. You could have made it two hours and delivered the actions if that would have sold. But to your point, because a lot of people want to learn and don't not do anything with it, that wouldn't have been as sexy because you would have been like, I'm trying stuff

with this, not working. Plus, that's the other thing. Then you would have said, well, this isn't working for me. So this sucks and who do I go do to learn? And there's a lot of things that would have created. So to that point, I felt the lessons were necessary. So to go back to your question about how does this work. Basically, it's a fictional parable, two strangers on a plane. One is a young, arrogant business person. And by the way, I've realized after I wrote it that I'm a bit of both people. Now, I say that I wasn't the arrogant young business person, but what I was is a business person who didn't know self-help existed and thought I already knew it all. And so when I sold photocopiers, that first character, the young character, is me selling photocopies, basically.

He even says he sells digital equipment for LexiCorps, company I made up the name of. But he basically is the younger me and then the other guy hopefully is the older me somewhat more enlightened and when you read the story honestly j c it's all the things we talked with today preb is his name treb performed stand-up comedy when he's younger he played music at the cavern club where the beetles play well so did i like that's stuff for my life that is in treb's life uh he says whenever he was backstage with les brown and lesb's said synchronicity's god's way of staying anonymous but that was really me in lesz's living room who said that's how do you describe synchronicity and he said synchronicity is God's way of staying anonymous.

So what I'm saying is a fictionalized version of my life. But it's a story about two people on a plane and it's a journey where the young person doesn't want to learn until he thinks the person next to him is rich financially. So almost like thinking of a rich, why did people buy it? But then he learns how to become rich as a person using those 10 lessons that Treb shares from his life.

And that's why it's called the flight that changes everything. Is it changes the way Robert, the younger pastor, thinks about life. But as far as the book itself, you pick it up, it's a story, you can read it and stop. and read it and stop. Preb walks you through saying, you know, okay, you're ready for lesson two? So you actually hear that it's a lesson.

And at the end of each chapter, it says, your lessons or your takeaways is to start using the mantra saying no more often. So it teaches you at the end what you can do now that you've read the chapter. I love that. I love that because so many people love to just read fantasy and story and make, make up what it means to them and just drift off into fantasy. And then you've got the other people that just like science and mathematics and proven stuff. But self-help and personal growth, and you said this about thinking grow rich, how they didn't really tell you what it was about. You had the opportunity

to make up yourself. Seems like your book is a journey that allows the reader to figure out what it means for them. And that I like a lot because I think one of the biggest problems that people face is they've been taught what things like success mean by somebody else rather than figuring it out for themselves. Here we have this guy, Corey, here, who's obviously painstakingly figured things out by himself. So here he is sharing his stuff, but he's been smart enough to share it in a way that allows you as the reader to figure out what it means for you. Am I right in saying that? You are. And to your point about almost ambiguous, the title. So people would say to me, well, what's the title referencing?

Why the title? For me, the title was even, you can decide, meaning the enlightened passenger. So who is it, JC? Is it the young person who's becoming more enlightened than the flight because he's enlightened more so than he was? Is it the older passenger because he's the enlightened one already more so? Or is it you the reader who's a passenger on the journey become more enlightened? And they'll go one step further.

Or if you hand a book to somebody else that you need to check out this book, are you the passenger that brings it to that person? So, I mean, and you can go, there's more layers. But yeah, so it's meant to be you kind of saying, what does this mean to me? And so it's the same idea in the book, you know, I talk about the mayfly. I never thought in my whole life I would title a chapter of a book called The Mayfly. And where that concept came from is I heard everybody loves Raymond, Robert, the brother, said something about how short the life was of the Mayflower. And I'm like, well, that's fascinating.

