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144: The Paradox of Great Ideas and Work-Life Balance: Insights from Donnie Boivin · Imperfect Marketing

• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome back to Imperfect Marketing.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, kendra Corman.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Today I'm joined by Donnie Bovine, an entrepreneur, and he's the CEO and founder of Success Champions and Success Champion Networking.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: He's considered one of the leading global minds on sales, business development and business growth.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: He is the first person to make sales and business development relatable and human.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: He runs many businesses and, including that, he runs a full working farm with goats, chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: His podcast Growth Mode ranks among the top podcasts globally.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: He's a five-time best-selling author and highly sought-after public speaker.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining me today, donnie.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Kendra, this is going to be a lot of fun.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: The short banter we've already had.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I am so excited to talk about farming with you.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: It's going to be like the greatest episode ever.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: So I definitely want to jump.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: So for those of you who know me, you know my husband grew up on a farm in central Pennsylvania.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: They did cash crops.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Farming is not a work-life balance situation, at least not in the same level that most of us look to it to.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: And with animals I mean like they need to be fat and watered and like eggs taken and things like that.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: You act like it's a chore.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: I do act like it's a chore because it's not on my things to do.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I'd like to look at them.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: They're cute, and then I move on.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: So talk to me about business freedom and getting to business freedom while you farm and run multiple businesses.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love the question Having a farm.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: I grew up on a lot larger farm.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: As a kid we rented a house on a 500-acre farm and we helped maintain the property and whatnot.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: But I went full city life, full suburbia life for years after that and then, as my brand continued to grow, my wife wanted animals.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: I wanted to get out to the country because I really want to be the most famous person that nobody knows in my hometown so I can still go to the grocery store and things like that.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: So that's the reason we got away from it all.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: The interesting thing is I don't think most people understand the business they're actually building.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: I didn't for sure.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: When I first started building my business, I actually was trying to recreate the life I left when I left corporate America, because that's all I knew.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: I mean I knew working for others, having tons of employees, having overhead and buildings and all this stuff, and I really thought that's the direction I wanted to go.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: I really saw myself buying, you know, a five-six story building, renting out the different floors and the likes, and then one day, as I'm walking the farm, I'm like you know what I really kind of like just being out here.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: I really just like this lifestyle.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, as we sit right now, I'm in my typical ball cap, t-shirt and pajama bottoms.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: Because it's freaking comfortable.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: So what I had to learn is freedom is about building a business that fits your lifestyle, not building a crappy job for yourself.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: And I think what most people actually do is build that crappy job because that's the life they know and understand.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: So for me, it's a really, really fascinating, simple idea.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: It's figuring out what's the life you want to live and then figuring out how do you accomplish all the things you need to get done within that lifestyle.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: So, for instance and I always get people come at me when I tell this story, but because some people hear me as the hustling grind guy and I'm just not the hustling grind guy, I'm the do the work until the work is done guy.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: So I work primarily Monday through Friday.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Every Thursday at noon I take off a half day and we call it our farm day.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: My wife and I excluding July and August, because it's too damn hot out friggin we will be out working on projects on the farm and taking care of the animals.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: It's just our cool way of hanging out and spending time together.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: So rest of the time it's eight to five, and in the eight to five window I have got to accomplish everything that needs to get done within the business.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: That has to be accomplished.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: And it's a funny thing when you give yourself hard deadlines.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: And when you give yourself hard deadlines you get shit done and it's you know the matter of knowing what it takes.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: And so every day you're going to really have to prioritize your day, otherwise your business is going to go off the rails and you're going to find yourself back up in front of your computer at nine, 10 o'clock at night trying to get all the stuff done because you won't prioritize the things in the way they need to get done.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: So that's what I mean by business freedom.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: Is there tough days of managing farms, managing apps?
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: A fricking?
