In this conversation, Donnie Boevin discusses the power of networking and the importance of building trust and relationships in the business-to-business (B2B) space. He introduces Success Champions, a networking organization that focuses on connecting business owners and facilitating introductions. Donnie shares the six codes of Success Champions and emphasizes the value of being authentic and transparent in networking. He also highlights the difference between B2B and business-to-customer (B2C) networking and the importance of finding the right communities and sub-communities. Donnie discusses the impact of Success Champions and his vision for creating a generational legacy of business success.

Takeaways

• Building trust and relationships is crucial in the B2B space.
• Success Champions focuses on connecting business owners and facilitating introductions.
• Authenticity and transparency are key in networking.
• Finding the right communities and sub-communities is important for effective networking.

Get To Know Donnie:

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give me an old bar stool. I can't sing, I can't play guitar. Give me the old dive bar with a guitar and I'd be content.

It's time to dial in with Deb.

Go, welcome, Joseph. Welcome. They're coming. We're giving you guys time to get into the room, but welcome to the dial in with Deb's show. My whole idea of this show is to support the small business to business space where we work together and network with one another. Thumbs up, Joe. I like that. Thank you. I'm glad you can hear us. LinkedIn is a great platform where all of that business to business is happening.

But when we create sub communities off of LinkedIn, kind of online still, but sub communities, the right ones, that's where the magic happens. Yeah, I agree, Donnie. I'm giving that a heart too. So welcome. Thank you guys for joining us and more will pop in as we get going. So I personally love LinkedIn, but I love smaller communities where everyone is transparent.

building trust, being patient with the process and getting to know one another so we can refer to one another. And that is where I bring in our special guest, Donnie Boevin. How did I do on that? Look at that. You even got it right. I'm impressed. I'm impressed. You sound like you almost sound like a rock star. Donnie Boevin. Well, growing up as a kid, I just listened to him to say Donnie and then anything that began with B and I'm like, that's me. But OK.

that makes you feel any better. I was introduced on the news one time as David Brown. Oh, very, very template basic, right? That's not you, Donnie. I know that's for sure. Right. So so if you were some kind of a musician, what type of band and what kind of music would you be? Would you be performing for us, Donnie? So a good friend of mine is a gentleman by the name of Cody Jenks, and he's really big in the country western scene.

If I was going to do anything, it would be in the country music scene. Give me an old bar stool. I can't sing, I can't play guitar. Give me the old dive bar with a guitar and I'd be content. I would like to do that same bar stool in front of 50 to 100 ,000 people. That'd be pretty rad too. Yeah, we lost a legend with Toby Keith in the country music scene. Right? Yeah. Wow.

There's a documentary he did or he did an interview, I want to say a month or so prior to his passing. It was incredible. I don't know if you caught that. I didn't see that, but I know one of the coolest things he did before Merle Haggard passed away is Merle's last concert. You know, he was battling cancer and everything and he couldn't finish out a set and he looked at Toby and said, Toby, how many of my songs do you know? And Toby said, I know all of them. And Toby finished out Merle Haggard last set. So it was always a cool thing. Wow.

Yeah, Toby's journey, you talk about patience and persistence. He tried for years to make it big and he gave himself a deadline of, I believe, if it didn't happen by the age of 40, he was done. Done trying. And he made it happen right before he turned 40. So it's pretty cool. If you can catch that interview, oh, Shannon. Shannon, how are you? I'm gonna bring you up to say hi. Oh, did I lose her? Oh, okay. All right.

All right, well, thank you. We're going to get going. I see Jeffrey Grisel, Jonathan, Markel, Joseph, Sia, welcome. Donnie is the founder of Success Champions. And I actually came across his profile on LinkedIn and was intrigued. And then he invited me, Donnie invited me to just check out one of the chapters. And I checked out the growth mode chapter.

And my very first impression was this is different. That's exactly what I thought, Donnie. Love that. I mean, different because there are so many communities out there that I have been involved in and they just pitch slap and do all do do networking all the wrong way. And I knew in my heart that first half hour into the hour of visiting that chapter that this was something special.

So before I get into the interview questions, can you give us a rundown of success champions for those of us in the room to hear? Yeah, for sure. And thanks for having me on here. And saying is different. It's probably one of the greatest compliments I can get for the network because I think most networks are cookie cutter. They're all trying to just replicate each other intentionally or unintentionally.

