Bill Poje was born in 1963 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. During and after high school he managed The Argos Bookshop. Bill worked at the bookshop for 8 years selling new products as well as buying and selling estates of books, comic books, baseball cards and more.
After leaving the bookshop he attended Aquinas College completing a BSBA in Business Administration\Accounting as well as studying Shakespeare, Robert Frost, EE Cummings, Southern American Writers and Creative Writing. Post Aquinas Bill received an MBA from Vanderbilt University in Finance and Operations Management. Extensive Marketing and Information System classes were also completed.
Post schooling Bill worked in various manufacturing and service industries before spending 8 years working at Hi-Lex in Battle Creek, MI. Hi-Lex makes push\pull cables (think transmission) and window regulators. Bill was in charge of the standard cost system, all Customs regulatory reporting, the sales\cost of goods sold budget, as well as product estimating at least 25% of all annual OEM cable sales in the USA.
Bill moved on to working for Dart Management on Grand Cayman Island becoming the financial controller for the largest Bahamian Exporter. He installed and trained staff on a full ERP\Accounting, Biometric Time and Attendance, and Payroll Systems.
In 2007 Bill faced a personal choice of staying living on Grand Cayman Island or moving back to the USA and starting over. He became an author and created Corporation X to create profitable tent-pole movies as well as positively changing society with products such as The Byzantine Pineapple.
Please tell us a little bit about your company – what is Corporation X all about?
Corporation X is a production and marketing corporation. Corporation X has a marketing agreement with Poje LLC to produce and market the products of the author. Producing can mean book publication or film production or merchandising. Marketing means building product awareness as well as selling the products produced.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
My business background is in a variety of industries and departments in a variety of corporations as well as going through the process of buying corporations. The full list would take up this page! One very relevant experience was spending ten years buying and selling estates of books, comic books, baseball cards, etc. This background has provided me with a perspective of written material that is quite unique.
My educational background is also well rounded with undergraduate degrees in Business Administration\Accounting and an MBA in Finance and Operations Management. If one counts audited classes I also covered an MBA Marketing Concentration. Between Aquinas and Vanderbilt enough coursework was completed for a minor in Information Systems. In college I also took a variety of History and studied Shakespeare, Robert Frost, EE Cummings, Southern American Writers, and Creative Writing.
In 2007 I faced a personal choice: Stay living on Grand Cayman for probably the rest of my life or move back to the USA and do something else. I walked into a movie theatre and watched yet another of the annually produced and marketed awful big budget movies and I said “I can and will do better than that.” Corporation X was born.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
- The first skill is to learn how to successfully communicate with people. If you are starting a business you need to make sales to people and that requires communication. If you are growing a business you need to communicate to others you hire what the job expectations are. If one has a Cool Hand Luke “failure to communicate” then one experiences headache that could have been avoided.
- The second skill is the ability to plan and adapt. The quote from “The Hunt For Red October” is that a “Russkie don’t take a dump without a plan.” One has to have a plan for every department’s activities and those plans must be flexible to change as the environment changes. Evolution is survival of the fittest and the fittest do the best long-term planning.
- The third skill is math\accounting. It is foolish to blindly trust others to take care of the math. Whether it costs or revenues or banking or financial statements you are the person responsible for the math\accounting. History is littered with those who were taken for a ride by those they blindly trusted with the math.
What are your plans for the future, how do you plan to grow this company?
Corporation X publishes a Quarterly Newsletter to those who sign up for it on the poje dot biz website. The newsletter is published at the solstice and equinox. The newsletter updates the interested parties about the plans as evolution occurs.
The immediate main focus is expanding the product line with the publication of three books simultaneously. The first book is Blindless which is the sequel to the award winning Painless and is the second installment of The Less Trilogy. Timeless will conclude the trilogy.
The Salvador Dali Cyfer is also planned for publication.The Salvador Dali Cyfer is part of another planned trilogy. The novel combines the TV Show Charmed with The DaVinci Code using the works of Dali.
The third text will be The Byzantine Pineapple: The COVID chronicles. This text will be gathering of the COVID essays and reports posted on the poje.biz website into one compendium.The Byzantine Pineapple (Part 1) predicted the fraud of COVID so when the global shutdown of March 18, 2019, occurred the author knew it was a fraud from Day 1 and posted the reasons why on the website. Also on March 18, the author started gathering the Johns Hopkins COVID deaths data at 8:00 every morning and publishing the data daily on the poje.biz website and social media. Six essays on the topic of COVID related activities were also published.
The long term plans are to translate the works into movies and merchandising as well as to publish more books. Once the first movie is created and the bugs are worked out there is enough material stockpiled and planned to create three movies a year for ten years.
