Speaking Sessions
Speaking Sessions
TURBOCHARGE Your Event PLANNING and NETWORKING Skills with Donnie Boivin
Ever wondered how to turn a spontaneous idea into a profitable event? Join us with Donnie Boivin, founder of the Badass Business Summit, as he shares the unfiltered truth about event planning and public speaking. From managing egos to overcoming logistical hurdles, Donnie dives into why humility and delivering high-quality content are key to making a lasting impact in the business world. His candid stories and humor offer valuable lessons for anyone looking to succeed in the event space.
Learn how Donnie turned a $40,000 debt and the challenges of launching during the COVID-19 pandemic into a profitable event by year five. We explore essential strategies for securing sponsorships, managing costs, and leveraging LinkedIn influencers to grow your brand. Whether you're planning events, speaking, or building your business, this episode is full of actionable insights on networking, securing speaking gigs, and navigating the financial side of public speaking.
NOTABLE QUOTES
"The things have to come together almost like an orchestra and play a damn good song to make [events] work." – Donnie
"A lot of the people that you have in your network that you think that… they're going to support you end up not supporting you for an event, which is just mind-blowing." – Philip
"Micro-influencers really, really, really work." – Donnie
"Intimate, tiny… event venues are the best way to go." – Donnie
"Networking is crucial … especially when it comes to getting on stages, filling your events up and everything." – Philip
"Getting on stages is 100% networking." – Donnie
“When you're first starting out…, you've really got to be networking with anybody you can, because they most likely know somebody or know somebody who knows somebody that can get you that connection for the stage or for business." – Philip
"The Three-Foot Rule is: I don't care where you are, you should turn and introduce yourself… ‘cause you never know who the heck you're going to meet." – Donnie
"Having my own stage has allowed me to get on a lot of other stages." – Donnie
"If you want to be a speaker… you've got to become a complete package you've got to become something that people actually want to get excited about." – Donnie
"Reach out to successful person who gets on stages and ask them how they do it." – Donnie
RESOURCES
Donnie
Website: https://successchampionnetworking.com
Podcast: https://growth-mode.captivate.fm/listen
Events: https://badassbusinesssummit.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/donnie.boivin
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donnieboivin
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/donnie.boivin
Philip
Digital Course: https://www.speakingsessions.com/digital-course
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamphilipsessions/?hl=en
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philipsessions
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-sessions-b2986563/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealphilipsessions
What's up guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Speaking Sessions podcast. I've got Donnie Boyvin here. He's the CEO and success champion, networking and a founder of the Badass Business Summit. As a top podcaster and five-time bestselling author, he established a B2B networking groups across North America, creating a support system for hundreds of members. Scn is a thriving B2B business community dedicated to providing essential support, education and a vibrant community for its members' success, and today we're going to be talking about that a little bit. But we're also going to be talking about Donnie's speaking journey, event planning journey and so much more. We are talking offline about the bad things that nobody wants to talk about as a speaker, as an event planner, and we're going to go through that. So it will help you not make those same mistakes that we made. But, donnie, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Hey, phillip man, it's already been fun hanging out with you. We've got some network acquaintances in common, so I think we're going to have a good time laughing, joking, making fun of ourselves and some of the stupid things we've done along the way, so this should be fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. I mean, we just talked about Doug Mitchell, an amazing guy yeah dude. We poked at him. But he had an amazing event, his first event actually making money on it. Yeah, had an amazing event, his first event actually making money on it, which you don't hear about that and so I'd love for us to kind of start there. I know that's not the beginning of your journey, but let's get that out of the way right away with events that typically your first one you don't make money on.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll even be more transparent on that. We're year five of the Badass Business Summit and this is the first year we'll turn a profit. You know it comes down to. People just don't know all that has to happen behind the scenes for an event to actually be successful. So it's way more than coming up with a concept, a theme, then deciding you know what speakers need to be there, right, that's only partial. Then you got to sell tickets. You got to get the venue. You've got to get all the video, audio. You know all the different moving parts. Are you bringing in food? If you're not, they're all going to yell at you, right? You're going to bring in drinks? If not, they're all going to yell at you, right?
