The Evolution of Success with Donnie Boivin with CEO, Donnie Boivin

What pivotal moment in your life has inspired you to follow your true passion?

In this episode of The EmPOWERed Half Hour, Becca has an insightful conversation with Donnie Boivin, the CEO of Success Champion Networking and the visionary force behind the Badass Business Summit.

From his humble beginnings as a blue-collar kid, growing up with a strong work ethic but limited opportunities, to becoming the leader of a thriving B2B networking empire, Donnie has consistently defied the odds.

Donnie shares the raw, unfiltered truth about the challenges he faced in launching his business, including the moments of self-doubt and the risks that nearly broke him. But more importantly, he reveals the powerful lessons he’s learned along the way—lessons about grit, perseverance, and the importance of staying true to your vision, no matter the obstacles.

A Life-Altering Moment

Donnie Boivin shares a pivotal moment when a conversation with his business partner made him realize he was pursuing someone else’s dream. This revelation sparked his determination to follow his path and start his own business, transforming his life.

Facing Early Entrepreneurial Hurdles

In the early days of his startup, Donnie faced significant obstacles, including a non-compete agreement that nearly sunk his new venture. He recounts the financial difficulties and uncertainty that tested his resolve and how he navigated these early challenges to build a successful business.

Building Resilience in Business

Donnie reflects on his journey from almost losing his farm to establishing a thriving networking empire. He emphasizes the importance of resilience, advising aspiring entrepreneurs to build their business on the side while keeping their day job until the venture is sustainable.

Embracing Business Evolution

He discusses how his business evolved from a focus on sales training to a successful networking platform. He explores how embracing this evolution and adapting to new opportunities were essential for achieving clarity and success in his entrepreneurial journey.

Start Now and Trust the Journey

Donnie encourages dreamers to take the plunge and start pursuing their passions. He believes that the universe will guide those who are willing to act on their dreams, urging listeners to trust the process and jump into their entrepreneurial aspirations.

Key Moments You Won't Want to Miss:

• Defining Turning Points: Donnie recounts the moment a conversation with his business partner revealed he was chasing someone else’s dream, sparking his decision to pursue his vision.
• Overcoming Early Setbacks: Hear how a non-compete agreement nearly derailed Donnie’s startup, testing his perseverance and leading to critical lessons in handling unforeseen obstacles.
• Lessons from Resilience: Discover how Donnie's journey from almost losing his farm to creating a successful networking empire underscores the power of resilience and the importance of building a business on the side.
• Finding Clarity Through Change: Explore how Donnie’s willingness to pivot and embrace new opportunities led to greater clarity and success, highlighting the importance of staying flexible and open to change in entrepreneurship.
• Encouraging Action: Donnie motivates listeners to take immediate action on their dreams, emphasizing that the universe will align in favor of those who actively pursue their passions.

Empowering Thoughts to Take With You:

• “Never quit whatever you're doing to launch a business, go build the business up on the side.” — Donnie Boivin
• “Anybody who's found some sort of success is because the moment it got hard, they smiled and leaned in because they knew that's when the good thing happens.” — Donnie Boivin
• “People that endure are the ones that learn as they go through it.” — Donnie Boivin
• “As long as you keep applying those learnings, you force yourself to evolve. That's where everybody wins, and that's how winning is done.” — Donnie Boivin
• “If you found success in your past, you're going to find it in the future.” — Donnie Boivin
• “The trick is you can't just win, you have to go through the things you need to work and get after it.” — Donnie Boivin
• “If you don't start, you don't know, and what you think might happen may not be the thing that happens, but if you don't go through the process, you can't get to what it's supposed to be.” — Becca Powers
• “When we are in our truest nature and we're nurturing and cultivating who we are, we make an impact.”  — Becca Powers
• “Invest in more of you and then share it.“  — Becca Powers

About Donnie:

Donnie Boivin serves as the CEO of Success Champion Networking and is the Founder of the Badass Business Summit. He is a top podcaster and 5-time best-selling author. Motivated by a desire to transform the landscape of networking, Donnie established business-to-business networking groups across North America.

Now, with hundreds of members they have created a business that is more than a community; it is a support system. SCN is a B2B business community that recognizes networking as a vital driver of growth and success. We are dedicated to providing our members with the essential support, a thriving community, and valuable education to ensure their B2B success.

