The First Customer - Embracing the Wild Ride of Breaking Barriers with Founder Donnie Boivin

In this episode, I was lucky enough to interview Donnie Boivin, Founder and CEO of Success Champions Network.

Donnie grew up in a blue-collar family, and never considered starting a business until he was in his 40s. Inspired by thought leaders like Gary Vee and Tim Ferriss, Donnie made the leap after spending nearly two decades in sales, but quickly realized that building a successful business was far harder than anticipated. He faced significant challenges, including a crippling non-compete that nearly caused him to lose everything. Through resilience and with the support of his wife, Donnie turned things around, ultimately building Success Champions Network into a thriving community for B2B networking.

Donnie shared his philosophy on networking, emphasizing the importance of strategic partnerships over the traditional referral-based networking model. Donnie explained how Success Champions Network is designed to help businesses grow by connecting with partners that share their target markets, rather than merely making one-off sales. He also discussed how his personal brand plays a role in the success of the network, but stressed that the real value comes from the community itself. Donnie's no-nonsense approach and belief that B2B networking has been taught incorrectly for years resonates with those frustrated by traditional methods, making Success Champions Network stand out in the crowded world of business networking.

Follow Donnie Boivin’s bold steps into the world of business reinvention in this episode of The First Customer!

Guest Info:
Success Champions Network
https://successchampionnetworking.com/


Donnie Boivin's LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/donnieboivin/

Connect with Jay on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayaigner/
The First Customer Youtube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/@thefirstcustomerpodcast
The First Customer podcast website
https://www.firstcustomerpodcast.com
Follow The First Customer on LinkedIn
http://www.linkedin.com/company/the-first-customer-podcast/

Transcript

[00:00:27] Jay: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The First Customer Podcast today. I am lucky enough to be joined by Donnie Boivin. He is the founder and CEO of Success Champions Network. he's also the host of the Growth Mode Podcast. Busy guy. See you all over the place on LinkedIn and stuff, Donnie. how's it going, brother?

Thanks for joining me.

[00:00:47] Donnie: dude, life is good, man. I'm actually stoked to hang out with you. You know, sometimes you get in the green room and have conversations. You're like, Oh, this isn't going to go well, but other than you're a big sports guy, I think we're gonna get along.

[00:00:56] Jay: I think we're going to get along fine, man. I think we've got a similar kind of drive going on here. all right. Where did you grow up and did that have an impact on you being an entrepreneur?

[00:01:05] Donnie: Oh, that's an interesting spin on the question. So, dad was a truck driver. and so we went where the business was. By the time we got to Kansas, I was five. Mom ended up working for a blue jean factory on a sewing machine. Dad drove truck, then moved to Texas when I was 11, graduated high school from there, I would say, no, it had no influence on me whatsoever because I had no entrepreneurs, no business owners.

I never had lemonade stands. None of that crap. Like, I didn't even know you could start a business until I was 40. Like, you know, just a blue collar kid. You work, you get a job, you retire. So yeah, no, for, me, since I, we grew up so damn dirt poor, you know, success look like ivory tower, you know, skyscrapers and suits, you know, that's.

What I've really thought success was growing up. So we had no influence whatsoever.

[00:01:51] Jay: So when did you find out that the mirage was not real and that's not what success looked like for you?

[00:01:56] Donnie: Turn 40 started hearing assholes like Gary V, Tim Ferriss, all these people start talking about, you know, being an entrepreneur, it's so easy. Anybody can do it. So I thought being a 25 year at that point, 20 year sales guy, almost 20 years, that building a business should be really fricking easy. Yeah, nobody tells you it's the most difficult thing on the planet to build a successful business.

I mean, literally, I almost lost everything. So, so when I launched my company, I was instantly put under a non compete. Three cheers from them doing away with the non competes yesterday

[00:02:28] Jay: gone now. Yeah, they're gone.

[00:02:29] Donnie: Yeah, but it almost cost me everything. I went from making almost seven figures a year, having built our dream farm, second house on property for my mother in law to zero income in 24 hours.

Cause I was getting rid of my own sales training company and the company I had partnered with before, slapped me with, you know, non compete papers. So I couldn't do anything. So. Six months in, I literally had a Jeep repossessed. we almost lost a farm to foreclosure. Luckily, my wife cashed in her 401k, got the Jeep back, saved the farm, but I had to dogfight it to actually build a successful company and it took me, I don't know, another year before I was able to get us to a, some sort of stability inside of a company, you know, and then two and a half years before we really figured out what the business was going to be,

[00:03:14] Jay: So how long ago was that? How long have you been in business

[00:03:16] Donnie: 2017.

