Donnie Boivin :
Like is nice, it's fun to have, but people buy because of trust, relationships are formed because of trust, marriages, marketing, everything happens because of trust.
James Robert Lay:
Greetings and hello. I am James Robert Lay and welcome to the 185th episode of the Banking on Digital Growth podcast. Today's episode is part of the exponential insight series, and I'm excited to welcome Donnie Boivin to the show. Donnie is a global speaker and podcaster, as well as the author of How to be a Success Champion, as well as the book Endless Stream of Referrals. And over the years, Donnie has trained sales teams at some of the largest financial brands in the United States. And I'm looking forward to diving deep into his perspective framed around personal branding and podcasting as both go together like a great peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and both personal branding and podcasting, I see, are future growth opportunities for financial brand and FinTech marketing sales and leadership teams to create and capture in the future. Welcome to the show Donnie. It is so good to share time with you today.
Donnie Boivin :
James, dude, I'm looking forward to this. We've already had some fun conversations, so it's always nice to get to know somebody a little bit before we dive in and bring as much value as possible.
James Robert Lay:
Absolutely. And before we dive in, before we talk personal brands, podcasts for financial brands, what is good in your world right now, personally, or professionally? Always start to show off on a positive note.
Donnie Boivin :
Well, that's fun. I mean, I always like telling people that in addition to running six companies, I have a full working farm. So we raise goats, chickens, ducks, geese, the whole nine yards, and right now we've got five baby goats on the ground that are within a couple weeks old. So you go out and any of those little goat videos you see, that stuff's real, man. It's like little popcorn popping all over the field. So got a bunch of new goats on the farm. It's awesome.
James Robert Lay:
I got to tell, you're talking baby goats. So for spring break, we took the kids... Because you're up in Fort Worth, Texas. I'm in Houston. We took the kids up to Rath, Texas and we took-
Donnie Boivin :
[crosstalk 00:02:43], the train?
James Robert Lay:
The train. We did the train. It's a Texas railroad, and we took the train and it was so neat because we went and there was a little baby goat farm that we, I don't know, rode by trained by. I don't know how you'd frame that, but like you said, it's like little popcorn all over. They're so cute. The kids were going crazy. I love that, man.
Donnie Boivin :
Yeah, dude. I haven't heard a lot of people that don't know about that, but it's just a little train ride, you don't go very far, but they take you in these little festivals and do all kinds of stuff. There's an RV park at one end of that train. We camped at the RV park, the only reason we know about it.
James Robert Lay:
We got off there, we did lunch. And they have a lake. It's a beautiful place, beautiful countryside, and the kids absolutely enjoyed it. So man, great kindred spirits with that to start things off. Speaking about kindred spirits, we share a similar perspective when it comes to what I call the future of marketing, particularly within financial services, within banking. I'm betting that marketing gets a lot smaller where micro beats the macro. And what I mean by this, is that the personal brand, the people within a financial brand, have the potential to be far greater than the corporate brand when it comes to capturing eyes, ears, hearts, minds of potential account holders. And it's quite simple. It's not rocket science. People trust people and people bank with people, and I want to get your take on this to start off. What are the biggest opportunities from your perspective for financial brands to empower their people internally, to build personal brands while connecting with prospects in the that they're already serving?
Donnie Boivin :
Great question. I grew up like most of the people listening to your show in some of the bigger companies. I worked for Cardinal Health for a hot minute. And it used to be the big brand names mattered. You had to be the Maytags or this household Sears, those household names, but given everything that's happened recently in life, world news, all that stuff, what people have learned to value is the individual person is more important than the overall brand. Now, brand matters as a whole, but at the end of the day, the best way I can put it, is if you don't think your people are a personal brand for your overall brand, watch a salesperson leave your company. They're going to take 75% of their accounts with them, may not be immediately, but eventually, right? Because of their relationships with the individual. Right? So if they don't allow people to establish this personal connection, to get that trust, big business banks, everybody's going to be struggling down the line.
