Dr. Misner reaches the final chapter of Givers Gain in this episode. Over time, Dr. Misner developed a clearer and clearer vision of what BNI would be, a vision that continues to grow and expand.

The theme of this chapter is summed up in this phrase: You may not be able to make a world of difference, but you can make a difference in the world. BNI is about cooperating for mutual success.

Givers Gain concludes with the following quote: “I believe that if all the people in an organization row in the same direction, that organization can dominate in any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.”

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 062 -

Priscilla Rice:
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Official BNI Podcast brought to you by Networkingnow.com, the leading sight on the net for networking downloadables. I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California. I’m joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan, how are you?

Ivan Misner:
I’m doing great today, Priscilla. Thank you.

Priscilla:
It looks like this is the last chapter of Giver’s Gain.

Ivan:
It is. Over the last year, every month or so, I’ve covered a different chapter of the book.
My hope is that the members of BNI who get a copy of Giver’s Gain, and everyone should be getting a copy of Giver’s Gain when they go through the MSP Training or New Member Orientation Training that are done around the world, that they can use this audio file, this podcast, to go along with each chapter and use it for support material for the book that they’re reading.

Priscilla:
Great. Tell us all about this chapter 11.

Ivan:
This is the last chapter. It’s called 20/20 Vision. We came up with the term 20/20 Vision because that was our theme for BNI’s 20th Anniversary. That’s when we first released this book. It’s been revised since then, but we kept this title, 20/20 Vision. I’d like to tell that when I started, and I talked about this in the book, when I started BNI in 1985 as a 28 year old business consultant, that I had 20/20 vision on where the organization was headed. At that time I didn’t, but as time went on, I got a clearer vision of what this organization could be and where we were heading as an organization. That’s what I really talk about here in this book is the success, and how we got to be as large as we became.

I think creating a truly effective system took time, and it’s a never ending task because we’re constantly improving the program as we go along. In the late eighties I began to think that BNI could be an international organization. It took several years to actually create the corporate infrastructure necessary to make that happen. By the early nineties, we spent most of our time spreading the program across the United States, but the real triumph for BNI was in the mid nineties when my vision for an international organization came to fruition, became a reality. We opened our first countries outside of the United States; they were Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and then we continued to spread throughout Europe and then Africa, and throughout all of Asia.

I now have chapters operating in 40 countries around the world. We have well over 100,000 members. It’s been an incredible experience for the organization and I think this phenomenal growth hasn’t even been dented by international recessions, the economy. As a matter of fact, one of the things we’ve learned is that as we have recessionary economies, the growth for BNI tends to continue to be just as strong, if not sometimes stronger because businesses, when times are tough need to be creative. They need to find creative ways to build their business. BNI has helped small businesses in recessionary economies. It’s one of the things that I think we learned.

One of the things I talk about in chapter 11 is that you may not be able to, this is a phrase I really love, that you may not be able to make a world of difference, but you can make a difference in the world. I think that BNI makes a difference in the world. We are changing the way the world does business. And we’re doing it through this philosophy that the book is named after, that is, Giver’s Gain. If I help you, and you help me, we’ll all do better as a result of it. With Giver’s Gain as a foundation, a powerful organizational culture has evolved. It was really, I think, fortuitous for us to use that phrase, because it’s been one that has been so simple, but so effective to apply world wide.

As I travel around the world, sometimes people say BNI is so American, and I have to tell them, BNI is one of the least American things I’ve ever done. And they will say how can that be? I say when you think of American business do you think of cooperation, of helping, of support, collaboration? They go , well no not really. Well that’s what BNI’s all about. It’s all about helping each other as a way of building each others business. This is not an American concept. This a human concept. This is about people helping people around the world. Different people, different places, different races, different religions, different countries, different cultures, we all speak the language of referrals. I think that’s why we’re going to continue to see growth worldwide of the BNI phenomenon.

When I first wrote the book, it was about 70/30. 70% of the organization was in the United States and 30% worldwide. And now it’s down to about 67% U.S., and I think that as the decade continues and throughout the century, we’re going to see the global BNI very soon become larger than where it started. I think we’ll end up having more chapters outside the U.S. in just the next few years than we have inside the U.S. One of the things I said in the first edition of the book, is that we don’t see any signs of slowing, and by the end of the decade, I said this in 2000 when this first came out. I will think we will have more than 5000 chapters by the end of the decade. And sure enough here we are in 2008, when this podcast is being recorded, and we have 5,100 chapters. We hit that target that I put out there many years ago.

I think we’re going to continue to see it grow. A lot of people don’t know, and I talk about this in chapter 11, that we established a few years ago, a cross cultural counsel in BNI. We did that to address the many different cultures that are operating in the organization. This is a volunteer group of BNI directors, mostly directors, and some members headed by the founding chair of the cross cultural counsel, Stacia Robinson of Montgomery, Alabama. The counsel develops cross cultural policies and guidelines and educates and trains staff, directors, and members of cross cultural issues. It meets at all the directors conferences and communicates from time to time. I think it’s a great example of how we need to be aware of the cultural differences throughout the organization. We are not a religious organization. We are not a political organization. But we are an international organization and so we need to be aware of the cultural differences and the different people from around the world, and how we can all work together effectively.

I think that although our international growth will most likely out pace our growth in the U.S., our studies show that there’s still a tremendous potential in the United States as well and so we’re going to continue to see growth in the U.S.. I don’t think we’re anywhere near saturation point for BNI. I believe that we can have more than 15,000 chapters worldwide in my life time. That’s huge growth, but I think it’s quite possible. It’s possible because networking is one of the bests ways to build business. We still don’t teach it in colleges and universities, but it’s one of the best ways to build business. No other networking organization anywhere in the world devotes as much time and energy to teaching people how to build their business through word of mouth than BNI. I think the chapters who have learned how to immerse and engage in a culture of learning are the ones that will be most successful. The groups who are regularly look at our podcasts, the members who are watching and listening to these podcast, going to my blog, going to SuccessNet, those who are engaging in educational opportunities that BNI has to offer, and there are so many of them, Our books, our CD’s, our materials, those are the ones that are going to be even more and more successful. I think you’re going to see nothing but a continued growth in the wealth of information that’s available through BNI.

Integrating technology, BNI has already invested in new technologies, and I think you’re going to see more and more technologies in the next 12 months. We hope to soon be announcing some development of some technologies that will help our members to network more effectively on-line all around the world. You’ll hear more and more about that.

I’m almost out of time and I just want to wrap it up with a couple of closing comments from chapter 11, Giver’s Gain. If you’re a member and you haven’t read the book, please, take a few minutes and skim the book and listen to these podcasts as you’re reading the book because it will add a little flavor to the content to the material. There’s some great content in this book. You as a member of BNI are part of a remarkable organization. An organization whose primary purpose is to help you increase your business through referrals.

I’ve often said that the local chapter is only the tip of the iceberg, that there’s so much more than just the local chapter. You’re part of something bigger, bigger than what you see from week to week. It’s my hope that the stories and the traditions that were discussed throughout Giver’s Gain and throughout these podcasts of me reviewing the book Giver’s Gain with you, that you will learn from these and grow from these. I believe, and this is how in the book, Giver’s Gain, the BNI story, if all the people in an organization row in the same direction, that organization can dominate any industry in any market against any competition at any time. BNI has dominated its industry in almost every market against all the competition for almost a decade now. It has happened because of a shared vision, and a shared implementation of that vision. I invite you, BNI members, to share that vision with me and be part of Giver’s Gain.

Priscilla:
Thank you, Ivan. I think that’s a great place to end. That’s it for this week. This podcast has been brought to you by Networkingnow.com, the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you 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.

Dr. Misner continues his discussion of BNI traditions this week.

Testimonials

This is one of the earliest traditions of BNI. It came about when a member wasn’t getting a business, tried offering an initial consultation, and received a spontaneous testimonial from another member who took him up on it. The more you have third-party endorsements, the easier it is to give referrals to people. It mitigates the risk of referral marketing.

Caring About People

BNI is all about people, from the top down. Remember, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. The best way you can show you care is to be there and help. One of the reasons Dr. Misner does these podcasts is to show that he cares about BNI members.

Walking the Talk

What you do thunders so loudly above your head I cannot hear you speak. There are many ways to contribute to BNI. Bring visitors. Welcome visitors. Don’t let a week go by where there’s not a tidbit of information you offer to your fellow members.

Investment to Join

Getting business out of BNI is not a guarantee, it’s an opportunity. You can turn a $10 bar of iron into $250,000 worth of springs for watches. Turning your BNI membership into value involves understanding the traditions of the organization.

The Secret to Success

The secret to success without hard work is still a secret. The things Dr. Misner talks about in Givers Gain are simple, but not easy. You have to work to succeed in BNI.

If you’re interested in traditions within organizations, read Inside the Magic Kingdom.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 059 -

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

Ivan:
Hello Priscilla. I am going great. I am covering today my favorite topic in the book, Givers Gain, Chapter 10, the BNI Traditions. We are doing the second half. There is so much that I had to do it in two different podcasts. The first one actually went long because I just love this material. I think it is the traditions that keep an organization alive and healthy. A book I recommend besides Givers Gain that talks about an organization’s traditions is called Inside the Magic Kingdom by Tom Connelin. He talks about Disney and how they keep their traditions alive.

That is what we are trying to do with this book- keep our traditions and BNI culture alive. When an organization grows to 5000+ locations, they are doing a few things right and I think one of those things is the culture. There are a few subjects that we will talk about there. One is testimonials. Caring about people- this is a people business. Walking the talk. The investment to join and the secret to success in BNI. Those are the topics. Let me just jump right in with testimonials.

Testimonials is actually one of our oldest traditions. It came early in the change of our agenda when just a couple of months into BNI we added that because we found someone. I believe I talk about this at length in an earlier podcast. We found a chiropractor who wasn’t getting any business and was looking for some. I suggested to him that he do a free initial consultation as a way of getting some members to use him. He did. He got one person to use him. He was a little disappointed that he only got one person to use him. Only one person used him but when that person stood up the next week, instead of doing what he normally did (give a referral), he said, “Ivan, do you mind if I talk a little bit about my experience last week?”

I said okay. He spent the entire minute talking about what a great chiropractor this was and how every member was an idiot if they didn’t use this free initial consultation because it was a wonderful experience. It was so glowing. The chiropractor was getting all kinds of referrals left and right. It was the first time that I realized that the way that I wrote the agenda was weong because if you had a referral you gave it and if you didn’t, you passed. That was the way BNI worked in the beginning. If you had a referral you gave it and if you didn’t you passed. The passing was an opportinity lost. What we found was that if somebody stood up and gave a testimonial instead, it was much more powerful. That third-party endorsement was key.

Priscilla:
Absolutely. I think it is the strongest part of the meeting. I want to tell you that in our meeting, in our chapter, we like to do the testimonials. We have shortened a little bit of the earlier agenda just so we can have enough time for more testimonials.

