Are you where you want to be? Podcast host and business owner Donnie Boivin shares his experience of transforming his life from someone who was building a great retirement for others into a business owner creating an amazing future for himself and his family. Donnie tells of the struggles and trials he faced and shares with Corey how he had to change his mindset and become a totally different person to step into his new role and to meet the challenges of becoming a business owner. Join Corey and Donnie to get insights on how you can be the next level of yourself and truly live the life you deserve.
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Who Do You Have To Become To Get The Life You Deserve with Donnie Boivin
How To Step Into The Future You Truly Deserve
Do you know what’s fun for a podcast host? That is to interview another podcast host because one thing that successful thinkers like to do is surround themselves with other people who surround themselves with people who are better than they are. I’ve got a guy I’m bringing on that is going to be a lot of fun. We’re all about fun here because we know that America’s taken itself way too serious right now here. This man whose name is Donnie Boivin, the host of Success Champions Podcast and probably got nine or ten irons in the fire, is really going to add some serious value to all of us. Donnie, welcome to the show. How’s it going?
It’s awesome. I’m honored to be on here. Thanks for letting me be a part of your show.
You have over two decades of experience in sales. You were in this job, and you decided about age 40 that you had been living on other people’s dreams and you weren’t really chasing your own. Can you tell us about how you decided to take a big risk and jump out of that and start your own business?
I was crazy. I’m that guy who thinks that you should throw the parachute out the plane and catch it on the way down. What happened was for several years of my career, I was 40 years old and I realized that as one of my business partners put it, he was grateful that I was his retirement plan. I was really good at making other people wealthy. It was a series of things that happened that led up to it. I realize that I had never looked at life and said, “This is what I should be doing.” I always did what was in front of me. I always seem to be successful. I always seem to win, but it was only because it was in front of me. It took me having a rude awakening at the age of 40 going, “I wonder what life would be or look like if I finally went in all on me.” I was sitting in a meeting one day, I had the light bulb moment that some people get and realize that it was time to jump out of my own. That’s what I did. It’s been a fun journey so far jumping out and figuring all this stuff out.
When you first started, you had told me that you were doing okay, but you weren’t crushing it. Can you tell me about what you learned that really helped you turn things around?
I had this crazy thought that everything would be sunshine and rainbows. I was a successful sales guy. I was well known in my area, had a great network. I also didn’t understand that I’d spent my entire career as an employee. When I launched my business, I tried to create a job for myself versus a company. It was a wicked transition. The light bulb moment for me was my business actually was going on the rocks and things were falling apart. It was because I hadn’t wrapped my head around running a business. Luckily in truth, I found podcasting. That’s what saved everything. It taught me processes, operations, procedures the business development side of the strategy and everything for me. It forced me to become a business owner.
If you working in a job you hate, don't stay there. Share on XWhen you’re interviewing some of the top people in the world that I have had the privilege on the show, you can’t do things willy-nilly. I had to put automation in and processes. The biggest light bulb for me at that moment became that I understood I never really bet on me my entire life. Now, that I had launched my own business, I was starting to figure out how I worked mentally. How I worked on the inside, how I function and grew. It became this cool evolutionary type thing where I was evolving into a better version of myself. That became the key to a lot of my success with everything I’ve done with my business so far.
Did you develop a process for self-development and for teaching yourself what to do and how to do it?
I tell everybody it’s a really hard thing to learn. It’s like getting punched in the face over and over again by life. Here’s what I understood is I don’t think anybody’s a natural born salesperson. You grow into it. You learn through the processes and I learned a lot of things. I learned how to be a good sales guy. It took me a minute of experiencing failure in my business before I started wrapping my head around what it was going to take to run a successful business. I learned that the process for me, and I coach a lot of people through it now, is stepping into the fire as I call it which is stepping into the fear.
I know for a fact that if a fear pops up for you in your career, your life, your business or whatever, that’s 99.9% of the time the universe is saying that’s the direction you need to go. It’s not about facing your fears. It never is. It’s about who you become when you’ve faced your fears. It’s about that evolution of you and that leveling up that you need to do. The thing that I embraced and learned most was the person I am right now is not the person I needed to become to get where I need to go. It’s this whole thought process of what fear am I not stepping into to allow me to move forward and then redoing that over and over again so I can get to that next level if that makes sense.