So we launched success champions networking in March of 20. You know, at that time I had two very successful businesses going and I was watching the whole world move into the online space. And, you know, it took me two and a half years to build a legitimate online profitable business. Knew we were going to be fine through the pandemic, but knew people didn't have two and a half years to figure out the online world. Like I did, they had 30 days if they were lucky. So we launched in March 20.

and we've been growing ever since, but we run B2B, business to business networking groups, because most of our people are frustrated with, you know, they sell business to business. So they're selling software, they're selling commercial real estate, they're selling managed services, telecom, HR, your fractional stuff.

And they're tired of walking into rooms where they're bumping up against all the realtors and all the title companies. And there's nothing wrong with those people. I'm not bashing on them. But those conversations tend to be one sided if you're B2B and they're B2C because they're not typically talking to business owners. So we wanted to create an environment where we brought business owners together and allowed them to network. And we can talk through the differences between B2C and B2B networking. But.

Really, that's the gist of it. We have chapters all throughout North America and do a couple of live events a year, but we're just having fun, literally grabbing market share and changing the marketplace on networking as a whole. I love how you explained the difference between business to business and business to customer because I've been in those business to customer networking groups or I've been in the networking groups that is a mix of both and it's frustrating.

It would be the best message I could say. Would you agree? 100%. I mean, you, God love the people, but if you ask, you know, a title person, what's the last five deals they closed, they're going to tell you it's an engineer, a doctor, a, you know, a middle management person in a company. Those are all great, phenomenal people. But when you're selling B2B, none of those contacts are relevant for you.

Right? They, you know, and so they're just not dealing with business owners and business owners don't typically want to hang out with people who are not running their own companies. So it really changes the dynamics when you create an environment that's all B2B. Yeah. Huge difference. Share with our listeners. I love the champions code. Is it six of them? Yeah. Give them a list.

Absolutely. So we have the champions code and the champions code really came about because everybody kept saying you've got to have these core values, these core values, core values. And it was driving me nuts because core values to me were just a bunch of words thrown up on a wall. And there just wasn't any, you know, real value with those words up on the wall. And so they just felt pushed, if you will, and forced. So.

I decided we were going come up with codes because I liked the Knights codes back in the day. I felt like the Knights actually stood for something. So instead of calling them core values, we came up with the champions code. So the first one, show up as yourself. I didn't think anybody would do business with a guy who talk like I talk, wears a ball cap and t -shirt, shows up like I do. And for almost 20 years, I literally freaking, you know,

wore the monkey suit in corporate America trying to be somebody and anybody but myself. And it's crazy. Once I started showing up as me, the whole world started showing up as well. And we really encourage everybody to be yourself, come as you are, geek out on what you geek out on and have fun. Like your goat posts, right? Yeah, a hundred percent. And who knew baby goat posts would do so well on LinkedIn? Jeez. Yep.

For those of you in the room, I suggest to click on Donnie's profile picture here and follow him. Is it Sundays you do the Goat Post? Typically Sundays, but because of a DM thread where the LinkedIn ladies came at me in a fun way, I just put an actual video out on Saturday. So if you want to see the video. Okay. All right. So that's number one of the six codes. All right, everyone in the room.

Would you put your hands together because Danny raises goats and that's being yourself. Well, raise goats. I have Harry Potter tattoos. I go, my wife and I go to Renaissance fairs in costume and have a blast. I drink way too much rum and just enjoy life all together. So I love it. Thanks for your vulnerability. That's what it's all about. Right. For sure. For sure.

And I'm happy to tell people, you know, just to go on to that even further, in building my business, you know, in the first six months, my wife's Jeep was repossessed. We almost lost my farm to foreclosure. I had no idea how to be a business owner. I was also under a non -compete, so I couldn't talk about sales, which was the only thing I knew. So, and I share that story as often as I possibly can.

because I think there's a lot of people out there trying to tell people that, you be an entrepreneur, you know, make a million dollars overnight, those types of things. And I just want it to be the raw, real side of things. Oh man. For sure. Thank you for that. There's not enough honesty out there. So that was number one. So let's hear the rest of them. The second one is my favorite one, which is family first in all things. So,

You know when you are climbing that corporate ladder you make a lot of sacrifices to get up that ladder and i was just as guilty. I'm sorry when i was building the company as a whole that i wanted to be able to go participate in do so for us we want everybody to be at the ball games go to the place go do the stuff with the family. You know if somebody sick i go go be with them.