Ivan:
The stronger you focus on testimonials, the more you get third-party endorsements. The more you get third-party endorsements, the easier it is to give referrals to people. I may not have used the chiropractor myself, but if I hear four, five, six, or ten people say how great he is, I can say with great confidence when I am referring him.

One of the podcasts we did a few weeks ago was about referral marketing being risky business. It is not very risky when I have ten people who have done business with this person. The risk is very minimal because I know so many people who have done business with him and had such great experiences, thats when I hear that – and that is the power and value of testimonials.

A lot of times, members will get into a chapter and not fully understand why we do some of the things we do. This is to mitigate the risks of referral marketing. You get so familiar with people that you can refer them with confidence. Make sense?

Here is another one: caring about people. This is a people business from the top down. This is all about people. There is a phrase that I love and all that I can tell members who are listening to this – the directors listening to this know it is true that every BNI director training that I am involved with. So any director that comes to HQ or if I am in the region and happen to do director training, they hear me say this. I say this to all BNI directors. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

It’s all about showing people that you care about their success. I tell directors and, for that matter, leadership teams. Don’t be a seagull manager. Do you know what a seagull manager is? It is someone who comes in, makes a lot of noise, dumps on everyone and then flies out of here. You have to be there. Every time that a director visits a chapter, the goal should be to provide feedback and help make it a better meeting.

Every time the education coordinator does a presentation, it should be to give a nugget of information to make that a better group. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. The best way they can learn about how you care is to be there.

One of the reasons that I do these podcasts is that I want members to know that I care about their success. I want you to be successful. I do these podcasts every week to provide tidbits of information to make this work better for you and to make a better connection. It is going to be almost impossible for me to meet every member of BNI but I believe it is possible for me to be able to talk to every member of BNI through these podcasts. I am trying to show that I am interested in your success and I care about your success. It has to operation on every level of the chapter to be successful.

The next one is walk the talk. Here is another phrase that I love. BNI directors know that when I do training,I talk about this. What you do thunders so loudly above your head that I cannot hear the words you are speaking. It is walk the talk. You have to. What you do thunders so loudly above your head that I cannot hear the words you speak.

It is very important that we talk the talk. If we are on a leadership team, we have to be as good as any member there. That doesn’t mean that you have to bring the most referrals. You never hear me say that the best member is the one who brings the most referrals. The best member may be the person who comes in and rarely has a referral but they bring in visitors. They may be the education coordinator and they do a great job of teaching people. There are many many ways to contribute to BNI. Bringing in a referral is only one way to contribute.

Walk the talk. If you are on the membership team, be a strong member. If you are a visitor host, be a great visitor host. Make every visitor who walks through that door feel welcome to the organization. If you are the education coordinator, don’t ;et a week go by where there is no a tidbit of information that someone picked up from your experience. What you do thunders above your herd so loudly that I cannot hear a word you speak. Very powerful.

This chapter ends up with thwo things that i think are very important. One is your investment. Membership in BNI is not a guarantee. It is an opportunity to turn your time and commitment into a lot of money. There is an old truism that is true here. I thin BNI is a lot like a bar of iron. A plain bar of iron is worth five or ten dollars. But if you turn that into horseshoes, it’s worth ten to twenty dollars. If you turn that same bar into screwdrivers, it is worth $250. If you turn that same bar of iron into sewing needles, it is worth more than $3000. If you turn that same bar of iron into balance spring for watches, it is worth more than $250,000.

Everyone who is listening to this podcast has a membership in this organization. Turning that into value involves understanding the traditions of the organization. It involves Givers Gain, giving to other people in order to get business. It involves going to every single education and training opportunity. It involves keeping the fun in the fundamentals. It involves learning how to do effective testimonials. It involves showing people that you truly care about their success. It involves walking the talk. These are the traditions that have made BNI the world’s most successful networking organization.

I end this chapter with something that I think is really powerful. It is a personal story. I end it with the secret of success. Here, I talk about about my son who, as of this recording is 14 years old, almost 15. He is almost as tall as I am and wears a bigger shoe now. He has grown so much. But when he was about nine years old, I asked him a question. Visitors who have come to my home will tell you that I do this. I used to do it a lot to him. I would ask him, “Son, what is the secret to success?” Or I would have them go ask him. He would look at them and in that sort of sing song phrase that a kid will do, he would look at me and say, “ The secret of success without hard work is still a secret, Dad. Can I go and play now?”

I talk about this in the book and that is so powerful. It is a personal story for me but I think it applies to everyone. Truly the secret to success without hard work is still a secret. The things that I talk about are simple. But not easy. If members apply these traditions of the organization religiously within their group, they will build the strongest chapters within their regions. They will generate more business than any other group. The hard work is essential but the vision and the focus on maintining the healthy traditions of the group are the things that set this company aside from other networking organizations in the world. It think it is one of the important reasons why BNI is the largest network in the world.

Priscilla:
That is a beautiful summary. I think it is some incredibly valuable information. I love the aspects of givers gain, caring for people and walking the talk. All of that is really important to me. I feel like they are wonderful principles to live by.

Ivan:
Thank you. I really enjoy doing this book and I am looking forward to the final chapter. The next time I do a recording on Givers Gain will be the last chapter, Chapter 11. That will wrap up the entire book, which was my goal to do in about a year.

Priscilla:
So then we will have to start on your other books.

Ivan:
There we go. Okay, I am ready.

Priscilla:
Thank you, Dr. Misner. I just want to remind our listeners that this podcast was brought to you by networkingnow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thanks for listening. This is Priscilla Rice. We hope you will join us again next week for another great adventure on the Official BNI Podcast.

Dr. Misner has just returned from BNI’s global conference in Malaysia to tell us about BNI’s traditions. In this episode, we hear about the first half of the chapter; the second have comes in Episode 59.

The Mission of BNI

Any discussion of BNI’s traditions has to begin with the mission: to help members increase their business through a structured, positive, and professional word-of-mouth program that enables them to develop long-term, meaningful relationships with quality business professionals. It’s important to remember that because people often suggest that BNI should be doing other things, which are good things, but not part of the mission.

The Philosophy

BNI accomplishes its mission through the philosophy of “Givers Gain:” when you contribute to the success of others, that will contribute to you. That’s why every new member gets a copy of the book. Dr. Misner illustrates this with a story of a prize-winning Nebraska farmer who won the State Fair four years in a row by giving away his specially developed seed to his neighbor.

Training and Education

This is one of the most important traditions of BNI. BNI spends hundreds of thousands of person-hours a year training members, and that’s one of the main reasons BNI is the world’s most successful networking association. Participate in as many trainings as possible.

Keeping the Fun in the Fundamentals

Never forget about having fun. Chapters that have fun are always the strongest. Meeting stimulants can really help with this. Try the NAT Radio exercise, or the candy bar exercise. Talk to your leadership team if you’re not familiar with these.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 058 -

Priscilla Rice:
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the official BNI Podcast brought to you by Networkingnow.com the leading sight on the net for networking downloadables. I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California. I’m joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan, it’s so nice to have you on the phone today.

Ivan Misner:
Hi Priscilla, it’s great to be on. I just got back from BNI’s global conference in Malaysia, and what an incredible experience it was. Hundreds and hundreds of BNI members from dozens of countries from around the world were there. Members, whenever you see conferences like this, take a good look at them, because it’s a good way to network with people worldwide.

Priscilla:
Wow, you’ve been doing a lot of traveling.

Ivan:
Yes, it comes with the territory. We’re now in almost 40 countries.

Priscilla:
Wow! What are you going to share with us today?

Ivan:
Today I’m going to talk about my absolute favorite chapter in the book, Givers Gain. Listeners of the podcast know that I’ve been going through the book chapter by chapter, Givers Gain and talking about different elements of the book so that you have something to go along with as you’re reading it. My personal take on what’s in the book as you go through and read it. This one chapter 10, BNI Traditions, is really my favorite chapter. So much so that I’m going to take two episodes to cover this one. I’m going to go through the first half of chapter10, BNI Traditions, in this episode and then next week I’ll be covering the second half.

I want to talk a little about the basic culture of BNI, the philosophy, the mission. Then I want to talk about the philosophy, Givers Gain, and then I want to talk about training and education. If time permits, I would like to talk a little about keeping the fun in the fundamentals in this particular episode. Let’s get started with the mission of the organization. I think we keep the culture of BNI alive by constantly training and retraining members and leadership teams on the organization and the traditions. It is one of the things that really sets this organization aside from other companies. I think any discussion of the traditions has to begin with the mission of the organization. The mission of BNI is to help members increase their business through a structured, positive and professional word of mouth program that enables them to develop long term meaningful relationships with quality business professionals. I think that’s key. One of the reasons it’s important to know that is, often times many people think BNI should be doing this or should be doing that. For example, here’s one I get a lot. We should be teaching people how to be better speakers. That’s a great mission. But that’s Toastmasters mission. That’s not BNI’s mission. Toastmaster’s does it better than we do and they probably always will.

We’ve been very good about staying on mission. Our mission is to help people increase business through a structured word of mouth marketing program. That’s it. We do that with a philosophy that is really, really powerful, so powerful that we named this book by that philosophy. The central philosophy of BNI has pretty much from day one been the concept of Givers Gain. If I give you business, you’ll give me business and we’ll all do better as a result of it. It’s based on the social capital theory of the law of reciprocity, that by working together we all support and help one another. That philosophy pretty much evolved from the very beginning. The first year or so we didn’t use that expression. We have a corny saying, this unwritten loyalty of we promise that we would refer each other. It evolved into this idea of Giver’s Gain, that by giving to other people, by contributing to their success, they’ll contribute to you. This is a great story in Giver’s Gain and if you have a chance and you’re listening to this podcast, pick up the book. Any body who’s gone through MSP Training or the new member orientation training should get a copy of this book. See your director if you don’t not have one and you’ve gone through that training.

There’s a great story in there about a farmer in Nebraska. For those of you outside the United States, Nebraska is the heartland of the United States. There’s a lot of farming in Nebraska. He won the State Fair four times in a row. Priscilla, do you know, what’s Nebraska most well known for growing? Any guesses?

Priscilla:
I’m going to say cattle?

Ivan:
No, corn. Nebraska corn. Now, this particular guy won the State Fair in Nebraska four times in a row, which is unheard of. Nobody’s ever done that. The newspaper sent someone out to interview him. The reporter asked, ” What’s your secret, do you have any special corn seed?” The farmer said, “Absolutely, I develop my very own corn seed.” The reporter said ,” OK, so that’s your secret. You developed your own corn seed.” And the farmer said,” No, no not particularly.” The reporter said, “I don’t understand.” The farmer said, “Well, I develop my own seed and then I give it to my neighbors.” The reporter said, “Excuse me. You develop your own seed and you give it to your neighbors? Why would you give it to your neighbors?” The reporter was incredulous. Why in the world would you give your award winning corn seed to your neighbors? The farmer said,” You don’t understand how corn is pollinated. It’s pollinated from neighboring fields. And if you’ve got fields around you that don’t have top quality corn, then your fields not going to grow top quality corn. But if my neighbors field has really strong corn, then I will have awesome corn. That’s how I won the Nebraska State Fair four years in a row. ” I thought that was a powerful story, that by helping people around you do better, you will do better. That is the BNI story. It is a perfect metaphor for how this organization works. It is truly the power of the philosophy of Givers Gain. The building a business to referral networking is truly more about farming than it is hunting. You’ve heard me say that over and over again. But it’s very true and it’s a great story to go with it.