I’d like to highlight a couple of things there. I know that feeling of being moderately successful because you’re putting a moderate amount of effort into it. That allows you to sidestep the big gate because you’ve got a decent house, you’ve got a place to live, you have enough food. There’s that one day where you say, “I should be doing more to help more people.” What motivates you then to keep going to grow yourself out of your comfort zone?
For me, it’s the interactions with the fans. My wife and I’ve had the luxury of buying our dream farm that we live on. We have two houses on the property, that one we built for my mother-in-law so she could stay there. We’ve got everything that we really need. Throwing a little bit of traveling in there, but it’s not stuff, it’s not anything. For us, it’s watching the people step into themselves. Growing up, I was the guy that was constantly seeking people who had done things in life and then asked them how they did that. When I was in sales, I went and found the top salesperson and said, “How’d you get here?” I started following that path and usually would get beyond whatever success they had found.
I realize along that journey that there are two people in life. There are the people that are carving the path and then there are the people that are following. For me, I know that I’ve followed for 40 years, other people’s dreams and stories and everything else. Now, I have the privilege, the fun side of being the guy who carves a trail and leading people along the way. What’s fun is as other people seem to be following along on the journey and doing the things that I talk about, I just feed off of their success. At the end of the day, that’s what inspires me most to keep going for it.
That’s one of the things that I truly believe is that many people are afraid to step into any kind of creative work because they’re afraid that some people aren’t going to their work. The fact is that some people aren’t going to their work, but it’s really important to be a beacon for those people who need to hear what you have to say.
Two seconds on that is one I tell everybody. When you start getting the people that don’t like your stuff, that’s when you know it’s working. Here’s what I mean. Your friends and family are going to tell you whatever you do are awesome and great and you’re awesome. At some point, you’re going to grow beyond your friends and family. When you start getting the naysayers, you start getting the people that they call haters or are the people that are trolling you on social media and everything else. When those things start happening, start celebrating because that’s when you know you’re going big enough that you’ve begotten on your friends and family. At the end of the day, I’ve got empathy for those people because people are consuming social media on such a high level right now. They’re inundated with it.
Everybody’s playing on Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat or whatever that thing is but people are there consuming time. The fact that they would pause in whatever they’re doing to consume my stuff or anybody’s stuff and then bash that person, I’ve got empathy because why does that make them feel good? Misery loves company. That person gets two seconds of joy by trying to knock me down or anybody else down. If that gives them two seconds of joy, I’m empathetic because that’s as high as they’re going to rise. If that is your life, that makes you feel good, cool, more power to you. If more people will embrace that thought process they have to pause their life, which is probably not that great anyway, to try and knock you down a notch. They’ve got some weird sense of joy, God loves him. That’s how you know it’s working is when the naysayers show up. That’s when you know that you’re down the right path.
That’s so great because that’s what Successful Thinkers do. They realize that people are stuck in the consciousness that they have grown into thus far. I always feel bad for them because it must be terrible to have a life to where you get joy out of making other people feel bad.
It’s that misery loves company thing. You’ve got people with this mindset and it’s unconscious. They’re not coming out to bash you. They don’t feel good about themselves, so now they’re going to come out and try and get you to engage with their misery. I learned this from a guy over in the UK is you just don’t acknowledge that power. When somebody bashes you some way negative, honor it. This guy’s way of handling it was somebody called him some filthy names and he turned it into a joke and said, “Not now.”
Words are just words. They're not going to slow you down unless you over internalize it. Share on XIt’s that thought process of the person who’s making a comment who doesn’t know you personally most times. If they’re going to bash you, they don’t know you personally. It’s not a personal attack. It’s trying to get you engaged to their level. Have fun with it and realize that they did not physically walk up and punch you in the face. The whole thing “sticks and stones may hurt me, but words” all that, whatever that phrase goes, will totally destroy you. Words are just words. They’re not going to slow you down unless you over internalize it and realize these people have no power over you. You step into it. Who cares what they say and keep rolling?