James Robert Lay:
And it's interesting you talk about that fear of business walking out of the door if someone has a personal brand. And that's one reason that I think financial brands pump the brakes on empowering and encouraging employees to build personal brands particularly in the context of digital, social podcasts which we'll talk about here in a second. But it's already happening in the, quote unquote, real physical world, back to your point, and I know there are a growing number of leaders and lenders who are already doing this in the space and a few come onto the show to learn and share their experiences. And for context for the dear listener, just to go back in time, Paul Long, episode 107, Greg Martin, episode 70, Natalie Bartholomew, episode 96, and Jennifer Bist in episode 105.
James Robert Lay:
The pattern in the trend that I'm seeing here though, is a lot of these are either commercial lenders, or leaders, or small business space, mortgage space, and there's really a lot to learn here. But from your perspective, I want to dive deeper into the roadblocks of the challenges that hold people back. And I say people. I want to really focus on the individual first. What holds people back from building a personal brand in the first place?
Donnie Boivin :
Let's define personal brand because I think that's really important for your listeners. Marketing and advertising is what you say you do. So you tell people you're a personal banker, you tell people you're a lender, whatever. That's what you say. Your personal brand is what everybody says when you're no longer in the room, right? So when you've walked away. So if you are not helping people tell the right stories about you, then they're going to make up their own stories, which become your personal brand, right? So what I want most people to do is to wrap their head around... like the word authenticity is overused at the moment and people don't understand what it means to be authentic. So let me make it easy for you.
Donnie Boivin :
Authenticity doesn't mean you share what you ate for freaking breakfast. Nobody cares. Authenticity is you share the stories that resonate with your ideal clients so you can build that trust factor. So a great example. Recently, I'm 45 years old, diagnosed with ADHD. Didn't know my entire life, just got diagnosed, so I put a post out on LinkedIn. And before I put a post out on LinkedIn to tell the world that I was diagnosed with ADHD, I asked the question, would my ideal client, which is a lot of entrepreneurs, business owners resonate with me telling them I have ADHD, or am I doing this as a gimmick? And I justified that this was something I wanted to connect with my people with.
Donnie Boivin :
So now part of my personal brand, although I don't want to be in that space per se, but a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of business owners, deal and struggle with ADHD. So for me, I shared the story of being 45 years old and finding relief, being diagnosed with ADHD, which I had so many people, which I wasn't planning, sending me DMs, and messages, and chats going, "Man, I've always wondered what led you to go get checked out." And it made this cool dynamic conversation happen that I've been having ongoing with other people.
Donnie Boivin :
So when people think about being authentic and they think about their personal brand is what's the things that you can share that's going to connect with your ideal audience and it gets people over the thought process? We don't have to talk about the dark side of your life, you don't have to talk about know your dogs or whatever else, you need to talk about specifically what's going to talk to your audience.
James Robert Lay:
That's a great point. And you mentioned a couple things. Number one, trust. I'm going to come back to trust because I want connect on this whole ADD, ADHD thing because I'm right there with you man. And I pulled up a couple of books just for the dear listener. If this is you ADD, ADHD, Driven to Distraction, and then the other book by Kate Kelly, You Mean I'm not Lazy, Stupid, or Crazy? These are a couple of books that I read back whenever got this awareness. I mean, I was probably in my early thirties and it was through my marriage counseling that they were like, "Yeah, probably your ADD." And I'm like, "Well, what does that mean?" Because it has this stigma tied to it and they're like, "No, you makes sense. You're an entrepreneur, you're visionary and your brain connects things a little bit differently than everyone else."
James Robert Lay:
And I'm like, "This is cool." so I'm right there with you, and it's through just these dialogues, and conversations, and discussions that have nothing to do about work, it's just about life. I'm writing my second book, Banking on Change, and it's written through the context of what I have defined as exponential growth. And exponential growth where one is growing personally while at the same time growing professionally, because you're getting this whole view of life. I think it's hard to grow professionally when you're struggling personally and it's hard to grow personally when you're struggling professionally. Here's where trust comes back into the mix because trust is in the pyramid of human relationships.
James Robert Lay:
This is a model that my wife and I, we worked on together. We do marriage preparation, and we saw patterns of couples that we were like, "They're going to be great, or they're going to struggle, and here's why they're going to struggle." And pretty much it became true. But there are three things. Respect is at the foundation of every relationship, love is at the pinnacle. And love doesn't mean feel good mushy stuff, but to bridge the gap between respect and love, and we'll look at this from the sense of marketing and sales as just commitment, it is trust, and trust is built upon what you say and what you do. What's your take on that?