Let me jump into two other things quickly. One of the traditions of our organization is the tradition of training and education. One of the most important BNI traditions is our commitment to training. We spend hundreds of thousands of person hours a year, Priscilla. Literally, hundreds of thousands of person hours a year training leadership teams and directors, BNI staff, membership committee’s, visitor hosts…if you add up all the training we do for all the people in this organization every year, it adds up to hundreds of thousands of person hours. It’s really amazing and it’ one of the reasons why BNI is the worlds leading referral marketing organization. We are that because of the amount of training we do to tell people to learn how to do this, because this isn’t taught in college. Training in education is the key. If you’re in a leadership role in BNI, I know it’s a commitment to go to that training but listen, that’s what sets BNI aside from the other organizations. Participate in as many trainings as possible because it will make your chapter stronger.

Priscilla:
I agree. It’s good too. It’s very valuable information.

Ivan:
It really is. Virtually all the trainings we do are free other than the cost of the meeting location. So it’s a great way to learn how to do this better.

I want to give one more before I wrap up, and that’s the tradition of keeping the fun in the fundamentals. You’ve got to keep the fun in the fundamentals if you want to be successful. I’ve been a real believer in system and structure and following the program, but at one point in the process I looked back and I said you know what? I’ve been so focused on the system and structure and everybody following the program that I forgot to talk about having fun. What I’ve learned is, the chapters that learn how to have fun are the stronger chapters. I know I’m in a great group, when they run a BNI meeting, and they run it very well, and I walk out and my cheeks hurt from laughing so much. I know I’ve got a great group then. There a lot of ways you can do that., that you can have fun.

One of the ways I recommend are the meeting stimulants. We have some great meeting stimulants, and I’m not talking about good drugs. I’m talking about exercises that people can do like different ways of doing the sixty second introduction or different exercises before the meeting starts. One of my favorites is the talk show, NET Radio where the president is the DJ and all the members have a sixty second commercial. Not a fifty second commercial, not a minute and ten second commercial, but a sixty second commercial. So if they do thirty seconds, you have thirty seconds of dead air. OK, thirty seconds, now lets just pause. OK that was three seconds…so thirty seconds of dead air. I’ve never seen so many good sixty second commercials in my entire life. People will do the person on the street interview and they’ll interview other members, and they come in with jingles and bumper music. Wow, they have a lot of fun with that.

There’s so many others besides the NET Radio that are really strong. There’s the candy bar exercise where you actually come in with some candy bar and you do a presentation based on the candy bar. There’s the industry trends that’s a very interesting exercise. We have forty or fifty of these. And so if you’ve never heard of what I’m talking about, talk to your chapter leadership team. Talk to your BNI director and get a list of the meeting stimulants. One of the earliest ones, is a card in the basket, where everybody puts a card in. They reach in and pull a card out, and whomever’s card they pull out, they do that persons sixty second presentation. What a blast that is. I could spend an hour just talking about how to keep the fun in the fundamentals, but I don’t have it. Take a look at this chapter and really read this section on keeping the fun in the fundamentals, because the best BNI chapters not only have system and structure, but they’re having a blast.

OK, I’ve run out of time. Next week we’re going to cover Part 2 of chapter 10, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
OK, good. I think we have run out of time, otherwise I would tell you what my favorite meeting stimulant is.

Ivan:
Why not throw it in there. What is it, what’s your favorite one?

Priscilla:
OK. My favorite one is when you make up a family and each person who goes around the room has to describe their business as to how they can help that particular family. We’ve had so much fun with that.

Ivan:
I think it might be meeting stimulant #1 and it might be meeting stimulant #20. I’m going to tell you a secret here OK? I’ve never told this to, well, I’ve told individuals, but I’ve never publicly told this. It’s the Richard and Lynette story. The first one is they’re about to get married and the second version is they’re married and have three kids. Here’s something, a little point of interest, it’s the middle names of my whole family. Richard is my middle name, Lynette is Elizabeth, my wife’s middle name, who I met in BNI. And all the names of the kids in the stories are my kids middle names. We just threw that in there to have a little bit of fun. A little trivia for your best meeting stimulant. That is a great one by the way.

Priscilla:
Yes, it’s a really fun one. OK I think that’s it for this week. Thank you listeners for joining us. I just want to remind you that this podcast has been brought to you by Networkingnow.com which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thanks for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we hope you’ll join us next week for another great episode of the Official BNI Podcast.

This week Dr. Misner is in Orlando at the BNI National Conference and calls in to praise BNI’s long-term employees, some of whom have been with BNI for all its 23 years. These are the people who’ve taken BNI from a home-based business in Dr. Misner’s tiny Claremont house to the international organization it is today.

Employee loyalty shows that a company has stability, commitment, and a good working environment. It’s important for members to know that BNI’s success is based on having good people.

The other thing Dr. Misner talks about in this chapter of Givers Gain is the communication revolution. This podcast is just one example of the things technology lets us do that we couldn’t do before. Thousands of members listen every week, thanks to the e-mail announcement list and the fact that education coordinators are sharing this information with their chapters.

One reason for writing the book was to keep BNI chapters from repeating mistakes that have already been made. BNI keeps experimenting with new possibilities, testing them out before disseminating them to the BNI chapters. The Referral Institute was born from some of these experiments.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 055 -

Priscilla Rice:
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 am Priscilla Rice and I’m coming to your from Live Oak recording studio which is in Berkeley, California. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. It is so nice to have you on the phone. Where are you?

Ivan Misner:
Thanks Priscilla. This week I am in Orlando for the BNI national conference in the USA. I’ve been traveling a lot over the last few weeks.

Priscilla:
Yeah. It sounds that way. What do you have to share with us?

Ivan:
This week I’m talking about Givers Gain chapter 9. I want to just remind all the listeners while going through the book, Givers Gain, that every new member when they join the organization goes to remember success program training or new member orientation. It’s called different things to different countries. They get a free copy of this book, Givers Gain.

I really thought that it would be great for BNI members to not only have the book but also hear in my own words, a discussion about the books chapter by chapter. We are to Chapter 9 now. I think this is a great way of flattening that communication hierarchy and hearing directly from me what I put in writing. I would like BNI members to pick up a copy of the book and as I am talking about the various chapters, go back to earlier in the year and you will find every chapter. We are up to Chapter 9 and sometime this year, we will complete the book. Have the book with you as I go through and talk about these chapters.

This particular chapter is The New Millenium. I talk about the opening years of the 21st century and how it has been a time of incredible growth for BNI indefinitely transition. We’ve created new systems to support our growth. At the time that I wrote the book, we had about 600 directors. Now we are over 1000 directors. We are on every populated continent now. I talk about this in the book.

In 2004, we opened a new headquarters in a really beautiful modern two-story complex in Auckland that ironically, is not far from our little itty-bitty Clairmont Palace that we had 15 years ago as BNI headquarters, when we bought a house that was on commercial land. It was very small. You could probably fit 10 of those houses in a commercial building. It’s just amazing how we have grown.

We certainly have the facility, but I think the most important thing is that we have really brought in smart personable and motivated people. We have great people who work for this company. I think the fact that we have people who’ve been with BNI at headquarters for 10, 15, 20 — we have an employee other than myself who has been with the company since the very beginning. This is our 23rd year and she’s been with us for 23 years. You know, you know employees like Amy Turly-Brown, our Director of Operations. I talk about her in our book. Amy started as a BNI member. She represented a hair salon. She came to work at BNI as a receptionist which is amazing.

Amy is one of those classic examples of the kind of employee that everybody wants because she constantly took on responsibilities while above her pay great just because she wanted to learn and expand. Of course, every time there was a promotion opportunity, guess what. Amy got it. She is now third in command reporting directly to the CEO of the company. She started as a BNI member and then a receptionist for us. She is in our director of operations and has been with us since 1991. It’s been a long time.

Priscilla:
That’s an incredible story.

Ivan:
It really is. And Lonnie Figerly, BNI’s first employee. She started BNI making member packets. She made 10 or 20 a week. That’s all she did. I was working out of my house, so she came into my garage and put together about 20 new member packets every week and that was it. Now she works full time for us in our accounting department and also as a Senior Supervising Regional Director for BNI in Southern California. She has been with us since day one.

Of course, why wife, Elizabeth, started as a member in 1986 and is now the director and administrator of the BNI foundation. Norm Dominguez started in 1987, so has been with us for more than two decades. He started as a member then director. He started up the ladder and is now the CEO of the organization.

Why are these things important? To the listeners, I think it shows something about the company when you have a group of employees have been with the company a long, long time. It shows stability. It shows commitment. It shows hopefully that there is a good working environment. I think that’s important to know is a member that there is a stability to this organization that plays itself out throughout the organization. That’s why I talk about it in here because I talk so much about growth, but it’s also important to understand that the foundation is all based on having good people working for the organization.

The other thing I talk about in this chapter is the communication revolution. Communication has really changed right after this podcast. When I wrote this book and I was talking about the turn-of-the-century, podcasting was — I’m not even sure it was around in 2000. If so, it was in its infancy. We have come so far with technology. It enables us to do things that we just couldn’t do before. Our online database system, BNI net, I predict a year ago to see some real changes over the next few years with BNI in our database system and helping to allow members to network worldwide. That’s one of our goals for the system.

Priscilla:
Do you have any idea how many people are listening to this podcast?

Ivan:
There are thousands. I don’t know the exact number but we have thousands of members listening to the podcasts every week. One of the things I recommend is go around your chapter and have everyone to a sign-up sheet together e-mail address. Then get on the e-mail announcement list. So that each week you get an announcement saying here is that topic. Have one of your members collect e-mails and put it into the e-mail list that you can find on this podcast. You’ll never. We don’t sell the list we don’t give it away. You’ll get one e-mail a week that says here is the topic. When we started doing that, we started getting more and more hits. We’re getting thousands of hits but what I really like is that the education coordinators in particular are sharing this information at their chapters and I think that’s really powerful.

There is so much more to cover in the book. We are almost out of time. In Chapter 9, we talk about experimental programs. You know, when you run a franchise, you perform a balancing act between the stability of following a proven system and the importance of trying out new ideas. The day we say this is BNI and we will never make another change to it is the day we’re going to be in trouble.

So we are constantly improving the system and you have to have what I call controlled experimentation. You just can’t let people go willy-nilly because you end up making the same mistakes over and over and over again because people don’t know what mistakes are being made. That’s why we wrote this book to teach people some of the things we did wrong. We talk very candidly about some of the things we did wrong so that people don’t make this mistake.