One of the things I find hysterical, I was watching a YouTube video and it was a video by a really famous singer. There were 250,000 likes and 32 dislikes. If you’re going to go ahead and say 250,000 people are wrong, there’s a little bit of math problem I have with that.
That one to note could be the 32 people that don’t like her style of music. It’s like country and opera. Some people that listen to country music are never going to listen to opera. They could be flipping through the channels and just happened to land on there and are totally into opera, and it’s a country song and I’m out.
It’s important that we as people who want to do something bigger in life, regardless of if it’s a creative thing, if it’s a business move you want to make or even a personal change, we shouldn’t stop. I think that’s what you’re saying because those people exist. In fact, what we should do is let those people motivate us.
Here’s the thing, because I love the whole premise of your show and I want to make sure that point gets across. If you hate your life, if you hate your career, if you hate whatever you’re doing, then you need to 100% change that life. Change that path, change that direction because if you’re doing something you absolutely love, if you do something you embrace. I don’t tell anybody to turn their passion into their business. I tell them to create a business so they can do their passion more. If you’re going down that path, then it won’t matter what the naysayers are saying along the way. If you’re in a job that you hate, if you’re in a career that you despise, get out of it and start something that allows you to step into your greatness and be that next level version of yourself.
Take it from a guy that never chose a career path, that took the next thing that was in front of him. You don’t understand the misery of that until you get on the other side of it. I love telling people I’m completely unemployable at this point because there’s no way I could ever go work for somebody else. Just flat out, I’m unemployable because the minute somebody tries to tell me what to do and I know they don’t have the experience level that I’ve had so far, there is no way I’m going to follow that lead. Life’s too short to be in something you completely hate. Get out, start something, create something and have fun with life.
Life You Deserve: Life’s too short to be in something you completely hate. Get out, create something, and have fun with life.
Professionally, I’m a pharmacist and one of the things that I see is people literally coming to me month after month and they’re dying from their job. Why stay in a job that will kill you? One of the things that keep people from stepping out is they don’t realize how many possibilities there are. As a podcast host, you must have seen some people who have some really what you and I might call it bizarre careers but are working for them. Can you tell us about any of those?
What immediately comes to mind is one, Lucinda Bakken White. She’s a bone healer. She comes from Silicon Valley. She was a major VP in a major company. She had the Porsches, the huge lifestyle, the huge career and she walked away from it all and she is a bone healer. It goes totally now with almost shamanism type of things. It’s a little bit out there, but she has such energy and passion. She’s got a massive following of people. She’d written a book, that’s one. A lot of people have become speakers, coaches, authors, writers and poets that are running very successful poetic careers. People who are musicians, you name it. Anything that you can find joy with you can have and turn into a business. Some of the people turned a hobby that they had into two full-time careers.
Donald Dodson comes to mind. He was working a very successful career and he walked away and turned his hobby into a full-time business. Now, he is a full-time leatherworker. He builds a leather armor, bags and totes and he works the crafts. Shawna Barnes is the same thing. She was working a pretty successful career, got disabled due to an illness and now is a full-time professional sculptor. She speaks all over talking about disabilities and sculpting at the same time and turning that into a full career. A lot of people are stuck in this 9 to 5 game, and there’s nothing wrong with a 9 to 5 except that it makes most people unhealthy because of two things. One, they’re living a lie. They’re not necessarily chasing what they want to be. I say that with one caveat is some people love working for other people. If that’s you, stay there.
I’m not trying to convince you to get out of that realm by any means. My mom and dad worked for people their entire lives and we’re happy that entire go. Be that, do that. If you’re that person sitting around completely miserable with what you do, start something, anything to try and create that next level version of yourself. It can be literally anything. In this day and age, I have a theory that big businesses are eventually going to go away because you’re going to lose all the worker bees. It’s so easy to start a business. It’s very difficult to make a successful, profitable business, but you can very easily create a business. In this economy that we’re in, in this world we’re living in, all you need is your phone and internet connection. You can create quite a lot. You can start a podcast with all that.