You know, all that stuff. You got to put your family first, because if not, why the hell are we doing any of this? That's right. The third one is always be learning and teach what you learn. I think a lot of people have been hoarders of knowledge for a lot of time, because when you're in corporate America, you don't share your knowledge because somebody is going to take it and then beat you out of your position. So you learn to keep it all close to the vest.

And look, there's no secrets out there. Everything you want to learn is on Google or YouTube. And forgive me, I'm coming over a cold, but so so we want people to go out and be learning, but we also want you to come back and teach it to others. The fourth one, and I'll clean it up for LinkedIn, is go break stuff, but it does not say stuff. I'll let you fill in the blanks there, but go break stuff, try new things. And what we find is that.

People get very stagnant in what they do. They get really, really structured in the way they do things and they get to a place where they plateau. It's because they're not trying new things and exploring new things. So I just believe life is an experiment and if it's an experiment, you don't ever fail anything. You just learned a way it didn't work. Let's go try another way. And so that's what we encourage people to do. The fifth one, be a champion of yourself.

Literally nobody else is going to do this for you. Nobody's going to show up. Nobody's going to do all put in the time, put in the work, do all the things you need to do. You have to be your own success champion. And that's where the name came from. So and then the last one I'll clean up for your show as well is don't be a jerk. But it is not a jerk is actually a lot stronger word. But don't be a jerk, right? It's you have to be respectful.

Nice to people you gotta treat people with respect and I really wrote this one for me and because it can be a challenge for me you know when there's bad customer service or the likes to not want to fly off the handle so I wanted to create an environment where this wasn't the male aggressive Rose club of you know let's bust everybody's chops and the likes I want everybody to have fun.

but don't be a jerk about it. So, but those are the codes. Yeah. I love the codes and that last one, don't be a jerk. I think of lack of transparency. It can be intentional when people are networking and I'm sorry, but that's just being a jerk. I don't think that. Right? I mean, anyone in the room, if you agree, give me a thumbs up. Anybody that's not delivering full transparency, I'm sorry.

That's just, you're being a jerk. And it, and most of it is intentional. I'm sorry. You know what you're doing. Absolutely. So that, that was something that really raised, um, my, my liking of success champions, Donnie. Um, and I think it's okay to be bold with the choice words that you choose. Cause you're laying down the expectations to those that want to join one of the chapters.

This is no fluffy B and I group. I'm telling you right now, folks, this is business to business and I can say it, get shit done. Right, Donnie? Oh, if you'll let me talk that way, I'll talk to you. Go right ahead. Hey, I've been on some audios and I've heard a lot more worse words. All right. And then let me fix two of the codes. So the one code is, yeah, is go break shit trying new things. Right. That's that's the fourth code. And then the last one is don't be a dick.

And I love that word because I think it just completely emphasizes the point we're trying to make here. Have fun. But but, yeah, you know, people destroy people and it drives me bonkers. Yes, it drives me bonkers, too. I've been destroyed. I've I've joined previous groups in the past and I've trusted people that I thought I could trust, but I should have done a better job of verifying Donnie. And I guess.

Well, and I think you know that that's a perfect segue into the B2B B2C, you know in B2C everything is transactional like Everybody can be a prospect when you sell B2C and so when you sell in a transactional world B2C the the nature of that sale is you make one cell and Then you're good. You don't have to make multiple sales and sometimes if it is

You know, you can sell multiple houses over time, you know, multiple titles, but they're usually a long period of time in between those sales and purchases and stuff. You know, so when you're in those environments, people are used to skipping the real relationships. They're used to, hey, do you need to buy a house?

You know, and they oftentimes will do it under the guise of, hey, I'm here to build long -term relationships. But it never seems to come out that way. When you sell B2B, you're used to sales cycles that take six months, two years, you know, any elongated period of time. So you know the power of actually going in and making real relationships. You know that most of the people that you're sitting there talking to in the room aren't going to be your prospect.