If you have a chance, take a look at the experimental programs because to this day, we still use it. Things like the member success program came out in the experimental program. It’s probably the biggest of all — the education coordinator. We didn’t have that at one time. That was an experimental program that came out of our system. The last thing I want to talk about in this chapter is the Referral Institute which is a sister company of BNI. We started doing more training.

One of the things that we really are proud of is that we do a lot of training education in BNI. But sometimes you really have to 50 in programs like the certified networker training, which is like 26 hours or so of training. It’s so comprehensive that we found it was just too much to try to do within the BNI context. So we spun off a sister company, the Referral Institute. Listeners have heard of the Referral Institute. We have a strong strategic alliance with them. They use our material.

I am associated with the company and what we’ve tried to do at the Referral Institute is provide really in depth going deep kind of training for people to build their business through referrals. We talk about the Referral Institute in this chapter to have a chance to take a look at that. The website is Referral Institute.com. We’ll find any training that you might do with referrals would be very synergistic with BNI it’s a situation where the Referral Institute refers many, many, many people to the organization. Chapters to come through Referral Institute training tend to have much, much better members. That’s most of Chapter 9. I’m really looking forward to the next chapter that were to talk about which is Chapter 10, BNI Traditions. It’s one of my favorite topics. That’ll be our next topic for Givers Gain.

Priscilla:
Great. I thank you Ivan. I just wanted to say that it’s very impressive – was it 23 years ago you started the company?

Ivan:
23 years.

Priscilla:
How far ahead were you! Now referral marketing is kind of a big deal. But then, probably nobody had ever heard of it.

Ivan:
You’re absolutely right. When I first started BNI, we got a lot of what is that? They had never heard of anything like that. We would get people who would ask if this Amway or multi-level. I would say no Amway is a member number of our chapters and we have multi-level members and their chapters. But they just didn’t understand. They thought it was just like Rotary. I said that rotary is a great organization but it’s a service club not a referral group. In the early days, there was a lot of confusion about what BNI is. I think in a lot of ways, we’ve created an industry worldwide and certainly and methodologies for people to help build their businesses. Last year we passed 5.5 million referrals and generated $2.2 billion worth of business for our members all around the world.

Priscilla:
That’s great. I think were almost out of time.

Ivan:
It goes by fast.

Priscilla:
It does. So I want to thank you very much Dr. Misner and just 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 will see you next week on the Official BNI Podcast.

Chapter 8 of Givers Gain covers the years 1998-2000. It was during this period that Dr. Misner realized he needed to write a book about networking to educate BNI members, and wrote The World’s Best Known Marketing Secret.
The surprise discovery was the media benefits of publishing a book. Thanks to his 10 books, Dr. Misner has been interviewed well over 1000 times. His first live TV appearance was right after the Village People and his book nearly set the host on fire.

Since that time, Dr. Misner’s books have become a vital part of the BNI culture.

Four main factors determined BNI’s phenomenal growth during this period:

1. Had already built a solid foundation for BNI.
2. BNI is locally owned an operated.
3. Jumped the borders and started spreading into new countries.
4. Gained greater exposure through publishing books.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 051 -

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 to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. I’m joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. How are you, Ivan?

Ivan Misner:
Doing great, Priscilla. Today I am going to be talking about Chapter 8, A New Audience, of the book, Givers Gain. I have been covering the book over the last several months, and my plan is to talk a little bit about each one of the chapters so that people who have the book in front of them can also listen to a little bit of it in my own voice. So they are reading some of the material and they hear me talking about it as well. I think it’s a great tool to use as you read the book.

This section, Chapter 8, really talks about mostly from 1995 through 2000 for the most part. Some really interesting things happened right about that time. I was really trying to spend more time working on the business and less time working in the business. It was really at that point that I was coming to the conclusion that I needed to be spending more time on strategic planning, content and material.

Over the years I had read a lot of books and journals on marketing but I hadn’t read anything on networking. If you do a literature search prior to 1995, you will find almost nothing on business networking and referral marketing prior to the mid-90s. I wanted to do a book that was a comprehensive book on networking and word-of-mouth. I did a book in 1989 called Networking for Success but it was a self published book. It wasn’t distributed much.

I really wanted to do a real book, a book that was published. So I worked with Ray Bard of Bard press in 1994 and we published my first primary published book, The World’s Best-Known Marketing Secret. It’s probably important to note that Jeff Morris was the editor of that book and Jeff is my co-author of this book, Givers Gain. Jeff has been involved in so many of my books that he ended up being the co-author with me of Givers Gain.

That’s where I came out with the book, The World’s Best-Known Marketing Secret. That was really the core book for success in networking and particularly in BNI. What I wanted to do was sort of write a book that was a blueprint that BNI members could use to use in BNI and their other networks to become successful in the networking process. There were a lot of really core philosophies of the organization that are spread throughout this book.

Priscilla:
Is that the reason you’ve written so many books? Aren’t there like 10 now or something?

Ivan:
There are. That led me into writing a number of other books. There are now 10 books including Givers Gain that I have written. We have about six or seven more in the works. You know, the bottom line when I started writing the books was to provide educational content for members who were reasonably new to the organization.

When we first came out with The World’s Best-Known Marketing Secret, there were no educational coordinators of the chapters. It was because there was no content. We didn’t have a lot of stuff. As we started doing more and more books, it was like how do we communicate this to members? How do we get this content to members? So we started doing the books as a way of providing additional content for members and then later education coordinators.

You know, we discovered along the way which is an amazing thing is the publicity that you get from doing a book. If you go to the media, particularly radio but even newspaper and television, and say would you do it interview on me for my business? They will say, “Take an ad out. We don’t want to interview you about your business, about BNI.”

But Priscilla, the media will interview any idiot with a book. I have 10. I have lots and lots of interviews. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve been doing the books is because you get this incredible exposure and media opportunities to build the brand. I have now done well over 1000 radio, TV and newspaper interviews and almost all have started because of the book. They want me to talk about the book. I talk about the book and then of course they always ask what is one of the reasons that led you to write this book? Then I bring a BNI and guess what? They end up spending most of the rest of the interview talking about BNI.

I talk about this in this book. I talk about one of our strategic alliance partners, Jim Blasingame in Chapter 8 of Givers Gain. Jim Blasingame runs a radio talk show called the Small Business Advocate. If you would like to go to his website, www.smallbusinessAdvocate.com is his website. He has interviewed me dozens and dozens and dozens of times. If you do a search on me you will probably find 20 or 30 radio interviews that I have done with Jim.

He has been a real supporter of BNI. If the listeners of his podcast want to hear half-hour interviews with Jim and me, you should go do that because there’s some great content there that’s been done over the years. My interviews with Jim have gotten a lot better than my first one. I talk about my very first television interview in this. Have you ever heard about my live TV interview in Connecticut, Priscilla?

Priscilla:
No. I would love to hear about that.

Ivan:
Well, it’s a real embarrassment. You know, this is back before the time of tape delay. Since Janet Jackson, everything is tape delayed now. But when I did this it was my first live television interview. I will give you the short version of the story and if you want the whole version, you’re going to have to go read it. It’s in Chapter 8 on page 68 of Givers Gain, the BNI story. I was in Connecticut. It was a live television show in the morning. I’m in the green room. It was a big show and a lot of people were there.

While I was sitting in there, Priscilla, a guy who walked by me, am Indian. Then some guy dressed as a construction worker. And some guy dressed as a cop. Someone says, “Gee, it looks like the Village People.” I was like, yeah right– the Village people are to be on. Then we are actually watching the TV show and it says, “Next on the Fairfield County exchange, the Village People and Dr. Ivan Misner to talk about networking. I was thinking all why. I’m on after the Village people!”

Well they wanted me to do something visual so I decided I would do this little magic trick. You’ve seen magicians where they take stick thier hand out and the flame comes out of their hands. Have you ever see that, Priscilla?

Priscilla:
Maybe.

Ivan:
You’ve seen fire come out of a magician’s hand or out of some box or something. Well, I had this little magic trick. I’m an amateur magician. The key word being amateur. I had this little thing or fire would come out and I was going to open the book and have a flame come out. I thought oh my, I am on after the Village People. This is going to be really scary. I better put more of that magic paper in there that makes it flame up. I put some more in and I watched the Village People. They were great. Of course, they are very visual. They want a visual on the show. So what is the last song you think that they would do to be visual?

Priscilla:
I have no idea. You’d tell me.

Ivan:
YMCA. So they appear out in the audience and there’s the entire audience standing on their feet, doing it with their arms, YMCA. I am thinking, oh my. I am going on next. This is going to be a total embarrassment. This is horrible. I’m going to put a little more of that magic paper is better to get the flame to really kick.

So I get out there. It’s a long story but the bottom line is that we got to the end of the interview and the host says, “I have here a copy of Dr. Misner’s book,” she opens it up and I had a little flame. I was going to say, “Be careful the book is hot.”

I did the flame thing and it shot way up into the sky. She jumped into the lap of her co-host, screaming at the top of her lungs. The camera stops. The director stops. Nobody can say anything. All she could say as she’s clutching her chest is, “Thankfully I didn’t swear on live television.” This is still coming out on the air. The last thing they said before they cut was her co-host looking out to the audience and looking back stage saying, “Wardrobe, new pants for her, please.”

The director says to cut and go to commercial. That was my first time on live television talking about the book. I’ve gotten a little better since then. In most states, I am considered an expert in networking, but in Connecticut, I am considered an arsonist.

Priscilla:
Did she forgive you for that?

Ivan:
She did. I tried to tell her two or three times what I was going to do and I talked about this in the long version of the story. If you read the book, you get the whole story. But I did try to tell her two or three times, but the director was in a rush and I didn’t get a chance to tell her. So that’s what happened.

Since The World’s Best-Known Marketing Secret, I have come out with books like Business by Referral, Masters of Networking, Masters of Success, and Masters of Sales. I should have a book coming out called the 29% Solution- 52 Weekly Networking Strategies. These books have really become a vital part of the BNI culture. There is just so much content available for education coordinators, but you know, you can’t be a member of BNI without having this wealth of content at your fingertips. These podcasts are a great example but also the material that is in the books. It’s just amazing.

Priscilla:
That sounds great.

Ivan:
I know we need to wrap up. I think to wrap up this chapter, Chapter 8, I think there are really made four main factors for BNI’s phenomenal growth from 1995 through 2000. First, we had given BNI a solid foundation. You hear about us talking in the first seven chapters about a foundation of good organizational structure, capable leaders, well-designed manuals. You cannot build a house until the foundation is solid. Everything started with the foundation. The system and the way we run the meetings and the schedule, the meeting agenda in the manuals — we now have almost a thousand pages of manuals for our directors. That started really in the early days.

Second, the fact that BNI is locally owned and operated. 95% of all the revenues stay within the country that operates in. It’s a locally owned and operated program and I think that’s one of the reasons that have made it successful.