One thing I want to share is that the reason I got started into this is that I needed a serious self-esteem boost because I was getting my butt kicked at work. Whenever I thought that things are going well, my manager would come in and have fourteen more things for me to do or fifteen complaints about things that were beyond my control. When I started writing, and podcasting and I started my magazine, all of a sudden, my self-esteem began to rise and I started feeling like a person again. What that did for my health is it exponentially improved dramatically. I was then one who wants to say, “I’m not just this cog in a wheel.” All of a sudden, you can start making a plan and it doesn’t necessarily have to be an exit plan, but it can be. It can be a retirement plan because guys you and me, we don’t retire. We keep going. One of the things that you said before and this is important to highlight, is that you needed to change your thinking if you are going to change your results. That’s what we’re really hoping that the audience will get out of our talk.
I’ll go back to who you are right now is not who you need to become to get where you want to go. Who you are right now is what got you exactly where you’re at. It got you to this level of success in your life. Success is only defined by the individual. Nobody can define success for you. If that’s the case, I will challenge your audience to look at themselves and go, “Who do I need to become that next level version of myself?” A mentor and coach friend of mine said, “Donnie, you’ll never learn more about yourself than you ever will until you start a business.”
Who you are right now is not who you need to become to get where you want to go. Share on XThe reason being is most people haven’t put themselves in a spot to shock their systems so bad, to freak themselves out so much that they have to go internally to discover themselves. That’s what happened to me is that I didn’t know myself until I launched my business. The reason being is it’s 100% on me. There are no scapegoats. If the business is a success, it’s on me. If the business fails, it’s on me. On the word failure, I don’t ever believe in failure because the only time you fail is when you quit. Otherwise, you’re just practicing.
I love that because everybody thinks that successful people have a straight line from the bottom to the top.
I don’t even know where that thought process comes from other than I thought the same thing. I put successful people on this pedestal as I was coming up through the ranks. If that guy’s on stage, if he’s got a book or if he’s a CEO of a major company, then they were something beyond what I could get to. It was my mentality. The truth of the matter is after interviewing so many of them, meeting so many of them and sharing stages with a lot of them, here’s what I can tell you. We all have the same story, “Let me tell you where I screwed up along the way. Let me tell you this time where it didn’t go so well.” The difference between people who have found some level of success and others is they’re willing to get punched in the face and keep moving forward.
It’s the greatest quote of all time by Rocky Balboa. “Life is not about how hard you can hit. It’s about how hard you can take a hit and keep moving forward.” That’s the answer is knowing that you’re going to take the hits and just keep progressing, keep stepping, keep moving forward. That’s really at the end of the day, the answer is there is no such thing as an overnight success. There is no such thing as this automatic millionaire and I’ll prove it. Go look at everybody who’s won the lottery. They won one day and it’s gone the next. Most times they’re worse off than they were before they won it. It’s all about stepping into it, going for it and knowing that you’re going to get your face punched in over and over again, but it’s a matter of going, “That one hurt. That was a good one.”
It’s so important because there have been many times in my career as a pharmacist even where your knees got buckled and you get up and say, “I can do this.” One of the things that you have to be able to do is to learn how to talk to yourself. One of the things we talk about in The Successful Thinker is the law of the story where if you want a better life, you’ve got to tell yourself a better story. Have you learned how to talk to yourself in a positive light over the years?
This one’s so fun especially right now in my life. I’m studying this deeply. I’ve always known a couple of things. One, I always have known about a gremlin that lives inside of me. This is a dude that has been with me my entire ride and I think everybody’s got one. He knows the good, the bad, the ugly and everything else. I also have known my entire journey that most people become the stories they tell themselves over and over again. That gremlin doesn’t want success. He wants us to keep everything comfortable, hunky-dory. He doesn’t want you to step into your greatness because every time you do it requires him to get out of his comfort zone. One of the only ways you can shut up that gremlin is by punching him in the face. What I mean is you change the story. Stop listening to yourself and start talking to yourself.
Life You Deserve: Change the story. Stop listening to yourself and start talking to yourself.