If one assumes a target Global Box Office of $500,000,000 for each product then producing and marketing three products a year means generating $1.5 billion in new sales every year and over ten years that is $15 billion in sales. This doesn’t include annual re-airings, etc., of products. If the products take off even better than the projection then the sales will be that much higher.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
My existence has been one of standing outside the bell curve of “normal behavior” and the writing perspectives brought to the products are unique. What seems normal to me to say and think is “abnormal” to what many other people believe.
This is stated not with an air of braggadocio but simply as a matter of fact. The sign over the door in The Matrix reads temet nosce which is “thine own self thou must know”…translated in The Matrix as “know thyself.” Separating the Corporation X products from the competitors’ products is not an issue because everything about the Corporation X product vision is already different.
Experience taught me that before I even began writing the first book that what I will write is not what the industry believes will work to sell to the public. Indeed there is no way I could be completely positive that the products would sell to the public until I created and market tested the products on the public. Painless was self-published and other products were created and market tested. The market test results have been spectacular.
The successful market tests have proven that the products do work with the public and that there is incredible global sales and net profit potential. However successful test marketing doesn’t mean that the industry will “get behind” the products. Many of the people at the highest levels of industry have proven themselves not to be the best decision makers. The evidence is all the big money spent making some really awful garbage every year.
There is a marketing story of two shoe salespeople who visit the land of shoeless people. The first salesperson immediately left saying “no one here wears shoes so I can’t make sales.” The second salesperson stayed saying “I can make a fortune here because everyone here needs shoes; they just don’t know it yet.” Corporation X is selling shoes to a shoeless public.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
Looking back I can’t specifically label any action taken as a mistake. Some actions taken may not have paid off like I thought they might but that’s just part of learning. If you are afraid of getting your nose bloodied then you aren’t ready for the fight.
I also didn’t start on the Corporation X journey until I was a mature businessperson. I’ve already been in the top management circle of global businesses larger than the production and marketing costs of a major motion picture. I already made and learned from a lot of mistakes working in other places.
The top mistake I didn’t make is the mistake of “being in a hurry to make a bad deal.” I’ve been happy to slowly build and market test the portfolio of work to create as well as to go completely over the business plan again and again to make sure I know what I am doing before taking each next major step forward.
How do you go about marketing your business, and what has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
From Day 1 I knew that the only way for me to succeed was via “grassroots support.” The plan was to use the fiction products to build around. The first task that had to happen was to create the first product and to go out and see if the product would sell. If the product sold and the public showed interest in what they saw then more products need creating and testing.
UnManifest Destiny, which is about Honduras becoming the 51st US state, was the first product created. But I knew that it is not the first product to write and sell. The first product has to be a different kind of story.
Painless is the first product. Painless is the first of The Less Trilogy to be followed by Blindless and Timeless.
After publishing, I performed 130 public appearances at primarily Border’s Bookstores but also at other events. I personally met and talked to 20,000 people in 16 states and sold 2,500 copies on just the one-to-one meeting. This is a phenomenal sales rate. No industry person I have talked to has ever heard of such a feat.
Along the way the product line grew and the majority of the public has responded favorably to everything they see. Many authors would be thrilled to see the public response the Poje products receive.
One key to the sales success is a unique book cover design coupled with a “30 second book tour” which uses the many elements on the book cover. All of the Poje products come with “30 second book tours” that are entertaining and informative. As far as I have been able to determine out of all the authors on planet Earth I am the only author to have such book tours.
The link below is to the Painless 30-second book tour done at a leisurely one minute pace for the purpose of the video. Trust me: there are plenty of people who set a watch and told me “go” to see if the tour was 30 seconds in length. The tour hits 30 seconds right on the nose.
Despite the proven track record of sales I have yet to meet a single agent or publisher or studio who will even have an initial conversation. This is because of the products and the author being unlike anything they have ever seen before. Nothing fits their established formula ergo it is ignored. The only way to grow is to publish more product and engage in more grassroots building of support.
At the beginning of 2020 I was deep into organizing an eight month long book tour when the tour got COVID’ed. This changed the marketing to more internet focused while also changing the focus from the fiction works to the non-fiction The Byzantine Pineapple as The Byzantine Pineapple predicted the COVID fraud that occurred.
For any reader who questions the use of the term “fraud” it is suggested that they read the Connect The Dots Essay Parts 1 & 2 linked below. As the essay points out the global economy was shut down over a single non-peer reviewed fraudulent study. With the fraudulent study that was not reviewed by anyone outside the inner cabal there is no global shutdown.
Anything that puts the Corporation X products in front of consumers and builds brand awareness is a successful form of marketing. This is because the Corporation X products resonates with the vast majority of the public. It is unlike anything they have seen before.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
The biggest challenge has been seeing to the needs of my now 96-year-old mother while building Corporation X. I have learned a lot about elderly care over the last decade.