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Literally there are, but also the ability of sitting on my farm and running three companies, including then, additionally, the farm.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: If something goes wrong on the farm, I'm sitting right here, you know, and I can go help and take care of things.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: So I think people got to really think through what is the business they want and then how do they get the business to fit around that lifestyle, not the other way around.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: So I think is it the Pareto principle Work expands to fill the time you give it or task expands Pareto is 80-20, but it's something in there.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, something like that.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: I can't remember which one it is.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: But work expands to fill the time you allow for it.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Giving yourself hard deadlines is, I think, a fantastic way to go ahead and work on getting things done more efficiently.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: I had a guest on the podcast earlier this year, in 2023, that he said he gave you the secret to getting I think it's an hours worth of work done in 30 minutes, and his secret was you do this several times a year whenever you're planning to go on vacation.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: You prioritize, you don't take extra fluff meetings.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: You get that stuff done.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Yep and hat because you have a date in which you have to be done with it by and the stuff that doesn't really have to be done Doesn't get done.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: But all the stuff that needs to get done does get done.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Well and I look.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Sorry, I don't mean to jump in, but I put an addition to that is most of the things that Causes to be busy.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: If you will or think somebody else should be doing for us anyways.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: You know like somebody should be reading your email for you.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: You know somebody should be handling your social media.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Somebody should be handling a lot of your correspondence in general.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: You know somebody should be handling your marketing.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Somebody should be handling your automation type.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: You know the reason people get so caught up in doing all the things is because they came from a world of working for other people and you do it or you get fired.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: So you still have the mentality of if it's got to be done, I've got to do it and oh, by the way, let me put on every hat in the company and make sure it happens.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: Versus being an owner.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: An employee thinks how do I get this done?
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: An owner thinks who can get this done for me?
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: It's not about taking advantage about people.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: It's about understanding the people that should be working for you and giving them tasks to allow you to go grow the business which is your job.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: So how do you balance running the farm and all your businesses?
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Because you're telling me 8 to 5?
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, there's no balance there's so.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: So work life balance is a myth, and I'm huge on this because and and this is one of the number one things I get people come at me on social media For which I love is anybody who's looking for work life balance hates what they do.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: It's because, look, especially if you're running a company, you're never gonna stop thinking about that business.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: It's your freaking livelihood.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: What you got to do is quit beating yourself up for thinking about that business when you're hanging out the family Right, beat yourself present, go back to watching the baseball game.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: But you're not gonna stop thinking and some of your best ideas are gonna come when you're watching a little kids baseball league or when you're at the freakin Sunday supper dinner, because you're gonna hear things, because you're around a bunch of people that aren't running businesses, so they're not thinking in the same regards.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: And I found that oftentimes my family lasts because, obviously, sitting down at dinner and all sudden I'll get that idea.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: I'll walk up, grab my phone, type it in, I'll just come back and sit down and be right back in the moment.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: But but there's, there's no such thing as work life bounce.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: I will tell you that I am Extremely regimented in my day because I have to be.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: So I'm up 350 in the morning and I'm not a miracle morning guy.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: I'm not telling people that gotta do this cool morning routine or any crap like that.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: This just works for me.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: I'm up early, I'll take my German shepherds out, we'll go walk the farm.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: It's been something I've been doing for a while.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: 45 minutes I usually listen to a podcast and that's just my think time.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: That's my time to Get the day off in the right foot and start thinking about things I'm gonna do.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: And then I'm about 90 to two hours to wake up the farm and get all the critters out and the likes.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: And here's what I tell everybody.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: I have no choice in the matter that every morning I have to let the animals out.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: There's no days off from that period.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: You don't get them right.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Every evening I have to put the animals and critters to bed.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: They can't put themselves to bed.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: So when I say, do the work until the work's done, there are things you absolutely have to do in your business.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: There's no way around them.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Your day doesn't finish until those things are done.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: And that's gonna require your business development.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: It's gonna require your freaking communication stuff.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: It's gonna require for you to give tasks and orders to people for things for them to do, and you have to do those things every day and if you don't, you're gonna go right back to that crappy job.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: And you're gonna go right back and I'm not saying going back to corporate America, I'm just saying you're gonna create a crappy job.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: So I'm extremely regimented in what I do and the worst thing that can happen for me out throughout the day is to have somebody like Miss a meeting or something and all of a sudden I got an open hour Because I've delegated things out so far.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Trying to backfill that space drives me bonkers Because I'm so task-oriented giving things to other people.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: But you got to get extremely regimented with everything you do.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: No, I love that and I love the permission To think about your business, because people are like, oh, you work too hard, but I love it, right, I love what I do.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: I truly love it, don't get me wrong any time away.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: And I like to be present when I'm at other things, but Doesn't mean I'm not thinking about my business or you know, and and that's just nice to have permission to do that because, again, I love what I do.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Well, and I think that's the whole reason we all I mean, there's a couple reasons people got into business.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Most of them is they.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: Somewhere along the line you realized you were Unemployable, like you should not work for anybody else.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's, that's my story.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: I'm not a good employee and you know.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: The second part side of things is you wanted to see what you were made of, and and business is a surefire way to meet the dude in mirror, and I used to do it universally, but there's no greater, greater tool on the planet to meet the person.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: You are Then trying to build a business, right?