I can promise you that you can manifest a life. Let me clarify this because this is where I tell people, “I’m not full woo-woo, I just woo.” What I mean is I hate the phrase that you hear in Think and Grow Rich where it says, “If you think that you can become,” or however words are in there. If I’m a seven foot, 500-pound guy, I’m never going to be a jockey. I don’t care how many times I tell myself I’m going to be a jockey. What I do believe is I can manifest abundance in my life. I can manifest a better lifestyle for me. When I launched my business, I would say things such as, “I have no idea how to run a business. I have no idea how to run operations. I don’t know how to deliver it.” I kept manifesting those ideas in my life. Once I started changing a phrase to, “I’m a world-class speaker. I’m an awesome business owner. I know how to develop business and revenue for me.”
Once I started changing the story, my business started changing and it’s because I look at it this way. I created my own choose your own adventure book. If you grew up on those books, path A took you in one direction, path B took you in another direction. The negative self-talk, the things where I told myself I couldn’t become something that turned me down one particular story, one avenue. When I started telling myself, “I am successful, I am great,” I’m not saying you don’t still have to put in work. I’m just saying that the universe steps in a little bit better and goes, “He wants more of that. Let’s give more of that.” Whatever story you tell yourself, that’s what you become.
One of the things that I think is that we are really an energy field that expands fifteen feet in all directions. When you’re putting out this negative energy, this, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” that’s what the world is absorbing. I want to make a very important distinction. Something that you keep saying is who do I have to become and not necessarily what do I have to do?
It’s all inside of you. I never was as bad as some of the guys. A lot of guys that I interviewed seem to have this similar story if they had to go conquer Corporate America and get the big cars, the big houses, the big stuff. I really thought that they’ve got to accomplish X or they can’t to do something that miraculously they would start enjoying life. What they all discovered was once they got there, they were still the same person. They were still that same individual. I tell people, the reason people screw up when they lend and watering it and they end up losing it all is because you have bigger issues than you have now. That means if you’re an alcoholic before you won the lottery, you’re still an alcoholic when you won the lottery. You’re just drinking higher-end crap.
You take you everywhere you go. The answer is not externally. The answer is 100% internal. Meaning who do you need to become? If you don’t know something, go learn something. If you don’t know sales, go get a sales job. If you don’t know how to run a business, go get around mentors and people who have run successful businesses and up your game. I’m one foot on the fence on this whole idea that you become the five people you surround yourself with because I believe that there is some truth. There is some influence from those five people. I also know this, is if you know yourself and you’re up in your own game then those five people won’t influence you so much because you know you and you can be empathetic, not sympathetic. Empathetic to where those people are in your journey so you can become more and it won’t influence you as much.
I’m more worried about what you are consuming when you’re commuting, when you’re mowing your yard and when you’re working on you internally. That’s what I’m really focused on. Are you listening to uplifting podcasts? Are you listening to audio books that can improve your life? Are you going to workshops that help you work on you? Are you going to seminars to help you up to your game? Are you hiring coaches, mentors and people that have gotten you there? That’s what I mean that the answer is always internal. It’s never external.
When people stop, slow down, and get in their mind, they create a flow state of mind to move forward and do something of greatness. Share on XDo you take time to sit and listen to your thoughts and figure out what’s going on in here?
Two of my favorite times is I do meditation and in a really weird way. Why I say it’s weird is because it is what works for me. Just before I wake up in the morning is my favorite time, right before I get out of bed. I’m up at 5:20 every morning. That five to ten minutes before I wake up and I’ve programmed myself to do this, I will get up there and lay and think. What’s very interesting is some of my greatest epiphanies about my business, myself, my life has come in those very moments because it’s turning off the noise.
The best way I can describe it, there’s a Kevin Costner movie called For The Love of the Game. In that movie, Kevin has learned the greatest asset. I forget this character’s name in the movie, but he’s on the pitching mound on a huge baseball stadium and the crowd is going nuts. People are heckling him and going crazy. He looks at the batter, the umpire and he says, “Clear the mechanism.” I love the visual graphic is a whole audience. All the people in the stands, they disappear, everything goes away and it goes quiet. It’s just Kevin Costner, the batter and you can see the umpire as well. That’s all he is always focused on. That moment he is in that state of flow.
