Exceptional performance is not achieved by looking for exceptions. You won’t get great results without great effort. You can’t win the Tour de France without riding a bike, or the Nobel Peace Prize without changing the world. Musicians and athletes need to practice. So do businesspeople. Without discipline and a focus on the fundamentals, you won’t achieve success. There are no shortcuts.

Have you run into people like this, either in BNI or elsewhere in business? The ones who want to read advice on how to be successful, but not to follow it? What has your experience been like.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 231 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan, how are you and where are you?

Ivan:
Hi Priscilla. I am actually at BNI headquarters this week training National Directors for BNI. I have some National Directors from around the world here at BNI. They are going through some training to open up new countries. We are in almost 50 countries now and we’ll be opening up more countries next year, too.

Priscilla:
That is amazing.

Ivan:
Yeah. It really is. It’s very exciting.

Priscilla:
So what do you have to share with us?

Ivan:
Well, the topic for today is You Don’t Become Exceptional by Looking for Exceptions. I have touched upon this some in other podcasts, but I have additional information that I think is of value because over and over again in my life, I am reminded that exceptional performance is not achieved by looking for exceptions. I’ll be really honest. I don’t feel very diplomatic today so I am just going to say it like it is. I am really tired of dealing with people who want great results but they don’t want to put any great effort.

I honestly think that if people spent half as much time focusing on the fundamentals of success in the area they are interested in, they would get twice the results of what they are actually getting. I am not aiming this message at BNI members. I am aiming this message at business owners worldwide, any business professional. This isn’t just BNI.

In fact, I think in many ways, BNI members are better at this than the average person. But I do find over and over way too many people around the world that I talk to who are searching for ideas and then arguing with people about what works. So they will ask for an opinion and then argue with people who have been successful in that area.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. Earlier this year, I read an article by a really good friend of mine, Tony Alessandra. Dr. Alessandra. He wrote the material on the “platinum rule.” The platinum rule talks about the fact that you treat people the way that they want to be treated, not the way that you want to be treated. It’s not quite the golden rule, which is treat others the way that you want to be treated. You treat others the way that they want to be treated.

It’s an important concept and his piece was well-written, Tony’s material. It explains that especially when it comes to business, it’s not about how you want to be treated. It’s how they want to be treated. They have needs, desires and wants that may be different from yours. So understanding them is very important. He did a very non-controversial posting, this friend of mine who posted on Tony’s material. He caught some guy- this was on an online network. He got some guy who posted a comment that this was a horrible idea because people don’t always know what is best for them. I’m thinking, really? Really?

That seemed crazy to me. But he said he thought perhaps he was overreacting so he thought he would check some of the other guy’s writings. He started looking at he other guy’s writings and other comments that he had posted, and he was always the guy taking the opposing position. He disagreed with virtually everyone about virtually everything. Then I started looking at his original posting and this guy is a total loser. He clearly jumped- this is the part where I said I was not going to be real diplomatic today. He clearly jumped from business to business. He didn’t appear to be successful in anything. The best thing this guy seemed to do was- wait for it, wait for it- yes, argue about everything. He argued about everything.

Soon after I read my friend’s article about the platinum rule, I received an email from someone who visited one of the BNI chapters. I wrote about this in a Success Net article some time ago. He said, “I am interested in how I can provide my extensive list of contacts to a local networking group without actually having to attend the weekly meetings. We only want to attend once a month for meetings, but we still want to adopt the group’s ethos as well as their well-structured program.”

I’m like, really? This is what I mean. You don’t become exceptional by looking for exceptions. “ I want all the results but I don’t want to do all the work that is necessary. I want to read advice on how to be successful but I don’t want to actually follow it.” That’s the kind of thing that got me thinking. I would really like to win the Tour de France, but I don’t like riding bikes.

Priscilla:
That would be a problem.

Ivan:
I always thought it would be amazing to win an Olympic medal, but really, all that conditioning- is it really necessary? I would have liked to have become a medical doctor but I’m really not so good with all the blood and internal organ stuff. I would really love to be a military general, but boot camp- really? Do I have to do boot camp? But the most coveted of all: a Nobel Peace Prize. That would be really amazing but then I would actually have to change the world in some incredibly important way. Surely there is something less I could do and still get the same results, right?

If all this wishing made it so, but it doesn’t. Looking for exceptions to what has been proven to work seems many times to be the norm with some people, those who go around constantly searching for exceptions to validate reasons why the disciplined hard work that has made others successful won’t work for them. In my experience, you will only find one truth and that is that successful people only find success through consistent, disciplined action. They are, in fact, the only real exceptions to the norm. They have that consistent, disciplined action.

