On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. Once upon a time made a massive decision. I'm gonna tell the story then I'll come back to the decision. Made a massive decision. And when it hit our client base, we lost almost 50% of our client base. What's up, everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe, gathering the king's podcast. I've got a special guest. Another podcaster an amazing business owner. He's gonna teach me how to do this podcast here today. I got Donnie Boven here on the King stage.
Donnie, thanks for being here, brother. Chaz, dude, man. I'm stoked to hang out with you. Our conversation are ready. The energy, the vibe man. I think we're gonna have a fun time, man. So thanks for inviting me in today. A 100%. I took one one little glance at your website, and I was like, cut from the same cloth. This is gonna be awesome. And so that was last week. I had to do it again this morning because there's a lot of things that happened between prep a week ago.
But I've been excited for a week for this conversation. Really appreciate your time. Thanks for being here. Tell us what kind of business that you got, my brother. So we have a company called Success Champions, and we run peer groups all across North America, and it's fixing to expand into Europe. But there are virtual business communities where we help your up and coming business owners grow their businesses.
There's a lot of guys that were like me that left corp in America decided to just trick out their own and say, okay. I'm gonna do this whole business thing. And gotten out there to only realize that building companies the toughest thing they've ever done in their life. So it is. A lot of people make themselves an island because they don't want people to know how bad the business actually is.
Yeah. So we create a place where they can, learn, collaborate, and grow together and currently have the fastest growing peer group organization in the in the country right now. Maybe in the Wolfe, but in the country, for sure. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. We're coming from the same cloth of just the ability or the desire, rather, maybe create collaboration, create connection points for entrepreneurs. And it's not so much necessarily because, like, we can't do it in that siloed fashion.
But it just gets done a whole lot faster and better when we have the collaboration. Would you agree with that? Yeah. 100%. I'd tell you when I went through my hardest struggling life, which was built into company, almost lost everything in a lot of process. And I completely made myself an island. I I didn't want anybody to know how bad things were.
And I thought, in addition to that they're reaching out for help or asking for help from anybody was a huge sign of weakness because that's how it was brought up. So now you got the conundrum of you don't want people to know how bad it is. You can. It's for help because that makes you weak. And misery loves company, so you spend more time trying to make yourself miserable at the process. Yeah. All the while bailing water the entire time, hoping the boat doesn't sink.
Yeah. Yeah. And so there's a uniqueness of that moment to be able to break through. I wanna get to Chaz. Before I do though, how are you doing this? What? You kinda gave a little bit of the practicality of you. You had some pain, but what's the bigger picture for you? What's the burning desire on the inside of Donny? As I was going through trying to build this company early on, man. I wish somebody was swung around and said, hey, dude. Keep going. You got this, or, hey. Go this direction.
Nobody was doing it. You had all of these big name people that were saying he started business. Anybody can be an entrepreneur, and entrepreneur became this Buzzword. It was like another m o m. Right? You can get a 1,000,000 to overnight if I made 7 figures in 30 days, and I was Chaz you can't hear him. Full disclosure I bought somewhat into that hype, and that's one of the reasons I jumped ship to start my own company. And as I got out there going through it, nobody was helping people.
So Interestingly enough, I started sharing up all my screw ups and everything that I was not understanding and figuring out business in hopes of getting advice from people And people started asking me questions. I'm like, wait. Don't ask me. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm still trying to figure all this out.
But what I found is there was just thousands upon thousands of other people that were in the same boat that I was that didn't know how to do this, didn't know how to build the business, didn't know how to put all the things together, And I'm like, my god, if I can just teach the things that I'm learning. So I started teaching the things that I was learning, and it was basic stuff. And people were like, oh my god. Nobody ever says it. Nobody's talking like that. And so I just said, alright, man.
Here's my mission. I'm gonna 100% Get as many people to freedom through building a business as a possibly can because, look, we all left. Most of us left some sort of corporate gig We don't wanna create a crappy job for ourselves. We don't a lot of them don't wanna build this big corporate empire. We just wanna get to freedom so we can live a cool light and not be a slave to the desk or slave to whatever else served this.
For me, is I give away a piece of knowledge I got for free just so can reach as many freaking people as possible. Yeah. I love that, man. I love the transparency there. And I think that you're right. When you're selling an environment or fulfillment or Freedom, information is transferable. I can transfer information today.
You can share about your stories and, experiences but it's still left up to the other person to go execute or implement, but what you provide alongside of gathering the kings, and we're very similar in this way where it's like, if we're running together, I can give you the information, but rather than you walking away by yourself and being an island like you talked about, we can do it together.
