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Synopsis

This week, Dr. Misner wants to talk about the Fast Track program put together by Mark Taylor, Executive Director for the Houston East and South East Texas Area in conjunction with Del Fuego publishing. The program is based around the BNI Networking Secrets CDs that Del Fuego produced for Dr. Misner.

Everyone in the chapter buys the CDs and uses them like the required text for a college course. This ensures that everyone understands the fundamentals and works together. The result is 300% chapter growth.

Part of the program involves a live training session led by Ivan Misner on webcam.

If you’d like to see your chapter do the Fast Track Program, Dr. Misner will be happy to join you by webcam. To get started e-mail bnifastrack [at] delfuego [dot] com. (Just substitute the appropriate symbols for the words in brackets so it looks like a normal e-mail address. It’s written that way to prevent spammers from assaulting them with junk.)

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 108 -

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, and where are you?

Ivan:
Hi, Priscilla. Doing great, and I’m really excited. I’m in Southern California, this week, and I’ll be headed to a local high school to give a scholarship, a leadership scholarship. It’ll be the tenth annual scholarship that BNI has given to this high school, and we have, as of this podcast, the BNI Foundation has given almost $800,000 in mini grants and scholarships to organizations all around the world, in many countries around the world. This is our tenth year with this particular one, and I’m headed out there right after this interview today.

Priscilla:
That’s great, really great.

Ivan:
Thanks. We’re really pleased. For any member that wants to know more about the BNI Foundation, go to BNIFoundation.org, BNIFoundation.org.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about today. Today I want to talk about quantum chapter growth and the program that was put together by Mark Taylor. Mark has been in the Houston area for 32 years. He’s been involved with BNI since 2001. He’s been an Executive Director with BNI since 2006, and he is the Executive Director for the Houston East and South East Texas area. He’s been doing a joint program with Del Fuego Publishing, and Del Fuego Publishing did a CD called BNI Networking Secrets. And he and the Del Fuego ladies had put together an incredible program that has made a huge difference with some of the chapters, and that’s what I wanted to talk about today.

And I wanted to welcome Mark Taylor as my guest. Mark.

Mark:
Thank you, Dr. Misner. Great to be here.

Ivan:
Well, it’s good to have you on board. Let me throw the first question at you.

What have you done to help your BNI chapters grow? What was the secret, in your mind, of taking some of the members, the growth of these chapters that were in this program, the BNI Networking Secrets Program, which, I think, you’re calling with the Del Fuego ladies, the Fast Track program. Is that correct?

Mark:
That is correct.

Ivan:
You took a few chapters and they had 25 percent growth in members. And here’s the part that blew me away. They have tripled their referrals. They have had as much, and in some cases more than, 300 percent growth in referrals. Is that true?

Mark:
That is exactly true, and it’s happened in more than one chapter. We’re noticing in every chapter who’s adopted the chapter wide practice of buying these CDs and listening to them, we’ve noticed that in every single chapter. It’s amazing.

Ivan:
So tell me, why do you think it’s worked. To me, it’s all about a team and knowing how to work it together. Would you agree?

Mark:
Yes. In fact, the reason it’s worked is because it is, as you say on the CDs, it’s all about the fundamentals, and I’m a little embarrassed to say that I came to realize that many of our chapter members were not fundamentally sound.

So I listened to the CD, and I knew that that was the answer if we had everybody purchase their own set and listen to their set, their own reference copy, if you will, then that was the fastest, simplest way to get everybody on the same page. And you, Ivan, you and Tom Fleming we doing the training for me, 24/7.

Ivan:
In one of the stories in the CD that really resonated for the Fundamentals was the wind sprints story. Is that right?

Mark:
Exactly, exactly. We got a lot of testimonials afterward and asked our members, “Why? Why was this meaningful to you? What did you gain from this?” Wind sprints was the overwhelming answer, the popular answer. They really related to that story.

Ivan:
So once they had the CD, what do you think was the secret in getting them to all play the same game as one team? Just listening to the CD?

Mark:
No, that was the start. It was the first step, but then once they listened to the CDs, I’m happy to tell you that most of the work is done there. They then began to understand. When the information was dug up from the CD and in their head, they began to have an appreciation for how this BNI thing really works. So it really was that simple. You and the Del Fuego ladies and Tom Fleming go the ball to the one yard line; we simply just decided for everybody to participate in that way, and we were delighted with the results.