Speaker 2:It's dealing with the personalities of all the different speakers, and some are more high maintenance than others. You know it's all. The things have to come together almost like an orchestra and play a damn good song to make this all work, and it doesn't matter what you plan for. This is the universe, in effect, full thing. Something's going to blow up game day, and you know where you're supposed to be the person running your own event. You're going to find up game day, uh, and you know where you're supposed to be, the person running your own event. You're going to find yourself putting out fires and the likes because people come to you versus your team that's maybe designated to do those things. So it's a lot of things, you know, uh to to really make these successful, that people don't see if they're only the person standing on the stage yeah, or even, or even in the audience as well, you say, oh, this is awesome, this amazing event, this all just kind of came together.
Speaker 1:And that is not the case at all. But there are so many things we could talk about here, but I want to talk about the diva speakers. As a speaking coach and as a speaker myself. And you mentioned, hey, you've been there as well, and I've been there too, and I've seen speakers that think that, hey, I'm the gift to this stage, I'm the gift to the audience, I'm the gift to that event host, but they're I don't want to say they're not speakers. Obviously, you need to have good speakers there, but they should be more than speakers, especially if they want to get invited back to stage. So share with us a funny story that you've had.
Speaker 2:I'll give you two. I'll give you two. Last year I had a speaker and I of course won't drop their name when we sent out the collateral and stuff for them to promote they're going to be on the stage. This person looked at me and said, well, why would I promote you? You need me, I don't need you. So we gave them their walking papers and said, well, I don't need you that bad. But they had their whole thought process and I want to talk a little bit about where that thought process comes from. Was we needed them to be on the stage because we needed their brand, their clout and everything else?
Speaker 2:The second one was a gal that I brought in to speak at another event. We had really propped her up, had a lot of people there, and her speech consisted of this I know you all showed up for me today and I'm really glad you came to see me today because I'm going to really teach you everything that's made me me. So thank you for being here for me today, because I know the things that I'm going to say are the things you're specifically here to listen, to, learn from, from me. I mean everything. The whole speech 45 minutes was done with her saying I know you're here to see me and I and all I can think in the back of my head because I'm standing in the back of the room is freaking. Teach them something. Shut up about you, right? Um? But there are a lot of self-centered speakers. I'll speak for myself.
Speaker 2:Early on, it came from an ego. I thought stages needed me. I thought podcasts needed me. They needed my brand, my clout and the things I've done Right. My brand, my people are coming to their world and the truth is your brand. Your people aren't coming along for the ride for me to go speak on their stage. Not an honor for them to reach out to me and say, hey, I need you on my stage.
Speaker 1:So true, man, too many speakers do get it that wrong way and I've been guilty of that as well Like, oh cool, look at me, I'm great, I'm special, that's why I'm here on this stage. They need me because they need my message, and you are exactly right. But then that flip side to this as well is when you are setting up that stage, you think you're going to have all these people that follow you, that know you, that are going to support you, and in Word they'll support you. Oh, that's so awesome. You're doing that event, you're building your own stage, you're going out there and speaking. It's great. Well, hey, we pay for a ticket to come to my event. Ten bucks, oh, you know, something comes up, or it's a thousand bucks, it doesn't matter what the price is.
Speaker 1:A lot of the people that you have in your network that you think that, hey, they're going to support you end up not supporting you for an event, which is just mind blowing.
Speaker 1:And so, before we kind of get down that route because I want to talk about the value of networking there you mentioned about you're coming out in your fifth year and you're finally going to make money, unless some craziness happens, like COVID 2.0 or something, where then you just lose money, which let's hope that doesn't happen. I'm going to knock on wood here real quick so that doesn't happen but you're finally making money on this. And, first of all, people think we're crazy when we want to go to an event, let alone create our own event, let alone spend five years not making money when this isn't your full-time job. You've got your own business doing stuff, so you have to do that. You've got the family doing stuff, so you have to do that. You've got the family, but you're also creating this whole event thing on the side and spending four years of making no money, really losing money to finally start making money. So talk to us through this mindset of what made you decide to continue to do this, even though you're not making money from the event.
Speaker 2:Well, and let's add a little craziness to it, I run a full working farm on top of this too. So have a dwarf nigerian goat farm on top of all of this that we're maintaining on the full that's normal stuff.
Speaker 1:I don't know right. Right, like everybody's got a goat, you know, dwarf, nigerian goat farm, goat farm, I can't say it right.