And and there's a power in the community or the peer to peer as you mentioned, We don't both have to have it all figured out, but we're just we're running hard together. What would you say to that? No. It's it's a 100%. If you think about it, I'll Successful businesses have boards of directors. They have teams of people that are That's right. Collaborating on different projects and different programs.
And that's the what thought we'd launch the peer groups was to create that environment for business owners and There's something to be said when you can get a group of individuals together that are really trying to go for it, really trying to create something. And, man, you get them all collaborating, Holy hell. Just hold on and watch what comes out of that because Yeah.
You know, it's like you take a bunch of marines and before marine, but you take a bunch of marines and you put them in a room with the ball bearing, they're gonna break the damn ball bearing. Same thing with entrepreneurs, man. It's kinda like you put them all in a room and say, okay. Let's go focus. Let's go create something. Let's go freaking build something. And watch them collaborate and come together, and the fireworks that happen afterwards is amazing.
But you gotta get around people that are going forward as hard as you're going for it because You don't wanna be the top dollar. You don't wanna be the high end in either. You wanna be around people that one day you're sitting up top the next day, somebody's kicking your ass. So the next day, you're going up. Let's say the you're constantly running and you're not pulling people up.
You're challenging people to run harder, faster than you are, man, you create that environment, and there's no holding you back. Yeah. It's just a cool place to be. It is. You're right. I couldn't agree more. Looking forward to running with guys like you even, and that's what we're doing right now, even on podcasts. Like, people don't realize it doesn't have to be right, in a meeting format. Like, we're literally growing and doing this thing that you're talking about right now.
And so encouragement to the listener. I would tell you, your listeners, man, the greatest networking tool on the planet is podcasting and podcast guesting. There's no other tool that I found to meet with some extraordinary people. Some of the biggest business relationships I've had and created have come from either I haven't guessed on my show or being guest on other shows because the conversation before and after is where all the magic happens.
And then you get an opportunity to sit down with somebody and provide value. Added a huge win for everybody. It is. It is. And also too, tell me about which I already know based on the things you've said, how you feel about this, but there's a linchpin in what you're talking about with podcasting or any other value in in between relationships is that it has to be in a place of I'm just coming down to sit at the table. I'm not necessarily looking for anything.
I know that there's gonna be value here, but I'm open to providing value and then just seeing where the value is for me. And it's a little bit of an open handedness. Like, I'm willing to give knowing that I'm gonna get back. Like, obviously, that's a law of reciprocity. But I'm not, like, coming in with an agenda. Is this how you do it as well? I'm gonna change up this thought process just a little bit because I was the guy for many years Chaz just gave. Right? I just gave.
And what I found is over the years being just the giver. You get walked on. You get people take advantage of you. Right? People you good graces. So I had to change up my old personal philosophy to this idea of give, take give. Okay. So in my head is you're gonna give to a 4 to 1 ratio. So that's gonna give. Maybe you make an introduction for somebody. Maybe you open a door for somebody. Maybe it's a knowledge transfer.
But if you have to take if you never take, you're never gonna get where you wanna go. So you give, you take, and then you give a get. And I'll tell people, oftentimes, there's people that you're sitting across room that have connections that could completely transform and change your world. Yeah. You're not asking. So if you need those connections, open those doors for them.
And then when you open a couple doors, ask for those introductions, ask for those conversations, ask for that knowledge transfer. And when they give it to you, give them back. And a give can be a lot of different things, but you have to take Otherwise, people are just gonna walk all over you and take advantage of you. Yeah. I agree with you. I think that I think that the natural maybe not natural, but the 20 year sales veteran in me knows to ask. And so I sometimes may have forget to say Chaz.
So I appreciate that that add on there. I think that's super valuable. Well, that made me think of is that there's incredible relationships that I have. Family, business, acquaintances, associates, close far, But inside of this context Chaz that you just built for us, if there is no giving and taking, then it's actually not a mutually benefiting scenario. It is totally one-sided, and that relationship will only last for so long because there's no back and forth. Would you agree?
Yep. Yep. That's where transactions come from. I'm not a fan of transactions. I don't like transaction. I want lifetime value. So for me, lifetime value is I wanna be around other people that wanna give as much as I do, but also wanna take from that conversation. Right? I want that environment. You'll run into people from time to time Chaz are like, man, I would never introduce anybody to my family. Right? Never introduce anybody to clients or these type of things.
