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Synopsis

BNI SuccessNet will be 25 years old in 2010. The newsletter started just a few months after BNI itself was founded. The online version started about 8 years ago.

If you’re anywhere near a computer, go to www.BNIsuccessnet.com. You can subscribe to get an e-mail notification when the month’s edition appears. We will not sell or rent your contact information, and we won’t spam you ourselves, either.

Each issue’s regular segments are listed in the left sidebar:

• From the Founder
• Across the Globe
• Art of Networking
• BNI in the News
• BNI Recommends
• Breaking News
• My BNI Story
• To the Next Level
• Words of Wisdom

If you don’t have time to read an article, you can print it out and bring it with you to read later—maybe with your BNI chapter.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 129 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast which is 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 the beautiful 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:
Doing great, and this week I’m at the International Conference for BNI, which this year is in Long Beach. We’ve done a number of them here. International Conferences are great. It’s like going to a United Nations meeting, because we have flags from all over the world. It’s really exciting. If BNI members ever want to come to the International Conference, they are welcome to come. We have a Member’s Day every year, and the International Conferences are always in November and always in Southern California somewhere, so just take a look at our Web site at BNI.com or e-mail us and ask for information on the Member’s Day, and we’d love to have BNI members coming to this conference. We get hundreds who do come, and we’d love to have more.

Priscilla:
Well, that sounds great! Well, what do you have to share with us today?

Ivan:
I’m going to give a tour today. Are you ready to take a tour with me?

Priscilla:
Absolutely! Would love to.

Ivan:
We’re going to take a tour of SuccessNet Online.

Priscilla:
Okay.

Ivan:
SuccessNet is coming up on its 25th anniversary. In 2010, the organization will be 25 years old, and SuccessNet is 25 years old.

Priscilla:
Wow!

Ivan:
We started doing the newsletter literally within months after BNI started. It started as a quarterly newsletter. Then it went to being bi-monthly, and now we have a monthly newsletter. And about eight years ago or so, we went to an online newsletter so that we can get the information out quickly, and that’s worked out really well. For members listening, if you’re anywhere near a computer, go to BNISuccessNet.com; that’s BNISuccessNet.com, and that’s our monthly newsletter. If you’re not getting a subscription to the monthly newsletter, you’ll see on the right-hand side, it says “Subscribe.” Just put in your e-mail address and your name, and you’ll get every month, on the first Wednesday of every month, you’ll get an e-mail, a simple e-mail that says, “SuccessNet, the new edition has come out. Click here to go read it.”

Listen carefully, and I’m recording this, so this is out on the airwaves. We will not sell that list to anybody, and we won’t give that list away to anybody. And you won’t be spammed by us off of SuccessNet. We do not sell the list, give the list away, or spam people. We send one e-mail out a month that says “Here’s the newsletter.” In the ten years, eight years or so, that it’s been online, we have only sent three other e-mails, and all of those were for things like 9/11 and the tsunami in Asia where the Foundation did some big project, and so we sent out an e-mail. Literally, three e-mails in addition to the monthly e-mails in the last eight years have been sent out, so you’re not going to get spammed by us, and we don’t send the list.

It’s really important for BNI members to come to this site. I want to kind of share some of the things that are on there, Priscilla, I think that are of value to BNI members.

Priscilla:
Great!

Ivan:
Starting with – every month, there’s an article from the founder. Each month I talk about – on the left-hand side, you’ll see the categories. I do something every month, an article about networking. I try to integrate some of the things that are going on in my life and with BNI into some interesting stories about networking.

But the next category is Across the Globe, and that’s a really interesting category. So if you go to BNISuccessNet.com, and on the left-hand side, click on Across the Globe. If you ever wonder just how international this organization is, just look there. I’m looking at this month’s edition, and I’m seeing things from Australia, from Japan, from South Africa, from the United States, United Kingdom, Israel, France, Germany, so many different countries.