Connect with Donnie Boivin:

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Instagram

Mentioned on the Show:

• Success Champion Networking: https://successchampionnetworking.com/
• Join the 2024 Badass Business Summit from September 18-20 in Fort Worth, TX: https://badassbusinesssummit.com/
  

Pre-order 'A Return To Radiance' by October 7th, and get over $333 in FREE bonuses!!!

Follow Becca Powers:

• Website
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

We Want to Hear From You!

Share your experiences of leaping into entrepreneurship and the journey of pursuing your dreams.

Connect with us on social media or leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your stories of overcoming challenges, embracing evolution, and trusting the process inspire us and highlight the power of following your passion.

Let’s celebrate how starting now and believing in your path can lead to remarkable and unexpected successes!

Welcome to another episode of the Empowered Half-Hour. I am so thrilled to bring you today's guest. His name is Donnie Boivin and he is the CEO of Success Champion Networking and is the founder of the Badass Business Summit. All things like just the Badass Business Summit, like those words I love. I want to tell the listeners how we met. And then I want to give it over to you for a little bit more of an introduction to yourself. 

I met Donnie from a former guest, Kate Bowman, and I enjoyed the conversation. We just had about 30 minutes of it. I get to know you, but he's built a very successful business and I don't think that you have the most typical background cause I know you've been in the military. You were in sales and now you help other people build up their businesses. I love the nontraditional path, but also everything that you had to go through to become who you are today. So Donnie, welcome to the show.

Oh, my honor, Becca. It took me a second to remember some of our conversation but it was awesome. You are a powerhouse girl to be able to accomplish and do the things that you've done and continue to do. You're the kind of person I love hanging out with, so thanks for having me on. This is going to be a blast.

It's going to be great. So let's talk about, so you're the CEO of your networking company and you also are the founder of a business summit. I know because I got connected to you through a CEO friend that you're impacting a lot of people out there, but how did you get to be the Donnie that is doing all these things today Let's get into your backstory.

From Blue-Collar Beginnings to Entrepreneurial Success

I'll give you a kind of fun background. I had 25 years in sales, and almost 20 of those years were spent selling for other people.

And in my last career, I picked up a partner in a sales training company. I turned 40 before I even knew that you could start your own business. I'm just a blue-collar kid. You work, you get a job, you retire. My last business partner and I didn't have a falling out. We had a wild conversation that led to the ultimate catalyst for me to jump out on my own.

I think it's important for your listeners to hear the story, but we went out to dinner and we were talking about the buyout. It was a multimillion and multi-seven-figure buyout over a few years and I was going to take over the company. During that dinner, he said something to me that forever changed my outlook on life and my view of everything.

And what he said to me was, Donnie, thank God you're my retirement plan. Now he said it out of love and your reactions, what everybody does when I tell this story, my instant response to the guy was, dude, it's been my honor, I love working for you. We're still great friends but after that dinner, I went and sat in my truck and as I'm sitting in my truck, I am looking at myself in the rearview mirror and dude, what is the matter with you?

You are somebody else's retirement plan. And I looked over my entire life and that's all I have been — somebody else's retirement plan. I wasn't the guy who chose a career path to learn skill sets. No, I just took every job that was put in front of me and I just happened to be good at it, so I had not explored life or figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up or anything.

At that moment, sitting in my truck, I gave myself an ultimatum. And the ultimatum was simply this. You either live the life you're living or you get in the game and you launch a company and quit dreaming that there's something better out there. You can't do both, right? Do one or the other. Cause I kept thinking, man, could I do something bigger and more badass out there for myself?

Or do I just need to own this life? Great life, making great money, doing great things. Which path was I going to choose? I couldn't turn off the dream. So 15 days later, I launched my company.

That's quick. Yeah. I moved fast, typically a fairly fast decision-maker. I don't always make the right decisions, but I make it fast.

The whirlwind of life happened from that moment because 24 hours after launching my company, it wasn't my business partner who did this to me. It was a company we worked for in a conglomerate. I was slapped with a non-compete that I don't remember signing. So I had full intent of launching my own sales training company and thank God that the new non-compete law just became ineffective, they don't matter anymore.

