Episode 109: “The Way Out: How to Beat the Recession”

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Synopsis

Dr. Misner wants to talk about the article he contributed to the recently published e-book The Way Out! Steer Clear of the Recession and Drive Toward Success and Prosperity. (If you download the e-book, please leave a comment here about what you’ve read and what you liked about it.)

Dr. Misner’s article is on page 49; it’s called “Networking Mixers: Break the Ice, Build Your Contacts, and Grow Your Business.” Next time you’re at a mixer, take a look at the way people stand.

If people are standing in closed groups, face to face, they’re not inviting you to join them. You can ignore them until they’re finished with their conversation.

But if people are standing at an angle to each other, with space between them, there’s an opening for someone to come into that group. Those are the people you can go up and talk to.

Also, look for the people who are wearing badges, especially if the badge mentions what business they’re in. That makes it easier to strike up a conversation.

Download the e-book and leave a comment here on the blog.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 109 -

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?

Ivan:
I’m doing great, Priscilla. Thank you very much.

Priscilla:
What do you have to share with us?

Ivan:
Well, I want to talk about a book that I just a contributing author to. It’s called The Way Out. It’s about how to steer clear of the recession. The subtitle is Your “GPS Guided Path to Success.” And I was a contributing author along with some other fairly well known business professionals, Bill Bartmann, Brian Tracy, Jim Cathcart, and myself along with about half a dozen other business professionals. And I did an article that I just wanted to talk a little bit about on this podcast. And for all the listeners on the podcast, we will be providing a link where you can download this e-book, and the price is great. Do you know what it is?

Priscilla:
Is it free?

Ivan:
It’s free, yeah! The price is free for this e-book. Actually, I shouldn’t have said free; there is one small for this. The price to download the book is I want you, if you download the book, to just leave a quote or a comment, any comment, about an article that you read in this e-book that you liked and what you liked about it. That’s the cost to download it. So it’s all on the honor system. That’s the cost to download it. Download the e-book for free here on this podcast, and read over some of the articles. Mine’s one of them. And I’d love for you to leave a comment. If you’re listening to this podcast, leave a comment under the Comment section here on the podcast about an article that you liked in this book.

It’s a book that just came out, and I did an article that was a little bit different. It’s a joint article. It’s a combination of a couple of pieces that I had written in the past. One is a piece that I talked about here on BNI Podcast about a year or so ago. It’s Episode 32 and Episode 33, and that’s the Ten Commandments of Networking a Mixer. I did those quite a few episodes ago, Episode 32 and Episode 33. And so, we’re talking about things like having the networking tools with you at all times, setting goals, acting like a host not a guest, giving a referral whenever possible, spent ten minutes or less with each person you meet. These are part of the Ten Commandments of Networking a Mixer.

That’s part of this article, but there’s another part that I’ve never really talked about in any of my podcasts, and that’s what I want to talk about for the next few minutes.

Priscilla:
What’s that?

Ivan:
When you download the book, I’m on page 49 of the e-book. I’m on page 49, and the title is Networking Mixers: Break the Ice, Build Your Contacts, and Grow Your Business. The first part of the book is something that I’ve not written about much, I haven’t talked about it at all, and that’s how to read a room when you walk in to network, how to look at it, and where do you start? Because many times when business people attend those ever popular networking mixers, they have a difficult time reading the crowd and knowing when and where to get started.

So what I did was I put together some material, and there’s actually some diagram, so if you download the book, you can have diagrams to look at while I’m talking here. And these diagrams allow you to assess the room to start the process. For example, imagine that you were on a balcony looking down on a large crowd of people. And you look at this crowd and it’s a mishmash of people and you really don’t even know where to start.

So with that in mind, what I want you to do is the next time you go to a mixer, take a look at how people stand, physically grouped together. You’ll find that people stand with their bodies clearly indicating whether or not they’re open to having someone approach them and join in or not. Literally, you want to look for open groups versus closes groups.

So take a look at the diagrams that are in this article, and you’ll see that there are some diagrams of people that are, what I would call, a closed group. Imagine two people standing face to face with one another, standing parallel with their shoulders squared off in a way that they’re looking face to face with each other. That would be a closed two. It’s kind of hard to walk up and start a conversation.