I would love to hear about this. Have you seen people like this in BNI or outside BNI? Have you seen people like this? This is one of the reasons that BNI works so much. It’s the discipline and accountability and the people who come in and understand that. I don’t like having to get up every week and go to a meeting. I would say that now some of us like it. There are crazy people out there who say this is fun. They love early morning meetings. But I’m a realist. I get it. It takes hard work. It takes discipline. But the results speak for themselves. To me, that is why I think BNI has been so successful- the discipline. I would love to hear from people who listened to this podcast or read the transcript of the podcast. Have you run into people like this? What has been your experience? Not just in BNI- anywhere in business. Let me step off of my soapbox now.

Priscilla:
You’re done?

Ivan:
I’m done.

Priscilla:
Okay. I think that’s great, and I think you’re right because discipline is the hardest thing to integrate into your life. But it really does get the best results. If you look at musicians that are very accomplished or athletes, it’s just very obvious that they are consistent and they do the hard work. So I think you’re right.

Ivan:
They do. A musician- isn’t that a great example? You’re not going to be a concert pianist is you don’t practice regularly.

Priscilla:
You’re right. And the more time you put into it, the better it gets.

Ivan:
Very true. Very true. So if you want to be exceptional in business, don’t look for the exceptions. Look for the rule and what other people are doing consistently. Be willing to do the hard work. Drop me a comment here on this podcast. Thanks, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Ivan, thanks so much. That’s it for this week. I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Many people who attend Dr. Misner’s keynote presentations congratulate him on his “overnight” success—which took more than 20 years of hard work. Very few people achieve success overnight, and even fewer can hang on to it. How many one-hit musicians are there? Sustaining success over time takes continuous work. Mark Twain claimed it took three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. Even people who seem to achieve success overnight have usually been working in obscurity for years.

You can watch Dr. Misner’s speaker’s reel and read more about overnight success on the Business Networking Blog.

Tell us what success means to you in the comments.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 228 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan, how are you and what do you have to share with us today?

Ivan:
I am doing great and today I want to talk about the myth of overnight success. It came as a result of me doing a blog at businessnetworking.com where I shared my speakers reel. I do a lot of keynote presentations. By the way, sometimes members are mistaken and think that I charge when I come to visit BNI regions. I never charge BNI to do keynote presentations. I do charge when I go to other organizations, but if you ever see me in your region, I don’t charge anything, including my travel.

I do a lot of keynotes for other organizations and I have a speakers reel that I posted up at businessnetworking.com and I think we will have the link in the podcast. During the course of speaking at organizations over the last decade, I have had the privilege and honor of doing keynote presentations and being the featured speaker at events across the world.  I have never done this on the podcast- a good referral for me. It’s been over 200 podcasts and I never said that a good referral for me is someone that you know who is in charge of speakers for that organization and having me come out to do a keynote presentation in their organization. We can put them in touch with the people who handle my keynote presentations. That would be a great referral for me because it gives me a chance to go out and talk about networking. Of course, I mention BNI. I don’t do a big sale for BNI but I mention BNI and it’s great branding development for the organization.

As a speaker, I had somebody look at this speaker’s reel that they did for me and had somebody say to me how amazing it is that I achieved this kind of overnight success. Everytime someone says that to me, and I got it when somebody saw this video reel recently, I had to chuckle and say, “Yeah, I am a 20-year overnight success.” It took me 20 years to achieve any kind of success in my life. I really don’t think there is anything- there is always an exception. People say, oh yeah, there is someone who hit it big overnight. Those are the exceptions, not the rule. There are people that it happened to, but they can’t sustain that success.

It’s one of the reasons why people who have won the lottery- how many stories have we heard about people who have won the lottery and then they blow it all. They blow all that money. Why? Because they don’t understand how to manage money. They get this windfall and run it right into the ground.

So sustained success over time, I think, is where most people become successful. Very few people are overnight successes and hang on to that. I know it happens in the moves but I don’t see it happen in real life very much.

I asked for some feedback from members and readers of my blog. I would love to get some feedback on this podcast. Diana said on my blog that success takes years of hard work and patience. There is no such thing as overnight success. I couldn’t agree more.

There were several quotes. One that I had never heard before was by Mark Twain, who was quoted as saying, “It takes me three weeks to prepare a great impromptu speech.” That is so true. I think about that. To do a one-hour keynote, I will put in about 50-60 hours. I am not talking about a presentation where it is a sort of a state of the company presentation. Even then, I would probably put in 30-40 hours. But for a professional keynote presentation, I will put in at least 50-60 hours of work to do what looks like it’s just, you know, winging it- like I’m going off a handful of notes. But there is a lot of practice and a lot of preparation. Most successful people make it look easy, but it comes from a lot of work prior to that.