Donnie Boivin :
So I despise the phrase, people do business with people they know, like, and trust. And the reason I do it, and it comes from my sales background is, people get so hung up unlike. You got to like me, right? Like is nice. It's fun to have, but people buy because of trust. Relationships are formed because of trust, marriages, marketing, everything happens because of trust. This is why if we want to swing it all the way back to personal brand, if you are one person at the office and another person at home, eventually those two people are going to meet and it's likely to be in your client's office.
James Robert Lay:
Conflict.
Donnie Boivin :
Yep. Absolutely. Because the person that you introduce yourself to your clients, your prospects, to people you're doing business with, is who they believe they're buying off of, right? Who they're getting a loan from, however you want to look at it. And then when they really meet you and where my perspective is, growing up, country, blue collar kid, selling Fortune 500 level stuff, suits, ties, haircuts, cars, at some point the country Donnie would come out and it was such a disconnect from how I showed up that I would lose trust and my sales would become more transactional versus lifelong relationships, because I was breaking that initial connection. So with it all, the only way you can build solid trust and maintain that through the lifetime of that relationship is you got to show up as you. And then I get the pushback. People are like, "But dude, if I show up as me, then nobody's going to freaking want to buy from a guy who drinks too much, parties too much, or whatever else," and it's the exact opposite that is true.
James Robert Lay:
It's interesting that you say that about showing up as who you are because when you bring that alternative self to the mix, like I said, that's where the conflict lies and I'll be the very first one to admit. It almost tanked my business, it almost tanked my marriage, and it was because I was lying. First and foremost, I was lying to myself. It didn't happen over time, but it was really this four year, dark night of the soul that came when my wife asked me, "Are you lying about things?" And I finally was just like, "Yeah, I was, and I am, and I need some help." And it was that first admission, I would say, that's when things... And it was a long journey out of that to the other side but that is when things started to open up in a completely new direction, because I was being honest.
James Robert Lay:
And one of the things that I teach financial brands when they're looking to maximize their future growth, the three Ts of transformation, and the first T, is you must tell the truth to yourself, to your team, and to your organization about where you've been, where you're at, and where you're looking to go next. And sometimes those are really hard conversations to have.
Donnie Boivin :
For sure. I think most people struggle with it because they're so concerned that if people really met them, that they wouldn't like it. They're treating life like it were back in high school. And the funny thing in saying that, the only reason they have a fear of what these other people will think, is because they can't look themselves in a mirror and actually like the person looking back at them. And as a species, we are so judgemental in nature. We're like, "Oh my God, I can't believe that person would wear that. I can't believe they're overweight, underweight," and we judge everybody else, we have it in our head that we must judge... that everybody else must be judging us, right? So to show up as you is to first stop judging everybody else, be a good person, and actually fall in love with the person that's looking back at you in the mirror. And if you can't enjoy that gaze with yourself, go dive into that world and understand what is it about you and how you're showing up that you don't currently like, and explore that.
James Robert Lay:
I want to dive deeper into this because I do believe that people fail to commit to building personal brands, is because, and really the theme here, is they are lying. They're lying to themselves, they don't think that they're good enough, they don't think that they're smart enough or interesting enough, and I think Jay Bara says it best, "Don't be interesting, be helpful." I mean, he wrote a great book around that utility, but there's so much knowledge. Whether you're a lender, or a leader, on the commercial side, the retail side, the mortgage side, you name it, there's so much knowledge that you have to share so much wisdom that can...
James Robert Lay:
And you mentioned transaction, right? To truly put the transformation of people over the commoditized transaction of dollars and cents, how can we help others, whether it's the dear listener, or the dear listener, it's someone that they know, break free from these self-limiting beliefs that stand in the way of building a personal brand?