And those are people that are coming from a very broke mindset, a very freaking desperation mindset. And It it's a good qualifier for me. I think you could sit across from anybody in the world and make a key introduction for that person. That would bring them a ton of value. And I don't care where they are because everybody's looking for something.
And part of our job this give give take give mentality is to understand what the hell they're looking for, and that may be a person that may be information, And if you go out of your way to give them that information, watch them come back and support you. And then you better try to rather pay that favor again because Chaz last give on there and you continue this process, and that's how you keep your ass top of mind.
That's how you get people to remember who you are And if you do open the right door for somebody and maybe it leads to amazing business or amazing relationships or whatever else, dude, they're not gonna forget you. Yeah. Little before this conversation, I just got off a call with a thirty one year old younger guy, and he's really moving heavy into the VR space and virtual reality. And I'm like, dude, that's something we've been looking for and trying to get into. He's, let's partner it.
I'll walk you through it and everything else. And, dude, I'm gonna do everything in my power to blow this kid business up and make it as big as possible because it's provided me so much value with something we were looking for I'm gonna go out of my way to open as many doors for him and help him really freaking explode in all this. Yeah. Absolutely.
I think just the listeners may not have picked this up yet, but I know you and I have because we're smart cookies here, but Donnie and I have similar businesses. Like, similar enough to where some people might be like, well, why would you have Donnie on your show? Or, Donny, why would you wanna be on his show? And it's because, first off, there's abundance. First off, just straight out of the gate, Donny already said it. You can't operate in a lack. And what can I learn from this guy?
What can he learn from me? What can introduction can I make for him? Vice versa. Well, who can I meet through this guy? I don't know. And so you just open up your mind, you open up your hand, reach it out, and shake some guy's hand, whether you think that there's value there or not. I don't know, but give, take give. Is what I just learned. Hope that you did as well if you're taking notes.
Yeah. And I wanna speak to that really quick because, you know, I grew up in an environment where competition was a real I sold commercial printing for a number of years. I sold HVAC for a number of years. And, look, that is a doggy dog world. Right? You get in there. Hell of the competition you win at all costs, those type of things.
That's why Chaz I launched my own business, what I realized, if I brought that energy and that mentality to business, I'm not burning a lot of bridges along the way. Chaz why. Decided, man, there's no competition. There's only collaboration, man. How can we get in I tell everybody, there's gonna be people that follow me that are into my message. There's gonna be people that are into you and follow you message Chaz we can both provide a crap ton of value for them.
I'd look at it like the Super Bowl. Then it's really simple. My team's gonna root for my for me. Right? So maybe on the Dallas Cowboys, whatever. Right? They're gonna root for me. But when the Super Bowl happens, and we figure out how to collaborate, bring everybody together, no one gives a damn who's playing. We just wanna watch the commercials. Watch the bluff. In that example, and, actually, I'm here in Kansas City, so I'll be the chief and I don't know. I I couldn't go.
The Dallas cowboys are gonna be the cheese, but I'm just kidding. Such a great example. I hope we are talking such thick stuff right now. I really just I'm trying to point out to the listener. I hope you're paying attention. Not just even taking notes, but I hope you're, like, really processing this because you have people in your industry in your market right now that would totally chop your head off, and maybe you or the guy trying to chop his head off.
I don't know, but there's a there's an atmosphere that must change it starts right here just like this. It starts with abundance, and it starts within reaching out and having collaboration, being willing to collaborate this entire time. I'm looking at Donnie's website going, how do I do something with this guy? And, like, other people might look at our 2 websites and be like, hey. Looks like you guys do the same thing. First off, we don't, but it's close enough, and I understand.
But I'm literally like, I got it up here on the other screen. I'm like, I I gotta figure out a way to collaborate with this guy, right, the whole time. And we will. There there's gonna be whether it's an event or something. There there's gonna be something there. I'm truthfully, I'm talking to a lot of people right now, and I'm like, alright. There's a lot of us that have these peer groups. A lot of us that have these one where we bring a lot of people together.
Why the hell are we not creating our own Super Bowl? Why are we not bringing all of our people together? Right? My people are gonna root for my team. Your people are gonna root for your team, but if we did a massive ass event, We Chaz fill a room and impact a lot of damn live doing it. So, yeah, we'll figure out something. I agree. Okay. Let's get into some practicality here.
You've obviously you're building this business, but you've built some other businesses and you've transitioned out of corporate. You got a lot of experience. And so I wanna know of a good decision that you made that was practical that you would do over and over again maybe that the listeners can take away and apply in their business today. The the best decision I ever made in business was to literally automate everything.