You’ve been at mixers, Priscilla, two people talking like that, it’s hard to walk up and start talking to them, right?

Priscilla:
Right.

Ivan:
But imagine instead of a closed two, where people are standing face to face with each other, that one or the other is standing slightly askew; they’re standing a little bit open. That an open two. Almost like if you were looking down from a balcony, they would be, from the top down, it would be sort of like a V. So a third person could walk in and start speaking fairly easily. That’s an open two.

So when you look at a room, look for open groups. A closed three would be three people who are standing. Looking down, they’d be standing like a triangle, shoulder to shoulder. Right? And there’s no opening. An open three would be like a U, where there’s an open spot that people can come in.

So being able to read a crowd, any size crowd, and gauge when to come into a group of two or three or four or five, ten people is really an acquired skill, and it’s something that you can look at a room very quickly and get a sense as to what groups are open and what groups are closed.

Now, I described this once. I was in Switzerland for a big conference, and I had a chance to do an interview with a CNN reporter. And I was describing this to him. He was, “Yeah, kind of makes sense. I’m not quite sure I get it.” And then, it was really funny because later after the interview, and this is what he actually broadcast, he was in a balcony looking down on a room and the light bulb came on. And he stood there, and he goes , “Oh, my gosh. I see it! There’s an open two; there’s an open three; there’s an open group.”

So if I were down there mixing, I would be looking for groups like that where I could come in and make that first introduction. And that’s the start of the process.

And so my article merges the Ten Commandments with How to Visualize a Room for a Mixer. So you start with looking for the open twos, threes, and fours. And then you start to apply the Ten Commandments.

And this is the article that I wrote that is available here on BNI Podcast for free. Anyone can download it, read it. The only cost is I’d love for you leave a comment and tell me what you either liked about one of the articles that you read or my piece in particular; either is fine with me.

Priscilla:
I want to ask one question.

Ivan:
Sure.

Priscilla:
It seems to me that if you see some people and they’re talking, maybe they would be a closed two or whatever, but if you approach them and you speak to them that they may just then open up. Isn’t that true? Or would you not approach somebody who seems – you would not want to interrupt them, is what you’re thinking?

Ivan:
What I’m talking about is really literally a physically open group. If you have three people standing shoulder to shoulder in basically a triangle, it’s hard to break into that.

Priscilla:
Yeah.

Ivan:
So what I’m talking about is physically three people standing together more in a U shape where there’s an open spot so that you can kind of saddle right in and start that conversation that you’re suggesting. But what happens is people go into a mixer and they’re overwhelmed because there’s hundreds of people and they don’t even know where to begin. So with this technique, I can immediately eliminate 50 percent of the room.

Priscilla:
I see.

Ivan:
Whereas you can focus on the other 50 percent of open groups where there’s a spot where you can walk into. Now the question is: What do you say? And that’s really the other half of the article, which I talked about in Episode 32 and 33 in an earlier podcast.

Does that make sense?

Priscilla:
Yeah. Okay, that makes sense.

Ivan:
Of course, when you strike up that conversation, one of the things that you want to look for are people who are wearing badges. If somebody is wearing a badge and they have their name on it, particularly their profession or their company, I can start a conversation with anybody on the planet if I just know what business they’re in. Because if I know what business you’re in, I can strike up a conversation about that business. “Oh, I know a number of people in the mortgage business. I think things are pretty tight right now. How are things going for you in your area?” You can start up a conversation like that fairly easily if you just know what business they’re in.

Let’s say it’s the name of the company and you have no idea what that company does, that’s how you open up the discussion. “I have not heard of that company before. Tell me a little bit about what you do.”

Priscilla:
That’s great. I always just make it over to the food, and then I have lots to talk about!

Ivan:
I try to get the food out of the way, then go meet people.

Priscilla:
That’s great, Dr. Misner. I think that might be as much time as we have for this podcast.

Ivan:
Great. I just want to remind people they can download the book here, and please leave a comment.

Priscilla:
Well, thank you very much.

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