Donnie Boivin :
Well, first it starts with the leadership in any organization, right? You've got to quit putting so much pressure on the people underneath you. You go into most organizations and you look at their quota structure and how much volume an individual does, every time they get a guy or girl that's just crushing it, they double their quota, and the people who aren't, they're micro lifting their quotas and it's beaten a crap out of their great people. So because of how leadership typically teaches their people underneath, they don't afford them the opportunity to show up as themselves, they're pushing, they're forcing. So when you're in a situation where your back's against the wall, you do a lot of things to make sure you bust through.
James Robert Lay:
Yes.
Donnie Boivin :
Outside of leadership, pushing people too hard, you got the individual themselves that has never personally met themselves ever in their life. They've gone this whole journey, believing they're chasing their own path and their own dreams, but they've never explored [inaudible 00:18:09]. Dude, I was 40 years old before I had the courage to break out and do something and really build and figure out who I was. And I'll tell you, when you're chasing something and you're actually exploring yourself, I thought you're not going to like that person you meet. Because I damn sure didn't because I didn't like how I showed up a lot of my journey. It took a lot of personal reconciliation and making it okay. "Look, that's a life in the past, let's move on. Let's be a good dude." I've always been a good dude, but let's not let the things that happened in your past. And nothing of it was tragic, it just wasn't being who I was.
James Robert Lay:
It's interesting that you say that because I just had Jim, The Rookie Morris on for a conversation, and he was played by Dennis Quaid in the movie, The Rookie.
Speaker 2:
Great movie.
James Robert Lay:
It really is. It's a great story. And we were talking about this idea of being held captive by the past. And Dr. Benjamin Hardy, who's an organizational psychologist, he has been on the show twice, he speaks frequently about always working towards your future self. Who do you want to become? And then letting go of who you are dying to the old, to make room for the new, which is easier said than done, how can we do this? How can we [crosstalk 00:20:14] to the old?
Donnie Boivin :
You made me think of Matthew McConaughey, because I love your ability to recall all these thoughts and the things you've done. So well done on that. But Matthew McConaughey, in a speech, he's winning an award on stage, they asked him, who does he look up to? And he goes, "Me, 10 years from now."
James Robert Lay:
Yes.
Donnie Boivin :
And I've always loved that phrase because I thought, "Gosh," and I did a phenomenal exercise at a convention one time, and I forget the girl whose name was on stage, but she came out and she goes, "Here's what I want you to do, I want you to write down every great thing you've ever accomplished in the last 15 years, everything you're proud of." And we went through and we're writing down all these fantastic things, and it was a really cool exercise to see how much we've done.
Donnie Boivin :
And she goes, "Man, past 15 years have actually been pretty cool. What do you think it's going to happen in the next 15?" Right? So it was a great perspective to see how big I was going to go. And I think for most people they're stuck, "Oh my God, I got to pay my bills. Oh my God, I've got to be at this event, I got to sit on this board, I've got to do this thing." And they're so stuck in the minutia of life that they're not looking at, but God, look what this is building, look what this is taking me, look what this is helping me accomplish, look how I'm evolving and an individual and all these things I'm going through right now are going to be the next foundation of who I get to become.
James Robert Lay:
Yes.
Donnie Boivin :
And as they start looking more that direction, it becomes a beautiful way to walk your life.
James Robert Lay:
This is where Dan Sullivan has written with Dr. Benjamin Hardy, actually, a book called The Gap and the Gain. And it's so easy to fall into the gap, and I call this getting stuck doing. We are not human doers, we are human beings and we must break free from doing to take time to review what we've done, reflect on those experiences, learn from those experiences, think about the key insights that we can apply to our next iteration of doing, and then repeat the cycle time and time again. But we measure progress. We can measure progress from where we've come from, because sometimes when you look ahead at where you're going like, "This is overwhelming. I can't do this," but when you say... Like you said, the 15 year exercise of like, "Wow, look at all we... just imagine..."
James Robert Lay:
I was just having dinner this weekend. My wife and I, we went out with her uncle and a friend of his, and she's a doctor. Now, she's doing some really cool cancer research but she's frustrated. And we were digging deeper and I'm like, "Where do you want to be? What does your future look like? Can you articulate that?" And she had a very hard time to share that with me. And I said, "Look, here's the deal. Imagine we're having coffee or cocktails..." And this is one of my favorite questions to ask, "... it's a year from now. Because I think, if we can just look at a year, we'll start there. And you're in a really good place. The first and most important question of them all is, 'What are we drinking?'" So Donnie we're having coffee or cocktails, what are we drinking?