Saves a guy like me. But the only thing I knew was sales. That was my background. I had full intent on launching a sales training organization. My wife and I had built our dream farm. I built a second house and a property for my mother-in-law to live in. We were living a fun life and now I found myself, I left a great job on my own, launched a company, and now I can't launch the company I tried to launch. I couldn't talk about sales, management, or business development, anywhere in the world. That's all I knew, So I had no idea what the hell my company was. So it felt like I had just gotten fired because I instantly had no income. 

So I'm like, I'm a sales guy and I've been primarily straight commission my entire life. I'll figure this out, six months of trying to figure this out, my wife's Jeep was repossessed. We almost lost a farm to foreclosure, which means we would have lost our house and my mother-in-law's house.

My wife graciously cashed in her 401k to get her Jeep back and save the farm. But that was our last lifeline. I'd already cashed in my 401k to try and sustain the lifestyle we had, and we went from that moment and that's the stuff we can dive into. But I went from that moment to now being the CEO of Success Champions Networking, where we run business-to-business networking groups throughout North America, and five bestselling books. Pretty cool podcast in a partridge in a pear tree.

There's so much in that, but during our pre-talk, before we went live, I was just saying that we have a lot of high achievers as listeners on here, some people are entrepreneurs, some people are working full time and an entrepreneur and some people are still just dreaming the dream, but they're scared to launch.

And that's why I wanted to have you on the show because I think that there's a realness to your story. It's not picture-perfect, and that's not really how it works anyway, but I would love for you to share with the listeners, maybe what is a lesson or two that you learned through going through that experience that you would want to share with them.

Why You Shouldn’t Quit Your Job When Starting a Business

One, I would tell anybody to never quit whatever you're doing to launch a business, go build the business up on the side. And then once the business is sustainable the only reason I couldn't do that is I was opening up a direct competition for the company I was leaving. So, I could not in conscious faith try and sell two companies, but I would tell anybody that the second thing is if you've never run a business and you're launching a business, get ready to realize anything about running a business. Because I thought being a straight commission sales guy, that being a business owner was going to be a cakewalk.

Let me tell you it's anything, but entrepreneurs are crazy and I'm not even sure I fully commit myself to being an entrepreneur. I'm more of a business owner-type guy. People that do this, we wake up every day knowing that we're gonna get punched in the face and it's like a smile and let's go again.

One day you're gonna be sitting on top of everything's great. And then the next day you're like, why am I still doing this? I have to constantly remind myself, dude, you signed up for this, as you're going through it. And I think you have to step back and ask yourself, Are you going to do something like this?

And it can't be to make more money. It can't be to prove that you're somebody, it's a hundred percent gotta be a mission-driven thing you're trying to accomplish.

I love that you said that. I just want to geek out on that for a second because I feel that people call me crazy too because I work full-time, but I still have so much passion behind what I do.

And then I have a speaking and writing career and a sales training business but I'm not doing it because it's how I make money. There is passion and purpose and there's something in that entrepreneurial spirit too that when you were talking, that made me want to talk about this for a second.

Once that mission starts burning inside you, you can't turn it off. Like I couldn't turn it off if I wanted to. And I think that there are probably some dreamers who would be listening to this episode thinking wow, I've had this idea in my head for two or three years. It just keeps cycling and it's very meaningful to them, but there's a fear of breaking out. What would you say to that listener?

The Power of Persistence and Evolution in Entrepreneurship

Jump, and a hundred percent good, and here's why. I never thought my company was going to be the company that it is. I thought I was going to end up even beyond the non-compete and do nothing but sales training. I thought that's where we're going to be, but networking has always been a part of my career, man.

It's how I built, and sold hundreds of millions of dollars over my lifetime and the likes, and it became around evolved relationships and networking. I didn't want to run a networking company where I brought people together and taught them how to network and let them grow their businesses.

It just wasn't the business that I wanted to do. And for me, the day I decided we were going to launch networking groups, I was telling my wife this kind of same thing. Hey, I don't want to watch networking. I won't be the guy that's associated with that networking. And I just thought anybody who taught networking is just some broke people who don't know how to sell, right?

The methodology is ahead of my head. And my wife's the one who slapped me upside the head. And what she said to me, she goes, Donnie, why don't you become the guy that changes the way the world networks and gets them to rethink everything? That's deep.