Third is we jumped our borders in this period of time, in 1995, and started spreading into new countries and spreading and new come trees has helped to grow the organization.

Fourth, we made ourselves better known by publishing books. It has opened the door for media interviews, and we just got a ton of exposure for the organization. In that five-year period, we ended up opening in half a dozen countries or more. That really laid the groundwork for the next 10 years of the organization. That’s a pretty good summary of Chapter 8 of Givers Gain.

Priscilla:
Can I add a number five?

Ivan:
Sure.

Priscilla:
I think it’s having somebody like you as a leader and CEO of the company. You’re an amazing person and you have a lot to offer. It’s wonderful to have you in the leadership role.

Ivan:
Thank you, Priscilla. I really appreciate you saying that. I stepped down as CEO, actually. And I’ll tell you why that’s important. Because it gives me an opportunity now to do this full-time. This is my function in the organization. I believe that the founder of an organization is really well positioned to be the spokesperson of an organization, better than almost anyone else because they started the company. So I spend the majority of my time now really working on the business, writing, speaking, doing these podcasts, writing articles, publishing books as a way of building the brand.

It’s helping to educate and train members. I appreciate you saying what you said. It’s a concerted effort really peaking in with this chapter’s topic. 1995, that is when I started thinking that I really wanted to be the spokesperson for the organization and it was a darn near 10 year journey to get to where I at this point. I like to tell people that I’m a 20 year overnight success. It took me 10 years when I decided I really wanted to work more on the business to be able to, in fact, be working on the business. But thank you very much.

Priscilla:
You’re so welcome. Well, I think we’ve come to the edit is podcasts. Thank you, Dr. Misner. I just want to let the listeners know that this podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, which is a leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thanks 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.

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.

Dr. Ivan Misner shares tips from Chapter 6 of his book Givers Gain, which covers the years 1990-1994. The one-to-one dance cards started at a conference during this time period. This was also when Dr. Misner developed his vision of an international organization and began working on the business instead of in it.

Some important points about how the BNI franchise works:

• 95% of all the revenue of every group stays within the country of that franchise.
• Franchise owners are all BNI members who work their way up.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 035 -

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

Ivan Misner:
I am doing great, Priscilla. I am calling this week from BNI headquarters. I open up with that because Chapter 6 of Givers Gain is what our topic is for this week. We open up Chapter 6 by talking about the fact that the organization really grew a lot. We talk about going coast to coast. We cover the years 1990-1994.

We open up with the fact that it was during this period of time that we finally moved BNI headquarters out of my house. I ran BNI from my home until the early 1990′s. I had a house in Laverne and we ran it there. Since then, we have moved successively to larger buildings three times.

BNI now resides in a headquarters building of 33,000 square feet. It is a very large facility with a lot of offices and a lot of warehouse space. A lot of members just don’t know how much content we ship out around the world. We have a very large shipping favility here. Chapter 6 opens up with the fact tha we finally moved out of my house and into our first offices.

Priscilla:
Great. Tell us about that.

Ivan:
In the early 1990′s is when I had sold off my consulting practice. I had formed BNI as as separate company and it became a corporation. That was when we began to do the conferences, and I talk about this throughout this section of the book.

Just as a reminder for those of you who haven’t heard the previous chapters , Givers Gain is a book that is given to every new member when they go through MSP training. My goal here in doing this podcast is to walk you through the book. As you read it, maybe you can listen to this podcast at the same time. It helps bring the book alive as you are doing it.

The conferences took place during this period of time. The 1990′s is when we started doing them. The BNI conferences are all around the world. Every November, we do an international conference where we bring everyone together from around the world. In the middle of the year, we have national conferences that are done in many, many countries around the world.

If you ever hear about a conference in your area- one way to find out about them is to go to BNI.com- you should definitely attend the conferences. We have some excellent speakers from around the world.
It all started in 1990. The whole story about how it happened is there and it is kind of an interesting story.

The next part of the book that we talk about there is franchising. We explain to members that BNI is a franchise. We talk about how we started franchising in the early days and why. The bottom line is that we found that the program works much better when it is locally owned and operated. People right there locally own and manage the operation.

A lot of people don’t realize it, but 95% of all the revenue of every group stays within the country of that franchise. This is very much an international organization and it truly is locally owned and operated. The countries retain the majority of- memberships used to operate the program within that country.

Priscilla:
If somebody wanted to be a franchise owner, is it difficult to get started with BNI?

Ivan:
It depends on the country that one is in. In some countries, most of the franchise territories have been sold. In other countries, they have not. In the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, most of the territories are sold, so they are franchise resales, not new franchises that are available. In most of the other countries that we operate in, there still are open areas.

The interesting thing about BNI is that you can’t just call us and say that you would like to buy a franchise. You really have to be a member and work your way up in the organization to an assistant director or executive director. We don’t just sell and we don’t advertise franchises. Those are things that we have never done, which when you think about it, makes sense. We are a word of mouth marketing organization. We should be able to build our company through word of mouth. If you don’t walk the talk, you can’t be a world-leading networking organization. It is all through referrals.

Priscilla:
Great. So is there more to tell us about what happened?

Ivan:
A few more things we cover here in this chapter. We talk about the fact that we started doing one-to-one dance cards. The version of Givers Gain that you have right now might say one-on-one dance cards. Here is something interesting that we learned as we went around the world. One-on-one has a completely different connotation in some countries. It is something completely different from what we had in mind. So we had some people going, yeah, I want to have a one-on-one. We had to change that. You will see in a revised version of Givers Gain that they are now called one-to-one’s on the material that we have.

The one-to-one dance card came from the idea of setting up meetings to connect with one another and get to know each other. But it actually didn’t start with members. It started at a conference. We had a day where there were a lot of people. The conference was on Saturday night and on Sunday they were still around. Maybe they didn’t fly out right away. We wanted to find a mechanism whereby they could connect with each other and we designed these one-to-one dance cards as a result of the conference.

At some point after a few years, someone said gee wouldn’t these be good for chapter meetings! It was one of those BFO’s. Have you ever heard of a BFO, Priscilla?

Priscilla:
What does it stand for?

Ivan:
It’s a blinding flash of light. We realized that these would be great tools for a BNI meeting, and that is how the one-to-one dance cards got used. It was also during this time, just to wrap up the chapter, that I really started looking at BNI as possibly being an international organization, at the point which through 1994 the first nine years, we were just in the United States. It was at this point that I really started to get the vision of this being international.

The last chapter of it is where I talk about understanding that if I wanted to grow this company, I had to work more on the business than in the business- working in it being the day to day operations, working in it being creating the vision that can be carried out throughout the world. I talk a little bit about how I did that.

I think for any small business owner, this might be of interest to them because BNI is truly an example of a small operation that became global. It started with me and two part time people. We, now as of this recording, have almost 1,000 directors working for the company around the world. This chapter really talks about how I sat down and started to get that vision about where to go.

I think that any of the members will find this book to be valuable if they look at it and understand how this relates to them in BNI but also how it can relate to them as a business owner. They can take these ideas that I talk about to help build a global company and use some of those to help them in their local business.

Priscilla:
Do you know the expression hootspa?

Ivan:
Yes, I do.

Priscilla:
I think it took a lot of hootspa to think of taking your business and making this international as well as national.

Ivan:
I appreciate you saying that. I think that to me it was so clear that people around the world wanted to do business through referrals that I really felt that this would literally translate into other countries. I am really pleased to say that it has done so extremely well.

Priscilla:
Thank you, Dr. Misner. I think this is all we have time for today. This podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com. I want to thank you listeners for listening in again. This is Priscilla Rice and we will see you again next week on the official BNI podcast.

Dr. Misner talks about his decision to sell off his consulting practice and focus 100% on BNI, as described in Chapter 5 of Givers Gain.

• Networking is different from other forms of marketing
• You follow people, rather than focusing on geographic locations
• BNI started opening chapters outside of California because BNI members moved
• Every policy in BNI was created by members (the BNI board of advisors)
• Dr. Misner met his wife through BNI—the best referral he ever got

Brought to you by Networking Now. Podcast produced by Live Oak Studio in conjunction with the Podcast Asylum.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 031 -

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

Ivan Misner:
Hello Priscilla. I am doing great.

Priscilla:
Where are you today, Ivan?

Ivan:
I am back at BNI headquarters. We just had our international conference last week. And this week, we are training directors from eight different countries of BNI. Six of them are new countries so members can be looking for new countries that will be opening up in the next six months to a year or so. We’re continuing to grow like crazy world wide and we are training these directors and BNI headquarters this week as we speak.

Priscilla:
So do you need translators for that?

Ivan:
Actually this time, we might have a translator, now that you mention it. We have somebody from Brazil coming up and we had some issues with English. However, in most cases we have somebody who speaks English as a partner in a new country, so that is helpful in training. You’re right- this time, it might be the first time that we have a translator.

Priscilla:
Well, so most people speak English then, I guess?

Ivan:
It really is very much a universal language. Now, if you speak two languages, what are you called in English?

Priscilla:
Bilingual

Ivan:
Yeah. If you speak three languages, do you know what you are called?

Priscilla:
Trilingual?

Ivan:
That’s right. If you speak only one language, do you know what it is?

Priscilla:
Unalingual. (laughing)

Ivan:
No, it’s American.

Priscilla:
It’s American, right.

Ivan:
English is a fairly universal language, and we’re lucky that it is because it makes it a lot easier for us to open BNI. As of this moment and this recording, we’re operating in 37 countries around the world.

Priscilla:
That is great. I look forward to going to some of those meetings. It looks like this week you have an interesting topic and it’s based on one of the chapters in your Givers Gain book that you wrote.

Ivan:
That’s right. What I’ve been trying to do with these podcasts is once a month or so to cover one of the chapters in Givers Gain so that members of BNI who have read the book can hear me talk about pieces of it. If you haven’t read the book, pick it up and take a look at it. Read the chapter as I go through it with you. I think it will add value to your position in the organization.

This recording that I’m doing is on chapter five. It’s called The Way East. It’s the road between 1988 and 1990. During this period of time, I was drowning in work. I was running a consulting business. Aim Consulting was the name of the company. I saw the handwriting on the wall that I had to do something because people would ask me what do you do in this BNI thing?

I would tell people that consulting was my vocation but BNI was my avocation. I love BNI. It was really getting to the point that I realized that you have to do what you love. I sold off my consulting practice during this period of time and focused on building BNI. It was the best thing I ever did and am very happy that I did it.

Priscilla:
That is a great organization. Tell us a little bit about – your topic is the way it was from 1988 to 1990.

Ivan:
That is what it’s called but it probably should be called The Way East and Back because when you’re talking about networking, it’s different than other forms of marketing. You say I want to market so I’m going to go here. Then you pick a place on the map and you market and advertise.

With networking, the best thing to do is follow people. That means you have to find the right person to do something or to work with. When you do that, it leads you in some pretty amazing directions.