So six and a half years now. Yeah,

[00:03:22] Jay: Everything's rocking and

[00:03:24] Donnie: sunshine and rainbows. Right. Yeah. Yeah. and just pop

[00:03:27] Jay: what most of these podcasts are. Yeah. Most of the podcasts are just like, everything is great.

[00:03:32] Donnie: Yeah. I got to throw in some more bro words in there to make it, make that whole story complete.

[00:03:37] Jay: right. You got it. Even my eight year old daughter says bro now and it drives me absolutely crazy.

[00:03:41] Donnie: I like bro better than bruh.

[00:03:43] Jay: oh, yeah But yeah, I mean bruh is like lazy, you know, it's like very it's just like come on there But it's the same stuff that my dad used to say to me when I would say stuff when I was a kid It's like it just it all comes back around.

All right, so, You have a very Donnie centric business, right? Like it's about like you are the face of the brand and like, you're building this thing and you're building this network. And, how have you differentiated if at all between kind of promoting yourself as a, you know, a brand yourself versus the business that you're growing?

Is it the same thing? you know, for some people it totally is. I think in reality, most people have like a little bit of a separation there. what's your take on that?

[00:04:20] Donnie: Yeah. So that's an interesting spin on a question, a little bit to unpack, but we'll hit it all. the truth is there's Donnie Boivin and then there's success champions, right? for the longest time I thought they needed to be the one singular thing. And what I realized is that people buy me. Then they're only staying because of me and I don't need them to stay because of me.

I need them to stay because they have the value of what they get from networking. Right? So a mentor of mine said, you know, people buy you, but they stay for the community. And I didn't fully have that model. People were following my content, were interested in what I had to say. So they were becoming a part of success champions, networking.

Because I was there. So I had to start really separating those out. Now, my personal brand is all around B2B networking. Cause I think B2B networking has just been taught wrong for years. And the most people who teach networking are just. Idiots because they don't know actually how to teach networking.

Let's be honest, everybody who taught networking usually came from a transactional, you know, insurance freaking cars, something, you know, background. But if you sell B2B and you network, like you do with B2C, you're going to get your damn teeth kicked in. Like in a B2C game. It's transactional. I need the deal one time.

I sell you a car, it's going to be years before I sell you another car. I sell you a house, it's going to be years before I sell you another house. I sell you an insurance policy, it's going to be years, right? But when you sell B2B, the person that you're networking with, nine times out of 10, can't do business with you.

Like, you know, when I sold commercial printing, for example, you know, if I went out and met a telecom company, they might be able to buy a printing, but not at the volume I needed to have printing done. However, the clients that they sold to needed printing at the level that I was printing it, right? So at B2B, it's literally about networking to get introduced to your network's network at a lot deeper level.

So what people don't understand and. You can interject any time, so don't you keep rambling over your

[00:06:28] Jay: no, you're good.

[00:06:29] Donnie: what people don't understand is networking has nothing to do with referrals. Okay. A referral is defined by an introduction with a sales call attached. Like I could introduce you to somebody and they know that their sale is going to be expected in that conversation.

Doesn't mean a sale is going to happen, but sales can be expected. Very rarely am I going to run into most people in a B2B games perfect ideal client. Right, because I'm not having conversations about their phone systems. I'm not having conversations about their I. T. Equipment, right? I went back when I did commercial printing and sales training.

I was either talking to their purchasing department, their marketing department or the sales department, right? If I'm talking to those people, I need other people that are out talking to company sizes that I'm talking to that are selling to also those same things. So I look at most people and say, look, I don't give a shit who your end client is, right?

I know who you want to sell to. You told me cool. Who else also sells to them and is not competition for you. So the entire philosophy of success champions networking is built on the foundation of I need to be able to create synergies with people who already sell to my ideal client. So I'm going to use my network and say, Hey guys, I do commercial printing.

I need to be connected with your branding companies and be connected with your copywriting companies. I need to be connected with your marketing firms, people that already work with my ideal clients. Those three companies, I'm going to be able to sit down and go, Hey, look, I don't have anything to sell you.

Like I don't want to sell you my services, but let's partner up and figure out how I can get you into my clients and you can get me into your clients and have a very matter of fact, specific conversation.

[00:08:13] Jay: Well, that's the word that's the word I was waiting for. how are you differentiating networking and partnerships? Where are you?

[00:08:20] Donnie: so there's strategic partnerships and then there's networking. So, and I think you have to look at who's asking the question sometimes, because what most people think networking is you go out and you make a whole bunch of friends. Right? Networking is about going and establishing partnerships.

