I built this event because I got tired of leaving conferences with a tote bag and nothing else.
You know the room. Three days in the dark while somebody pitches at you from a stage. A stack of business cards from people you will never speak to again. Lunch by yourself because you don't know anybody and nobody's going to fix that for you. Then you fly home, set the notebook on your desk, and never open it again.
Here's the thing that finally set me off. I was hunting for stages to speak on and I pulled up the big national association for event planners — the people who do this for a living. I read every single topic they were looking for. Not one of them was about the attendee. Not one. That's the whole business, and nobody's thinking about the person who paid to be in the seat.
So we built this one backwards from every one of those rooms.
You get put in a house the first morning, so by hour two you already have people. No One Eats Alone is not a slogan on a banner — it's the rule, and it's enforced. There are matchmaker meetings, house rounds, and a Speaker Showdown where the winner earns the stage instead of buying it. Yes, there are killer speakers. There's also karaoke. The breaks are on the schedule on purpose, because the hallway is where the business actually happens and I'm not going to program over the top of it.
I come by this honestly. I did twenty years on straight commission after the Marine Corps, and at forty I figured out I'd spent two decades building somebody else's dream. So I jumped. Then I damn near lost the whole thing, because knowing how to sell and knowing how to run a business are not the same skill. What pulled me out was other people — the ones who picked up the phone, made the introduction, told me the truth when I didn't want it. Every room I've built since has been an attempt to hand that to somebody else on purpose instead of by accident.
That's what the Badass Business Summit is. Three days built so you leave with relationships that are still worth something in March.
Come find me. I'll be the one in the back making sure you're not standing alone.
— Donnie Boivin