That's what you're talking about and that's the catalyst. So if something for your listeners keeps popping up in their heads, Nick keeps coming to the forefront, there's something there. You need to figure out what is the mission behind things because there's a reason it keeps coming up, right? There's a reason it keeps coming to the surface.

And what's funny is it took me two and a half years after I launched my company to get to the networking groups. I almost bought a networking franchise. I almost bought into a networking company. There were just a lot of things along the way that kept pointing me back to running networking, and just for everybody's clear, this is not an MLM or anything like this is a legitimate business. I don't want to, and I'm not a woo-woo guy by any stretch of the imagination, but the universe sure has a weird way of bringing things back. 

What I say is the universe is universing right now. I'm like, I don't know what's happening, but something's happening and I'm aware.

It's not some magical, mystical but if it keeps coming up, there is something behind that saying, dude, go that direction. And once I finally dared to listen and then act, it became the foundation for everything. 

It's wild, so there's another part of this that I think is interesting to explore if you're okay with going down another rabbit hole, is evolution.

If you don't start., you don't know, and what you think might happen may not be the thing that happens, but if you don't go through the process, you can't get to what it's supposed to be. 

Like how you said, you didn't know you wanted to start a sales training business, and then you ended up founding a networking business-to-business group.

Different from all the rest, right? Yep, but so many people are so focused on the outcome that they think they are going to get to that. They're afraid to take that step. And all I can say from my own experience is that nothing you think is going to happen is going to happen, or maybe just a fraction of it. And it's in the evolution that clarity happens, that more purpose exposes itself. So I'd love for you to geek out on that for a little bit if you don't mind.

How Endurance Fuels Success

Yeah, a hundred percent. And I love this because I don't get to talk about this as often. So thank you, it's interesting. The idea of jumping in and starting things is beautiful.

Evolution comes from going beyond where most people quit and let me explain this. So what happens to most people is they get this beautiful idea and they're going to try something. So let's say, I don't know, they want to start a podcast. What happens to a lot of people is they leave a successful career and they think the podcast is going to be the thing that allows them to get where they want to go.

So they launch a podcast, they get a few guests, and then they get to edit the episodes and then they get to get some more guests and then they put out the show, then they get to market the show. And somewhere along the way, they start going, this is hard. This is harder than I thought it was going to be. This is harder than I think I want to do. S

You know what? We're going to put the podcast to the side. I'm going to launch a YouTube channel cause I think that would just be easier. So like now they'll just record themselves and go. So now they sit down, they record and then they get to edit. Then they got a post and then they got a market and then they're like, you know what? This is harder than I thought I wanted to do. 

So let's not do YouTube, right? Let's become a blog writer. I think a blog writer is gonna be the answer. So now they go back and they start writing a blog and then they're like, oh, I got to come up with content. Now I have to edit, I got a market.

You know what? Let's screw the blog. I'm going to become a book author because I think a book author is going to be the thing. And what happens to most people is they don't allow themselves to evolve, what they do is every time they get stacked up against it, they throw in the towel and go and pivot and try something else.

Anybody who's found some sort of success is because the moment it got hard, they smiled and leaned in because they knew that's when the good happens. You start learning from what you're going through and apply that learning, and the distance between unsuccessful and successful is inches.

Because it's the people that continue to push on. And I tell everybody being an entrepreneur just means you were too dumb to quit because logic says you've been throwing the towel a long time. Logic says, go back and get a job. Logic says, why would you put yourself through this? The people that will endure, and being an entrepreneur, it's an endurance game. The people that endure are the ones that learn as they go through it. 

I don't think people fail, I think life is one big experiment. If life is a big experiment, you're experimenting, and you're not messing things up. That experiment didn't work, so you try it again.

You've applied different principles, you look at it from a different angle and you continue to smile and know you're going to get punched in the face, learn to duck that punch. Then you'll catch an uppercut, and learn to get out of the way of the uppercut. Then you'll catch a hook and it's going to keep coming.

But as long as you keep applying those learnings, you force yourself to evolve. That's where everybody wins, and that's how winning is done.

That was awesome. I love that whole conversation so much. That's like music to my ears because it's just so true. I love that you said the difference between failure and success is inches.

Because it is just about that little bit extra and not giving up that gets you over the line. So I do want to pivot and ask you another question. So what is a current aha or something like that's up for you if you have one or two? 