Speaker 2:Well you know, I mean the. The original summit came around out of a stupid story. Um, I was doing a live on facebook and there was a group of people watching the live and talking back and forth and somebody piped up and said hey, you know, I've got a speaking engagement for you down in San Antonio, texas. I'm like, oh, that's cool. A lot of people watching were like, oh, we want to see you speak, so we'll come down to San Antonio, we'll see you speak. Which led to somebody going well, if we're all going down to San Antonio, you should maybe rent out a room and just do something for all of us, since we're all coming down. I was like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, san Antonio is three hours from me. I'm not driving down to freaking San Antonio to buy a hotel room and do something for all you guys. If we're going to do something, we're going to do it up in Fort Worth, texas, where I'm from. And Somebody jokingly in a comment said, ooh, we should call it DonnieCon. And I said, no, no, no, no, we are not calling this DonnieCon. And then somebody else throughout there will call it the Badass Business Summit. And so that's really how it all came about.
Speaker 2:Was a lot of people wanted to get together and my goal for all the Badass Business Summit is literally to help people grow their businesses. We spend a lot of time focusing on personal brand, because I think it plays a huge part, uh, in today's society. Um, you know, influence and having a following of people. It does a lot of things in this in this day and age. But, um, you know, the the first year we rented out a convention center, um, we had spent a lot of money and, uh, two weeks before the event, covid broke out it was April of 20 is when we were slotted to do the first Badass Business Summit and, of course, we couldn't do it. We postponed until September of that year and we did it in September, you know, did all the freaking, spacing and all the stuff there.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, we went into it and we lost our ass. You know, year one, we didn't know what the heck we were doing and, as you and I were talking before and joked about, you know, we had that year we did trade shows and so we had sold like 20 trade show booths and you know, we had 75, almost 100 people in attendance and everybody was in attendance, had a trade show booth. So literally they would go from the convention to sit out at the trade show booth. But there was nobody to walk to booths other than the vendors, because that's the only people that were attending. So we went from there, we moved it to a hotel, learned the rough lesson of working with hotels and the surprise nickel and diming that happens and little things you're not aware of and the like.
Speaker 1:Oh, you want that electrical outlet.
Speaker 2:That's a good charge, oh, and little things you're not aware of and the like. Oh, you want that electrical outlet.
Speaker 1:That's a good charge. Yeah, yeah, oh, you want another Ethernet port.
Speaker 2:That's a charge. Yeah, oh, you want a curtain or something here, even though we have one in the closet right next door? That's a charge. Right, everything, everything. But it was year two that I was standing on the stage and the hotel manager's at the back of the room it's glaring at me because I own $40,000 and I didn't have it. So I'm sitting there thinking, god, I'm about to lose everything, owing these guys $40,000 and I don't have the money. So luckily, we sold some packages and some deals at the event and then I worked out a payment agreement with them. But here I am, delivering damn near a keynote and they're just glaring at me, knowing I own $40,000.
Speaker 1:Wow, I mean, you're trying to talk about business success too, and yet here I am forty thousand dollars in the hole from this event alone.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was, it was. It was crazy. I mean, people don't understand the stress and pressure it takes to really put on one of these, you know, very successfully. Um, but this year we're year five in and, luckily, my brother really stepped up. Um, he's got a huge sales background and he said, hey, let me take on sponsorships. And, uh, he brought in a couple of sponsors that underwrote the whole event for us this year. So, uh, we're, we stand to actually turn a really decent profit.
Speaker 2:Um, and one of the smartest things that we did is I partnered up and I brought in a LinkedIn panel of some of the top influencers on LinkedIn and really prop them up. But you know, these were amazing. You know influencers that started really touting the summit to where. You know, especially the last couple of weeks, there's been a huge buzz on LinkedIn of who the hell is Donnie Boving, what the hell is a badass business summit, and we've sold a lot of tickets here at the last rush of all this, you know. So, micro influencers really, really, really work. But, yeah, five years to turn a profit with this damn thing.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, and you kind of hinted at it there at the end was the sponsorship was a big thing there and there's definitely different avenues in order to create money with these events. And it's funny I made a post here, I think, yesterday actually, about this as recording this about how do you feel about being paying to speak on somebody's stage? Somebody's stage and that seems to be the way that people are trying to make money on events now is, rather than paying speakers to come speak on their stage or having speakers come speak for free and selling tickets, they're selling speakers to pay them to be on their stage and there's definitely things with that. If I was able to go speak with some of the greats like Ed Milet and Tony Robbins and you name it, these big celebrities I would probably be willing to do that. Or let's say, grant Cardone is 10X Growth Cons that are massive and he's got tons of people there that would be great clients for me. I'd be willing to pay that money.