Another reader said he would love to find where opportunity meets preparation. I have heard that a lot. I really like that one. But one of my favorite things that was shared on this blog video was shared by BJ. BJ Shaw is the National Director in the UAE. He put this saying up about newly planted bamboo. The saying is that the first year it sleeps. The second year it creeps and the third year it leaps. That is so true because bamboo has actually been clocked to grow over 40 inches in a 24-hour period. Over 40 inches. Can you imagine that in a 24-hour period. But that doesn’t happen in the first year. It is after many, many years down the road.

I’d like to say that harder you work, the luckier you get. I think that’s really the secret to success. That is one of the reasons why in BNI I talk about systems and passion and applying these systems and being consistent in what you do. Being there week in and week out. Why do we do it every week? Because it is about building those relationships. And building relationships takes time. You have to be dedicated to it. We talked about this in a previous year’s podcast. You can’t expect to get a ton of business in just a few months. It takes time and ongoing effort if you want to be a success.

I don’t believe in this overnight success stuff. There are very few people I have met who have been overnight successes and have sustained that success over time.

Priscilla:
I think it’s overnight for the people who are experiencing the other person’s success for the first time. So for them, it’s brand new, but for the person who is successful, I think they have to have been working on it for ages.

Ivan:
You bring up a good point. Somebody mentioned that in the blog, too. They said it really is a matter of perspective. You may not have ever heard about this person and all of a sudden, you hear about them and it looks like an overnight success but it really wasn’t. That person was working on it for a long time. And to me, success is about long-term. It’s not about short-term. You may have a short-term success, but can you keep it going? Can you sustain it over a long period of time? That’s where the rubber meets the road and it takes a lot of hard work- to sustain that over a period of time.

So if you have a chance and you’re listening to this podcast, tell us about your ideas of what it takes to be successful. I talk at length in a book that I wrote. It’s one of my favorite books that I did, Masters of Success. If you get a chance, take a look at Masters of Success because it talks about the things that I think it take to become successful in business and in life. Those things include passion, system, goals, vision, being able to deal with adversity, social capital skills. These are the things that you do long and hard and you are going to achieve some success. Share that with us. What do you think that it takes to be successful? We’d like to see it.

Priscilla:
Great. Thank you, Dr. Misner. I really appreciate that. I just have to say that in the music industry, that is where you think you see the overnight success happening, but those people have been studying music for years. But anyhow-

Ivan:
They have. But what about those people that all of a sudden have a big hit. How many one hit wonders are there out there?

Priscilla:
Thousands

Ivan:
There are so many and they can’s sustain it. Even those who have a hit early on in their career- my point is maintaining that is a lot of work. No matter what it is you are talking about, maybe you are looking to get there a little quicker, but maintaining that success is as hard if not harder.

For me personally, it took many, many years to build my business. I see these kids coming out of college expecting to be filthy rich in a year or two. That is the exception, not the rule. It’s long-term commitment to hard work.

Priscilla:
Agreed. Well, great.

Ivan:
Thanks Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Thank you, Dr. Misner. Well, I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you again for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

This episode has its origins in a video for Entrepreneur.com.

Everyone experiences fear of rejection. In Dr. Misner’s case, the overwhelming experience came when he was trying to persuade stores to carry his first book. He found himself afraid to get out of the car and walk into the store to ask.

Finally he realized that the worst that could happen if he asked was the same thing as if he did nothing at all: the store would not carry his book. So he picked up a copy of the book and went into the store. They asked for 20 copies.

When you ask people to do something—including joining BNI—some will, some won’t, and either way, it’s not a big deal.

Mark Goulston recently said, “We have a lot less control over winning or losing at something than we have over trying or quitting at something. If you always try, you’ll eventually win. If you always quit, you can never win.”

Success doesn’t necessarily go to the smartest person: persistence is critical. If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right. So don’t let fear of rejection stop you.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 211 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the web for networking downloadables. I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California, and I’m joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
I’m doing great, thanks.

Priscilla:
I heard it’s your birthday tomorrow.

Ivan:
It is my birthday. June 30th is my birthday, so I’ll be 55. Everyone is going to be going, “Gee. I wonder how old he is.” I started BNI when I was about 28 years old.

Priscilla:
You are so young. That’s great. I hope you have a very happy day.