Right? You need to tap into their networks. You learned to network for your network's network. And it really changes the dynamic of everything. And that's what I loved about continuing my visiting of the chapter within Success Champions. The chapter that I was visiting was growth mode. Right? Did I say that right? Growth? Yes. And what I heard, Donnie, from the members,

Many of them knew who to introduce to other members that would benefit their business. And I could not believe how many introductions were being made. Maybe share with us if you would for our listeners. Give us an example of a recent introduction and what it did for a success champion member.

Let me break this down a little bit further and I'm happy to do that. So people, most of us were raised in network. I mean, let's be honest. We all found networking because we didn't want to do traditional sales, myself included. I'm not a great sales guy, right? I can teach cold calling in front of rooms, we'll do live dials and have people listen to both sides of the conversation. You can go to YouTube, you can see videos of me doing live cold calls. And I always say that to say, I hate doing it.

I hate cold prospecting. I hate cold reach outs. But, you know, my career, I've done it. And so most of us found networking because we didn't want to do traditional prospecting. So based on that and that understanding, networking was really built by a bunch of desperate people that didn't know how and go out and get their own clients. They were also built, networking was built...

as we know it by people that were in transactional business. So the networking we grew up with and were learned and taught is all done in a transactional nature. So networking, you'll hear people to this day talk about, you know, networking is all about getting referrals and giving referrals. Networking has nothing to do with referrals whatsoever. Right? Networking has nothing to do with finding clients. And let me explain this because I got some people I know they're going to be looking at me like I got two heads.

Right. A referral is Bob meets Sally. Sally, I've told Bob all about your company and he's excited to talk to you. It's an introduction with a sales call attached. And when we understand that a referral is an expected sales call, that's never going to come from your network hardly in your B2B. And the reason being in B2B, I'm very rarely ever going to hear.

the person complaining, moaning and groaning about whatever services you offer. Like you do SBA lending and stuff. Very rarely is a company gonna come to me and say, God, I just gotta figure out how to get a $100 ,000 loan. I'm just not gonna have those type of conversations. So in knowing that, we changed the dynamic that networking isn't about referrals, it's about introductions. And it's getting introduced to the right people, the right opportunities, and the right places.

So if you think about it from this perspective, an introduction is two people getting together that can have some synergy or open doors for each other. So what we'll often do is we'll sit with a person and say, who's your ideal client? Like sometimes it's easier to say, who's your best client? So let's do that, Deb. It'll be a lot of fun. Play along with me. What industry is your favorite client?

you've ever had, what industry were they in? My client, Donnie? Yep, yep, yep. Well, I deal with people that want to buy small businesses, so they love all kinds of industries. Maybe I'm heading down a rabbit hole here. Right. So, so, um,

Let's think about, so you have people that want to buy businesses, right? I may run into people from time to time that have that conversation, but there are people that are talking intimately to people who buying a business may be something that's on the agenda on a regular basis. So for instance, this will help a little bit. I had a gal come to me last year and she sold a

college financial tuition support services basically. She'd go home and help people either find a better college or find grants or different ways to fund their kids going to college. And she called me up around June and she's like, I'm really frustrated because nobody will refer me, nobody will introduce me, nobody will get me to the people that I can actually sell to.

And I said, well, it's because nobody wants to admit that they can't afford to send their kids to school. That's the embarrassing thing for a lot of people. I said to her, so let's think about it differently. If you were to look at your clients, what industry has sent you the most referrals that are talking to these people? And she didn't skip a beat. And she said bookkeepers. I said, interesting. Why would bookkeepers send you your most referrals? And she said,

It's because there's always a conversation that pops up if they have kids that are near college age that they need to be making sure that they're bringing in enough money to cover college and yada, yada, yada. I said, fascinating, makes sense. I said, what would happen if you met a hundred bookkeepers before the end of the year? And she said, Donnie, it would absolutely change my business. I said, here's what I want you to do from here on out. I said, every person you meet, you say, I do this college tuition assistance program.

And I'd love to meet any bookkeepers you're attached to or connected with. Three weeks before the end of the year, she called me up in tears and I said, how are you? And she goes, I just got to let you know you tripled my business. Wow. And I said, really tell me more. And she said, I had to tell people to stop introducing me to bookkeepers. And about every second or third bookkeeper I was introduced to, they automatically had a referral for me.

because they were constantly in these conversations. So what I want everybody to think through is, and we usually draw this on a triangle on a board. So if you're taking notes, draw a triangle on a sheet of paper, put you at the top, put the industry of your favorite client in the center of that triangle, dead center of the triangle. And on the bottom left and the right side of those triangles, write down two industries.

that also sell to your ideal client that are not competition. So if you take something like a website company, right, a really good introduction for somebody that does websites is typically like copywriters or your managed services, your IT company, right? Those are really, really good people. They're all targeting the same type of companies to do business with.