Speaker 1:But if it's just Joe Schmoe's business event over here that he's got no following or anything, I'm not going to pay five to 10 grand or 20, 40 grand I've heard crazy prices to go speak on a stage for 30 minutes to an hour. I'm not going to pay that for that, because that doesn't make sense business wise. But then you got people that are like I wouldn't pay to be a speaker, you need to pay me as a speaker, which I think. They haven't been doing events like this, so they don't understand that side, that business side, to it. But what are, what are some things? I mean I would love your thoughts on that too. But as, but in addition, what are ways, if we're creating events, that we can make money or start to try and recuperate some of the money from the expenses that events cost us?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a hundred, 100%. I'll try and grab all that. And we've dealt with the speakers that are like dude, why would I come speak for free? You need to pay me to come be on your stage. No, no, no, no, no, no. When you have a brand big enough that I can put your name on a billboard and thousands of people move, right, then I would consider paying you to be on my stage. But if you don't have that clout, then it's not happening Paying to be on stage.
Speaker 2:You better have something to sell and you better be able to be able to make some sort of pitch from stage. So I paid to be on stages and it's paid off. But right audience, right offer, right package. But if you're getting paid to be on somebody's stages like I've heard nightmares of people paying, you know, five to a thousand dollars to be on somebody's stage and they show up and there's three people in the audience you know, and then you know they're not getting their money back from it. So you got to make sure there's an ROI on paying and you better make sure you have a damn good offer that you're going to be able to put out there to not only pay to speak, pay for your flight, your hotel room, your food while you're there and and all the likes.
Speaker 2:You know, um, but making money from stage, uh, or from creating your own stages, the first that your biggest expense is going to be the venue. Um, so, being able to find, you know, venues, um, and sorry, hotels, but y'all suck. Um, you know doing business and you know we do a three day event. So doing hotels just makes it more convenient for people to get rooms and stuff, but, man, they do not cater to, to people doing events in their venues. Most times, uh, they, they just don't care. So, um, we've, we've really struggled that to the point of going, we're going to eventually build our own, you know, conference center of some sort, um, that we can house and do control everything, and so, um, that's how frustrating it gets.
Speaker 2:But, uh, getting a venue, so and I would tell people actually, before the venue, smaller is better. Don't try and fill freaking cowboy stadium, uh, out the gate. Freaking 20 to 50 intimate, tiny, you know, event venues are the best way to go smaller if you can, um, and if you can get to where you can fit into a buddy's boardroom or or someplace that you can get dirt cheap. Do it, because half the success of running an event is learning how to run an event, make it successful, make it seamless. Two, price it right. We way underpriced our tickets the first couple of years and even though we sold a lot of tickets, we still weren't making any damn money because we were damn near giving the tickets away. So you got to think you know what? Just remember, people see value in cost. You know if it's, you know, 50 bucks, that's a perceived value. If it's 500 bucks, that's a perceived value. If it's five grand, that's a perceived value. So you have to price it to make sure you're attracting the right perceived value in the audience.
Speaker 2:But ultimately, sponsorships has been our greatest win for all this, and so you just got to really think about who needs this audience. So what we did this year is we said, ok, we get small business owners that are corporate escapees three to five years in the business. They're running telecoms, msps, they have five to seven employees. That's really kind of our sweet spot of people. Who needs that? It was the wealth management firms, it was, you know, the promotional companies, it was the printing companies, you know, it was the business coaching, consulting companies. And we just started looking at seeing, okay, who else is sponsoring other events and activities that have our same audience, and we started talking to them. But those are the big ways we've found to make money in all these.