Our biggest hire was an automation specialist, and all they did is come in and look at everything, every lever, every mechanism, and figured out how to automate every process. It's not foolproof and things do break, but let me tell you. When everything can be automated, dude, it's insanity. The second best thing that I did was I brought in a fractional mentoring officer that came in and not only mentored me, but it mentored a lot of my executive teams.
And a lot of my staff because a lot of people that work for us are all corporate rejects. Right? They all left corporate America at some point. Launched room companies, and then it found their way to us. And there's a lot of different mentality games. There's a lot of different leveling up. So I brought in Bob, who's a corporate mentor guy, and then I brought in Mandy Morris, who's a therapist, and my entire executive team sees a therapist.
A lot of my staff see a therapist because if you don't work on the individual, they're gonna just do a job for you. And we don't need people to just do a job for us. We need people to run for us and wanna be there, so we invested heavily in them. So I know that was 3 decisions, but they were all major impactful on the company. Yeah. And I appreciate you sharing. I think that those are real. A little bit of a little bit of the listener might be thinking a little bit of woo.
A little bit of sounds funny. Sounds nice, but is that really school for me. You've got guys in your groups that are probably much smaller than you and maybe can't quote, unquote, facilitate that type of lift. What would you suggest for that type of person? That type of a business owner. Here's the truth. It is a little woo. But the only people who call it a little woo is the people who haven't worked on their damn cell. Let's be honest. That's good. That's good.
I'm not the crazy person that talks to aliens a weird type of thing, but it would be the mindset game and working on yourself. For an individual, there is people at all levels. So there's guys like Bob that are just starting their company out. All they wanna do is mentor and help people, and they're out there. You just gotta put in the time, energy, and effort to go find these people. And if you're small and you can't afford a big budget, go find somebody starting out and saying, hey.
Why don't yeah. I'd be your guinea pig. Why don't you come work with us and figure Chaz barter that early stuff? That's right. If you can't take 2 seconds to look at yourself or your team and go, okay. How do I invest in them? What can I find to invest in them? Yeah. Then why do you invest in the first place? Because this is gonna be a money grab, which means it's not gonna last. You're not gonna enjoy the process because it's only about money. Then why the hell you're doing it?
Yeah. Yeah. It's gotta be something more, which is why my first question is about the burning desire because it It always starts out as money or at least we think it does, but it always has to go to more than that. And I think you've given us some super practicals there. Hey, Kings and Queens. Chaz Wolf. I wanna talk to you about something that's super important to me. We put a lot of time and effort.
We, meaning myself and my team, into this podcast into the content that goes out every single day. And if you have been getting any sort of value or insight from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too. So we would love if you would like, comment, share, leave a review, post, share again, all of the things. On social media, on all the different platforms, or even on the podcast mediums of Apple and Spotify.
We would love to be able to get our content into more hands more entrepreneurs so they can grow their business as quick as possible. Together, we are building a community of like minded entrepreneurs who are committed to growing their businesses to new heights. So Let's do this. Let's help each other. Let's help each other grow. What would be a a bad decision? You're not so great hour that you can share with us and hopefully maybe keep us away from.
So we once upon a time made a massive decision. I'm a tell the story and then I'll come back to the decision. Made a massive decision And when it hit our client base, we lost almost 50% of our client base. Wow. And what happened was is we made a decision that we were going nothing but a particular type of business. So you had to be a business owner, and then we're gonna put higher network, all of our client base rent, we had fit this particular mold. What we had not done is 2 things.
We did not survey our client base. And we did not look hard enough at the industries we were serving. So when we made the call within 24 hours, my phone was blowing up. My email was blowing up. People were calling for meetings when I went and met with one of our groups and sat down, and they were livid. Did they, like, look at this entire group? Do you not realize that Choice shoes may just cut us all off? Or, like, literally, they all quit on me right there.
So in 24 hours, I had to go reach tracked this whole decision process that we're gonna get dialed in, and we were on the verge of doing the ultimate, like, sacrifice of our business with the decision and it was, my part, just an emotional call. So I would tell you that I'm a very fast decision maker, and I like to make Cision very fast. You need to sit on your big decisions for 24 hours. This is something a mentor of mine told me.
He goes, if you're as excited about it, If you get a good night's sleep, probably have a cocktail, relax for the evening, whatever. If it's still there the next day, It may be worth doing. But within 24 hours, the emotion gone out of it. Don't pull the trigger on that thing, and it saved my butt a ton moving forward. Yeah. Appreciate that.