Finding Your Authentic Self in Different Roles

So, Amy Cuddy got one of the most famous TED talks or is on power poses. Phenomenal, Ted talk. She wrote a book called Presence and I am only a quarter away from this book, but she's got something in there that has me fascinated. And what she says is everybody's throwing around this word authentic and you've got to be authentic and you're going to be authentically yourself.

And what she says in the book is that there is no authentic self. There's only authenticity at the moment because that authentic self changes depending on the situation you're in. And I'm flabbergasted by this entire idea because I want to be the guy who's raw and will tell all sides of the business. So people can understand what it takes to get there. I've been trying to document my journey, this entire ride. 

And every time I'm screwing things up, I try and put it out there. For me, that was my authentic side of things, but I thought I was not the same guy in every situation when I heard Amy say this, right? I'm one guy when I'm on stage in front of audiences, whatever else. And it's not that I'm pulling on the show. I'm as authentic as I can be at that moment.

And you're pulling that part of your persona. Like you said, I'm a sales champion at work. So the president's club type has skills and stuff. I'm very authentic in that role. But if you put me in the role of Kundalini teacher, which I'm also a Kundalini yoga teacher, it's different, but both roles are authentic. So I love that example. That's cool.

And because I think people look at authenticity as this blanket statement and this is how you have to be all the time. I keep going back to LinkedIn. It's my favorite platform. I'm all over it, and I let people in my world, but nobody gives what you had for breakfast. So it's about how you show up? The whole point of her book is this idea of presence.

So, if you understand what authentic means in the moment, you can establish trust and confidence, which allows you to create a presence. And you think about it from a sales position, you think about it from a leadership position. Everything's done off trust and we buy from people that we trust way beyond

It's the idea of knowing who you are and what's authentic for you in a moment, and that authenticity may be nervous because you're in a situation you haven't been in before, right? It's taking you completely out of it, but it's knowing you're nervous and being okay with it, which is the twist of it all.

I'm fascinated with this idea. And then the second thing is standing for something. I think we live in such a vanilla world that if you don't stand for something in this day and age now and if you work for other people, it's a lot harder to stand on certain things you want to stand on.

But I'm learning more and more that the further I stand in my beliefs and put my beliefs out there, the more I attract my tribe, my people, and the people that I want to be hanging around.

I couldn't agree more. It's funny because my new book is Return to Radiance, but the concept is basically like, that we have our radiant self that is full of our uniqueness, our gifts, our strengths, and our talents.

And when we suppress them, we disconnect from ourselves. But when we nurture them, we become more of ourselves and like this authentic thing that you're talking about, but also within that expression. When we are in our truest nature and we're nurturing and cultivating who we are, we make an impact. Our work turns into a legacy.

When you say take a stand, people are likely to develop weaknesses. I'm like, that is brilliant. Because your weakness will always be your weakness and sometimes you do have to nurture the things that aren't good. So your skill gets a little better, but listen, like I'm never going to be a good tennis player.

Like it's just never going to happen. And then some people are like, they're already your strengths. I'm like, we might have natural strengths, gifts, and talents, but mastering them is a different thing. Investing in yourself is bringing them to the surface. That's what the world needs more of.

So anyway, that's one of my stances, that I lean into more of you, invest in more of you, and then share it.

Embracing the Second Half of Life

I would save a lot over the years. I did not know the dude in the mirror and I didn't invest enough in myself to figure out who that guy was. Running a business has been a catalyst for meeting the dude in America. You're gonna find out what you're made of. 

I was watching a movie over the weekend and there was one line in this movie that just got me to pause. The movie is called The Beautiful Game and it's literally about the homeless World Cup in 80 countries around the world, bringing homeless people together and doing this homeless World Cup, a soccer World Cup match.

It is the craziest thing ever started back in 2021 and it’s a great movie, but there's one line in the movie that just got me to pause. One of the main characters was a professional soccer player who didn't make it to the World Cup teams and so he made it just halfway, but his entire life was lived on Soccer.

That was what he was known for and he thought he was one of the greatest in the world, but he wasn't good enough to be one of the greatest in the world. And he never made it to that pinnacle, and because his whole life spiraled out of control, and he found himself homeless, right?