Ivan:
Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Today I am going to be talking about an interesting topic. It’s fear of rejection. I’ll tell you why I am doing this one. I am doing this one because I did a video for entrepreneur.com. They asked me to do something on fear of rejection. This is another one the staff saw and said I had to do this as a podcast. I was like, really? Why? I don’t know why BNI members would be interested in it.

I’ll tell you I am going to take the advice of my staff because the person who said to do episode 203, The Rest of the Story, where I talked about my background before I got BNI started- we had so many comments. I got a lot of emails and responses on that podcast, just talking about how I got to where I started BNI because most people know the BNI story but they don’t know the story before that. We had such a positive response.

This is a little bit different. It’s not about networking, but I think it will resonate with everyone. Fear of rejection. We all have all dealt with the fear of rejection. Maybe you haven’t, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
I have definitely had fear of rejection. I think that’s a great topic because I think it is universal. We all worry about it.

Ivan:
I think you’re right so I am going to take the advice of my staff and do the podcast today on this topic. They were absolutely right with episode 203. If you haven’t listened to it, go listen to episode 203. It’s really good.

So fear of rejection. What I did for Entrepreneur is talked about one of the more poignant  times in my life where I was really concerned about rejection. That’s when my first major book, The World’s Best Known Marketing Secret, came out in 1994. Let me tell you, if you ever feel like you are a big shot, write a book. That will humble you very quickly in terms of doing book signings and what not. Some people have heard me talk about some funny stories in doing book signings. The book came out  in 1994 and I was trying to get bookstores to carry it. A friend  of mine said there was a local neighborhood bookstore that didn’t have any copies. It was literally on my way home, and I stopped off at the bookstore and sat in the car paralyzed to go in.

I was supposed to go in and was going to ask them if they would mind carrying a few copies of my book.  I was just paralyzed. I sat there, like this was embarrassing. What if they say no? What if they said they didn’t want the book, thank you very much. It wasn’t a big bookstore. It wasn’t like these big giant bookstores that exist now. It was a smaller bookstore. I sat there and I swear I  almost put the key back in the ignition, turned it on and backed out. I was so close. Then I thought okay, if I don’t go in, what is going to happen? Chances are pretty good if I don’t go in that nothing is going to happen. They are not going to carry the book.  If I go in and they look at me and say they don’t want the book, what is going to happen? They won’t carry the book.

But what if I go in and ask and they say yes? Then something is going to happen. So really the only choice that would lead to a positive outcome was to go in. Doing nothing would get me the same thing that  I had now, which was nothing. So I literally sat in the car and said to myself, suck it up and go on in. This will be over in ten minutes. Nobody is actually going to get injured. There will be no hospitalization involved. It’s not that big a deal. It’s just a no.

So I went in. I brought a copy of the book and said, “I’m the author of this book. Some of your stores in your chain are carrying it. I live locally and just wondered if you would mind having a few copies, 3 or 4 copies. If so, I would be more than glad to sign them when they come in.”

They said, “Oh great! You’re a local author! We’ll get 20. Will you come back and sign them for us?” I was like, yeah, I’d be glad to come back and sign them. So they ordered 20 copies and they came back in a couple of weeks and I signed them all. It wasn’t a formal signing but what I call a drive by signing.  You drive by, sign the books and you leave. I did that and they carried way more than most bookstores.

I remember thinking back. That was sort of a nexus point in terms of rejection. I could do it or I could not do it. Not doing it would give me the same response as what I  presently had, which was no books there. So I tell people don’t let the fear of rejection stop you from doing what you are excited about. If you are excited about your business, don’t let rejection stop you. You have to just know that when it comes to asking somebody to do something, including asking people to join BNI-

Some will. Some won’t. So what? It’s not the end of the world. I  just had to put myself in the frame of mind that this is just not that big of a deal. If someone doesn’t want to do it, that’s fine. God bless them. I love them. It’s not that big a deal.

I just wrote a blog recently about a good friend of mine, Dr. Mark Goulston. Mark and I went out for dinner and he said something to me casually that literally made me reach into my pocket and scribble something down on the back of one of my business cards. It has to do with this rejection concept. Mark  has been a guest on my podcast before. Do a search on Mark Goulston. Mark has done at least one or two with me here. Great guy, psychiatrist, good friend. I  met him in doing research for Peter Guber’s book, Tell to Win. Mark and I were at one of the session with Peter Guber and working on his book.

Anyway, I wrote something down. He said, “You know, we have a lot less control over winning or losing at something than we do over trying  or quitting something. Always try. You can eventually win. If you always quit, you can never win.”  I loved this statement and  it completely resonated with me and what I have seen in relation to people being successful at networking or at anything for that matter. When people give  up, even in their thoughts, it’s game over.