Speaker 1:Nice. I appreciate you sharing that, and a lot of that sounded like the network that you had. You looked around other events, obviously, but then I'm sure you reached out to your network and I know as well as you that networking is crucial when it really comes to anything business life, whatever but especially when it comes to getting on stages, filling your events up and everything. And I alluded to this a little bit earlier. But doing my first event, I thought, oh man, I've got this great network of people. They were mainly online and then I realized after my event okay, I need to do more in-person networking, not just online, because those online friends didn't translate into in-person event attendees for me. But networking is so important, and so I'd love to hear more about your B2B networking that you have started up and how that's really helped you with business, with your events, with speaking, all of that. Would love to hear just kind of the evolution of that group and what it's all about.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. I was at a conference once upon a time and there was a panel of event planners and their sole focus was to teach you how to get on stages, and their responses were really generic in nature. They're like make a speaker one sheet and email this off and everything, and all this really generic stuff. And I get pissed right, sitting in the middle of this auditorium 400 people and they're giving generic answers, stuff you can just simply Google. And so me, being the quiet guy that I am, stood up in the middle of the conference and said all right, guys, what the F? We're all sitting here trying to figure out how to get on stages and you're throwing up things I can Google right now that aren't working for most people. They're not getting them on stage. How the hell do we actually get on your stages? And one of the guys, the panelist I guess I really pissed him off when I said this because I'm standing up in the middle of the crowd he looks at me and goes look, mf-er, if I don't know you, you're never getting on my stage. And from that moment on, it told me that networking is 100, or, excuse me, getting on stages is 100% networking. Right, you're not going to get on somebody's stage that's never heard of you. I don't care how many audition tapes and things and the like if somebody's not bringing your name up.
Speaker 2:So for us, you know, building the B2B networking groups one we didn't realize how much of a gap in the marketplace there was. But if you sell MSP services telecom services, cybersecurity, you sell commercial insurance, you sell bookkeeping services and the like most networking won't work for you because you're in rooms with people that are all B2C. And if you sell I don't know commercial printing and your average deal is $50,000 and you walk into a room with realtors, title, mortgage and the like all great people they're not talking to decision makers or companies that can do deals that large. So we created B2B groups to bring people who were going after larger business together. What we've found is there was a huge gap there and because of building out this network not only has it led to a ridiculous amount of speaking opportunities for me and podcast interviews and the likes that most of our sponsors came out of our ranks of people who need to see you know exposure on this level and need to get to people on this level and are dealing with people you know, on this level and when you create the right network of people that are all going after a typical ideal end client, you know clients that are multiple years in business, doing millions of dollars in revenue and the likes when you bring all those people together, amazing things, amazing opportunities.
Speaker 2:So not only do we have the Badass Business Summit, but we created the Champion Summit, which is a small 50, 60 person event that we take around the US and we're working on trying to take it up to Canada next. But literally that came from the network. All of the people in our chapters throughout North and South America were like, hey, we want to do something in our area, in our neck of the woods. So now we go into an area with the Champion Summit and we'll take three to four of the members of one of our chapters. They become the speakers.
Speaker 2:I typically come in and keynote the whole thing and now they get to build their brand locally in their area. They get to say the CEO is coming in and talk, which is fun for me, and we get them a ton of really cool exposure and we also get a bunch of sponsors that are local in the marketplace that need this audience. So we're completely leveraging the network to reach more people with our thoughts, but also to building their cloud brand. So everything's a network, in fact, in business period.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh man, I couldn't agree with you more on that. Networking is so important and, ironically, actually through LinkedIn, I connected with a student at Clemson University and we were just having a conversation. We got on a call one day and, him being a student at a university, I'm like, hey, you know, who knows what's going to come out of this. Well, that was that was probably about three or four months ago. Next month he just hit me up like two, like probably about a month ago, about this and he wants me to come speak to a group of student ambassadors there at Clemson University all because we had a connection.
Speaker 1:And too often a lot of people, especially when they're first starting in networking, they think, oh, if this person can't buy from me or this person doesn't happen to know the person that I need to buy from me, that they're not worth actually connecting with and actually networking. And there are levels to it. Obviously, if you're the CEO of Google, you're not just going to go and connect with every single person out there just because. But especially when you're first starting out, I mean you've really got to be grinding and networking with anybody you can, because they most likely know somebody or know somebody who knows somebody that can get you that connection for the stage or for business or whatever it is. So networking is so important and that's really awesome that you're doing that very unique approach, doing those local events.
Speaker 2:Thanks, dude, and I had a very similar effect with. It was Texas, a&m, but same thing. Student had followed me on LinkedIn, reached out and about a month, month and a half ago, I just did a a thing and I did. I thought it was all A&M students that I was doing it for and it actually be. It was uh, uh. Ages from 10 years to 18 years.
Speaker 2:They were all in their various journey. The 10 year old had already started its own business and was doing. It was blown away and they brought me in to talk about networking. So now I had to come up with how do you teach somebody networking that has never even heard of the word networking? So it was a real twist on trying to teach all the things that I typically teach. But, man, it was so cool, but it all came because, same thing, I recently did a national sales training for a large Fortune 500 company.