What is that? And I, by the way, the book was written and I added this in. But then I went in research. I'm like, wow, the mayfly lives 24 hours. Now, interestingly, that's the male mayfly. The female lives three to five minutes. So her whole life is just to create more mayflies. But the male, I said, well, I can work with that concept because I thought about what's

your perfect day? And most people don't live their perfect day. So what I said in the book is like, if you were the mayfly and you had 24 hours, whether left or only, how would you live that day? And then so Robert, the younger character lists all the things he would do. And then Treb gives this great, I think, great reflection question of, so why aren't you doing that now. And so it's meant, but you can decide what you do with that. And also, JC, you can decide what is your perfect day to you. So I still think it gives you the choice as the reader

to say, the perfect day for me might be this. Well, Corey's perfect day could be different. And in the book, I say, you know, your perfect day probably isn't going to be the same perfect day every day. But you can still make a list of what are the 100 things I would do in a perfect day and just make sure you're doing one of those every day. I love it. And just like conversation earlier on about how he just teaks these simple, simple concepts that might look like. And you're he was lazy but end up being genius, you know, ironically, to find this, you would go to www.w. This is the book.com. So I would assume that for the rest of your experience with Corey Porier, you will be seeing things like this pop up. And, you know, just a couple of things that I'll

point out because we're coming to the end of our time. Things that I just find sexy and you'll, you'll see them explained in detail on his website. Definitely one of the top five books I've ever read in my life just as far as impacting my life with Celestein prophecy. Corey has a relationship, you know, with Redfield. And one of them is about drawing more synchronicities in your life. I love that idea. He shares some very, very valuable lessons about law of attraction, finding your purpose and things like this, all this stuff that you'll probably read these chapters and find yourself saying, oh, I knew that. It's like, yeah, but you're not, you haven't applied it in your life. And when you see the way this book unfolds, you'll be able to execute on that.

I want to ask you one last question. So this is just a no-brainer because it just looks like a fun, almost like eating a piece of pizza. You know, you're going to have fun reading this, but you're going to be probably stopping and going maybe taking some notes and seeing what it meant for you. I love that idea of telling a story, but then having the reader interpret how that has unfolded in their own life. That's what I love about these topics. But here's an interesting question. Taking into account everything that you've experienced in life, because the dragon is going to turn 53 this month. So I've been around for a little while, and in my impression, by far the craziest this world has ever been. And just, you know, it's fascinating, but just completely crazy.

What I'd love you to share from your perspective, taking all things into account, including the economy, war, conflict, tech. tech advancements, AI, all of that stuff. What is your professional opinion? So try to keep in that realm. What is your professional opinion as somebody that helps others succeed? What's your professional opinion about the current reality and future for the entrepreneur? Well, I mean, this is timely if you, to quickly add the tech in just because people again say, well, I should say, again, people have asked me, why did I push the publisher to put this book out so quick? So the book was out and like, just tell you, JC, you know,

you know how traditional publisher usually works. This book, I told them it had to be out in four months. And that's unheard of. Why did that relates to your question? Because on the tech side, AI, now I'm going to say this from both perspectives. AI could be the difference maker with books. It could change everything. But it also could be terrible for books because I have a client.

We've helped get a TED talk. And her talk is about what happens to humanity when AI brings us back into the Dark Ages. And what she means is when artists don't continue to create, because AI, can do it quicker and easier. So my fear with this book was the type of book it is I felt it's not like a self-help or a how-to get paid to speak book or something where you can put it out and then you become the expert or AI can do a version of it. This is a book where it's meant to be like the Celestine or one of those books that

comes along that hopefully also has literary merit and can change lives and all that stuff. And I was just not sure. So not scared of, but not sure AI is going to do to the book world. So if I left this to be three or four years and everybody's like, well, AI is just kind of taken over the book world. I'm not even going to read books anymore. Like I just don't know where that's going to go. So that part of me may be put it out sooner.

So but I'm not advocating if you're an entrepreneur, do everything sooner because AI is going to take over. So that's, I just want to add that in because that is surprised people that that was my push for why sooner. But as far as what I think kind of the future looks like for entrepreneurs and what I think, you know, we can do within that, I first of all, I think entrepreneurs, for the most part, this is all generalization are very versatile people and understand flexibility you know as an entrepreneur as you know i mean the joke you know is the solopreneurs can be like the caterer for their company

the uh the filmmaker the everything and so we're used to i think um and i'm not even a solopreneur to the same extent anymore with blue talks but still i think we're used to okay i need to adjust the crap that happens and crap is always going to happen and so for better or worse i think the way the world's crazy right now i think actually it serves entrepreneurs well because we're used to adjusting. However, having said that, I think we also have to be forward thinking in what does that feature look like. So what is important right now for me to acquire? Let's say it's skills. And for example, you have two choices with, let's say, technology. So there's a name Onick Singall. And I've been on Onick's show and he's been on my show. I've been to his events.