She says this is just such, it hit me hard. She's looking at him, and he's down on his luck, and a moment in the movie, it's a nun talking to him, and she goes, whatever his name is, what surprises me most is you played football your entire life. And like in his whole life, the whole first half of his life was just football and on that.

And what she says is, that you've never realized that football has two halves. Most people are still living that first half-life. They're still living that touchdown pass and that one sales award. And they're not even looking at what my second half is. And so even my post on LinkedIn this morning was all about this. And I'm like, are you living the second half of your life? 

I have to go check that out. I love that message so much because it just reminds me of the concept and why I felt passionate about writing this book.

I had a unique childhood and I was raised by full-time musicians. I was born into a musical family and my parents were hippies, sex, drugs, rock and roll. It was cool. Like I grew up in guitars and bonfires and it’s a good time. Everybody was joyful and laughing.

What I didn't realize then was that what I was seeing was people in their essence, in their gifts and skills when they were radiating. My dad is specifically an amazing guitarist who can play David Gilmore, Jimmy Page, and all this stuff flawlessly.

But both my parents have passed away. And what I noticed, and it goes to the second half is like their first half, they were pursuing to become full-time musicians and become famous. And when that didn't happen, they ended up disconnecting from themselves, from other people, and the universe. What I witnessed was more painful than anything because I witnessed them dim out literally and figuratively until they passed away.

They didn't have to be famous to make a difference, to develop, and to stay true to what was meaningful to them. And so I liked that you shared that story because, for listeners, there's a bigger message that we're saying here is that there's one aspect where you might have this current dream, like reoccurring in your head, and we're encouraging you to follow that and to follow those breadcrumbs because the evolution may take you somewhere magnificent.

And then there's another thing we're saying here is that maybe you were a star athlete, or maybe there's something that you were or something else that fascinates you or that you enjoy. And you don't see value because it hasn't been monetized or something like that. But that might be the very thing that catapults you back into your purpose. So there's a first half and a second half. I just think that's so dope.

This message for some reason keeps popping up for me. One of my clients put a post out on LinkedIn and he was in some college World Series of baseball. And it was like a big deal for me and he was talking about it and he was bragging about it. And the way he wrote the post as I started to write my comment on there, I started to say, man, this is so cool, this is so awesome and I wanted to congratulate him. But then I realized that was 20 years ago for this guy, this is 20 years and he's still celebrating this thing. So I deleted my comment and I hadn't posted yet. And the comment I wrote was, what's your next world series?

Because I think that's what most people do is they're still living on that one moment of life, that touchdown pass, their military career, their college career, that sales award or whatever, they're not shooting for that next thing.

And what happened to your parents, unfortunately, is what happens to a lot of people if they stop living. They don't have a purpose anymore, right? They don't have anything they're shooting for. Life is essentially over for them until they decide. Imagine if your parents, and I don't want to keep bringing them into it but imagine, had they chosen to, okay, we're not going to be famous, but what if we help the next generation become famous, right? What if we help the next round of musicians head to toe? That's exactly what I'm talking about, and then deeper meaning unfolds, fulfillment, satisfaction, joy, and again, life starts feeling a lot better. And it's going to become a lot more of my message.

I could talk to you forever. I'm like, we have three minutes. So we're probably going to go a few minutes over because I do want to ask you more and more questions about the listeners. And then I want you to tell us a little bit more about the summit. But as we like to wrap up, what's an empowering message that you can share? It could be anything.

The Difference Between Success and Mediocrity

I get thrown into this kind of hustle-and-grind mentality and world, and I'm all for busting your ass and getting things done.

Hard work and the right actions will outlast and do most people, but I want people to wrap their heads around this, if you found success in your past, you're going to find it in the future. Winners just win, it's just the rules of the game. The trick is you can't just win, you have to go through the things you need to work on and get after it. What I mean is most of us in our careers worked to an unhealthy work ethic, right? We busted her ass, and we put in longer hours than we ever should have. So I don't want people to embrace the hustle and grind. What I want them to embrace is the idea of doing the work until the work is done.

So I run a full working farm. In addition to everything else I do, I have dwarf Nigerian goats, turkeys, geese, and chickens, they're all a fun kind of menagerie of animals. Every morning I have to let those goats out and every night I have to put them up seven days a week. I don't get a day off and this is by choice.