Donnie Boivin :
Oh, Captain Morgan.
James Robert Lay:
Captain Morgan, there you go. I'm having an old fashion. So you're having Captain Morgan, I'm having an old fashion, and you're in a really good place. I want you to take a drink of that Captain Morgan and I want you to look back to this conversation today and tell me three things that need to happen between now until then, for you to feel good about the progress you're making on your own journey of growth.
Donnie Boivin :
For me, it's really simple. I don't need three things. And the reason I don't need three things is we are tracking to hit everything that we set out to hit. So every year we set out, "This is what we're going to accomplish this year." So we're tracking a hit. So I know we'll have the number of people that we set out to come up and say thank you, right? We set that as an actual milestone, number of people we want to come up and say we made an impact and changed their lives. We know exactly how many clients and companies we're going to be working with, we set that out, and we know exactly how we're going to get there, right? And we know the impact that we're leaving behind us as we go, right? So we know where we're going to be. For me, I'm more fascinated about what can we actually accomplish in 10 years.
Donnie Boivin :
Because you go to Bill Gates, he's like, "People underestimate what they can do in a year or overestimate what they can do in a year, and underestimate what they can do in 10." I'm personally more fascinated with what can we actually accomplish in the future, right? You bring in crazy things like NFTs and everything else that's coming into marketplace that everybody's trying to get their hands on and figure out how they work, what is the evolution of business in the future, and where do we fit into the overall scheme of things, and what's that impact and change we've left overall? That's what keeps me more fascinated.
James Robert Lay:
Yeah. No, I completely agree. And speaking about that bigger future, let's bring some of that bigger future into the present moment when it comes to personal branding, because one of these areas that I know you're personally passionate about is what we're doing right now with podcasts. Because I mean what an amazing opportunity to multiply literally your voice to reach exponentially more ears that would not be possible in any other type of medium or platform maybe outside of video, but video add its own complexities, which is where podcasts come back into place, plus, there's the auditory side of things that's the relationship side, where's the opportunity here, in your mind, thinking about banking through the context of podcasting and personal branding to create exponential value, looking ahead into the future?
Donnie Boivin :
Well, I think we have to get people to understand what podcast really is. Podcasting is a networking tool, right? It is also a how to tool, okay? So if you think about social media in general, YouTube and podcasting, are how to platforms. People go to listen to podcast, they type in, how do I do X?
James Robert Lay:
Right.
Donnie Boivin :
Right. So the second side of that is it's the greatest networking tool under the sun. You've already very professionally name-dropped a bunch of really cool places and I'm not busting your chops about name-dropping. You've done it in a respectful way and said, "This is how they contributed to my story," right? Which I love about that. And I'll not use a financial advisor as a way to do this, because financial advisors are the most regulated people when it comes to putting content out in the market.
James Robert Lay:
Absolutely.
Donnie Boivin :
Right? So I had a financial advisor come to me at one point and he said, "I'd love to start a podcast, but I want to talk about money and I can't do it." And I said, "Well, why would you ever start a podcast to talk about money?" He goes, "Well, I need more people to buy things from me. I need to do more." I'm like, "That's the wrong way to look at it." I'm like, "What's your biggest hobby in the world?" He goes, "Man, I love fly fishing." I'm like, "Cool. Tell me more about fly fishing." And he's geeking out, talking about the different rods and reels and I'm completely over my head and I don't even know how to contribute to the conversation at this point, right? And I said, "Why not start a fly fishing podcast?" He's like, "Why the hell would I ever do that?"