That perfect state of conscious awareness where everything is clicking and moving forward in his life, that’s what happens when people stop, slow down, get in their head and get in their mind. That’s what they’re creating is that flow state of mind so they can move forward and do something of greatness. For me, that’s it. The second thing I do is journaling. I’m huge on journaling. It’s the greatest way to get the bad thoughts out of your head is to write them down and get them out of your head. That’s part of my morning routine every morning is to journal. The third portion that I do religiously is I have a very hardcore routine every morning that I do for myself, my business and everything. That routine keeps me regimented and moving forward with everything.
That’s one of the things that you said that is very impressive to me. I used to think that, “I’m only going to ever be able to figure this all out if I can go off to the mountains of Tibet or some cabin in Colorado.” One day I realized it’s all right here. It’s as simple as a lock on your office door.
It’s like, Wherever You Go, There You Are.
Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation In Everyday Life
That’s important for Successful Thinkers to realize that no one is coming to fix this for you. If you’re unhappy where you are, and that doesn’t matter if it’s a job or relationship, your physical health or whatever it is. No one’s coming to fix this for you until you get clear on what it is that you want to fix and how you’re going to go about fixing it. Donnie, this has been just phenomenal. I feel I could sit and talk to you forever. In fact, I feel I have talked to you before. Tell our audience a little bit about your business and how they can get in touch with you.
It’s been a fun ride. My business has evolved. If people would look at me a year and a half ago and said, “You’re going to be an international speaker on the podcast and helping people get out of their own way,” I would’ve laughed at you. Now, I go in and help businesses get a voice for their business. I help them start and launch podcasts. I believe intuitively that marketing is what you say you do. Branding is what everybody else says you do. I help businesses really create that voice for their business. In addition to that, I do a lot of public speaking. I spoke in Ireland and Tampa, Florida. A lot of those times, podcasting is what brings me in the door, but it always comes back to mindset and helping people get out of their own way. I do run a coaching business as well. On top of that, helping individuals work on themselves and level up their game.
If people want to get in touch, they can always email me. I answer every email [email protected] or they can come to check me out of my site, which is DonnieBoivin.com. If you are so inclined on my site, I’ve got free stuff for you. I’ve got my eBook on journaling. It’s called, That’s Not How you Journal, Donkey. There is a How to Find Your Personal Strengths Workbook in there. There’s one more worksheet in there that helps you discover if you’ve been Playing Defense in your life versus offense. The defense is when you’re playing to keep everything you have versus offense, which is creating the lifestyle that you are meant for. If you’re in the US and you are looking for some other freebies, send me a text at (817) 318-6030. If you do that, I’ll send you all kinds of free stuff via text. Send me a message there too.
I really want to highlight just a couple of things for Successful Thinkers out there. Remember what Donnie was saying. What this is about is getting clear inside of your mind who you want to become and then taking the steps to learn how to get there. Don’t be thinking that anybody who started a business knew what they were doing because where you ended up was never where you started and where you thought you would end up. I want to also thank you for your time. I want to invite you to visit me at Coffee with Corey to get your free daily downloadable video where we talk about interesting leadership topics that will help you get your game going. We talked about mental toughness after Tiger Woods’ amazing Masters victory. I want you to remember that no matter what happens, no matter where you are in the world, I believe in you.
Important Links:
- Success Champions Podcast
- Think and Grow Rich
- Wherever You Go, There You Are
- [email protected]
- DonnieBoivin.com
- That’s Not How you Journal, Donkey
- How to Find Your Personal Strengths Workbook
- Playing Defense Worksheet
- Coffee with Corey
- https://www.Facebook.com/groups/SuccessChampion/
- https://www.Facebook.com/groups/SYWTP/
- https://www.Instagram.com/donnietalkspodcast/
About Donnie Boivin
Donnie Boivin has over two decades of experience in sales and he’s going to show you what it means to be awesome in your business. He’s an expert sales professional and top 200 iTunes podcaster.
At the age of 40, he discovered he had been living other people’s dreams and not chasing his own. Taking the biggest risk in his life, he jumped out and started a business. Although he had great success at the start, he quickly understood he knew nothing about being a business owner.
Through learning from the mistakes and being at the brink of failure, he gained the experience, perseverance and attitude required to succeed.
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