Partnerships are the result of networking, not networking itself. So if I give you a referral, like to a legitimate referral, somebody needs your services, that's likely a one time transaction, right? Great. Cool. Everybody's happy. It's good. But if I can get you to the right person who has a thousand of your perfect client, and I can introduce you to that person.

That potentially is a thousand referrals down the road. I want to get you to that person versus the one referral,

[00:09:12] Jay: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. who was your first customer?

[00:09:16] Donnie: So we started off in B2C, and I've, shit, I don't even remember who the first customers were, but we had a lot of your realtors, your mortgage, your typical type of networking groups.we had built to just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of members. and then the mortgage rates went through the roof and we instantly lost half of our network.

So because all the mortgage companies closed, the title companies closed, everybody closed. So at that point we said, all right, no more B2C. We went a hundred percent B2B to have a more volatile market. What I didn't know. Is that there was a huge necessity for B2B because everywhere you go, if you're B2B and you walk into a room full of Realtors, title mortgage, it's a lopsided conversation as a B2B sales guy.

I can help you Realtor, but Realtor, you can't help me back because you're not having the conversations with the people I need you to be having conversations with. So we just, we continue to find that if you network at on B2B only, that you're. frustrated, burned out on a lot of traditional networking because you're sitting around a bunch of people that you can help but can't help you back,

[00:10:30] Jay: right. Yeah. And I found that in a, local chambers for me because I am a, Tech services guy, a local, you know, chamber of commerce is full of the people you just mentioned, like mortgage brokers and AAA and like all these, and it's great. And it's great to learn stuff from different business owners and all that.

But like

[00:10:48] Donnie: They're all great people.

[00:10:49] Jay: but they're great people and they're great to learn from, but they're not, like you said, they're not working with my customers, which is what I need is the people that I need to meet.

[00:10:58] Donnie: And this is, that's the niche. That's where we found, and by teaching them to Quit looking at networking to find clients and start looking at networking to build these strategic partnerships changes the game of how they approach networking. Like if you're doing it and technical stuff like a telecom company, should you be your biggest referral source?

Right? Because they're, you know, MSP type things, a technology companies and telecom and they always should be partnering up because they're going after the same damn client.

[00:11:28] Jay: Right.

[00:11:29] Donnie: Right. Yeah. And so we try and create groups that build these synergies. You know, we have, this triangle that we teach everybody to do and at the triangle we put you at the top, we'll put your favorite industry and we've got some fun things we do.

Like, let's do this. This will be more easier for you, your listeners to explain. So you're at the top. What's the first name of your best client? Just first name, your best client, your favorite client.

[00:11:55] Jay: Jonathan,

[00:11:56] Donnie: Cool. Jonathan. What industry is Jonathan in?

[00:12:00] Jay: software automation.

[00:12:01] Donnie: Cool. Software automation. Beautiful. So you're at the top of the triangle. Who else sells to software automation companies that are not competition for you?

[00:12:12] Jay: you're going to put them in the spot. I'm not sure. bigger companies than us, handle that typically like enterprise level. there's not a ton of

[00:12:19] Donnie: So tell me specifically what you sell. That'll help me in a second.

[00:12:22] Jay: so I sell software quality assurance services. So we

[00:12:27] Donnie: going in and making sure the software build outs are right and the

[00:12:29] Jay: right. And we work with SaaS and custom software development shops.

Those are our two kind of main, departments.

[00:12:33] Donnie: Beautiful. So now if you look at that, now, when you look at a SaaS software development shops, now you're thinking, and there's a ton of computers in there, there's a ton of programmers and the like. So now if they have an office space, you've got telecom trying to sell into there cause they need all the phones.

You need MSP selling in there because they have all the computers. It may be the commercial real estate guy in there. Right. So I'm. May run into software companies from time to time, and I might be able to introduce you to these type of companies, but I promise you, I'm gonna run into a ton of telecoms.

I'm gonna run into a ton of MSP, especially in our network. We have a ton of them right now. I can get you introduced to those people like, and there's no meat on the bone, right? I mean, there's no threat. I'm literally say J go meet Jeffrey. Think you guys will have a cool conversation. Right. And you guys aren't going to get together and instantly and find yourself in the pitch because you guys really can't sell each other your shit.

So now you guys get together and the smart people that understand this game will look at you and go, okay, Jay, right? Who do you need to meet? And they'll start making you introductions. And then after you've made three or four introductions, you can make a very specific ask. You can say something along the lines of, so Donnie, I've got you on this podcast, this podcast, this podcast.