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: You're just gonna be seen what you're made of and for me, I'm not gonna lie and say I don't have escapism.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: Like I play game, like I have fortnight on my freaking computer, because every once in a while you just need to mind mush the hell out and and turn everything off and escape into something and it allows you to recalculate recenter.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: And it's the same thing for me riding the back of a tractor because you can't listen to the podcast, because the tractor so damn loud, is a great way to completely zone out and escape everything.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: And you'll be amazed when, when that stuff does break through.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: I just try and be intentional with it every morning, with the walks.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I think that's great.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: My husband gets up at four o'clock he's a farmer, so that I think that's a trend, whereas I'm like my day is gonna end when it ends no matter what, oh, you and my wife would get along great.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Except for the fact that he makes me get up with him.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Um no, he lets me I get to.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: He gets two hours by himself and then he's like all right, let's go.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: We're very similar.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, all right.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: So let's let's talk a little bit about podcasting, because you have your own podcast and I heard that podcasting saved your business it did.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: So I was in gosh about six months into the business and, with my wife Elizabeth upstairs asleep in our room, I walk out the back door of the farm and her Jeep is missing.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: So I call the police and I say, hey, I think somebody stole my wife's Jeep.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: And the police quickly informed me that no, it hasn't been stolen, had been repossessed.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: So I was six months in, I had no idea how to run a business and I was doing a piss-poor job of actually trying to figure this out.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: My wife didn't know this at the time, but I'd already cashed in my 401k Trying to make all the ends meet.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: So now I had to go in the house and tell my wife, and not only had a Jeep been Repossessed, but we were three months behind on the mortgage.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: So I love that woman.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: She's right or die.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: She went in and cashed in her 401k to make one last bet.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: So I had a buddy reach out to me about a week or two after we went through all that and said, hey, I got a speaking engagement for you in Fort Worth, texas.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: And I said, cool, he goes.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: It's a sales conference.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: And at the time one of my biggest struggles is I was on an un-non-compete that I couldn't talk about sales anywhere in the world Because my last career is with the international sales training organization, so I couldn't talk about sales.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: I'm like, dude, I can't love to do it, but I can't talk about sales.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: Don't worry about time, I sales.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Just come in and tell your sales story.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: I'm like, cool, I can do that.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: So I show up to the event, do the speech, had a great time, get off stage and everybody likes to come up and talk to you after you speak on stage and stuff.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: And a guy came up to me.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: He goes man, I love your energy, I love your story, would you come tell your story on my podcast?
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: And I said, what the hell is a podcast?