The next biggest challenge has been building from scratch a multibillion-dollar vision in an industry that doesn’t want me around. On day 1 there were no products, customers or industry contacts. Everything has been built from scratch with limited capital.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
Looking back I can’t say that there is anything that stands out. Everything had to be built from scratch so it didn’t really matter in a sense what I did and didn’t know.
The saying is that “it is one thing to know the path. It is another thing to walk the path.” Once you commit and start walking the path then everything is different.
What are the top 3 online tools and resources you’re currently using to grow your company?
The internet itself is a powerful tool. With public appearances I can only meet so many people at a time. With the internet a much larger global audience can be reached every day on a website I control. Actively maintaining a website is a powerful tool.
A year ago the poje dot biz website attracted zero visitors per day. Now the site is attracting over 600 visitors a day from all over earth. 80% of the traffic comes from the USA and the rest comes from all over the planet. So, over the next year, over 200,000 visitors at a minimum will become aware of the website\products. The marketing tool used to bring in the traffic is a top online tool.
My COVID reporting of the Johns Hopkins data on social networks has helped grow the business. I have been banned by LinkedIn and Facebook and the posts scrubbed under the guise that posting factual information from the Johns Hopkins website is somehow “harmful to people’s health.” The data is now posted daily on Twitter, Xephula and Parler. On any day 15% to 25% of my daily web traffic comes from all the social networks…even the ones I am banned from…so the social networks are a powerful online tool.
What are three books or courses would you recommend to entrepreneurs?
To me it all starts with knowing the core fundamentals to business. I recommend Accounting texts and courses. Financial Statements are the ultimate scorecard for a business and if you don’t understand how the accounting is done how do you know you aren’t being fleeced?
The next thing I would recommend are Information System texts\courses that deal with Systems Analysis and Systems Design. Ultimately planning is a form of Systems Analysis and Systems Design. There is no industry that has not been impacted by some form of software\computerization. If you don’t have a grasp of how the software you are using is fundamentally constructed you may miss out on what is going on around you.
If you had the chance to start your career over again what would you do differently?
I cannot honestly state any answer to that question because life does not give one that second opportunity. What happened in my life is what made me who I am today. If I changed the past I would be changed today. I can’t say how the alternate reality would have changed me.
I have no time travelling Delorean. There is no Grey’s Sports Almanac I can use to bring back to my past to change my future.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
For one grand, unless one is some form of personal groomer, the only thing one can really do is buy some product and resell it for a profit. I am no groomer and the only products I can think of that I could buy and resell to make a profit are either financial instruments or illegal drugs. Those are two businesses that if I wanted to get into I would have gone that route long ago. I didn’t. So in my case I would either have a big party night or save the money until enough capital had been accumulated to do whatever is the next thing necessary to start the business.
What is your favorite quote?
I don’t have any single “favorites” of anything. I don’t believe in the concept that there MUST be a single favorite.
That said…I am reminded of a saying I saw one time in a Successories catalog of a quotes that always stuck with me and that I have never seen anywhere else again and have never been able to find a source for. The quote basically said:
“A person with great intelligence and no ambition will go nowhere.”
“A person with limited intelligence and great ambition will go everywhere.”
I’ve met plenty of intelligent people in my life who went nowhere because it was easier not to put in the effort. In high school I used to hang out with some intelligent people who are now beggars and thieves because that was easier than working. They had no ambition in the single life that they have to live.
Conversely I have met many people…and also see in the public eye others…who aren’t what would be labeled as “Mensa material” but who have achieved a lot in their lives and who have gone places that they never would have thought possible. They got there because they had the ambition to do something with their life.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Sergio Leone created brilliant movies about people and life. In his classic Once Upon A time in The West one character states to another:
- “Easy, Frank. Easy.
- You gotta learn not to push things.
- Taking it easy is the first thing a businessman should do.”
My advice is “Don’t be in too big a hurry.” That’s one of the easiest ways to get burned.
Who should we interview next and why?
I am not wise enough to provide an answer.
Random Bonus: With the game on the line and 5 seconds on the clock, who takes the last shot? Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, or Lebron James?
I am 57 and still play full court basketball. I have had the fortune of playing pickup basketball with such players as the great 1966 #1 overall NBA draft pick Cazzie Russell and current NBA player Grayson Allen. I also played hoops with Grand Rapids native Loy Vaught who played for the Clippers for a decade. I grew up in Grand Rapids during the Bird\Magic and Bad Boys era.
For me, as a Pistons fan, there is no choice. I have a great deal of respect for MJ and LJ for fashioning the fabulous careers that they had. They not only have natural talent but they had the ambition to max that natural talent. They accomplished what many other talented players did not accomplish. But a lot of their damage was done against the Pistons. I can’t pick them so it has to be Kobe!
How can we get in touch with you?
I am always happy to talk to people. Send me an e-mail or give me a call. I am in Jacksonville, FL., and I am easy to find via web searches. You can Visit my website poje.biz/ and purchase my book on Amazon.
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