In a previous chapter of the book, I talk about opening up in Arizona. It was 1986 and it was the first state outside of California. With the in just a few years, by the late eighties for 1990, one of our Phoenix members moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. Then one of the members from Las Vegas moved to Connecticut. Of course the person who moved to Nevada had asked me if I can help them open up a chapter in that state.

Then the guy who moved from Nevada to Connecticut asked if I would help him open up chapters there. I said OK, so we went from California to Arizona to Las Vegas to Connecticut, the Hartford area. Then the most amazing thing was that somebody from Connecticut moved to Lake Tahoe.

So in a period of about four years, we literally did a complete circle around the United States. I tell the story to members because you have to understand that that’s the way the networking works. It goes into directions that you might not expect or did not foresee, but if you find the right people and you’re working with the right people, they lead you to success.

Priscialla:
It’s very organic.

Ivan:
It is very organic. That is the perfect phrase. If you are doing networking correctly, it really is an organic process, and I talk about that here.

Everything that I talk about in this chapter I think is really critical in the success of BNI, particularly the early success of BNI. It was during this period of time that the Board of Advisors really came into its own. I started it in 1986 but I talk about it at length here in this chapter because the Board of Advisors tackled a lot of important subjects.

Members need to know that every single policy created by BNI and used in BNI today was either created by the Board of Advisors or approved by it. Everything from attendance to every policy we have was created by members of the organization- not by me in my ivory tower, but by members of BNI from all around the world.

They really came into it in the late eighties and tackled some tough issues that I think have made BNI a much stronger organization today. If you have a chance, read that section of chapter five because our listeners would really gain a lot as to the things that we learned as we went along. You know, when you’re learning something for the first time it’s called the learning curve right, Priscilla?

Priscilla:
Right.

Ivan:
Do you know what it’s called when you’re learning it as you go? You’re basically discovering it and there’s no way to teach you how to do it?

Priscilla:
What is it called then?

Ivan:
Then it’s called learning steps. The reason that their called learning steps rather than learning curve is that is really not very smooth. It tends to be very, very bumpy. You go along on your own and you’re doing just fine and then boom- you hit this wall and this wall and this wall.

You finally figure out how to solve the problem. So what do you do? You go up to the next level then you’re going along just fine and everything is okay until boom- you hit this wall, you hit this wall, you hit this wall. If anyone has ever seen a picture of me you’ll see that I have a flat spot on the front of my head. It’s from all the walls that I hit in my early days of BNI.

What I love about this book and what we tried to do in this is show BNI members that we made mistakes. What you are seeing today is much different than the way that it started and we learned as a group and BNI absolutely created an industry. We created the networking industry, and we did it through trial and error. When you look at our program, if you ever think that this is really a good program, it’s because we’re screwed up so much along the way. We got it right after two decades.

Priscilla:
Can you give us just one little example of a mistake that you made?

Ivan:
Oh yes. A big example. One of the things that we did- and I know we talk about in the book somewhere. I’m not sure it’s as if it’s in this chapter, but we allowed chapters to meet every week. We didn’t know any better. Some chapter said you know what I really like this but I think that every week is too much. We said okay meet every other week.

What we discovered was that chapters that met every other week past 52% less referrals than groups that met every week. We went back to these chapters in we asked if we could show them one way to double the numbers of referrals that they passed, would they do it? You know all but one chapter said yes. They did double the number of referrals that they did.

The only chapter that didn’t do it within a year had closed down because they were not very successful. It’s these kinds of things that we learn over time – there are dozens and dozens of them throughout the book.

Priscilla:
That’s interesting. I’m glad you shared that with us. Ivan, I understand that you met somebody special in the process of creating BNI.

Ivan:
I certainly did. I talk about in the book of chiropractic assistant whom I met earlier. Her name was Elizabeth Privo. It was during this period of time that Elizabeth moved to Prescott, Arizona and invited me out to speak to her chapter. One thing led to another, and I ended up marrying Elizabeth Privo. She is now Elizabeth Misner.

As of the date of this recording, we’ve been married almost eighteen years. That referral from BNI was the best referral I ever got. Although I don’t pitch BNI as a dating service, I have to be honest. I met my lovely wife in BNI, and it definitely was the best referral but I ever got!

Priscilla:
That is a lovely story. Okay- well Ivan, I think that might be all we have time for today. I would like to thank you for talking to all the members and listeners and let you know that this podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. This is Priscilla Rice, and we will see you next week on the official BNI podcast. Thank you, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Ivan:
Thank you.

• Steady Growth Was The Key
• The Origin Of The Visitor Host Position
• During These Years, BNI Learned That It’s All About People, Not About Places or Professions
• The Givers Gain Philosophy Is Based Upon The Social Capital Theory Of The Law Of Reciprocity

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 023 -

Frank Felker:
Hello everybody and welcome back to the official BNI podcast, brought to you by networkingnow.com, the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I’m Frank Felker in Washington DC joined on the phone today by Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner who is calling and this week from Texas, down in the yellow rose country in Texas. I understand you’re going to be both in Austin and in Dallas this week.

Ivan Misner:
Yes I will. I’ll be doing some recording sessions in both places.

Frank:
You are recording audio books? What are you recording?

Ivan:
I’m doing several different recordings but probably the most comprehensive is a series of recordings with Del Fuego who is the company who does BNI CDs. We’ve done a whole series on networking and success and we will be doing some future material, and I’m recording that now. BNI members will be seeing it come out of BNI.com probably before the end of the year.

Frank:
Del Fuego – my rusty Spanish tells me that means of the fire. Is that a very hot recording studio down there?

Ivan:
It is. That’s what their logo is, too- it’s little flames. They have beautiful graphics. If you have a chance, go to the BNI.com take a look at some of the CDs that they have done. They really do a nice job. It’s done conversational like this, where I’d talk to Sarah and Flynn who are producers. It’s done in an interview format and it is very good.

Frank:
I understand that you are also going to be the recipient of an award in Dallas while you are in Texas. What’s that all about?

Ivan:
The sales and marketing executives international is giving me a little award in Dallas. I appreciate them thinking of me. They’re giving the data ward called the marketing statesman of the year, if you can believe that, Frank.

Frank:
Well. Are they going to make you put on a Sam Houston hat and a sidearm or anything?

Ivan:
I would be glad to do it. I will probably pass on the sidearm.

Frank:
You know Ivan, we’ve been talking a lot in a series of intermittent podcasts about your book Givers Gain that is given away free to members of BNI. In fact, it isn’t even for sale you have gone through chapters one, two and three and I thought it would be good this week to talk about chapter four of Givers Gain.

Ivan:
Thanks. Chapter four is about steady growth. The reason we’re doing this in a podcast is I think it’s a real complement to the book. BNI members all around the world should be getting a copy of this book for free when they go through the MSP training, the Member Success Program training.

In some countries is called different things but it is basically the new member orientation training. Whenever you go through one of those trainings, you should get a copy of Givers Gain.

We’re going to talk about chapter four and I think these podcasts are great tool to listen to as you go through the book. Chapter four is entitled Steady Growth. It really covers BNI from 1986, the second year of BNI, until 1989. Like the end of our second year in 1986, BNI was up to about 40 chapters and was in its second state. It started in California and was in Arizona.

A year later we had hit 60 and the word “national” was starting to echo in my mind. I started thinking this might actually be national someday. Of course today, we are in more than three dozen countries with over 100,000 members but at that time I didn’t quite see it as that quite yet. By 1987, we were in three states. That’s three states in three years and I was really amazed.

Of course now, we open up entire countries faster than that. One year I think we opened ten countries. There’s really nothing like the joy of planting the first seed and having it grow and stepping back and watching it. A lot of things happen in those first few years and there’s a lot of stories in this chapter, and one in particular that I want to talk about because it’s a great illustration of how we learn from our mistakes.

Some people don’t know that we had a number of chapters, about 20% of the chapters I believe, that net every other week in BNI. They did not meet every single week. They met every other week. I thought in the beginning – people had these ideas and they didn’t want to meet every week. They wanted to meet every other week. I thought let’s try it out and experiment. So we did it and do you have any idea for a how many less referrals the chapters that were meeting every other week as compared to the chapters and that met every week?

Frank:
I would guess more than a 50% drop.

Ivan:
You’re absolutely right. Over time we found out that these groups past 52% fewer referrals than the groups that met once a week. I sat down with those groups and there were about seven or eight groups at that point – I sat down with them individually and I said if I can show you one thing, just one thing that would double the number of your referrals that you’re passing in your group, would you do it? What do you think they said?

Frank:
Sure. We’re all ears.

Ivan:
Absolutely. So I told them to meet every week. I showed them the numbers. I put it the reports from all the other chapters that I have photocopied and I showed them how groups that were meeting every week instead of every other week were passing twice the number of referrals that they were passing.

I have to say to their credit, every single chapter transition to a weekly group except for one. That one group closed down within a year. They just weren’t passing enough referrals. It was one of the first things in the early days that we learned about how networking works. Have you ever gotten a haircut over the phone?

Frank:
Only from a stockbroker. That’s the only time I got a haircut over the phone.

Ivan:
What other than him, you generally have to be there. And you certainly have to be there to get referrals. We learned that early on. It was one of the first lessons that we learned and I talk about it in chapter four of Givers Gain.

The other thing that happened – it’s a long story and I’m not going to cover it today, but there’s a great story in chapter four about how the visitor host program was developed. It was actually developed by a specific chapter in BNI that came up with this idea and I stumbled across it.

Listeners of the podcasts who have a chance, go to chapter four and read the story about how the visitor host program began because it’s not something I thought up or came up with. It was absolutely a great example of BNI members who came up with great ideas and have contributed into the program.

Frank:
Well, we’re just about out of time for this week’s podcast. Any last pearl of wisdom that you would like to share with us?

Ivan:
Sure. I think the last thing I would talk about and it’s really one of the most powerful things- in this chapter we talk about how we learned this program is all about people not places or professions, and I’ve talked about that in a previous podcast. The history behind that and how we learned that it’s so much more about people than professionals really comes out of this chapter.

If you have a chance, take a look at it. The last thing is I talk about is Givers Gain and how we came up with that phrase and how it is based on the social capital theory of the law of reciprocity. Listeners of the podcast, take a look at the book and read along with me as we go through these podcasts over the next year every month covering the chapters.

Frank:
That’s great. That’s it for this week. For Dr. Ivan Misner, I’m Frank Felker saying we will see you next week on the official BNI podcast.

• Ivan’s Calling-In From Leon, Mexico
• The Importance Of Maintaining The Organization’s Culture During Rapid Initial Growth
• 20 Chapters Opened In The First Year Alone – All By Word-Of-Mouth
• Ivan Was Surprised How Many Businesspeople Rushed To Learn About Referral Marketing
• Formalized Training Was Instituted To Maintain Success Standards

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 019 -

Frank Felker:
Hello everybody in welcome back to the official BNI podcast, brought to you by networkingnow.com, the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I’m Frank Felker in Washington DC joined on the phone today by Chairman and Founder of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner, calling in today from Leon, Mexico. Hola Ivan.