I love doing this, so what I want people to understand is that chasing your life is like working on a farm. There are things that you're going to have to get up and do every morning, no matter what. There are things you're going to have to do every night, no matter what. It's not about the hustle and grind. It's about doing the things that will push your life forward, no matter what. 

That is the difference between where mediocre people stay mediocre and the successful are willing to do the things that others aren't willing to do. So that's the biggest message out there.

That's awesome. So, tell the listeners a little bit about your summit cause I know it's coming up in September.

Badass Business Summit

September 18th to the 20th is a badass business summit and the summit's designed for people who have built their company or they're starting to build their company and they understand the ideology that people buy you.

People buy you and then they get what you sell. And I love explaining it this way. People don't know but Tony Robbins himself, and I'm not into jumping on coals and all the crazy things he does. You can have it, then let's go this route.

What is Tony Robbins's business? Personal development. Tony has 105 companies to the tune of 7 billion. Name one of his companies. The only one I know is Tony Robbins because that's what I register for events for when I do go.

So what people don't understand is Tony's only job is to be the face of Tony Robbins. People buy you and then get what you sell. So all of his conferences, all of his summits, all that stuff, I'm sure he wants to help people, but they are in a sense, the gateway to sell people into his 105 companies, right? That's how he makes his wealth mastery, life mastery, and everything always has more next steps.

Absolutely. He's the king of platform selling.

The business summit is really about people buying you. So it's teaching people how to get on more stages? How do you get on more podcasts? How do you dominate on LinkedIn? So I'm bringing in some of the top podcasters from around the world.

We're going to put them up on a panel where people get to talk to them and ask them, like how do we get on your podcast? Then we're going to do a voice-style setup where those same podcasters will be on the stage. You'll get a chance to pitch, to be on their show, and they'll be in a swivel chair. If they swivel and turn around after your pitch, you get to go on their show as a guest.

They'll be doing live podcasts while we're there as well, that's going on. Then I'm bringing in Dr. Stevie Dawn Carter, one of the top keynote speakers in the world. She'll do 90 speeches this year, and she's going to help walk you through how to get more speaking engagements and how to speak on stage to get more speaking engagements.

Then how do you make money from those stages? And then I've got a LinkedIn panel coming in with some of the top LinkedIn people out there, Liam Darbany, Sherry Jones, Kevin Turner, and Melissa Cohen combined. They have well over 150,000 followers and they're going to walk you through how they dominate on the platform.

So you get a ton of exposure and amazing networking experiences. The hotel rooms are already 50 percent sold out and the tickets are going fast. Early bird ends on the 1st of July. So it is moving extremely fast. This, for me, is my world series. So, everybody has the thing they do, but getting on the stage and being able to pour in and help as many people as possible is my big thing. I'm excited for this year.

I am sure there are a lot of listeners that would like to attend. Is it virtual or just in person? So we're talking about doing virtual, depending on demand right now. We're only in person at the moment. I can livestream, depending on how much demand goes, but they just go to Badassbusinesssummit.com and they'll find all the information. 

That's what I was going to ask. We'll include it in the show notes too, listeners, so that you can sign up. Where is it going to be held?

So in Fort Worth, Texas, September 18th through the 20th, and you're going to want to be there the entire time.

The speakers will all stay, and all the podcast people there for the entire event. So it's not like people come and speak, they're in the crowd with you. So you're learning right beside them and because I've been to too many summits, and it was like the speaker flew in and then flew out and you didn't get a chance to meet them or anything like that. No, we keep an environment where everybody's there. There's no pitch. 

Donnie. It's been a pleasure to have you on the show. I'd love to have you again at some point.

Oh, anytime. This is a blast. If you made it this far, do me and Becca a favor. Take a screenshot wherever you're watching or listening to this, and go post it to social media with your takeaway from the episode and tag me and Becca in it. And here's what happens is, having my show, and trying to grow my audience is a lot of work. 

So if you like her content, and the guests she's bringing on, whether it's this episode or any episode, take a screenshot and post it out there. It lets her know this is the type of content you're looking for and trust me, if I see the tag, she sees the tag, we will both come, comment, and engage, but it's the best way to give her feedback that this is the right thing. Then, this is what you guys are looking for.