When you know those two industries that you can have synergy with but not compete with, now you tell everybody, hey, I do X, whatever your business is, and you gotta keep it black and light, you don't need stupid jingles, you don't need a pitch, you don't need an elevator crap, whatever. You just tell people very black and white what you do, I do X. And I'd love to meet and you insert those two industries, people in copywriting, people in managed services, and you're gonna be blown away.

by how quickly people will open doors and make introductions for you. Because it's an introduction. It's Deb, Mel, Go Meet Sal. It's not a referral where you're putting your name and your brand on the line. And this is how we facilitate so many phenomenal introductions when people show up to the meetings. It can get overwhelming for some, because we are gonna do a lot of introductions, but that's how we continue to teach everything. I like that, yeah.

And looking at that triangle in my mind, I'm thinking, you know, on the bottom would be business brokers selling businesses. They know tons of people that need the financing or business bankers, people that go to them saying, hey, I need a loan to buy a business. And it might be a little tiny community bank that says we don't do SBA lending because a lot of them don't see. And this is what the power of this is. You just saying the brokers.

Do you follow Mike Finger on LinkedIn? Oh yeah. I love his content. It's amazing. Right? So great dude. We just had a guy join one of the Great Bind Texas chapters, Mike Vairs. I haven't gotten to know him yet, but he's a business broker. But in that simple thing saying I need to meet business brokers, I can instantly bring up names of people and go, God, you need to meet this person. Yeah. That's the power of this. Love the triangle.

image in my mind, Donnie. That was great to share with us. Super. Tell our room of listeners, you know, how many chapters you have, you know, some are nationwide, some are location specific. Let's hear that. Yeah. So we've got 17 chapters throughout North America, one in Canada. We may be working on a second one.

So we're in Ontario, Canada right now. Ontario is a national chapter. So you can be anywhere in Canada and join that one. And then we have 17 other chapters sprinkled throughout North America from Texas to Ohio to the DC, Maryland area to going up even further into Boston and New Hampshire, Connecticut areas.

Majority of our chapters are location specific, so like Fort Worth, Texas or Fall River, Massachusetts, those type of things. And then we have three national chapters where you can be anywhere. And what we found is we had a lot of people that were not stuck to a geographical zip code or something from licensing and the like that could do business anywhere. So we started launching national chapters.

We have, I think, four chapters working on launching right now. I know one of them is in Austin, Texas. And we are always on the lookout for new people that really want the idea of building their own community of people that become their word of mouth marketing. So, a couple hundred members in the system as well.

Uh, it's, it's been the coolest thing we've ever built. Yeah. Your, um, platform, uh, for those listening, he has a platform, a website, a community, and you have access to all the chapters, getting to know everybody, uh, besides the one that, that you're home to. Um, I love the national ones myself, and there's a reason why I'm in Wisconsin and, uh,

business values, real estate values just aren't as competitive as they are in like the beautiful big state of Texas or what not, right? So going national, I know what states to go where business is very strong. So I love that mixed in. If you are in success champions and you mix that in with the power of LinkedIn,

I mean, putting the two together is incredible. I just cannot believe the connections that I've made already, Donnie. Oh, for sure. It's wild to me, the crossover and the cross -pollination. And I can tell you, I've been a part of organizations where they're like, you can only be a part of this group. You can't go do anything else. You can't be a part of it. I'm like, screw that. Come in to Success Champions. Go visit every chapter.

You know, go network. You never know where somebody might know somebody or who they're connected to somewhere. And, you know, it's really fascinating thing. And then, you know, that's why we created the online circle community, because now you can go interact and put out your own content and engage with other people. So, yeah, we, as most people say, we fixed a lot of things that people hated about networking. Right. You sure did.

What I'd like to do since we're at the half hour mark, if anybody in the room has a question for Donnie, just raise your hand and I pull you up to the top and then you unmute yourself. So feel free to raise your hand or if you just want to say hi, you can do that too. I see some friendly faces in the room. And so, oh, here we go. I'm going to bring up Joseph. Thanks for coming on to the top of the room, Joe. Joe, I got you up there. The floor is yours.