Ivan Misner:
Hola Frank. I am here in Mexico with National Directors for Mexico, Lorraine Medina and Senator Carlos Medina. Carlos is a past Federal Senator for the country of Mexico and his staff contacted me a little over a year ago said the senator was retiring. They asked about starting at BNII in Mexico.

I think it is great how they found us. They went to the internet and did a Google search on business networking. If you do a Google search on business networking, from just about anywhere in the world, you get over 200 million hits. Listeners should try this. Type in business networking in Google. There will be over 200 million hits and BNI will be right up there at or near number one.

That is what his staff did and BNI popped up there and they contacted us and asked what it would take to get BNI started in Mexico. We’ve been working with them. They kicked off last year and are doing well. I am here in Mexico to do my first presentation. My Spanish is not very good but my wife is fluent in Spanish. Either way, Frank, if you speak to languages, would you call it in English?

Frank:
Bilingual.

Ivan:
Bilingual. Right. What do you call it if you speak three languages?

Frank:
Trilingual.

Ivan:
Trilingual. Very good. If you speak one language, what are you called?
You’re called American. I don’t speak Spanish, but luckily my wife does so she will be doing a presentation in Spanish and then I will be doing one in English for the English speaking members here in Mexico. We’re really looking forward to it.

Frank:
You wanted to talk to us today. You are carrying on with your discussion of your book Givers Gain and today he will talk to us about chapter three.

Ivan:
Chapter three is the first year. And I think with me being here in Mexico, which is a reasonably new country, I think it is good to go back to Givers Gain. My plan was over the course of the year to talk about one of the chapters. For every new member and everyone who is listening to this podcast from BNI, you should get a copy of Givers Gain for free when you go to the MST, member success training.

Chapter three is the very first year of BNI. It is really good for people to have context as to how an organization grew the way it did, and that is what we try to do here in Givers Gain, to help maintain the organizational culture. Sometimes the things that help the company grow get lost in the growth process, especially as you open up in different cultural contexts. So we do the book and it is done all around the world as a way of helping to maintain the growth and healthy culture of the organization that was created.

Chapter three talks about the very first year of BNI. Basically, what happened was- we’ve talked about in chapter two – BNI was very successful. Pretty quick into the process, somebody came and couldn’t join because of a conflict and she asked if I would help her open up the second group. We opened up the second chapter. The first was in Arcadia California and the second was in Pasadena.

At the very first meeting of the second chapter, we had about 25 people come. Two couldn’t join because of a conflict and they said this is a great idea. I can get a lot of business out of this. If you’ll help me open up my own group, you can run four groups and your consulting practice. I was a business consultant as I talk about in the other chapters.

I said sure I can do that and run my consulting practice so we opened up two more and all those groups had about 25 to 30 people come, three of which could not join because of a conflict. Two and one group and one in another. All three of them said well this is a great idea and I could get it on a business out of this. So we literally ended up opening about twenty chapters all across southern California in the first year, pretty much by accident.

Frank:
Twenty chapters in the first year. Wow.

Ivan:
Twenty chapters in the first year and it happened totall through word of mouth. I was really surprised. I would like to tell you that I had a vision of an international organization of the point the truth was that I needed some referrals for my consulting practice and I was helping my friends build their businesses. I realized that I had struck a chord that I never saw. I don’t see this in the book and when I redo the book, I will put this in.

I know it sounds crazy but sometimes you’re in a situation where you think that something is happening to you and you think that you’re the only one who has experienced this. I was there in the early days thinking that I need to build my business through word of mouth and I don’t know how to do it. Everybody else has figured out that out. I created BNI as a way to fit my philosophy of doing business with people through relationships.

I did it to fit my own philosophy of working with people, thinking that everybody else had this figured out. What I learned was that most people didn’t have networking through word of mouth figured out. I struck a chord that just resonated with so many people and I think that’s why we were successful in opening twenty chapters in the very first year of the organization.

Frank:
It makes a lot of sense. And I’m sure it’s the same reason why you have grown to thousands of chapters around the world to this date.

Ivan:
Yes. We now have – our official chapter count as of this date is 4832. But who’s counting? That’s 4832 and more than three dozen countries around the world. It all started with this very first year where we really learned a lot. We made lots and lots of mistakes. That is what I talk about throughout chapter three of Givers Gain.

I really urge listeners of the podcasts and members of BNI to pick up the book because you really learn a lot of things about why we do some things that we do. Example: we have one chapter than a talk about in the group. You’ll love this. I went to a meeting and in the first year we didn’t have the kind of training that we do now. Now we have leadership training. We didn’t have that the first year. So I went to a chapter that had been trained by me nine or ten months earlier and saw the leadership team.

The leadership team was training the next generation of leadership people so some of the information kind of gets lost in translation. So one of the things they did was they opened up the meeting and they had 60 second introductions, they introduced the visitors, they had a speaker, they had announcements, and they closed the meeting. Anything missing, Frank?

Frank:
Yeah. How about standing up and say who you are and what you need and how you can help me.

Ivan:
No. They did the 60 second intro but the entire referral part of the meeting was missing. They dropped it from the group. I met with them and at that point I felt like Dr. Phil. Is there something that I was missing here? They said oh, the referral part? I said yeah, the referral part. You didn’t do that. They said yet they took it out. And I said well why? They said that these people felt uncomfortable standing up in front of everyone if they didn’t have any referrals. It just put them on the spot.

And that’s where I felt like Dr. Phil when I aid how is that working for you? And they said well they don’t know, so let’s look up the numbers. Know what happened to the numbers? They plummeted. Referrals absolutely plummeted. We found there has to be accountability as well as friendship. You have to have these friendships with people but you also have to have accountability.

So it was really at that point in the chapter of the first year that I realized that you had an ongoing training. We can’t just hand over materials and train one set of leadership team people who train trains the next set of leadership people who train the next set of leadership- that doesn’t work at all.

I call it the leaky bucket process. Education is a leaky bucket process. If I train you and you train someone else who trains someone else, you lose information. What happens is through the levels of training and you have a bucket of information and then when you have half of the bucket of information, people start putting their own stuff in. I saw that really, really quickly and that’s what when decided to start doing leadership team training.

By the way, take a wild guess how many hours of leadership training began ideas as of this day of this recording? How many hours of leadership team training to do we do each year? Can you take a guess?

Frank:
250?

Ivan:
Try about 130,000.

Frank:
That is a lot.

Ivan:
That is a lot. We do over 130,000 person hours leadership team training. Many of the listeners are skeptical about that? hear the numbers. The three leadership team people and they do about four and a half hours of training twice a year times 4832 chapters. If you do that now, you’ll find it’s over 130,000 person hours. That was one of the things we learned in the first year, that you have to have a commitment to training and education.

Members of BNI, if you ever have a leadership team person who has decided to take on the role and the chapter has approved them to be president, vice president, secretary treasurer- if they decide they don’t want to go through training, kick them out – not out of the chapter – but don’t let them be on the leadership team.

How many of you would like to take flight with a pilot who hasn’t been trained? Yikes. Nobody wants to do that. But that’s what happens with the chapter because the leadership team pilots the chapter. They fly the chapter. The chapter is not going to be as successful as it could be. It’s critical.

We absolutely nailed that the first year. I think that was probably one of the most important things that we learned in the first year. But there are many, many other things that we can talk about. As a matter of fact, I probably could speak for hours talking about chapter three. I don’t think I have an hour, do I?

Frank:
No is a matter of fact are just about out of time, Ivan.

Ivan:
There are lots of things we talk about in chapter three. Get up and take a look at chapter three because we really learned, I would say, two important principles during the first year of vigorous growth. That was when we had focused on maintaining the traditions that were being created and I love to talk about that in one of the last chapters of Givers Gain.

We’ll talk about some specific traditions, procedures and systems as we added new chapters and spread further and further from our headquarters, we had to train and train retrain. The second principle was that we would consider every suggestion of change on its own merit.

The organization that exist today is substantially different in many ways than it was 22 years ago because we had so many ideas- some of which we talk about in chapter three but we don’t have enough time in this podcast, so many ideas that we learned early on that we integrated into the chapter over the years. Things like MST and things like education coordinators – these are things that were all added over the years from good ideas that we experimented with. I think that’s one of the things that created the strong organizational culture that we have today.

Frank:
Clearly, what you’ve done has worked and so, Ivan, I congratulate you for that. That’s it for this week’s episode of the official BNI podcast. For Dr. Ivan Misner, I’m Frank Felker saying we’ll see you next week on the official BNI podcast.

• How the First BNI Chapter Was Founded
• The First Meeting Agenda Was Typed on An IBM Selectric
• Many of The 12 People Who Were At The First Meeting Are Still BNI Members
• BNI Was Originally Called “The Network”
• The Concept of “Contact Spheres”

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 014 -

Frank Felker:
Hello everybody and welcome back to the official BNI podcast brought to you by networkingnow.com, the networking downloadables. I’m Frank Felker in Washington DC joined on the phone today by Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner, calling in from Vancouver, British Columbia. How are you today, Ivan?

Ivan Misner:
If I were doing any better, Frank, it would be illegal.

Frank:
I don’t know how much better that would have to be or what that would entail so I will just leave that alone. You know, I was wondering-. All those years ago in 1985 – 22 years ago – could you imagine that BNI would come to be the size and scope that it is today?

Ivan:
I would like to tell you that I had this vision of an international organization with almost 5000 chapters in three dozen countries around the world, but the truth is I was looking for some referrals for my consulting practice and to help some friends and business associates of mine. That’s really how the organization got rolling. I think it’s a great medium for what I wanted to talk about today which is chapter two of the book, Givers Gain.

For the listeners and BNI members who are listening to this podcast, Givers Gain, the BNI story is given to every BNI member for free at the member success program training. It is called different things in different countries but generally it is orientation training, and new member training. Every member who attends that training gets a free copy of this book.

If you didn’t get a copy and you’ve been a member for a few years, that may be why. We started handing this out about two or three years ago in the United States and in some countries just this year. Go back to an MSP training and you’ll get a copy of the book.

I would like to talk about chapter two today if we can, Frank, which is really how the first chapter got started. Chapter one we talked about in a previous podcast and chapter two is about how the first group kicked off. It kicked off because I was a management consultant. My doctorate award is in organizational behavior.

I was working with companies in hiring training and evaluating employees and personal policy procedures- that kind of thing. I had a big client who was due to renew their contract and all of the sudden, I found myself with a very large contract not being renewed and a significant source of income lost. I was looking for ways to generate more business fairly quickly. I got most of my business through speaking engagements on the rubber chicken circuit and referrals.

The thing is I wanted to create something that was a little more structured in the process. And I had to do something very quickly. I sat down and tried to put together something that I felt was organized, structured, and had accountability (because that is important) but yet had some flexibility and focused on developing friendships.

That is how we put the first group together. We literally sat down together at an IBM electric typewriter and typed up the agenda if you can believe that. Frank, you’re probably too young to remember the IBM electric typewriter.