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: This was April of 2018.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: And he said you know, it's kind of like talk radio.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: Well, come on, I'll bring you out to my set and we'll have some fun.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: So went out, drove, the Dallas did.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: His set had an absolute blast.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: You could tell that I hadn't talked much on podcast.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: My stories were just rambling all over the place and but the show aired two days later and one of his listeners reached out becoming asked if they could, I could come help them With their company and the things they were into, and I went wait, no, this podcast thing might be something.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: So and, by the way, if you ever guessed and getting clients out of being a guest, it's not something that happens on a regular occasion.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Don't let me put that delusion out there, but I went on a bunch of shows.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: Some of them were fantastic.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Some of them not so good and it was enough of the not so good shows that I'm like, man, I should just launch my own show.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: So I launched my first podcast in May of 2018 and it took off and and we had seen some really cool success and I found myself having some of the biggest names in a world actually reaching out to be a guest on the show Charlene Johnson, neil Patel, mike McAlewitz, you know and their teams were reaching out to be guest on the show and here I was trying to figure out what my business wasn't like.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, god, these guys need to be on my show.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: I can't have this kind of crap show of a process trying to deal with these people getting all this stuff.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: So that's when I started learning to outsource and I started learning to hire and started learning into bringing in editors and people to Do all the the things and automation specialists.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: So it taught me business in a sense, of the operational side of things I could sell.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: That was fine.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: It was the everything that happens after the sale.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: I had no freaking clue how to do.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: So it really taught me a lot of things, so much so that I ended up creating a six Well, almost seven figure podcast production company for corporations On the backside of that, because we got just so good at integrating with the team.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: So it taught me business at the end of the day, but it also taught me how to network in extremely high levels, which was fun.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: I love that and yes, I agree with you, you don't always get business out of guesting, but I've actually had.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: I've gotten business from guests, my show they've shared the episode.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the secret.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: They shared the episode and then other people started to follow me.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: They build the relationship then that no like and trust factor, and all of a sudden they're buying from me later and it's.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: It's just such a powerful tool podcasting, I think it's.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: You know, there's, there's a lot going around in the world and I am a huge fan of AI Because, as you're talking about from an operation standpoint, I mean it helps with automation.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: It helps, I mean it cuts tons of time out of my day.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: I had three hours a week on just on the podcast alone, just being able to leverage AI, and so it's a very, very powerful tool.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: But with all this AI, so much content's becoming mediocre.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just talking to someone about blogging and we were talking about lots of mediocre content Thanks to AI.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: But it you know, on podcasts, when I'm talking to you and don't get me wrong like yes, people can fake it with AI and blah, blah, blah, but when we're talking and when we're sharing stories and expertise, it takes the content up Above mediocre and it depends on the guest.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Let's see how far above mediocre it goes, but it's about getting better content out there.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd agree with that.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: I think that AI is gonna hurt a lot of people from the ones and so so I had a guy on my show.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: We were talking about how AI is gonna really screw up sales for the next few generations, and the reason being is, if you look at your emails that come into your inbox, you're getting the same generic email from different companies saying the same stupid thing, because everybody's going to AI and say write an email to a CEO of a company that looking blah, blah, blah, right, so they're getting the same generic stuff was fascinating when Email marketing first hit the marketplace.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: All this old-school guys who are cold-collars like that email stuff's not gonna work.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: We're not gonna do that, we're not gonna play with it.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: And then email marketing and all the marketing teams came to the table.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: Next thing, you know, we were getting leads coming in rembox from the email marketing.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: And then that went to like this tidal wave of people doing Email marketing and now email marketing to nowhere near as strong as it used to be when it first started.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: And that's where we are with.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Ai is Out the gate.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: Initially it's gonna do some really cool things, but eventually it's just gonna saturate the market.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: And the sad thing is is the kids that came up behind us to sell have no clue how to write an email.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Because, it's all done by you know, the remarketing teams are now being done by AI, even Saturn for me is these young up-and-comers don't know how to cold-call Because they've never had to do it, and what's so frustrating with that is right now, cold-call is actually one of the best tools and sales Because nobody else is doing it like ah well, ai, this crap all the way out there.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: And so all those old guys are a little bit great hair or whatnot.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: We're picking up the phone.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: I just hired a company of Seven outbound callers to do nothing but sell tickets for my upcoming summit.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: Because I know it gets around all the noise, but that's.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: That's the thing is, everything is good and everything's bad if you don't use it in the right, proper context.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: So it's gonna be fascinating To see what this generation behind this is gonna be doing with everything and how much AI is gonna affect that overall.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: I Agree with that a hundred percent because I mean I just had an email series back and forth with a client.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: I'll say we had four back and forth my normal rule is three and then I put it down and I called her.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: But to get one of my interns to make a phone call, you, it's like I'm asking them to like cut off their hand.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: I'm like no, make a phone call.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: And they're like no, I was working with my niece on.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: She had a project for econ and I was helping her out with it and I was like, alright, you're gonna call and do research, you're gonna call the store and you're gonna ask them About these sneakers, the after this paper on.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: And I said, so tell me, you know, ask him.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Here's the questions I want you to ask him my introducers.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: She cried.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: She cried, high school student balling, whining.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: I'm like this is not torture.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: I Going to do this.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: I had a client who was almost 30 years old.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: I was telling her to say the same exact thing.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: Almost 30 years old and full on breaking down tears that she couldn't pick up the phone.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: I'm like what's the worst thing that can happen to you right now, is it?