Do you happen to know any software companies you might have a good relationship with that you'd be comfortable making an introduction

[00:13:53] Jay: Sure.

[00:13:54] Donnie: Right. And after you've helped me already, of course, I'm going to make that cool introduction for you.

[00:13:59] Jay: Right.

[00:14:00] Donnie: So that's how our world is built.

No, I love that. I love that. It's very, it's a clean process. do you have competitors or like a bunch of, I mean, there's a million business groups. Like, how are You know,

[00:14:10] Jay: you let them know raise your hand and be like, we are different and in a lot of ways, you know, talk to us.

[00:14:15] Donnie: I don't know of any that's focused strictly on B2B. I'm sure there are, but I haven't run across them yet. And I've run across quite a few. I've run across a lot of different versions, you know, and I usually try and promote their companies. You know, I'm more the Macy's guys than give a shit about what them they do because We're not going to be a fit for everybody.

I mean, look, I'm a blue collar country dude that wears ball caps and cusses too much And run my business from this perspective and enjoy it There's gonna be people that get around me like dude, I am nowhere near that motherfuckers company. It's not happening Right Which is okay, because there's plenty of opportunities out there.

So, so I just continue to look at it from the perspective of how do we continue to go louder as a company, tell people who we are, what we do, because most times when we say we're B2B, right, and we're going to change the philosophy of how you look at networking, people are intrigued enough, they want to come look.

once you experience our world nine 10, you're in.

[00:15:10] Jay: I like that. I mean, it is very appealing. so what

[00:15:13] Donnie: And Jay, this is why I podcast so much.

[00:15:16] Jay: I mean, I can see why. I mean, it's good. It's a good, and it's probably a great funnel for you, right? 

[00:15:20] Donnie: it is.

[00:15:20] Jay: it's, you know, once people hear it and hear the kind of matter of factness

[00:15:23] Donnie: Same thing, right?

[00:15:24] Jay: for example, it makes sense.

[00:15:25] Donnie: This is also why I'm so loud on LinkedIn, you know, like literally I told you as we were recording this, I just got back from a speech. I'm at 12, 000 followers on LinkedIn. I don't mean to brag when I say that I am proud of the work it took me to get there. but the speech I just got back from was from a company that's been following me for six months on LinkedIn.

They like the way I talk about networking. So I just went into an industry I've never even heard of to a company that I didn't know existed and taught, you know, 12 of their salespeople, you know, specifically on how to network like this in their industry.

[00:15:57] Jay: Wow. so what is your biggest lesson learned, this year so far at the business?

[00:16:04] Donnie: So, that even running a business, You can't stop the business development. So I think we all, some point as we're running our companies, we kind of get to that place where like, Ooh, this feels kind of good. Right. And then all of a sudden you look up and you're like, Oh shit, there's nothing else. Right. So, it hit us pretty good. And, you know, It's amazing once you realize that you've stopped doing something and then you go, Ooh, we got to get back after that. We're getting ready to launch 10 more chapters of Success Champions Networking all because we look like realized we weren't focused on the overall business development, but as soon as we did, we realized a lot of conversations and things that we had.

We're people that were interested, potentially want to open one of our chapters and the like, so you can't ever stop doing the business development thing. It's a massive lesson learned, no matter how big you get or how, you know, things are growing. So

[00:16:59] Jay: if you're too comfortable, you're probably in the wrong place, right? I mean, that's been my, the only thing in the business world that has rung true with me, over the years, whether I was working for somebody or for myself was if it feels too good, then you're probably behind on something else.

Right. So, all

[00:17:15] Donnie: Or if it's too easy, right?

[00:17:18] Jay: right, right.

[00:17:18] Donnie: if it's

[00:17:19] Jay: there's no challenge, then you're just, you're spinning wheels. So, how do you guys market today? I mean, you're on podcasts, obviously you do LinkedIn. Is this a concerted part of some big plan that you have, or are you just kind of figuring out as you go, like how are you handling marketing yourself?

[00:17:36] Donnie: there's a couple of methods. one are members of our chapters that are all throughout North America. They do a lot for us, right? because. Some of them in their own words, they found home. finally found a community. They fit into with this style of networking. They tell others about it. So they become our word of mouth team.

so we have the word of mouth through all of them, which is awesome. because we call them our champions and they do that second. Public speaking. you know, this year I set a goal to get on 20 stages. I'm on 14 already, or scheduled through 14 now. So we'll hit our 20. But, getting in front of a room, speaking like I speak, you know, this directly and the likes gets a lot of people to lean in to our world and come take a look.