I think that you gave actually several micro lessons in that, the surveying of the clients and paying attention to who you're serving currently before you make Massive decisions like that is is great. The slowing down. It's a slowing down to speed up, and I I am so shocked. Like you said at the very beginning, of the things that you were sharing at the beginning of your journey and all this was that you were sharing some basic stuff.
And but it was so profound to a lot of business owners, and this is one of the concepts that I feel like when I share it, it seems so simple, but so many people just Chaz their tail over and over. They're complete reactionary to their decisions. And it's because of this right here. They don't slow down to speed up, and it's okay. It's NASCAR. They have a pit stop. They gotta change the tires, change the wheel.
If you don't, it's just gonna fall apart, and people keep going, and then they fall apart. What do you say to that? You're a 100% spot on. And trust me, slowing down frustrates the hell out of me. Amen. Me too. It's like we're slogging through it. Right? And we're like, guys, just can we just pull the trigger on this already? And luckily, I've got a really good team that, you know, has figured out, 1, how to talk to me because I can be very fast that there can be someone hot headed sometimes.
And but they've learned to talk to me to say, hey. Let's think about this before we just pull the trigger. And I would tell you more often than not, they've saved my butt because the direction I was gonna go would have derailed us. Yeah. So I think often and it was Bob that sent it to me. He goes, You've got to look at your business. And if it doesn't have a process to it, it's not a thing. And if that process isn't documented somewhere, it's not a process.
And so what we've found through a lot of it is we've had to slow down to add additional processes in. And what people don't understand, and I hope your listeners take value from this, is it's Not the CEO's job to create the process. They created it initially. We come up and go, okay. This is how I think it should work. And then you have to give that process to somebody else. Let them go tinker with it. Change it up. Get it better.
And it's not until they give it to that third person that actually implements that process and finally puts the last tweaks on there, is it an actual process? Because everything you're gonna put into it where the first person who's creating a process puts into it is theory. This is how I think it should go. So we call this AD, which is you take action, you document it, then you delegate to somebody else.
They take it, they take action on it, they document their changes, they delegate to somebody else, that becomes a process. Yeah. And people will follow that format that it'd be hugely impactful for them. Yeah. I think so, and we'll put that in the show notes as well. I think that's super valuable.
The what that keeps people from, I feel like I I'm always talking, especially as a visionary, If the listener can relate, we're talking conceptual thoughts, like Donnie just said, I think it should go this way, or better yet, I'm gonna talk about making a process. Not even the actual process, but I'm gonna just talk about that thing over there that needs a process.
And then for whatever reason, in my brain, like, I checked the box of, like, why created a process for that because I talked about making a process for that. Yep. 100%. 100%. You gotta sit down. And you gotta put some attentional thought and then documentation to this and then delegate it out. And I love iteration of making it real is really what it comes down to. So I appreciate that. What about decision making? So I'm gonna same lane here. I wanna make good decisions still.
You've given us good and bad. But what's sort of a step or a formula? I'm sure you've got one. You've given us already a couple formulas, but decision making, I wanna make good decisions. I wanna be good as CEO. How do I do Chaz? Or how do you do it? So for me is I pick my lanes of where I'm allowed to make decisions. I'm naturally fast paced. Right? If it's revenue of the company, Michael. Right? If it's operational, I'm out.
You do not want me touching the operational side think I will give input all day long. You have to know your lanes. And this is one of the ways I could explain this to my team is every morning I go walk my farm. And I got a full working farm here in addition to running the companies, and I'll take my German Shepherd out, let them go run the field, and I can walk to gate to gate. Was I walked out that gate to my right, I got a creek. It's a natural spring creek that's forty foot down. Wolfe.
To my left is a bar bar fence that keeps my goats and everything in. Right? So I got this road to walk on. Yeah. Too far left, a menu of fence, too far right. I fall into a damn creek. When it comes to decision making, you gotta put your boundaries on. Right? You've got to know where your lanes are. And if you don't know where your lanes are, you're gonna make a lot of bad calls.
Because often guys that run fast pace, which I'm assuming a lot of your listeners are, we fire from the hip very often, and if you're always firing from the hip without taking too to slow down or from military perspective, you don't know your lanes of fire, then you're gonna make a lot of decisions that you're gonna have to come back and clean up and fix or redo.
Look at specifically what decisions you should be making in your company and then have faith enough in the rest of your team of what area they should be making decisions on, and they did power them to go make those decisions and back to play good and bad. If they make a call and it goes south, that's on you gave them the permission to make to call. It's not on them. Right? And you have to take ownership of that moment. Now we gotta come back and fix it and say, okay.