And Onick is very forward thinking. He's got a, he's an internet marketer, but he's got a large network of people that work for them that are tech savvy and he loves tech. And so he put a post just today about Claude. And I haven't even like logged in. Claude is amazing. So he talked about Claude projects. I guess the new add on to Claude. And he said it scares the hell to me and excites me at the same time. And what I'm getting, what I'm driving to is as an entrepreneur, you kind of have two choices. You become an onic who gets excited and scared by Claude, but dives in and learns it. Or your other option is you get so successful doing something, nobody else. can do that you can hire somebody who knows how to use Claude.

And then the other side is we could say, well, what if you don't, that's not, you never learn it and you get behind, well, that's possible. But I think as long as there's lots of clods, which people that know Claude, which there will be, because that's the new skill, I think you might hate it. Like, you might hate technology in the sense that I don't get joy off this. It's not your genius zone. So you can hire somebody. Henry Ford from Thinking Grow Rich was accused of being ignorant back in a day.

And I love the story about how he got taken to court over. or he took the other guy. I can't remember which version. But whenever the lawyer tried to make him a Zigner because he didn't understand a bunch of stuff, he goes, yeah, but I can push a button and I have somebody on staff that will help me get that answer. Why would I waste my mind and time learning it? So I think, J.C., I think now we're at a pivotal time where as an entrepreneur, you decide am I the person that knows Claude? Or do I become so good, like Steve Martin says, that people can't ignore you at something that nobody else can do so that you can always make sure you have a clot on your team. Or again, I keep saying clot, a person that knows clot on your team.

So I think the world is going to keep evolving. I think we're hopefully going to survive. I think entrepreneurs are still going to be successful. But I do think machines are coming for your job. And so I think you have to either decide, do I learn the technology so I'm invaluable, or do I become so invaluable at something nobody else has figured out yet? And they can't replicate, like maybe interviewing 7,500 people, and then hire somebody that can learn the technology. So I don't know if that's a full answer, but that's my take on. It's great. Yeah.

And, you know, if you really think about it in hindsight, nothing's changed because that same rule always, you know, equates, you know, you're either going to be the person that is agile and moves with the time or you're going to stand your ground. And, you know, I don't know which one will be a better idea. but if you're on the side of the better choice, you'll be great. But at the end of the day, one thing's for sure is that you're never going to just snap your fingers and find success. However, what I will tell you, you're talking about you're either going to learn how to

use something like Claude or not and, you know, take that other avenue of becoming the next Steve Jobs. But what's interesting about this conversation that you and I have had is the definition of hard work is completely different. You know, the version of failure for my children, for your children, and for the future might seem drastic to them, but to me, you know, all I have to do is open Claude and play with it. You know, but this new generation, you know, might go open it and not like one thing about it and move on to something else. So I see in the future, that if you do start working with these technologies and also move with the times,

I see more opportunity than ever. I do see a whole culture of entrepreneurs that are not really entrepreneurs. They just figured out how to push the buttons and they've created this illusion and they're becoming billionaires and having to learn how to become entrepreneurs then. So that's an interesting world. But I see this as a very, very big opportunity. And we were talking a lot about urgency before. I spent quite a bit of time in my life being afraid of dying until the day that I realized that I was.

And I stopped being afraid of it and I started taking action. So, Corey, awesome. You can find Corey, that speaker guy and this is thebook.com. We shared those. What a delight to have you on the show and just, you know, you're one of those interviews where we probably need, you know, about six hours to do. You know, because there's so much to talk about. But as far as rejection and this idea of living an epic life, it makes sense. It makes perfect sense.

And I think that the idea of getting his book is a wonderful idea. So we'll make sure that everybody gains access to that. And I thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much. J.C. the Dragon. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for making this possible. And thanks everybody.

Makes sense. Thank you.