Synopsis -
In This Episode, Dr. Misner Describes The Early Growth Years Of BNI from 1986-1989:

Steady Growth Was The Key

The Origin Of The Visitor Host Position

During These Years, BNI Learned That It’s All About People, Not About Places or Professions

The Givers Gain Philosophy Is Based Upon The Social Capital Theory Of The Law Of Reciprocity

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 023 -

Frank Felker:
Hello everybody and welcome back to the official BNI podcast, brought to you by networkingnow.com, the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I’m Frank Felker in Washington DC joined on the phone today by Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner who is calling and this week from Texas, down in the yellow rose country in Texas. I understand you’re going to be both in Austin and in Dallas this week.

Ivan Misner:
Yes I will. I’ll be doing some recording sessions in both places.

Frank:
You are recording audio books? What are you recording?

Ivan:
I’m doing several different recordings but probably the most comprehensive is a series of recordings with Del Fuego who is the company who does BNI CDs. We’ve done a whole series on networking and success and we will be doing some future material, and I’m recording that now. BNI members will be seeing it come out of BNI.com probably before the end of the year.

Frank:
Del Fuego – my rusty Spanish tells me that means of the fire. Is that a very hot recording studio down there?

Ivan:
It is. That’s what their logo is, too- it’s little flames. They have beautiful graphics. If you have a chance, go to the BNI.com take a look at some of the CDs that they have done. They really do a nice job. It’s done conversational like this, where I’d talk to Sarah and Flynn who are producers. It’s done in an interview format and it is very good.

Frank:
I understand that you are also going to be the recipient of an award in Dallas while you are in Texas. What’s that all about?

Ivan:
The sales and marketing executives international is giving me a little award in Dallas. I appreciate them thinking of me. They’re giving the data ward called the marketing statesman of the year, if you can believe that, Frank.

Frank:
Well. Are they going to make you put on a Sam Houston hat and a sidearm or anything?

Ivan:
I would be glad to do it. I will probably pass on the sidearm.

Frank:
You know Ivan, we’ve been talking a lot in a series of intermittent podcasts about your book Givers Gain that is given away free to members of BNI. In fact, it isn’t even for sale you have gone through chapters one, two and three and I thought it would be good this week to talk about chapter four of Givers Gain.

Ivan:
Thanks. Chapter four is about steady growth. The reason we’re doing this in a podcast is I think it’s a real complement to the book. BNI members all around the world should be getting a copy of this book for free when they go through the MSP training, the Member Success Program training.

In some countries is called different things but it is basically the new member orientation training. Whenever you go through one of those trainings, you should get a copy of Givers Gain.

We’re going to talk about chapter four and I think these podcasts are great tool to listen to as you go through the book. Chapter four is entitled Steady Growth. It really covers BNI from 1986, the second year of BNI, until 1989. Like the end of our second year in 1986, BNI was up to about 40 chapters and was in its second state. It started in California and was in Arizona.

A year later we had hit 60 and the word “national” was starting to echo in my mind. I started thinking this might actually be national someday. Of course today, we are in more than three dozen countries with over 100,000 members but at that time I didn’t quite see it as that quite yet. By 1987, we were in three states. That’s three states in three years and I was really amazed.

Of course now, we open up entire countries faster than that. One year I think we opened ten countries. There’s really nothing like the joy of planting the first seed and having it grow and stepping back and watching it. A lot of things happen in those first few years and there’s a lot of stories in this chapter, and one in particular that I want to talk about because it’s a great illustration of how we learn from our mistakes.

Some people don’t know that we had a number of chapters, about 20% of the chapters I believe, that net every other week in BNI. They did not meet every single week. They met every other week. I thought in the beginning – people had these ideas and they didn’t want to meet every week. They wanted to meet every other week. I thought let’s try it out and experiment. So we did it and do you have any idea for a how many less referrals the chapters that were meeting every other week as compared to the chapters and that met every week?

Frank:
I would guess more than a 50% drop.

Ivan:
You’re absolutely right. Over time we found out that these groups past 52% fewer referrals than the groups that met once a week. I sat down with those groups and there were about seven or eight groups at that point – I sat down with them individually and I said if I can show you one thing, just one thing that would double the number of your referrals that you’re passing in your group, would you do it? What do you think they said?

Frank:
Sure. We’re all ears.

Ivan:
Absolutely. So I told them to meet every week. I showed them the numbers. I put it the reports from all the other chapters that I have photocopied and I showed them how groups that were meeting every week instead of every other week were passing twice the number of referrals that they were passing.

I have to say to their credit, every single chapter transition to a weekly group except for one. That one group closed down within a year. They just weren’t passing enough referrals. It was one of the first things in the early days that we learned about how networking works. Have you ever gotten a haircut over the phone?

Frank:
Only from a stockbroker. That’s the only time I got a haircut over the phone.

Ivan:
What other than him, you generally have to be there. And you certainly have to be there to get referrals. We learned that early on. It was one of the first lessons that we learned and I talk about it in chapter four of Givers Gain.

The other thing that happened – it’s a long story and I’m not going to cover it today, but there’s a great story in chapter four about how the visitor host program was developed. It was actually developed by a specific chapter in BNI that came up with this idea and I stumbled across it.

Listeners of the podcasts who have a chance, go to chapter four and read the story about how the visitor host program began because it’s not something I thought up or came up with. It was absolutely a great example of BNI members who came up with great ideas and have contributed into the program.

Frank:
Well, we’re just about out of time for this week’s podcast. Any last pearl of wisdom that you would like to share with us?

Ivan:
Sure. I think the last thing I would talk about and it’s really one of the most powerful things- in this chapter we talk about how we learned this program is all about people not places or professions, and I’ve talked about that in a previous podcast. The history behind that and how we learned that it’s so much more about people than professionals really comes out of this chapter.

If you have a chance, take a look at it. The last thing is I talk about is Givers Gain and how we came up with that phrase and how it is based on the social capital theory of the law of reciprocity. Listeners of the podcast, take a look at the book and read along with me as we go through these podcasts over the next year every month covering the chapters.

Frank:
That’s great. That’s it for this week. For Dr. Ivan Misner, I’m Frank Felker saying we will see you next week on the official BNI podcast.