Cool. That didn't go so well. How do we keep it from not happening again? What do we do now to fix this mess? But you can't look at them because, oh my god. I can't believe you screwed all that up. No. That was your calling. You told them that they'll make decision. Yeah. Yeah. You're strengthening that relationship so that way they can go back out and do it again and not be gun shy.
Because if if you ruin that moment, that opportunity, they will be gun shy, and then you've just bought yourself their job. Yeah. 100%. He he just bought their job. That was well soon. That was one of them. Yeah. Okay. You said something inside of there that I think is applicable and I wanna know if you if you feel like it transfers.
When I think about my house and I think about my wife and I think about our family, And, obviously, there's a lot of things that operate like a business, and I don't mean to make it systematic or robotic, but the lanes, the language that you're using around lanes is the same language that I use with my Wolfe. I'm like, okay. We've established. This is your lane. These are the things that you make the call on, and these are the things that I'm running hard in.
And I've used the same language of, look, I know I can run hard because she's over there running hard, and I don't try to get in her lane because that slows her down. I yield to her, and she yields to me in our respective lanes. And then at the end of the day, we come together and if there's something that we need to do together, then great. Everything I just gave in a business works in a marriage, would you agree or disagree? 100% agree.
So far, my wife and I have had separate bank accounts since the day we were married. And the reason we set that up even out the gate was she wanted her money. I wanted my money. We have a joint account where we pay everything, and we don't have the money fight. If she wants more money, then go get more money. If I need more money and for sure, I'm the breadwinner. For sure, I'd pay for a lot of the cool fun things we get to go do. But she always has carpool on to do whatever she wants.
An interesting thing is, literally, as we're recording this, my wife is 5 days away from not working for anybody else ever again. She's gonna come home and just run the farm, and we've been working towards that for a while. We just need to get to hit a couple of plateaus into business. So now in my wife, if she's not, like, an overambitious, unfamiliar type of person, but you put her attached, and she's driven as hell. So I'm like, babe, come home, take care of the farm, whatever you need.
I'll financially freaking take care of it all, and run it. And the nice thing is Her and I could never work together. We'd kill each other. Just the way we're wired, but letting her take this on, and it she can go as big as she wants with it. She wants to go crazy big will go crazy big with it. She wants to do it as a kind of a hobby, goes a hobby with it. But if you don't know your lanes and what responsibilities and things you have, man.
You're gonna be all over the place, and it's not just marriage. I'm just freaking everything in life. That's right. I'm not a work life balance guy. I don't think that's a a real thing. I'm a work life integration, especially if you run a business, man, because it's all one thing. If you run a business, you're never gonna stop thinking about the damn business. Yep. You're gonna be thinking about, okay. What's my next investment? What's my next move? Chaz. That broke.
Hey. Yeah. Be where you are in the moment. Be with the family. I'm a family first guy. Be with the family. Just don't beat yourself up for thinking about the business when you're hanging with the family. Just bring yourself back to hanging with the damn family. Yeah. Yeah. Super practical. You jumped ahead and stole one of my surprise speed route questions. So I appreciate that.
I I'm gonna elaborate on it, though, because I want I wanna give you an because you just gave us you opened it up and you did such a great job. I just really appreciate that. I'm in a 100% alignment with you that there is no such thing as balance. And, the word that I use instead of integration, I love the word integration, by the way. Thank you. Because you're right. It's a coming together of all of it.
And if we can't if we at first, if we don't have that recognition that it's all together and it's all intertwined, then for trying to look for something that doesn't exist, which is the balance, I like the word obsession, and so I know that I've been successful in multiple businesses and multiple industries in a very short period of time and now over a long period of time. Because of my obsession with success, with business, with people building, with personalities, with growing myself.
Like, you name it. Right? This is what we do as entrepreneurs. Okay. But the obsession with my marriage. I have to raise that up just like I did with my business. I have to raise my obsession with my children recently probably over the last probably 3 or 4 years. This phraseology that I'm using has come to me, but coloring with my four year old doesn't sound super. It doesn't get my juices flowing, like, doing a podcast with a guy like you.
But what does get my juices flowing because building a doing a podcast with you is building. I'm building something. Cool. That's what getting my juices flowing. So when I'm coloring with my four year old, now it's turned into I'm building my son. And it's like, okay. That just took me to a whole another level of obsession. So what are your thoughts on you're integrating, but what about doing them both at the same time? You said, okay.