Hey, hey, Devin, Donnie, what's going on? How you guys doing today? Really good. And I freaking love Colby, by the way. Yeah, you know, I call it transformational because I've done the disc, the Myers and Briggs, all the other ones. And for me, it's it's one that really transforms and you get to really understand how a person takes action. And for me, that's that's transformational. And it's helped me a lot. Not only me personally, but my family and my business. But.

It's it's been really, really, really cool. And I've got a guy, a guy you need to meet that he runs a really large community. And if you're not a nine or a ten on Quickstart, he won't let you in the community. Well, I'm an eight fact finder. So you know how that goes. Oh, yeah. A lot of research, a lot of research, just like structure. And I just like to make things happen. You know, I try to keep it as simple as possible. Like I tell her about.

For me, it's all about making it happen. And you touched on that. For me, family first values are priceless, and that's what I base my life on. And I've passed up businesses, understanding that, hey, you know what? I will struggle a little bit, but my family values are just priorities, and that's what I base it on. But I thank you guys for the information. It was awesome. Oh, thanks, dude. I appreciate that. And I'll tell anybody, because people ask us all the time, what's it entailed to start one of our chapters?

We have an eight week training course for somebody to be a president of one of our groups because we don't want to just throw you to the wolves. So you'll sit with Jessica Gruber who's built out most of Texas for us and she'll take you step by step, hand in my hand and walk you through how to not only build a group but how to leverage it to grow your business as well. So that's fantastic. So I'll DM you offline, Donnie. We'll get together. We'll see what happens. Looking forward to that. you guys for bringing me up. Have a fantastic day.

Thank you, Joe. Thank you. I'd like to add to this, Donnie, that when you want to join as a member, it's not quick and fast and easy because you're being vetted. And you don't find that often in these communities, these networking communities. Well, you'll find sometimes they say they do, right? Like you've got to be voted in, but it's nine times out of 10. It's just a...

a supposed gate in front of it. A lot of organizations are out there, they're just trying to grab as many damn members as they possibly can. I don't want to grab as many members as possible. I want the right seats. I want the right people. I want the people that really get the power of opening doors for others. And I don't bash on BNI. I have a philosophy of theirs I hate, but BNI itself is a great organization. But the philosophy they have at Give or Gain is the

biggest crock of shit I've ever met in my life. Givers gain, even though they try and explain that it doesn't mean this, is the context of give to gain. Right? And that always drives me nuts. Right? If you only give, and give, give, give, give, give, give, you're gonna be taken advantage of. Right? Because everybody always hears this idea of, man, you're supposed to give, you gotta give, you gotta give, you gotta get you. Yeah, you'll never get.

if you do that. So you have to literally take from the network. So we call it the 5 G's, which is give, give, give, get, and then give. You give three to four or five introductions, and then you ask very specifically. So I'll go to the biz brokers for you. I would make three to four biz broker introductions for you, and then I would say, hey, Deb, you know anybody that has a podcast or a stage?

Right? And if you gave me one of those, I'm instantly going to freaking open up a whole nother introduction for you. Right? Because it's a way to say thank you. And when you make these cool introductions for other people, now you just stay top of mind. And they want to continue to help you out, but you got to ask specifically for what you want. That's right. And you do stay top of mind. And it does work.

In harmony, it just starts to roll. Right. But I get that though, the give, give, give. I mean, how many in the room have been in a community and you gave, gave, gave, and it was just crickets. You know, you just say, nope, not interested. So the difference with success champions is everything that you all want.

those of you that have been in communities and it didn't work for you, I highly recommend to give success champions a visit, a chance, connect with Donnie. Share with us, would they just DM you or go to your website to check things out? So, I mean, I'm stupid active on LinkedIn. I mean, I run two monitors. LinkedIn's open all day long for me and I love hanging out here. So by all means, you want to connect with me.

Literally guys, on my profile, you can book a time with me. You can get 30 minutes on my profile if you wanna sit down and chat with me. If you wanna visit a group, just go to successchampionnetworking .com, click on visit groups, find one that's close to you, and go visit. If you're interested in starting a group and wanna have that conversation, just send me a DM. I'm happy to have that conversation as well. We'll put you through the same vetting process that we do, everybody else. But, you know.

