Episode 81: “Staying on Track”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Synopsis

This week Dr. Misner addresses a question a BNI member asked him: “What do you do stay on track?” Ivan sums his formula for success up in these quotable phrases:

1. Success is the uncommon application of common knowledge. (For example, Ivan Misner did not create networking; he focused it.)
2. Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way.
3. What you do thunders above your head so loudly I cannot hear you speak.
4. You may not be able to make a world of difference, but you can make a difference in the world.

Don’t forget the search function on this podcast site. Enter a search term into the search box at the top, and you’ll see every episode where Dr. Misner has addressed that subject.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 081 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, 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’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California , and I am joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Hello, Ivan. How are you today?

Ivan:
I’m doing great, Priscilla. I just got back from Cleveland, Ohio, where I did a big BNI event. It’s always great to go visit the regions of BNI. They really recharge my battery to have a chance to talk to them.

Priscilla:
That’s great. Well, what are you planning to share with us?

Ivan:
Well, I’m going to share a question that was asked of me just recently in one of my visits to a BNI region, where somebody stood up and – we opened it up for questions, and the gentlemen stood up and he said, “What do you do to stay on track, to help achieve your goals, to stay focused on what you’re doing? What are the things that you think about in life and in business to help keep you going and staying on track?”

That was sort of his question. I came up with four points right then and there that I thought might be interesting for other people who want to sort of assess how they can achieve a level of success within their business, sort of hear what I do, and maybe some of it will resonate with them.

Priscilla:
What are they?

Ivan:
Well, here’s the first one that I told him.

**Success is the uncommon application of common knowledge.

That’s a phrase that was in my book, Masters of Success.

For BNI members, if you haven’t seen that, I really recommend that you take a look at the book, Masters of Success. It’s probably one of the most interesting books for me to write. I really enjoy doing it because I had contributing authors like Buzz Aldrin, Erin Brockovich, Brian Tracy, Mark Victor Hansen, Jack Canfield, Tony Robbins, and some very successful people. And I think the one thing I’ve learned, and I’ve talked about this in other podcasts – while I’m talking about this, I just really discovered – I feel silly to say this – I just discovered the “search” function on this podcast. So if you’re listening to this, there’s some topic you find of interest, punch in the topic under the “search” button at the top, and you can find all the places where I talked about that particular subject. I think that’s really good for members who want to go deep and understand one subject or another.

I know I talked a little bit about this in a previous podcast, in The Uncommon Application, Common Knowledge. We all know what it takes to be successful. We really do. If you go to a successful person and ask them, “What’s your secret to success,” they’re not going to tell you something you don’t already know. You know it. So, to me, it’s the uncommon application of common knowledge. That’s the first thing that helps to keep me on track. I know that there’s no magic pill or secret out there. It’s a matter of taking what I know and what other people know and applying it with an uncommon system or an uncommon commitment. That’s the first thing.

Priscilla:
Can you give us just one example?

Ivan:
Well, sure. A great example is I didn’t create networking. Networking was out there way before me. What I did is I took this concept and I focused it with this laser-like focus on creating a program around a system that meets regularly, and there’s training involved, and we’re very myopic. So, anybody can take a concept and with a lot of work and creating a system and an uncommon commitment can create tremendous success out of it.

If you look, in Masters of Success, I talk about the founder of Chick-Fil-A and how he didn’t create a formula for the human genome; he just had a recipe for a chicken sandwich, and he marketed it like crazy. That’s it. And it took a lot of work in his own system and a simple recipe, and he created this really successful business.

So there’s many examples of it that are in Masters of Success. But the uncommon application, common knowledge is the first one.

The second one that I shared with this gentleman was something that my mother gave me as a letter opener when I was in high school. And I carried this thing with me in every office I ever had my entire life. I got it when I was probably 16 or 17 years old. It ended up breaking about 15 or 20 years ago. If you go into my office in my home, on my desk, right there, is a paperweight that says this. It’s the same quote that my mother gave me 30-some years ago.

**Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way.

I love that phrase. And for somebody who’s maybe a little bit assertive – and I might be just a little bit assertive. My mother got that when I was a kid. I was running for a student body position, an ASB position when I was in high school, and she said this with great love.