If I'm with the family and I'm thinking about the business, don't harp on it, but bring yourself back. I love that's a present kinda feeling. Wolfe, what would you say to kinda what I've said here? So tell just a really quick story, I'll get through it fast, but there was a time early on my visit, about 6 months in where we almost lost the farm. Literally, I walked out the back door my farm. My wife's cheapest missing. It got repossessed. We were 3 months behind on the mortgage.
My wife and I had to both go patch in our 401 k's. We'll literally save the farm. And bet on me that I could build this business. Right? It was a scary freaking moment, and probably one of my lowest moments of my entire life. That evening, I went up to the mirror in my bathroom, looked myself in the mirror, and I tried to say the words I'm proud of you, but I couldn't fully get the words out because I wasn't proud of me. Right?
And instantly, as I tried to say those words, the thought pops in head goes, no, you're not, dude. You're not carrying on your part of the marriage. You're not doing any things you need to do to build this business. So the next day, I had to get out and bus in my ass to go try and build this business and figure out what the business was and get it all going.
Then second night, I went up to the mirrors Chaz I'm proud of And there was a part of me that was the activity and the amount of effort I put in for the day, but also said, dude, you can do more. So I'm like, it wasn't fully proud of me. And I stopped doing this every day where I was going in the mirror just saying, proud of you. And every day, man, freaking something would pop up in the back of heads and not you're not doing this thing.
And that became the next thing they had to go fix or gold work on, and this became my regiment and my routine. It was interesting once we turned the companies around and had them really freaking rocking and rolling, went to the mirror one night, and I said, I'm proud of you. And I go, no. You're not. You're not dedicating the time to your wife. What I realized is I hadn't been sitting down having a cup of coffee.
I hadn't been sitting down with her freaking getting to hear about her day and her time. I was so invested in the freaking business. Trying to get the shift righted Chaz I wasn't given her time. So I had to freaking curtail my entire company to give her the time she needed So I love your idea of obsession because that's literally what I had to do with her is I had to get obsessed with her and what she wanted to do in life.
And I didn't know until this moment that she wanted to quit working for other people. I thought she was loving what she was doing. I thought she was into it. That was when I first started realizing she wanted to come home and work the farm and and really make this all happen. So we turned in everything in that direction. To make it happen. And I love the word obsession way more than I like the word passion.
I don't think people actually understand passion, but that obsession to make a right touch shoot and do coloring with your four year old, that's beautiful, brother. That's the stuff that's gonna imprint long lasting memories on. Yeah. Dude, I appreciate the appreciate the comments and then also the kind words, but what you've shared is real. That's what I wanna point out to the listener. It's, like, this is real life. This is how it works.
Even for the guys that have, quote, unquote, figured it out. Donnie hasn't figured out anything. I haven't figured out anything that you can't or maybe that you're not in the process of. This is regular life. This morning I got today is my 15 year wedding anniversary. And down there down in the kitchen this morning. Awesome. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. We got a little tip. This is not no. Stop. We leave tomorrow to go on an incredible cruise. Stop. This is not worth it.
And, of course, you at 5th for 15 years, 18 years have known each other. You're like, okay. Kissy. Love you. He you put the b s to the side. Because I'm obsessed. And sometimes the intensity of being obsessed causes issues for us in our business and or in our marriage, but that's okay. That's another podcast. Hey. I, a 100% agree with you. I wanna speak to the 2 seconds because we'll hit our 17 this year together going on.
Almost 20. And let me tell you, there is so much strength in having a rider die. Oh, yeah. Having somebody that when you're going through the thick of it won't let you wallow because every once in a while, you just wanna throw your freaking hands up in the air and go, what the and your bride and Dyer's like, alright. What are you gonna do next? That's 30%. It's so good. Oh, so good. Okay. I got one last question here for you. Actually, no, too. I don't wanna I don't wanna rush this.
I wanna make sure that I get, like, a business resource of course, you've got a podcast. Please mention that, but maybe a favorite book. Like, where can we glean some of the knowledge that you've gotten from a resource? Probably the the funniest thing is who we literally have the badass business summit in September, 20 this year, did September 23rd, this year, Fort Worth, Texas. Love it. We got speakers flying in from all over.
One of our speakers Jordan did a half a $1,000,000,000 exit 2 years ago. We'll be talking him in about how to freaking really scale a business. We got some other heavy hitters in. So it's gonna be a phenomenal event. So come check that out badassbusinesssummit.com. Book wise, my favorite book that I've ever written is up behind me. It's I will say try and say the whole word out there, but it's f to focus. So put the f word in front to focus out on Amazon.