Growing a building a business has literally been the toughest thing that I've ever done. And I want to help as many people get to freedom through building a business as I possibly can. There's so many people out there trying to say how easy it is and somehow the word entrepreneur became like the new MLM. You can be a millionaire overnight, but that's at the heart of why I'm doing all this. So.

I would love to see you guys at one of the chapter meetings, one of the trainings, one of the educations, or even the Badass Business Summit coming up in September. You took the thought out of my mind, Donnie. Why don't you share about that event? So, you know, growing a business is hard. And I got really tired about five years ago of fighting to get on everybody else's stage. And nobody gave me a shot to get on those stages. And I was trying everything that I knew how to do.

So I said screw it and I launched my own summit. So we created a badass business summit in September of 20. And we bring together some of the coolest entrepreneurs to network with people that you want to be around, engage with. We bring in some of the most powerhouse speakers that are real people doing real things. And you'll recognize some of the names from LinkedIn, because I bring in a lot of my LinkedIn buddies.

to come help us out with a lot of this stuff. But it's three days in Fort Worth, Texas of networking, introductions, collaborations, masterminds, podcasts. You can be a guest on podcasts while you're there. I mean, it's a ton of cool things. And that's at badassbusinesssummit .com that you can go check that out. We are regularly told that it's the best business conference that people have ever attended because we're not pitching anything. There's no...

cheeseball stuff from stages, it is straight. Let's learn the thing, let's apply the thing and let's walk away from the summit having all the things actually already working in your business so you don't get home and trying to remember what all your damn notes say. Is that just for members? No, no, that's open to the public. That's open to the public. That's huge. I love that. Um, and yes, I have seen a lot of rave reviews about that summit. So if any of you in the room,

are experienced at speaking, you might want to connect with Donnie in regards to that as well. On the Bad Ass Business Summit site, there is a call for speakers open right now. So if you were looking for stages, I made a promise when I launched this that every year that I will give one to two people, I'm happy to be their first stage, happy to be their first opportunity. So if you're looking for places to speak, please throw your name in. Yeah, I love your heart. So in closing,

I love to talk about the ripple effect. What kind of legacy, Donnie, do you envision success champion networking to create in the entrepreneurial world? What is the legacy that you? Yeah, I was asked on the show one time, do I want to become the next BNI? And I instantly answered no. I have no desire. I want about a tenth of what BNI has done. If I can grab 100 ,000 yo,

people and directly impact their business. If I can grab 10 ,000 people and directly impact their business, then the ripple effect will go on for generationals. And I'm looking for generational change. I knew being raised how I was raised as a blue collar kid that if I was gonna get out of my blue collar lifestyle,

If I was going to actually make something to myself, then I was going to have to change my own stars. And to do that was going to take a lot of time, a lot of energy and a lot of effort. So I want to help as many people change their stars and be able to go and create a life. So it creates generational legacy, right? It creates a generational impact. I want people to look back on success champions networking and say, I built my business because of it. And that would be the world.

Oh, I love that. I love that. Ladies and gentlemen, let's give Donnie a heart, a round of applause. I mean, his heart is in the right place and it's supporting small businesses. And I love small businesses. They are the heartbeat of every local economy. They're the heartbeat of our country. And we have to work together.

and support one another. And that's what success champions networking does. Because if we don't support small businesses and wrap our arms around one another, the big is going to take us over. And that ain't happening. I mean, the big state of Texas can't let that happen, Donnie. Right, right. Oh, well, I'm so grateful that for the time here, dial in with Deb. It's all about supporting small businesses.

Ladies and gentlemen, check out Donnie, reach out to him on DM. Joe, think things. Let me do one thing for you really quick, guys. If you guys are still hanging out with us and you've listened, if there's been any value out of this whatsoever, do Deb the favor of sharing out these upcoming shows for her, right? And get more people in here to support. She's really given us time to shine. She's really putting a centered stage. Show her some love and tell other people about it.

about these dial in her deads or other workshops and the things she do. It'll mean the world to her. Oh, you're a doll. Thank you. And as make sure you check out Donnie's post of goats on Sunday. Okay. All right. Thank you, Donnie. Thank you, Joe, for stepping up on stage and everyone else in the room. I appreciate your time and and let's let's make it a great rest of the week. See you next week. Have a great day. Thank you. Bye now.