Speaker 2:I won't drop their name, I'm not trying to do that, but they were following me for six months on LinkedIn and just liked my content. They eventually connected, sent me a DM and said, hey, would you like to come speak to our sales team? And I was blown away because I wasn't expecting to go speak into Fortune 500s. And you know they brought me in, then led me to their national accounts and the likes. But you know it all came from, you know, posting on LinkedIn, networking on LinkedIn. Just you know showing up and being in the right place at the right time because you're consistently doing the right things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean. So true, I definitely have had opportunities as myself not to the level or things that you're talking about there, but I've had opportunities with the companies, be able to talk with the CEOs and other like VPs and higher up people. Because of posting on LinkedIn, because of just networking with somebody that's quote unquote on the lower level they're not the executive and everything like that but just through that networking, getting to know people, being genuine about it and really caring about them, being able to then end up getting that opportunity. So it's you just never know who you're going to meet, that knows the right person and everything. And it just goes back to we should treat people the way we want to be treated. We should treat people with kindness and just show consideration and respect for anybody, no matter who they are A hundred percent and for most people they should be practicing the three foot rule.
Speaker 2:And the three foot rule is literally, I don't care where you are, you should turn and introduce yourself. Uh, cause you never know who the heck you're going to meet. And you know, I ask people all the time. I'm like your kids play sports and they're like, yeah, and I'm like, what do all the other parents do for a living? And they'll look at you like you got two heads. You know people don't think outside of business and the likes about talking about what they do and and their careers and the likes. It's all you know. We're leaving that over here. And you know, in this section right, this is at home version of me and I'm like man, especially if you're running a business, there's no work-life balance here. This is all, it's all integrated man. And so every conversation, everything it's got to be centered around improving your life, improving your business, improving your network. So you know you're through. For then three foot of somebody say hi and you get blown away. What will happen from it?
Speaker 1:I like that, the three foot rule. So if people are interested in your B2B networking group, where can they go to find more information and see if there's something in their local area?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they can go to successchampionnetworkingcom. The groups are actually virtual, so we have national chapters as well. So if they want to network, uh, just got to be b2b focused and not okay, you know. Uh, so if you sell into companies and you're selling, you know, like group type packages and the like, that's, that's who we're targeting in there for those. So, uh, but yeah, success champion networkingcom, they can go visit any of the chapters for free and then if they want to become a member, they can submit an application. It's really cheap. It's $67 a month or 670 for the year, so really inexpensive to get a part of. But we've literally changed how the world networks, especially for the B2B game. So if they're tired of traditional networking, come hang out with us and just let's show you a lot better way to network.
Speaker 1:Nice, I like it. Now let's take a step back into your speaking journey. I want to hear about your speaking journey. It sounds like it's been pretty smooth sailing. You've gotten all these big stages been paid, the big bucks and all of that, and then let's tie in how this has actually helped your personal brand. We talked about that a little bit as well, but I really wanted to take us back to day one. Donnie decided he wanted to become a speaker. What did that look like, and how has this journey been so far?
Speaker 2:Well, that's cool, I get to share kind of the dark side of business. So I turned 40.
Speaker 1:There's no dark side. I don't know what you're talking about, Don. Yeah, that's all sunshine and rainbows. We're all millionaires. We say we're a business owner.
Speaker 2:We fly for the.
Speaker 1:LLC. We got a million dollars.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. And here, if you buy now, here's my seven-day program and you can do it too $9.97. So you know, I turned 40 before I even knew that I could start my own business. Right, I'm just a blue collar kid, you work, you get a job and retire. But I turned 40, her guys like Gary Vee, tim Ferriss, jensen, sherrill, all these people talking about being an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:So I launched my company and within 24 hours I was slapped with a non-compete that I don't think I ever signed. I think they fabricated the damn thing. I lawyered up, they lawyered up. Long story short, I lost. So I went into starting my company and I was planning on launching a sales training corporation and I couldn't. So because of that, my second alternative was okay, I'm going to go be a public speaker and that's going to be my thing, maybe a motivational speaker, maybe I'll speak on sales, but I'll figure out some way to do public speaking.