We drop the price down as cheap as we could possibly do it to damn near give it away for free, but that will tell my entire story and how we built to hear. And the process for others to follow that path along the way. Oh, and name, Paka, because you asked, is growth mode? Yep. You're you're a living, breathing example of when someone else says, hey. I read this book. It's this guy's book, or it's this guy's podcast. So I just, again, just appreciate you even starting these things.
Being willing put forth the effort so that way you even have a book to sell. You probably don't hear that very often, but, man, thanks for just doing the work of providing value. It's a lot. Alright. Finally, my last question. I wanna know, Donnie, if you had a chance to whisper in the younger Donnie's ear, what would you say? Go screw up faster. Chaz Biggest hurdle I think I had in life is I felt like failure was failure.
If I screwed something up, that was a representation of me as a person or me as a personality or me as an identity. Rocky Bell have always got the greatest quote of all times. Which is it's not about how hard you can hit, it's about how hard you could take a hit and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done. And I'm telling you, man, there's no such thing as failure. Life is a damn experiment. And as long as you look at it as an experiment, this way didn't work.
Cool. Let's go experiment way to it does work. Apply the lessons learned from everything that you screw up. If you've never seen Peter Dinklages, commencement speech. It's one of the greatest ones of all time, and you only need to see a 1, 2 minute clip. And the idea behind us, he comes out, he says, fail, fail better, fail faster, fail forward. Yeah. And the whole way you hear Peter Dinklage saying it's just so much powerful coming up such a great actor.
And I think if I would have heard those words early on, I can't imagine how much more bigger my empire would have been back in the if I was willing to take the damn hits and keep walking forward. Yeah. Such a good message. I think it's real. It's tough in the moment. To have the actual persistence that you're talking about. Uh-huh. You you already given us some examples of those moments for you, but the listeners, they have that moment as well, or maybe moment.
Where they've had to take the punch, take the hit. But thinking Grow Rich talks about persistence, and a stick to itiveness is how I kinda like to say it. And so I appreciate that because it is a 100% true, and it's absolutely needed. Yeah. For sure. And let's be honest, man. Any of us that have, quote, unquote, found any sort of level success, It's because we were too dumb to quit at some point. A 100%. We got stacked up against it. All logics that throw in the towel and we're like, nope.
We're gonna keep going because we love this misery. We love this movie. I'm gonna do it anyway. Yep. That's it. Okay, Donnie. You've been incredible so much value in such a short period of time. You've already talked about some of your events, but tell us where we can find the event, where we can find you, where they can just connect. If they wanna connect with you on social, give us all that information, if you don't mind. Yeah. Before I do all this, let me do something for you, guys.
This Chaz been a powerful conversation. I've enjoyed it. Hell out of this. This is really good at pulling out some great amazing content. Dude, if you got any value out of this conversation, tweet us any of his other episodes, do him the honor of sharing this show out with one person. I can tell you have my own show. The hardest thing in the world to do is to build an audience and to reach an inspired touch as many lives.
So if you could do him the honor of literally telling one buddy, one friend about this show, It's literally like giving him a virtual hug. It'll mean everything to him. So for me, go to badassbusinesssummit.com. Go to badassbusinessdumpsummer.com. Come check it out. It's 4 days. All about business growth, all about leveling up in your business. Find me at donnybobien.com, and it's Donnybobien on all social media. Freaking, tell me that you've heard me on this podcast.
And one of the coolest ways you can share this out for somebody. Take a screenshot on your phone where you're doing this. If you're watching on YouTube, and use that as part of a social post with your takeaways from this episode, and you'll be amazed how many people lean into you providing that value out there for them. Yeah. I appreciate that. Also, too, this is me and the listener. We just separated from Donny for half a second.
I wondered if you guys noticed his give give one more give before the take there at the end. So I just really appreciate that. Thank you for being here, Donnie. I really do mean Chaz. I really do mean that we're gonna collaborate on some form or fashion. It's just inevitable. It's already a done deal. We just need to figure out the details. Thank you for being here and adding value to my audience, and I hope that in return, your audience, and you, and your team, everything is blessed in 2023.
Thank you for being here. My honor, brother. Thanks for having me. Keep rocking Davis is well done. Thank you for listening to gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply to your business right away. More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself.
What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses in multiple different industries and now interviewing over 2 or 300 other very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is Chaz It's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs. In fact, we are putting together 1000 kings, specifically who are grateful, but not done.
We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities, and here's what we believe Chaz in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy. So if that relates and and resonates with you, and you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gathering the king's dot com.
You take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 kings. Talk soon.