Podcast guesting, you know, Massively getting after it on LinkedIn. that's my platform, really getting after it from there. We do some summits. So, we have a micro summit called the champion summit, which we're getting ready to do here in Dallas, May 10th. and so we'll put six, five of our members up.

I'll come in, kick them off and then I'll close the whole thing out. But we're highlighting our members, let them show that. So this whole, this summit's all about from going from prospecting to actually closing a sale and then using the experts we have in the community to teach all this. So we'll market that, bring people in.

And then every year we do the Badass Business Summit. It's a three day conference here in Fort Worth, Texas, where it'll be a mix of half our members, half people that are, don't know much about us other than they wanted to come to a conference. so we bring it from there. The overall master plan, really is to become the world's largest B2B networking organization. because nobody's done it yet. There's massive networking organizations, but there's none that are massive focused on B2B. So that's where we're going.

[00:19:29] Jay: don't have much going on. That's basically what it

[00:19:31] Donnie: Oh, dude, I run a full working farm on top of this as well. So I have a dwarf, dwarf Nigerian farm. Funny thing for your listeners. No kidding.

Because people harass me to do this every Sunday. I post about my baby dwarf Nigerian goats on LinkedIn. So I'll put a video out about them. and he's gotten so crazy that literally people will send me DMS if I haven't gotten them out by a certain time.

[00:19:52] Jay: I mean, they're probably popular. What are the, how many do you have?

[00:19:55] Donnie: so at a given time, most we've had at one time is 22 babies at one time. we got one right now. So a lot of the videos we're putting out are from, you know, earlier in the year. So, but I got enough videos to carry through until we have our next round, which will be closer to, you know, September, October.

[00:20:11] Jay: Beautiful. All right. I have one final question for you, my friend. if you could do non business related, if you could do anything on earth and you knew you couldn't fail, what would it be?

[00:20:21] Donnie: Yeah, it's a funny question for me because it is business related. my biggest thing and we're going to build it anyways. you know, we are working towards building a massive ranch. So I want a 600 plus acre ranch and on the ranch, I want to create a huge executive receipt rather retreat. Also on this retreat.

I want to build a renaissance fair style park and a wildlife park. I want you to be able to go to a renaissance fair and see all the animals and the likes, but I also want you to be able to do corporate retreats and wake up and have a giraffe walking by your fucking window. Right. I just want to create a cool experience where we can do the things that my wife and I enjoy doing, you know, year round and be able to do multiple festivals and a cool town set up and like Christmas and different things.

And then, but I also want to bring businesses together because the one thing that I find is we all grew up in business where we had to be the business version of ourselves, right? We had to be this stoic button down slacks, you know, type version of ourselves. And it leads people to a lot of people to a very miserable life.

I want to create an environment where you can just come the fuck as you are, right? Blue jeans, t shirts, purple hair. I don't care. Right. But you can let your hair down. Let's do real business, but let's get business done, you know? And so I'm going to create that entire environment.

[00:21:44] Jay: What are you going to call it? Is it going to be Donnie world or something? Like, what

[00:21:47] Donnie: Yeah, Donnie Whirl, that's a hundred percent.

That's a good name. We should

[00:21:50] Jay: I mean, I love it, honestly. I think it's a great one. that's probably the first time someone has said, An animal theme park, executive ranch as their, answer to that. So you definitely win points for uniqueness there.

Donnie, if people want to find you, how did they do that? How did they reach out?

[00:22:06] Donnie: Well, before I do that, guys, if you're still sticking with us and you got any value out of this episode or any other episode, do Jay a favor. Take a screenshot wherever you're watching and listening to this and share this out to other people. I can promise you having my own show, the toughest thing in the world is to build a following and an audience.

So literally, if you'll share this out, tag me in it. If I see it, especially on LinkedIn, I will come engage with you and, you know, show you love by posting this out there, but literally this is like giving Jay a virtual hugs, whether it's this episode or any of his other episodes, promote this out for him.

It'll mean everything to him.

[00:22:38] Jay: I appreciate the virtual hug. I need as many hugs as I can get. so I appreciate that. And now how do people find you?

[00:22:45] Donnie: for sure. Donnie Boivin on LinkedIn, B as in boy, O I, V as in Victor, I N on LinkedIn, come hang out and it's Donnie with an I E successchampionnetworking. com or badassbusinesssummit. com. Wow. My

[00:22:57] Jay: Beautiful. You are a, a busy man. I think we started off with that and we'll end with that. get back to it, brother. you're awesome. I appreciate it and have a good rest of your week. All right. Thanks. See you, man. 

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