Frank:
No, I remember that. I remember them very well. They had that little ball in the middle.

Ivan:
Back then I typed Columbus style. Do you know what that is?

Frank:
No, I don’t.

Ivan:
It is to seek out and discover. I typed up this agenda and photocopied the agenda and that was the only material that we had. To date, a lot of members don’t know this, but we actually have a 900 page set volume of manuals for BNI directors. Of course, leadership teams get dozens of pages. Then, it was a one page agenda.

I really created a group that was built around the idea of mutual benefit. The concept that our first duty would really be to help other people in the group and by doing that, they helped us. That was what led to the phrase “givers gain” being used in BNI and of course is what we named the book. What I love about this philosophy of givers gain is that it is really been inculcated throughout the organization. It is understood and recognized in really good chapters throughout the world.

We got together and we started testing out ideas on how to run effective meetings. I have to tell you that the program that exists today is substantially different than what it was maybe fifteen or certainly twenty years ago. We learned through trial and error.

Some of the first people that were in the first meeting – there were about twelve of us – are still in BNI today. Carolyn Denny, a CPA has been a member now for over 22 years. She has transferred chapters as she has moved her practice. Lee Shipman, an insurance agent, is still involved on the board of advisors today. Mike Ryan, a financial planner, is still involved in the same chapter. Can you imagine, Frank, attending a meeting for 22 years at the same chapter?

Frank:
That is amazing. That is truly amazing.

Ivan:
It really is. They have become very good friends and outstanding members and participants of the organization. They have been involved in BNI for over twenty years.

There’s something in the book that a lot of people don’t know. When the organization started, our name was not BNI. It was The Network. We learned early on in the process that The Network is not very trademarkable. We attempted to get a trademark and could not do that. When we first started – this is in the book – The Network was an Aim Consulting affiliate. The logo for the network was actually my consulting company because it was connected to my consulting company.

That was stripped off pretty soon and we tried to get a trademark and we could not get a trademark on The Network. That led to the name BNI which was more trademarkable. We kicked off the first chapter in January of 1985 in Arcadia, California and the organization that you see today is an outgrowth from the organization.

I think the one thing that has carried over from day one has been the importance of system, the importance of structure, accountability and friendship. One other thing that was in the very first group that is still today is the whole idea of working contact spheres. I think to a large extent that BNI started from a big contact sphere, mine. I had people who have helped me in my consulting business who I referred to in symbiotic relationships.

The whole organization is really an outgrowth of the concept of business professions that have that symbiotic relationship. I think it’s one of the easiest ways to grow chapters today and to grow them around the concept of contact spheres.

Frank:
When you say contact spheres, do you mean the same ideas as power teams or certain occupations that have natural affiliations?

Ivan:
You know, I think that would make a great podcast down the road- to talk about the difference between power teams and contact spheres because they are really concentric circles of each other. The contact sphere is a group of business professionals that have a symbiotic relationship. The power team is the professions that you actually have the connection with. So the potential strategic alliance partners and then actual strategic alliance partners might be a way of describing it. I think we should probably hit that as a separate podcast because it’s important want to talk about.

Anyway, what I didn’t realize in starting BNI was that this would grow like crazy and the next time I talk about chapter three, I will give a little bit of a history of how it just grew so rapidly almost like Jack’s magic beanstalk. I was really about to shoot skyward and at that point had no idea.

Just this week, I think it’s a great chapter to talk about because we actually crossed the 100,000 member mark in the organization. So a big applause to members all around the world. Our current chapter count as of today is about 4830 chapters in over three dozen countries. And for the first time we have over 100,000 members.

I have to tell you, 22 years ago, I did not have any idea how big this organization would get. I think it took a couple of years before I had any sense for what was possible. I like to talk about this here on the podcast because sometimes members only see the tip of the iceberg. They only see what’s going on within their chapter. But this is really an organization that is truly global.

Frank:
You are certainly to be congratulated for the success that the organization has had and it is obvious that it just means that you really caught lightning in a bottle and came up with an idea whose time had come, and the structure and the accountability and everything else that you’ve spoken about that makes BNI different from other networking organizations ob have contributed to the growth and success.

Ivan:
You know, one thing that is not in the book here that we can touch on if you don’t mind – I think this is really important. You say that I caught lightning in a bottle, but the truth is, I kind of fell upon it and grabbed it. I didn’t really see it coming.

I know it sounds crazy, but back then I thought I was the only person that had this problem with referrals. I kind of thought that everybody else had this figured out. They knew how to generate referrals. I created a referral system that fit my personality of having accountability and developing friendships, so I kind of created it in my own image in effect and what I thought would make a good networking group. It was based on trial and error.

What I discovered is that very few people have this whole thing about referral development understood because we don’t teach it in college and because it’s not taught and trained by companies. I think the idea resonates was so many people because they really need to build their business through referrals and nobody else has really captured it in the way that we have.

I think that’s a real testament to all the members listening to this program and being willing to follow the system. When you think about it, we have almost 5000 meetings every week all over the world. It’s really powerful.

Frank:
Amazing. Well, that’s it for this week’s podcast. For Dr. Ivan Misner, I am Frank Felker saying we will see you next week on the official BNI podcast.

• “Givers Gain” Is Given Only to BNI Members
• The Book Is Not Available For Sale to the General Public
• Written to Perpetuate BNI’s Traditions As The Organization Grew Worldwide
• Over Three Dozen Localized Versions Are In Print
• Where The Givers Gain Philosophy Came From
• Encouraging Members and Directors to Openly Share Ideas With Each Other
• If You Don’t Have A Copy, Go to MSP Training and Ask Your Director For One

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 013 -

Frank Felker:
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the official BNI podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

I’m Frank Felker in Washington D.C. joined on the phone again today by founder and chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner, calling in from BNI HQ in Southern California.

How are you today, Ivan?

Dr. Ivan Misner:
Doing great, Frank. Thank you very much.

Frank:
I understand you’re going to share with us today from your book, Giver’s Gain.

Ivan:
Yup, I surely am. It is a book given only to BNI members. I don’t know if you knew this, but it’s not available for sale in bookstores.

Frank:
I didn’t know that.

Ivan:
We never made available to sell to the public. It’s only available to BNI members, and it’s given to any BNI member who goes through MSP training for free. It’s one of the benefits of membership.

Frank:
Okay. I did not know that book was not for sale to the public.

Ivan:
Yeah, it’s not for sale to the public, and we really wrote it for BNI members specifically. And the reason that I wrote it a couple years ago was we were becoming larger and larger in terms of the number of chapters and the number of countries we were going to. And one of the concerns I’ve always had with growth is that you lose — it’s very easy for an organization to lose the very things that made it strong. When you become bigger, you lose touch with the things that helped get you there to begin with, and the traditions of the organization and the history of the organization gets lost with growth.

And so I was hoping that by putting together a book that really quite candidly talks about our screw-ups, what we did wrong, as well as what we did right, that it would help put everything in perspective for the average member to understand why BNI has become the world’s largest business networking organization.

And it’s not only my story about how we started BNI, but it’s a story of many, many other directors, including each country. And many of your listeners don’t know this. This is something that only a handful of directors know. There are actually, at this point, more than three dozen versions of Giver’s Gain.

Frank:
You mean in different languages?

Ivan:
Well, yes, you’re right. There are different languages, as well, but there’s also different forwards, because one of the things that we wanted to do was to make this very localized. So in each country, the national director for that country writes the forward for the country. So they talk about, in the United Kingdom, how they heard about BNI, how the Lawsons heard about BNI, and how they got the program started right there in the United Kingdom. And then it launches into the BNI story.

In Canada, the same with Don and Nancy Morgan, how they first heard about BNI and how they brought it to Canada. And the same in Australia and every single country, we start the book with the story of that country, and then we launch into the primary book, which I think is a great way to help keep this localized as well as focused on the traditions of the organization.

Frank:
I agree. That’s brilliant. It’s a great idea.

Ivan:
So it’s really awesome if anybody ever has a chance to see any of the books from the other countries. It’s great to see the different languages and, of course, the different forwards.

If we can, I’d like to just touch upon, for a couple of minutes, the first chapter of Giver’s Gain and some of the real important points that are in there so that when you get a copy of the book, look for these things because they are very important.

In the first chapter, we talk about two or three things that I think are critical, one of which is the philosophy of the organization, Giver’s Gain, and how that became so important in the beginning of BNI. You know, when I started the organization, it took a year or so to start using that phrase. We used to say that we had an unwritten loyalty of, you know, if you didn’t have a referral for — let me say that again. We had an unwritten loyalty. As much as possible, we tried to use one another in business, but that was too long and complex, and we found that the phrase, Giver’s Gain, really said it all as to what this organization is all about.

Another one of the central philosophies for the organization that really started early on was the idea of encouraging sharing of good ideas and having members share ideas with one another so that they can improve their involvement in the organization. We have certainly done that with directors, and we have conferences now all around world where directors get together and share all of the great ideas that they hear.

And the last thing that’s in that chapter that I think is really critical is that we talk about BNI’s traditions and how important it is to understand the traditions of an organization and how traditions really make or break the success of the company. And we actually spend a whole chapter — and later, what I’d like to do with these podcasts is that over the next six months, at least once a month or so, I’d like to hit upon one chapter of Giver’s Gain and talk a little bit about some of the key points that are in that chapter, because I think you’ll get a bird’s eye view, a perspective of how BNI got to where it is today through both trial and error.

So for the listeners out there, you know, pull up a rocking chair, get comfortable, and we’ll do the BNI story in one or two of these podcasts every month over the next six months.

Frank:
I think that’s a great idea. But we’re just about out of time for this week’s podcast. Do you have a last pearl of wisdom about Giver’s Gain?

Ivan:
Well, I think you don’t live long enough to make all the mistakes that you can, so learn from other people’s mistakes, and Giver’s Gain is really all about learning from the now 100,000 members. And this would be a good time to make the announcement, actually. We just hit the 100,000 member mark this week in BNI.

Frank:
Unbelievable. Congratulations.

Ivan:
So learn from the other hundred thousand members that have made every mistake you can think of. I mean, if you ever look at the BNI program and you say, “Wow, this is really good,” it’s because we screwed up so much, we’ve gotten it right. So follow what’s worked over the last 22 years, and Giver’s Gain really does that. It shows, step by step, the things we’ve done right, the things we’ve done wrong. It’s really good reading for somebody who wants to be successful in this program.

Frank:
Ivan, I don’t know if you have ever heard this expression, but I often like to say, “We learn best by our mistakes, and that’s what makes me an expert.”

Ivan:
That’s for sure, and I’m an expert with all the mistakes we’ve made.

One parting comment, Frank. If you do not have a copy of Giver’s Gain, go to MSP training or the equivalent in your country and make sure your director gives you a free copy of Giver’s Gain.

Frank:
Well, that’s it for this week’s podcast for Dr. Ivan Misner. I’m Frank Felker saying we’ll see you next week on the official BNI podcast.