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: Your response was go hang up on me.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: I'm like yeah.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: It's like okay, so what?
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: There's only two things to be scared of death and dismemberment.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: So Cold calls are not either of those.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, when you're looking at marketing again, I think you're right.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Nothing is all good or all bad.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: It, you know, to any extent, but it's about using the right tools in the right places and and Leveraging them and making sure that you're not being mediocre, and I think that that's really important.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think what most people don't understand is we all suck at everything until we no longer suck.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's just the way it is, and I think there's a lot of things that play in there, head trash being the biggest one.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: You know, no matter what you're trying, whether it's marketing, whether it's sales, you're going to be clunky out the gate.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: You're going to look silly, you're going to look goofy.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Things just aren't going to work.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: You have to have all that stuff.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: Look silly, you have to have all that stuff.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: Look clunky.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: You've got to be willing to make a fool of yourself, because that's where you learn everything.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: And what people don't understand is usually, at the moment of some sort of frustration, that you actually learn stuff, because you're going to get to a point where, like, okay, this sucks.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: There's got to be a better way of doing this.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: And that's where us lazy guys that want to do this minimal as possible to find as much success as possible, we'll find every shortcut in a book, just so we don't have to go through that long, boring ass process.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: And that's where innovation comes through and that's where the business breakthrough comes through.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: And it's like for most people when you're building a business.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: The first business you drew out the gate is not going to be the business you end up with, because you're going to try all these different things.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: They're going to get better and better and everything you've learned up to that point you're going to apply to whatever this business is, and it can be broken down.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: The same thing as if you're out doing a sort of networking and meeting people.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: The first 20, 30 events you go to you're going to look like that junior high kid that everybody picked on, you know, because you're just awkward, clunky and weird.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: And eventually you're going to find a rhythm to it and be able to have the right conversations and figure out what's the point of doing everything.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: And you've got to embrace those frustrating moments, those moments when everything just feels just awkward and weird and you don't know what the hell you're doing.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: Those need to become some of the funnest moments in your business, because that is when you're actually learning everything.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, and I think you know we think that it's not good and we think that you know we're making fools of ourselves and we think because we're a lot harder judge, yes.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Of ourselves than other people are.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: And so, yes, my first couple of episodes of imperfect marketing.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: They sucked, like if you go back and listen to them.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: They sucked, but there's other people that liked them and they didn't judge me nearly as hard as I did myself.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: So you know it really comes down to, you know, getting over that, because you're really not that important to other people that they're going to judge you that harshly and it's all about moving forward.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: You know, keeping things going.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just on the podcast everybody probably brings back to Joe Rogan.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, let's go listen to Joe's early stuff.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: He was horrible, right.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: And then he just come off fear factor and you know his stuff was bad.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: The dude's got 14, 15 years of these fantastic conversations and the dude is self-aware as hell.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: And where most podcasts hosts screw up is they have no self-awareness.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: They don't actually know who the hell they are.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: So the conversations always are very dry because everybody's talking in kind of these sound bites.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: You know they have their key things they're going to say at the given moment in time.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: That's why a lot of shows don't work and a lot of shows don't get a lot of traction.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: Right, you've got to be able to put out original thought and have real dialogues and real conversations with people.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: But that only comes from repetition and only comes from doing it.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: It only comes from getting punched in the face by trying new things.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: And you're 100% right, because my mom was probably the only person she said it was amazing, but she was the only person that listened to episode one, I mean.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: It's 100% satisfaction.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: You're all good, right, all good.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: So no, but I agree with you on that, because it does come down to not being as hard on ourselves.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: And you know again, just, you're not going to get better at it if you don't start.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, there was a tick tock that went around for a little while and it was a group of billionaires just sitting around talking.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: They're like the only way to get successful, the only way to get wealthy, the only way to do anything is to start, because it's in the start that everything you start to learn and they were went on to say you know everything compounds once you learn a skill set.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: You don't learn that skill set.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: You might be a little clunky at it.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: You know, if you haven't done like.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: I went back to an after hours networking event last week.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: I haven't done that in freaking forever, but a bunch of clients asked me to come out, so I decided to come out.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: I really don't get off the farm that often and I go out and I'm like, oh God, this is going to be so horrible because I haven't done this in probably four or five years.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: And now here we go.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go out and go networking and it was funny to watch my clients watch me work a room, because it was like riding a bike for me.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: I'm just going around introducing people, collecting names, getting information and doing a couple of funny tricks like so your listeners can use it If you're ever at a networking event and you get cornered by that person that won't shut up or leave you alone and, like you're just locked in, fake a phone call on your phone.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: Hit a button on the phone so the screen lights up and just take that as a fake phone call and go.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Sorry, I got to walk away.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: I did that at this last event and all the people around me were like wow, you took a phone call right in the middle of that and I showed them the phone.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: They're like wait you faked that.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: I'm like yeah, I totally just faked that phone call to get away because the guy just would not shut the hell up.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, and it, yeah, it's important and yeah, you don't forget the things that that you experience.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: So I think that's really important too, and you just keep adding to it.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: So the more you do, the more you start, the more you learn.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: And what do they say?