And if you have something that’s going on exciting in your chapter or your region, this is the place to go. And to send this information to SuccessNet, there’s a place where you can submit requests. You go down to Contact the Editors, and you can send information in. We publish a lot of stuff from all over the world.

The next item is the Art of Networking. And here’s some great content from oftentimes BNI members and directors, but we also get outside experts on networking to submit pieces from time to time, that really is all about networking. So you know that in this section, in Ask the Founder, you’re going to always get articles about networking.

The next one is BNI in the News. So if your chapter or your region has been in the news, you want to send that to us, and we put it up here. I’m, again, looking at a recent issue, and here’s a magazine that we were in, two magazines we were in, a television show that I was on. So here’s some great stuff for people to kind of stay in touch with what’s going on in terms of the PR efforts.

Then the next one is BNI Recommends. If there’s any books – we get asked to review books; I get asked to endorse books a lot, and we don’t talk much about the books on these podcasts that I’ve endorsed, we did so in the last two podcasts, but here’s the place where, if you’re ever wondering, “What kind of books does Ivan recommend,” go to BNI Recommends, and you’ll see a lot of material from our strategic alliance partners and from books I have read that I recommend on that site, BNI Recommends.

Here’s probably the most important category, My BNI Story. It’s the next category here, My BNI Story. There’s some powerful stories here. If you want to remind yourself why you’re in this organization, go to My BNI Story. I’m looking at three right here in front of me. There just so powerful. One is from David Steiner; I think he’s in – no, he’s in Manhattan. He’s been president of a chapter of 57 members. He said he gets overwhelming majority of his business through BNI. He started a cleaning business in the middle of the recession, and he’s successful in these times with a new business because of BNI.

Here’s one from – I’m not even going to try Steve’s last name. In the myriad of referral chapter, he says that he joined BNI in October of ’06, and he gets 90 percent of his business from BNI.

And just one last one. Springfield, Illinois, Michael Vaughn. “I love this because” – he talks about the podcasts, Priscilla, podcast number 104.

Priscilla:
Oh, really?!

Ivan:
And how he did what podcast number 104 talked about, writing a letter to get referrals for your chapter members and position yourself as the resource. And he said that it worked out great, and he tells BNI members how it worked out and why it worked out.

And so what I’m recommending is go to BNISuccessNet Online, take a loot at My BNI Story, and you’re going to see how other members have used the ideas that we talk about in the newsletters, in the books, and, of course, on the podcasts to help them achieve success.

Last two sections. To the Next Level is really articles that are about building your business either through networking or other business topics. And the last one is Words of Wisdom, is the last section of SuccessNet, and that’s a column written by Brian Tracy, a good friend of mine and friend of BNI’s. And Brian, every month, submits an article for BNI, and it’s called Words of Wisdom from Brian Tracy.

So SuccessNet Online, please take a few minutes, go there, and look at the content, each and every issue, probably between 30 and 40 pages of content. This is one of the ways you can immerse and engage in a culture of learning for BNI.

Priscilla:
Well, that’s great! Thank you so much.

Ivan:
Thank you, Priscilla. That’s all for this week.

Priscilla:
Okay. I’m going to be checking that out.

Ivan:
You promise?

Priscilla:
I do promise. I’m gong to go right there and look at it.

Ivan:
I hope all the members do that as well.

Priscilla:
I am a subscriber; I just – you know how it is, sometimes you don’t always read everything that comes to you.

Ivan:
Sure. And I get that. My advice is when you get that subscription next month, not just to you, but to all the BNI members, just click on the one topic, because there will just be a list of topics, here’s some topics, click on the one topic that you think you may have interest in, take a look at it, and if you don’t have time to read it, print it out. There’s a section there that you can just print that article. Print that out so that you can go to it later and use it to help you improve your game in BNI.

Priscilla:
Okay, I’ll do that.

Ivan:
Thanks.

Priscilla:
Okay. Thank you, Dr. Misner.

I just want to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com which is 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.