Speaker 2:And I got a real rude awakening as I really started on, because I realized in Fort Worth Texas a lot of people knew who I was, but outside of Fort Worth Texas, not a damn soul knew the name. Donnie Bovine, no name, success champions, nobody knew who the hell I was. I mean so literally nobody was giving me a shot. I could get the local rotaries right, which were free free, you know, speaking opportunities, but nothing paid, nothing traveled, nothing overseas, you know nothing anywhere. Um, so I was going broke extremely fast. So so, like my first year of business, I became a business whore, and what I mean by that is I tried to sell everything I freaking could to turn a buck. I was doing website development, content packages, video editing, we had a magazine. I mean literally everything I could try and do to make a few dollars.
Speaker 2:Come in a successful podcast, um, uh, where I was interviewing people like Shailene Johnson, uh, patrick bet David and some of the big Mike McAuliffe and some of the cool names out there. Um, that somebody actually reached out to me and said, hey, we have a podcast convention down in Florida. Um, we'll have 400 people that are run podcasts, are trying to get on podcasts. Would you want to come down? And, uh, my first, second time yeah, second time really on stage is, um, I got paid 25 grand to come down and speak at a podcaster thing in Florida and, uh, it was. It was complete fluke. I mean, I had a podcast that looked a hell of a lot bigger than it was, you know, and so, uh, I wasn't going to tell them otherwise, um, you know so, um, and it was funny, cause at that time I was still wearing, you know, I was in blue jeans but I was in button down shirts no hat. Um, you know, I wasn't cussing or anything on stages, I was just still kind of half foot in corporate and they brought me down right before my session goes on.
Speaker 2:The guy who flew me down comes up and he grabs me about the arm. Now I'm a Marine, you know, I don't want to just be grabbed forcefully, and so I'm sure I reacted. But he looked at me and goes Donnie, I need a favor. And I said okay, steve, what's the favor? You need no-transcript to me.
Speaker 2:Right before I go on, and they're literally calling my name to come on. Right, they're announcing me crowd of 400. So I yank my arm out of his and I'm go running on stage that I'd never done on this in my life and I break through the curtains and I go where the F are all my badasses at right, and 95% of this crowd goes bananas. Right, they're screaming and hollering. I'm acting a damn fool on stage. I'd never done that right. I'm not the the guy who jumps around the stage to stuff at this moment.
Speaker 2:I was doing it and there was a table in the far back left corner and you could tell I just I destroyed them to their core, um, and you could tell, because they didn't like the language that was coming out of my mouth.
Speaker 2:And I learned two very valuable lessons that time getting on stage. First lesson I learned was this was the first time I'd ever shown up as me anywhere in public, right. Second thing I learned is by speaking like I speak and talking like I talk and showing up like I show up, ninety five percent of that room was into it. I didn't need those five people sitting at that table. You know that weren't into my message. So from that point on, that became the ball cap, the t-shirt wearing the cousin you know, guy, that I am now because that's who I am at home um, and then it was shortly after that that we'd started doing the badass business summit. Because even with that one success, it wasn't enough to be a tipping point to get on a whole bunch of other stages, so created my own stage to to literally make it. So I didn't have to fight and get anybody else's funny thing. Having my own stage has allowed me to get on a lot of other stages I like that and you speaking of, like, building your own stage.
Speaker 1:that's something that I talk to a lot of people about, because they just want to get on the stages, they want to be known and we've talked about this already as well but it's like you don't have that following for people to want to pay you to be on their stage, to even be on their stage.
Speaker 1:So it is all about networking and the shortcut, if you will to that, is, yeah, paying to be on people's stages so you can show. But even then, if you have to have video, you have to have pictures, you have to show that you've been doing that, speaking on that stage or build your own stage, which you're still paying for either way. You get sponsors and stuff like that that we talked about, but really building that stage. So talk to us about that, because building a stage is difficult, but I do think that's really probably the fastest track, because you get to learn all the intricacies of building a stage, not to mention because, just like a podcast, you invite who you want onto your podcast. You now have the power and can invite anybody you want onto your stage. So talk to us about how building your own stages actually exploded. Your speaking career.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So one, it gives you clout, you know, because anybody who runs their own events knows how much work that goes into it. So there's almost a mutual understanding and respect. But two, once you are able to post and you kind of get social proof of hundreds of people's in a room with you on stage videos and and footage you get people tagging you on all the stuff. Now there's more and more people that lean in and going who the hell is this person and why are so many people paying attention to them? Now you're going to make sure everything else is is somewhat aligned.