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: The more you fail, the more you learn and move forward too.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: So fail fast.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm on a mission to almost try and reframe the word fail, and the only reason is I like the idea of experiment because I think life is an experiment and if you look at life as an experiment, you never really fail at the thing that experiment didn't work.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: Cool.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: So, let's take what we freaking learned from that moment and let's you know, apply that learning and go forward and try it again.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: And then you just get to try and screw up a whole bunch of different experiments and, let's be honest, some of those failed science projects turned into some really cool things.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: So you know, it works well for me to reframe it that way.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm a big, huge fan of experimentation.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: I talk about it regularly in the podcast.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: So, as anybody who's a regular listener knows, I am a huge fan of experimentation because you have to try things to see what works and what doesn't.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: So I do like reframing that from failure.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, donnie, for joining me today.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it and I appreciate all that.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: You shared Such an interesting story.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: I love your perspective on being regimented and not allowing work to expand beyond the framework that you've given it, and your story about how podcasting saves your business.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: That's a very powerful story and I do appreciate it, but the one thing that I ask all my guests.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: So, before you leave, I need to get an answer to one more question, and that is the show is called Imperfect Marketing.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: As we all know, imperfect Marketing, or marketing, is anything but a perfect science.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: So, knowing that, what has been your biggest marketing lesson learned?
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: Love it.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: And before I answer that, guys, if you've hung out with us this long on the show and you've got any tips, tricks, any value out of this episode, do Kendra a favor, take a screenshot of wherever you're listening to this.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: Tag it on social media.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: If you tag me, if you tag Kendra, I promise we'll come, comment and engage.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: But share this out with one person, because having my own show building out of audience is one of the toughest things in the world.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: But you sharing this out to one person I need to see whether it's this episode or any other episode you've enjoyed.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: Share it to one person to answer your question.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: So the end.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: This is still an ongoing learning process.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: I named my summit the Badass Business Summit.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Let's be honest, actually some clients did.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: When we did that.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: We built out the website, we built all the stuff, we rented the convention center.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: We did all the things.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: Then we found out the word Badass.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: You can't run ads too.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: You can't run Facebook ads.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: you can't run LinkedIn Google ads, oh my gosh.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: So when we've tried to go around and we created another website called Events with an Edge, we're like, okay, we'll go two steps and try and run ads.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: So for me now, when we think about anything coming up, we're very conscious of what do we call this and we look at all the additional parameters.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: Can you run ads with this?
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Can you do whatever, Because having a brand new summit where only a handful of people know about it, do you want to talk and have to go?
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: Old school sales tactics to fill the damn thing Because you can't run ads and stuff.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: It was a massive lesson learned.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: So be cognizant of what the heck you're putting out there and look at all the things.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Don't do what I typically do Go oh, that's a good idea to run that direction.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: Do due diligence.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: It'll save you a lot of damn heartache.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, progress over perfection.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: But, yeah, you definitely need to do your research and make sure you know what you're doing right.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: So, again, it doesn't have to be perfect, but B plus work is always a good target.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: So this has been, again, a fantastic conversation.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining me today, donnie I do really appreciate it and for all of you listening, if you got anything out of this, we'd appreciate if you shared it.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: I love Donnie's suggestion of sharing that in social media and tagging it and getting it into one other person's hands.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: That would really help me out.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: Otherwise, rate and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: We do appreciate it and have a great rest of your day.