Donnie Boivin :
I said, "Tell me about your ideal client? He's like, "I want CEOs of major companies who are doing million dollars. They have the extra..." And he was explaining that these were high net value people. I said, "How many of these high net value people do you think fly fish?" He goes, "A ton of them." I said, "How hard is it to get into their office?" He goes, "It's extremely hard." I said, "What if you reached out and said, 'I have a podcast about fly fishing. I would love to grab and hear your fly fishing stories, how you got into it, how you grew up into it, and just show the world a different size of you.' Most of those heavy hidden CEOs are going to raise their hand, say, 'Hell yes, let's have that conversation.' Now you get to sit down, have a dynamic conversation, geek out on what you geek out on. You think a week or two, after the show airs, you reach out and say, 'Hey, can I buy you lunch?' You think they're going to turn down that lunch?"
James Robert Lay:
Nope.
Donnie Boivin :
Absolutely not. It's the greatest networking tool on the face of the earth. The flip side of it is you can go like I am and get on podcast, tell your story, give some value, and hope that people get some solid takeaways about you that they get curious enough to go, "I want to know more about that Donnie guy." And then they go start Googling, they start researching, and you are given a platform to go and connect, and you're building a new level of trust that no other platform in a world has allowed us to do.
James Robert Lay:
I think, and this is why I'm so excited, you're tapping into all of the opportunities that I have spoken about and teach because it's the networking. This is about using technology to connect people with people. I don't care how digital the world becomes, it all comes back to people. It's just the way that we connect, interact, and it's opening up doors, and it's also opening up hearts, and minds in completely new ways that we didn't have access to 15, 20 years ago. And to get to this level and then to think about what the opportunities are in the future, that's what really gets me excited, because now it's like, "Okay, I work at a credit union, I work at a community bank, I'm a lender, I'm a leader. Now, I can maybe..."
James Robert Lay:
And we've seen a couple of clients do this. They'll highlight the stories of local businesses to elevate them, and then they're just simply taking a backseat and playing the role of facilitator, because I mean, if you think about... You mentioned high school before. If you think about high school, who were the cool kids? Were the cool kids the ones that went to the party or were the really cool kids the ones that hosted the party? And if you can host the party and invite other people in... I think it was Emily Post in her book. It was like 500 pages.
James Robert Lay:
She entered her book and said, "If the host is having fun..." And I'm paraphrasing, "If the host of the party is having fun, everyone else is going to have fun." So I think right here is what you're tapping into this idea of networking, of bringing people together, and then that starts to build a platform. It doesn't just build an audience, it begins to build a community of like minds, and it's this community building too that I think is just an untapped opportunity, because you think community financial brand, you think of zip code, county, state, et cetera, but no, community is also... it's what we're doing right here in this space.
Donnie Boivin :
Yeah. Community is 100% the answer right now. And the reason being... And Facebook figured this out two, three years ago, and Facebook was tanking, right? It was going the way of Myspace, all these other things were coming out and it was all wrapped around election. And I don't talk world news, but that's why it was tanking, right?
James Robert Lay:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Donnie Boivin :
And they were like, "Okay, our platform is too divided. How do we get people to keep coming back to the platform?" Because they were losing [inaudible 00:31:40]. And what they realized and what they figured out is if people had a commonality, something that they could geek out on together, that the world news side of things didn't come into it, and that they could create these communities. And I can promise anybody building a personal brand, if you have champions... And I define champions by people who are going to go out and stand out front and tell other people about you, because you're great at what you do, you're great in the community, whatever reason, whatever value you're providing them, they're going to stand out front for you.
Donnie Boivin :
If you create a community of champions, you can do anything you want in the world. You're a hundred some odd episodes into this podcast, maybe more than that, so you've got a following of people. If you looked at that audience and say, guys, "You really need to go get this book," odds are, there's going to be a movement of people that's going to flood Amazon and go buy that book merely off of the trust you've given them by constantly being a voice of the industry. And what people forget is as you're building that community... We'll use Gary Vee in NFTs, right?
Donnie Boivin :
Gary came out and said, "I'm going to launch an NFT." Everybody's like, "I don't know what an NFT is, but I trust Gary Vee. And if Gary says go that direction, we're going in that direction, and the dude made $94 million in 24 hours with his NFT," and half your audience just went, "What the hell's an NFT?" But that's a side story. But that's what I'm talking about. When you have such a strong community, because you've shown up as you, you are providing value, you're helping your community, you're giving them a place where they can all geek out together on whatever it is they geek out on, man, you are the guy hosting the party, just to bring it full circle.
