Episode 45: “Givers Gain Chapter 7: Going International”

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Synopsis

Every BNI member gets a free copy of Givers Gain at the New Members’ Orientation/Member Success Program.

Going through the history of BNI gives members a sense of organizational culture. In this episode, Dr. Misner talks about how BNI became an international organization.

• Canada was the first country outside the US to have BNI; Don and Nancy Morgan, the founders of BNI Canada, are still the national directors.
• Canadian BNI directors are responsible for the expansion of BNI to the United Kingdom and Australia.
• BNI has been translated into more than a dozen languages, starting with Canadian French.
• Because BNI is about members doing business locally, it adapts itself to cultural differences.
• It was also during this period that the BNI Foundation was created.
• You can find the Hidden Elements to Running a Successful BNI meeting at the end of this chapter.

Sponsored by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 045 -

Priscilla Rice:
Hello everybody and welcome back to the Official BNI Podcast, brought to you by networkingnow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice and I am coming from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. How are you, Ivan?

Ivan Misner:
I am doing great, Priscilla. Thank you.

Priscilla:
What would you like to share with us today?

Ivan:
Today, I am going to talk about Chapter 7 of the book, Givers Gain. What I have been trying to do this year and last year at the end of last year is kind of go through chapter by chapter of the book, Givers Gain, which is all about the organization. It’s sort of the bio of BNI. The reason I think this is important for members is that it gives you a sense of the organizational culture. It tells you where we came from and how we got to where we are. The link to the past really is important to future, so I am going to be talking today about Chapter 7,  which is all about going international and how BNI became an international organization.

Priscilla:
Great.

Ivan:
This particular this chapter goes from 1995 to the year 2000. It really is the time when we put “International” in the “I” of BNI. We had always wanted the organization to go international but it took a little while for us to be able to do that. Today, after 23 years, we now are in 37 countries. We have chapters operating in 37 countries. We have over 5,000 chapters operating in 37 countries around the world. We have done 36 of those 37 countries in the last 13 years, from 1995 to 2008.

In the first 10 years, we were in one country. Finally in 1995, we opened up in our second country. That is Canada. Canada was the second country for BNI. I am going to share something on this podcast that is not in the book. I ran across a member. I was concerned, you know. We were opening up in a brand-new country. Is this really going to work in a new country? I didn’t know. I hadn’t done it before. I know it sounds silly now after being in 37 countries, but I didn’t know.

I was talking to a couple of members in Canada. I was asking them, “Do you think this will work here in Canada?” I am not making this up. This is not a joke, Priscilla.

One of the members, a woman, looks at me and says, “Oh honey, this will work great in Canada. Canadians are very much like Americans except with cheap healthcare and no guns.”

I had to laugh because I didn’t know if she was serious or if it was a joke, but whatever it was, it made me feel comfortable. I really appreciate that member saying because it made me think — you know what? People are people all around the world. This idea of building relationships will work in Canada as well as it will in other countries.

Canada our first country for us to open in. The founding National Directors for Canada are Don and Nancy Morgan. Don and Nancy are still the National Directors for us in Canada. They have really done a tremendous job of helping us open up in the first country outside the U.S., which really leapfrogged to other countries because one of our early Canadian directors, Steve Lawson, had a brother, Martin Lawson, in the London. Steve encouraged Martin and his wife, Julian, to consider starting BNI and United Kingdom. So we actually opened up BNI in the United Kingdom as a result of Steve Lawson in Canada.

We also ended up opening up in Australia because of some Canadian directors. Canada is really responsible for us opening up on two different sides of the world. For that we’re very appreciative. They were very instrumental in the growth of this organization.

Priscilla:
How many languages does BNI get translated into?

Ivan:
That’s a great question. It’s more than a dozen languages that we operate in. The first language was French-Canadian and now, of course, we are also in France and we have chapters in Sweden, Norway, Denmark — all separate languages — and Germany. We have chapters operating in Hebrew, in Chinese. There are probably a dozen or more languages.

I will never forget the first time I saw meeting room in a different language. The first time, it was in Sweden and Swedish is not like the French, where Americans kind of know a little bit of French. It’s not like Spanish. I grew up in Southern California, and you can’t grow up in southern California without knowing a little Spanish. Swedish is Swedish. You don’t understand a single word unless you know the language, right?

So I remember the first time I was listening to this entire meeting in Swedish and one of the members looks over at me and says, “You have no idea what he’s talking about, do you?”

