Synopsis

Dr. Ivan Misner shares tips from Chapter 6 of his book Givers Gain, which covers the years 1990-1994. The one-to-one dance cards started at a conference during this time period. This was also when Dr. Misner developed his vision of an international organization and began working on the business instead of in it.

Some important points about how the BNI franchise works:

• 95% of all the revenue of every group stays within the country of that franchise.
• Franchise owners are all BNI members who work their way up.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 035 -

Priscilla Rice:
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 am Priscilla Rice coming from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello, Ivan. How are you?

Ivan Misner:
I am doing great, Priscilla. I am calling this week from BNI headquarters. I open up with that because Chapter 6 of Givers Gain is what our topic is for this week. We open up Chapter 6 by talking about the fact that the organization really grew a lot. We talk about going coast to coast. We cover the years 1990-1994.

We open up with the fact that it was during this period of time that we finally moved BNI headquarters out of my house. I ran BNI from my home until the early 1990’s. I had a house in Laverne and we ran it there. Since then, we have moved successively to larger buildings three times.

BNI now resides in a headquarters building of 33,000 square feet. It is a very large facility with a lot of offices and a lot of warehouse space. A lot of members just don’t know how much content we ship out around the world. We have a very large shipping favility here. Chapter 6 opens up with the fact tha we finally moved out of my house and into our first offices.

Priscilla:
Great. Tell us about that.

Ivan:
In the early 1990’s is when I had sold off my consulting practice. I had formed BNI as as separate company and it became a corporation. That was when we began to do the conferences, and I talk about this throughout this section of the book.

Just as a reminder for those of you who haven’t heard the previous chapters , Givers Gain is a book that is given to every new member when they go through MSP training. My goal here in doing this podcast is to walk you through the book. As you read it, maybe you can listen to this podcast at the same time. It helps bring the book alive as you are doing it.

The conferences took place during this period of time. The 1990’s is when we started doing them. The BNI conferences are all around the world. Every November, we do an international conference where we bring everyone together from around the world. In the middle of the year, we have national conferences that are done in many, many countries around the world.

If you ever hear about a conference in your area- one way to find out about them is to go to BNI.com- you should definitely attend the conferences. We have some excellent speakers from around the world.
It all started in 1990. The whole story about how it happened is there and it is kind of an interesting story.

The next part of the book that we talk about there is franchising. We explain to members that BNI is a franchise. We talk about how we started franchising in the early days and why. The bottom line is that we found that the program works much better when it is locally owned and operated. People right there locally own and manage the operation.

A lot of people don’t realize it, but 95% of all the revenue of every group stays within the country of that franchise. This is very much an international organization and it truly is locally owned and operated. The countries retain the majority of- memberships used to operate the program within that country.

Priscilla:
If somebody wanted to be a franchise owner, is it difficult to get started with BNI?

Ivan:
It depends on the country that one is in. In some countries, most of the franchise territories have been sold. In other countries, they have not. In the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, most of the territories are sold, so they are franchise resales, not new franchises that are available. In most of the other countries that we operate in, there still are open areas.

The interesting thing about BNI is that you can’t just call us and say that you would like to buy a franchise. You really have to be a member and work your way up in the organization to an assistant director or executive director. We don’t just sell and we don’t advertise franchises. Those are things that we have never done, which when you think about it, makes sense. We are a word of mouth marketing organization. We should be able to build our company through word of mouth. If you don’t walk the talk, you can’t be a world-leading networking organization. It is all through referrals.

Priscilla:
Great. So is there more to tell us about what happened?

Ivan:
A few more things we cover here in this chapter. We talk about the fact that we started doing one-to-one dance cards. The version of Givers Gain that you have right now might say one-on-one dance cards. Here is something interesting that we learned as we went around the world. One-on-one has a completely different connotation in some countries. It is something completely different from what we had in mind. So we had some people going, yeah, I want to have a one-on-one. We had to change that. You will see in a revised version of Givers Gain that they are now called one-to-one’s on the material that we have.

The one-to-one dance card came from the idea of setting up meetings to connect with one another and get to know each other. But it actually didn’t start with members. It started at a conference. We had a day where there were a lot of people. The conference was on Saturday night and on Sunday they were still around. Maybe they didn’t fly out right away. We wanted to find a mechanism whereby they could connect with each other and we designed these one-to-one dance cards as a result of the conference.

At some point after a few years, someone said gee wouldn’t these be good for chapter meetings! It was one of those BFO’s. Have you ever heard of a BFO, Priscilla?

Priscilla:
What does it stand for?

Ivan:
It’s a blinding flash of light. We realized that these would be great tools for a BNI meeting, and that is how the one-to-one dance cards got used. It was also during this time, just to wrap up the chapter, that I really started looking at BNI as possibly being an international organization, at the point which through 1994 the first nine years, we were just in the United States. It was at this point that I really started to get the vision of this being international.

The last chapter of it is where I talk about understanding that if I wanted to grow this company, I had to work more on the business than in the business- working in it being the day to day operations, working in it being creating the vision that can be carried out throughout the world. I talk a little bit about how I did that.

I think for any small business owner, this might be of interest to them because BNI is truly an example of a small operation that became global. It started with me and two part time people. We, now as of this recording, have almost 1,000 directors working for the company around the world. This chapter really talks about how I sat down and started to get that vision about where to go.

I think that any of the members will find this book to be valuable if they look at it and understand how this relates to them in BNI but also how it can relate to them as a business owner. They can take these ideas that I talk about to help build a global company and use some of those to help them in their local business.

Priscilla:
Do you know the expression hootspa?

Ivan:
Yes, I do.

Priscilla:
I think it took a lot of hootspa to think of taking your business and making this international as well as national.

Ivan:
I appreciate you saying that. I think that to me it was so clear that people around the world wanted to do business through referrals that I really felt that this would literally translate into other countries. I am really pleased to say that it has done so extremely well.

Priscilla:
Thank you, Dr. Misner. I think this is all we have time for today. This podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com. I want to thank you listeners for listening in again. This is Priscilla Rice and we will see you again next week on the official BNI podcast.