James Robert Lay:
I want to give a couple of more shout outs here. For people who are doing this so that the dear listener can reference this, and they're like, "Donnie, this is great, but make it more practical to me," Lynne Jarman Johnson, she was a guest going back early episode. I think it was episode 45 if my memory serves correct. She's in consumers credit union and they have a multiyear running podcast called Money, I'm Home. And then there's Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson, who I've known since 2014, and she's the chief marketing officer of the JMMB Group out of Jamaica, and she's doing fantastic work around this idea of empowering brand champions or internal employee advocates through her internal marketing podcast.
James Robert Lay:
We had a conversation going back to episode 64, but back to the point of making recommendations, check out Kerry-Ann's podcast, the Internal Marketing podcast, that continue to go deeper into the conversations that Donnie and I have started here today. Donnie, I want to get real practical as we start to wrap up here. Looking ahead, what is a very practical, small step, the dear listener at a financial brand, a bank credit union, maybe even a FinTech, that they can take next on their own journey of growth to build their own personal brand, maybe through podcasting, maybe that's a next step down the road, but let's start small here.
Donnie Boivin :
Yeah, for sure. If I were in their shoes, I would 100% go to LinkedIn. I would then take an afternoon and write down everything significant that's happened in their business journey over the last, however many years they've been in business. I would then take that story and put what was the business lesson they learned about the story? And then for the next 30 days, maybe 60 days, I would put out one story a day on LinkedIn. Don't worry about who's reading it, don't worry about who's liking it, don't worry about who's viewing it. Part of the personal brand on social is consistency and showing up. It's how you establish trust. And if you put out 30 to 60 stories, what you're going to see? So go back to my ADHD story. "Hey, I just got diagnosed with ADHD," right?
Donnie Boivin :
It was a story that allowed me to go, "No wonder building a business is so hard because I'm constantly swirling all over the dang place." I'm like the dog from up squirrel all the time and now that I'm getting help and getting treatment for it, things are actually moving in the right direction. That was just one example of the story. But you take that story, you put it out on LinkedIn, you get authentically raw, like we defined it earlier, about what can I share that's going to connect with my ideal audience, from a personal story, maybe with a business lesson on it? 60 days, pop that out, every day, don't skip, Saturday and Sunday too, and watch how quickly you're following comes to the table, and you're going to see things like, "Man, I was there too. I did that." You're going to see things and people are going to start looking for your content as long as you are more into playing the long game with this.
James Robert Lay:
That's a great point. Play the long game because just like any relationship in the, quote, unquote, real world, the physical world, it takes time to gain respect, to establish trust, and ultimately fall in love with someone. This is a long game and you're right, we'll call it, 99% of winning here is just simply showing up, which is a rule of in life, just period, which I'm teaching my kids that just show up When everyone else is now showing up, and do the hard work that no one else is willing to do today so that you can win tomorrow, the next day, and the next day. Donnie, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you for showing up and sharing this time with me, man.
Donnie Boivin :
One quick thing for you. Guys, if you listen to this episode and you got any value out of it whatsoever, one tip, one trick, do James the biggest favor, and tell one other person, one other banker, to listen to the show. Being a fellow podcaster, one of the biggest struggles is continuing to gain new audience and finding more people to come in. Share this out with one of the person that could get absolute value out of it. It's literally like you walked up and gave James personal hug, man.
James Robert Lay:
Man. No. Donnie, thank you so much for that. And to end, this has been a fantastic conversation. If someone wants to continue the conversation with you, the dialogue discussion we've started today, what is best way for them to reach out to say hello?
Donnie Boivin :
Yeah. Absolutely. If they'll text the word success to 8173186030, we'll send them all our social handles and some freebies and stuff, but it's the fastest way to get connected with me. So text the word success, 8173186030, and we'll send you a whole bunch of goodies all from us and some of our champions.
James Robert Lay:
Connect with Donnie, learn from Donnie, text Donnie, grow with Donnie. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of Banking on Digital Growth. This has been a lot of fun today, man.
Donnie Boivin :
My honor brother. Well done. Keep it up.
James Robert Lay:
As always. And until next time be well, do good, and make your bed.