Speaker 2:So you know, uh, like one of the simplest things is, I wonder, if people own their own domain, like you know, named Donnie Bovine. I own Donnie Bovinecom, right, and for most people they, they Google their name and you know there's somebody else shows up at their image. If you want to be a speaker, right, you've got to become a complete package. Right, you've got to become. You know there's somebody else shows up at their image. If you want to be a speaker, right, you've got to become a complete package, right, you've got to become. You know, something that people actually want to get excited about.
Speaker 2:So for me it was how do I get myself seen enough where people are like I need him more than he needs me, right? So I wanted to build that, that, that vehicle. So what I found is I stopped reaching to get out on the stages and now, because I had my own, I would also find people that have their own stages and I'm like hey want to come speak at mine. And they're like, oh well, yeah, you want to come speak at mine. Well, yes, I do. Right, you know, and you kind of get this cool network effect back and forth, because you know, if you run your own events, once again, you know how hard it is, but you also know that you're going to market your butt off for somebody else's putting on their event. Because you know, like Doug Mitchell we talked about for like the last week leading up to his event, he brought me down to speak at his event. Every day. I was putting a post out and I was telling as many people as I could get down to Doug's event. Right, and Doug's doing the same for me right now is we're two weeks out from the badass business summit as we record this.
Speaker 2:Um, it's the same thing. When you get that network effect in place. You know people want to come in and when you have a stage, everybody wants it. So now you've got to go. Okay, everybody wants it. Who is going to earn it? Who deserves it? Who are you going to be able to network deeper into their world with, you know? Not always you know who's going to deliver the best. Content is what's going to make this a win for everybody involved.
Speaker 1:So I like it, I like it. And so one last question for you here. So much great information, I like it.
Speaker 2:And so one last question for you here. So much great information, If there's only one piece of advice that you could give to somebody who's looking at starting their speaking career or take their speaking career to the next level, they do it. One thing you're going to find is people that are proactively speaking on a regular basis. There's two, maybe three styles of speakers. There's one that all they do is get paid to speak right, and that's a rare bird that's got that model and system down. The second is the people who actually have a business behind their speaking. So speaking is just like a front-facing thing, but they actually have a different company behind the scenes. It's more my style when I do.
Speaker 2:And then you have the people that have found success and people will just bring them to the stage, and those are kind of the three big areas. You need to find a way to get in front of each one of those people and ask them how they did it. I love Alex Ramosi. You know he said I built my empire before I even started social media. I think most people are trying to, you know, build social media before they build their empire. You know, figure out what your business is behind it all. Uh, and then go talk to the people that have done it and ask them how they do it, or find a damn good speaking coach that can just teach you all the shortcuts, yeah those are the things, always those options that pay for it.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I like that Going and asking for advice from people that have already done that. Such great advice, such amazing content here today. Everybody definitely need to go back and re-listen to this. There's so much that Donnie laid out for us to be able to understand that speaking journey, what that looks like, starting your own events and everything. But, donnie, if people want to follow you, they want to see more about what you've got going on, the events that you're doing, the networking that you're doing. Where's the best place for them to follow you at?
Speaker 2:Well, let's do this. Guys. If you've hung out this long with us and you've gotten any value out of this episode, do me a favor. Take a screenshot wherever you're listening to this, post it on social media. Tag me and Phillip in it. If we see it, I'll come comment.
Speaker 2:I'll give it love, but by you sharing this episode out, or any of Phillip's other episodes out, it really lets him know this is the type of content you're looking for. This is the things you're trying to learn from, the type of people you want to learn from. And dude, just like literally giving him a virtual hug, trying to build your own audience, is tough as damn hell, right. By you doing this, you'll help him grow the audience, reach more people, right, and he'll love you for it. So go share this episode out with somebody.
Speaker 2:If you want to get in touch with me, you know, come find me on LinkedIn, donnie Bovine. So D? O N N I E B as in boy O I V as in Victor I N as in NATO on LinkedIn. If you want to visit one of our chapters successchampionnetworkingcom you want to check out one of our events, just go to badassbusinesssummitcom. We have all those, but you know, the biggest thing I want for you guys is to take action on something you learned from today freaking and then share this love out with other people so they can learn from it too.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me on bud Awesome.
Speaker 2:Love it, Donnie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely we need more virtual hugs out there? Yeah, for sure. Y'all make sure to go follow Donnie, for sure.