She said, “Honey, I love you, but the truth is you’re not going to get elected to dog catcher if you don’t learn how to work with people. You’ve got to work with people, and you can’t just tell them, ‘It’s this way or the highway.’ You’ve got to learn how to be diplomatic.”

And she gave me this letter opener, which I literally kept for many, many, many years until it broke. Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way. You can guide; you can coach; you can work with people, but you can’t make people do something. That advice was so good for me, because in working with entrepreneurs, you can’t make an entrepreneurs do anything they don’t want to do. You can’t. It’s like herding cats. And I’ve got 110,000 of them.

My guess is that people listening to this, that can resonate with you. Your clients are probably very much the same way. So, you can’t make people do things they don’t want to do. You’ve got to learn how to work with them, guide them, and take them in a direction. And that’s what diplomacy is all about. So, it’s one of the things I’ve sort of lived by in my life.

Priscilla:
What’s number three?

Ivan:
Number three is a spin on another phrase, walking the talk. You’ve got to walk the talk. I love this variation of it better.

**What you do thunders above your head so loudly I cannot hear the words you speak.

And I have this in the book, Givers Gain. What you do thunders above your head so loudly I cannot hear the words you speak. You’ve got to walk the talk. If you’re telling other people to show up on time, you should show up on time. If you’re telling other people to be prepared for their presentations, you need to be prepared for your presentations.

I do this a lot with BNI directors. I say, “If you’re expecting members to do something, you have to be able to do the same just as well or better.” And I think if you take it down to the BNI member level, then we’re really saying that you should have the same expectations of yourself as you have of your fellow members, and you should be able to do the things that you expect others to do as well, because “What you do thunders above your head so loudly I cannot hear the words you speak” is a real powerful concept that helps keep me on track professionally and personally.

Priscilla:
That’s a great phrase. I like that.

Ivan:
And the last one is one that I’ve been thinking about a lot over the years. We get out of college and we think we’re going to just light a fire and change the world and have these huge impacts. We find that we’re one person of several billion on the planet, and you look back, you’re in your 50s – I’m 52 years old at the time of this recording – you look back and you say, “Have I changed things as much as I had hoped to change them?” I’ve kind of come to the conclusion – and I sat on a board and we sort of brainstormed some phrases for this non-profit organization. This gentleman and I came up with a phrase that I think really represents how I feel, just the average person can impact the world, and that is:

**You may not be able to make a world of difference, but you can make a difference in the world.

I’d like to think that what I’ve done has made a lot of little differences in many people’s lives, and for all of us, it’s important to look back and say, “What little things have we done to help change other people’s lives?” And I’ve got to tell you, one simple thing is, if you’re just coming to BNI meetings regularly and you’re helping your fellow members and you’re giving them referrals on a regular basis, you’re changing their lives. You’re helping them succeed in their business. And now, more than ever, that’s really, really important; and it’s something, I think, that helps me keep on track for my business and my life.

Priscilla:
It’s the Givers Gain part of it. It’s the beautiful aspect of BNI.

Ivan:
Yeah, it really is the Givers Gain, the idea that if I help you, you’ll help me. We could all make a difference that way. It’s one of the reasons why the theme for BNI this year – and it’s a theme that we will be carrying on, I think, for many, many years to come. It won’t be our annual theme, but it’s a phrase we’re going to use for many years to come. We just got a registered trademark on it. And that is: Change the way the world does business.

I really believe that BNI is, in its own way, slowly but surely changing the way the world does business by teaching business people how to work together to build their business. I think that BNI is a classic example of the sum of the whole being greater than the individual parts. That happens with a lot of people doing a little work.

Priscilla:
Right, I agree with you. I think it’s a wonderful tool for making a difference in the world.

Ivan:
Well, thanks. He asked me that question about staying on track with my goals and my direction in business and life. That’s what I came up with off the cuff, and one of my staff people took some notes and said, “This would make a great podcast.” That’s why we’re doing this today.

Priscilla:
That’s nice. Okay. Well, I think we’ve come to the end of our time, unless you’d like to add anything else.

Ivan:
No, that covers it. Thank you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay, that’s great. Thank you, Dr. Misner.

Well, I’d like to just remind the listeners 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 hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.