Ivan:
I’ve taught colleges for many years as an adjunct faculty, and of course, whenever you teach a class, you have required texts. And if all of the students aren’t reading the text, you can’t have a dialogue, you can’t talk about the things. And so it was really brought to my attention by one of the members; this is just like having the required texts for a class, everybody has to be on the same page, be listening to the same material, dialoguing about the same material. And by everyone having the same verbiage and the same ideas and the same vision of the values of the organization that it’s much easier to accomplish what needs to be accomplished in the chapter if everybody’s on the same page, and that really resonated with me, everybody using the same curriculum basically.

Mark:
Exactly. And it’s one of those things where if you polled people, they tend to say, “Oh, yeah, yeah. We know the fundamentals,” just as you and your teammates did to your coach back when you were in high school. The fact is, we found that they simply were not well grounded in the fundamentals, but these CDs took care of that problem for us.

Ivan:
Here’s some of the fundamentals. And I’ve got to give my kudos to Del Fuego Publishing, because they really drew out of me and Tom Fleming some of the core fundamentals that I think are successful for a BNI chapters. Some of the things that we talked about on the CD were:

Setting Expectations
Why is BNI Important to Building Your Business?
What Can You Expect in Your First Year?
The Fundamentals, where I talked about the football story and the wind sprints.

Because our 60 second presentations are all about – just like those wind sprints, nobody likes doing them, but they’re core to being successful in a BNI chapter.

There was one thing in particular. You said “the fundamentals” when we talked about this, but there was another technique that you said was really important, from the members’ perspective, in achieving success.

Mark:
Oh, yeah, yeah. In fact, whether they were brand new members or they were our seasoned veterans, the VCP principle, Visibility, Credibility, and Profitability, that was what you call a BFO, blinding flash of the obvious. It was a real difference maker in our chapters. They went back and they did what you instructed them to do, they made a list of the people in the chapters and categorized them accordingly and began to see results from that point on.

Ivan:
And, of course, one of the things we did as a result of this, you asked would I be willing to do a webcam for your chapters if you had a handful of chapters that all listened to the CD, all basically did the homework, would I be willing to do a webcam. And I did, and we had a tremendous response. You had over 80 percent of all of your members who went through the program attend the event where I did the webcam, about a five, ten minute presentation and 20 minutes of Q&A. What was the result of that? They loved that event, did they not?

Mark:
Absolutely. In fact, that’s one of the challenges we had for them. We said, “Okay, our objective is for 100 percent of the chapter to have bought their own set of CDs and listened to them. And we’re going to track that, we’re going to track the numbers and so forth, but we are going to track that, and when we attain that, we’re going to contact you and see if you’d be willing to do a live webcam.” And that made a big difference to them.

Ivan:
And that’s the reason that I did this podcast with you today, because I’d like to make this offer to all BNI members all around the world. If you’re a BNI member and you’d like to see your chapters in your area do the Fast Track program, I’m willing to do the same thing for chapters all around the world. Get two or three chapters together who all commit to the Fast Track program, and I will do a live webcam with members all around the world, a special event.

In order to participate, we’re going to have a link for the BNI Networking Secrets CD that was published by the Del Fuego Publishing Company, and I’ll also include an e-mail where you can connect with one of the Del Fuego publishers, and they’ll work with your local director, like Mark, to see if we could do an event where I do a live webcam just like I did there in Houston.

Because your results were so impressive, I would just love to see that work all around the world, and that’s the reason why I invited you to be on this podcast today.

Mark:
I want to thank you, and really, the credit goes to you and Tom and Del Fuego because you made us look like heroes. We simply took the program that you had already prepared and implemented it, and thank you, Dr. Misner, for training our people for us.

Ivan:
Well, thank you, Mark. I appreciate you coming on. And I invite the listeners to this podcast, if you would like for me to do a live webcam, just connect with Flynn or Sara. I’ll have their e-mail address on this podcast. You can connect with them and ask what it takes to do a webcam. And all I ask is that you listen to the CD that was published by del Fuego Publishing so that we’re all on the same page and we’re teaching off the same content, and I’ll do a live webcam for the Fast Track program for BNI members anywhere in the world.

And I want to thank you, Mark, for working with del Fuego for putting this concept together. Tremendous results and kudos to your chapters; 300 percent increase in referrals; what a great job.

Mark:
Thank you. My pleasure.

Ivan:
Thank you very much.

I’ll turn it back over to you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Well, I think that’s it for this week, and thank you so much, Mark, and thank you, Dr. Misner.

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’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.