I said, “Yeah. He is introducing the referral part of the meeting and he’s explaining how the referral works and if you don’t have a referral, you give a testimonial.”

He said, “Wow, you know Swedish.”

I said, “No, I wrote the agenda.”

That’s what it was like. You go to meetings and that’s the great thing about BNI. You can go to BNI meetings anywhere in the world and not know any of the language and still know exactly what is happening and what’s going on because the BNI meetings operate very much the same all over the world. I think one of the beautiful things about the organization is that it’s all based on trust and building relationships and that kind of transcends many of the cultural differences.

Priscilla:
But there must be some really interesting cultural differences between the different countries, I would imagine. Right?

Ivan:
There are, but to a large extent, we are really not talking about Brits doing business with Americans, Americans doing business with Aussies, Aussies doing business with Malaysians, or Malaysians doing business with South Africans. We are really talking about business people locally doing business with each other. And so what we have been BNI is a mechanism or a structure an overlay being applied on top of the cultural context.

So it’s Americans doing business with Americans locally. It’s Canadians doing business with Canadians and Brits doing business with Brits. BNI is a classic example of thinking globally and acting locally. It’s about building relationships locally. Now mind you, that can lead to international business, and it can lead to referrals to do business worldwide, but it is about building relationships locally.

Although yes, there are absolutely cultural differences all over the world. One of these days, I have to do a podcast on some of the funny things that have happened to me around the world doing business internationally. The truth is it’s really about local business people getting to know and trust each other and doing referrals that may lead to business worldwide. It’s about building local contacts.

Priscilla:
Okay. Well now that I have sidetracked you, do you have anything else that you would like to say before the podcast is over?

Ivan:
I know we talk about, in Chapter 7, a lot of the cultural differences. That is an interesting thing to take a look at , but we also talk about how the Board of Advisors expanded during this period of time. Many members who are listening to this podcast may not know this but every single policy that exists today in BNI was either written by the Board of Advisors or approved by the Board of Advisors.

The Board of Advisors is made up of you, members. The Board of Advisors is completely made up of members of the organization and its members who create every single policy that exists today or have approved every single policy that exists today.

It was really in the mid-90s that we made the organization international. It was up until that, really, a local Southern California board that is now an international board representing a couple dozen countries for the program. Every policy that exists exists because it was created by the Board of Advisors.

We also created for the first time in the mid-90s what I call the Founders Circle. It is made up of the top BNI directors around the world. We get together once or twice a year to meet and help keep the program going.

It was also in the really late 90s, since this chapter covers from 1995 to 2000, that we created the BNI Foundation, which was the topic of a previous podcast a few weeks ago. The BNI Foundation was created in 1998, and we have over the years given away hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars through the BNI Foundation. If any of the members want to get some information on it, listen to the podcast a couple weeks ago about the foundation and go to our website for the foundation at BNI.org. We really are making a difference in the world from a charitable support perspective as well as generating business.

That is most of the chapter. I could probably spend a whole hour talking about this chapter, I think. The last thing that is key for this chapter is the Hidden Elements. We talk about the Hidden Elements and where and what they came from and how they apply to you as a member. If there is one thing that you as a BNI member should understand, it is the Hidden Elements of running a successful BNI meeting. You can find that towards the end of Chapter 7 in Givers Gain because it’s the single most important thing, I think, in running successful BNI meetings. The Hidden Elements are things that may seem obvious at first but really you need a deeper understanding in order to apply them effectively and be successful.

Priscilla:
That sounds like a podcast in itself. And it has a great name. The Hidden Elements.

Ivan:
It’s a martial arts term, actually. That is where I got it from. I describe the whole thing in there. By the way, if any listeners don’t have a copy of Givers Gain, you probably have not gone to the MSP training, Member Success Program training or new member orientation. It’s called different things in different countries.

If you have not gone to that training, go to that because you should get a free copy of the book that I am talking about. Every member gets a free copy of Givers Gain when they go to the new member orientation or Member Success Program training. If you went a long time ago, go back again and you will get a free copy of this. You can follow along in these podcasts and hear me talk about the very things that you are reading about.

Priscilla:
Great, Dr. Misner. I think that’s about all we have time for. Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

Ivan:
My pleasure.

Priscilla:
I would like to tell everybody that this podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we look forward to having you join us again next week for another episode of the Official BNI Podcast.