I have always thought that I may not be the most successful man in a room. I may not be the smartest man in a room. But I am pretty confident that I am the most persistent man in the room—or certainly one of the most persistent men in the room. That commitment to trying has helped me succeed. I think it is one of the things  that consistently helps anyone have long term success. The whole process  has to begin with the old axiom that if you think you can or if you think you can’t, you’ll be right.

So I say to people don’t let the fear of rejection stop you from what you are excited about. It begins with trying versus quitting. Keep trying and you have a chance at winning. That is my message for today, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
That is great. Can I just tell a little story?

Ivan:
Sure.

Priscilla:
When I was younger- I know you are a martial artist, and I also had studied martial arts. I was at a meet and I had never sparred before. It was a competition, and the grand master that I studied with wanted me to compete and I didn’t feel ready. So I said no. I wouldn’t do it. Afterwards, I suffered so much with regret. I decided from that point on that if there is ever a situation where I am either going to do it or not do it and I am fearful, I am going to do it because the regret afterwards is much worse than just failing. That’s what I decided.

Ivan:
I think you are absolutely right, especially for the return on the investment. The investment is just to get out there and try. Okay, maybe in martial arts, you get beat up a little bit, but in most cases, it’s not a physical issue. Even then, you are wearing gloves. I have been  in martial arts and have never been at a meet where anybody really got seriously hurt.

But you’re usually not talking about things like that. You are talking about simpler things- walking in and asking if they want to carry a few books. That is what most of us have to deal with in real life. Simple things like that. That fear of rejection freezes us from doing the things that we want.  You’re right. The regret can really last a long time. I am proud of you. You went out and did it after that.

Priscilla:
Well, I never forgot either. That is how deep it was. Okay.

Ivan:
Thank you.

Priscilla:
I think that is it. Thank you so much, Dr. Misner. I would just like to remind the listeners that today’s 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, and we hope that you will join us again next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Dr. Misner brought up the concept of EGBOK at the recent national conference in Rhode Island as part of a discussion about change, leadership, and solutions. The idea, introduced by Mark McKergow, is that you need to focus on what’s working, not what’s wrong.

If you focus on solutions, you can get almost anything done. Panic shifts responsibility away from ourselves. It reinforces counterproductive impulses.

So take a deep breath and remember EGBOK. Everything’s Gonna Be OK. It’s going to be okay because you do the hard work to make the vision a reality, because of your adaptability. The commitment and shared vision of the people in BNI mean that Everything’s Gonna Be OK in spite of challenges, technology problems, and personality conflicts.

Dr. Misner even handed out EGBOK buttons at the national conference. If you think the buttons are a good idea, say so here in the comments, and BNI will make more.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of Episode 207 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you 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 and what in the heck is EGBOK?

Ivan:
Hi Priscilla. I am doing great and I’m not going to tell you what it is yet. I want everyone to wait for it for a minute and want to build up to it a little bit. I will tell you that I started talking about this at our recent national conference in the U.S., the conference that was done in Rhode Island. I brought up the concept of EGBOK as a result of a conversation on change leadership and focus on solutions. I had a good friend come out to do a presentation in the CA region. His name is Mark McKurgow.

Mark wrote a book called The Solutions Focus. I talked to him at length about being solutions focused and dealing with change and the chaos that comes with change. He teaches a concept called rutenso, which is the art of thriving in times of constant change. If nobody has noticed, we are in times of constant change. He talked about, in his presentations and discussions we me- he and his wife stayed with us and we had conversations about change. We are going through change with BNI and online technologies. There is a lot of change, but also members, week to week, members change or leadership teams change. We have to be able to deal with change.

He talks about the standard process of change is hard and unnatural. You have to set goals and targets and identify and analyze the problem. Eliminate uncertaintly. With rutenso, he talks about the fact that change is happening all the time and that you want to identify the direction that you want to go and what’s working, not what’s wrong. If all you look at is problems, then you become an expert at problems, not solutions. He talks about the fact that small actions start things quickly. Just little things can make a big difference. He also has a whole concept that he is going to be doing which is leader as host, which I think is beautiful with BNI with how we talk about visitor hosts and supporting one another and givers gain. It will be interesting to see what he comes up with that.

So rutenso is how to deal with change. One of the things that I asked directors when I spoke to them recently, and let me throw this by you, Priscilla. Here’s the question or statement. True or false: we’ve changed a lot as an organization over the last 26 years, haven’t we?

Priscilla:
Yes.

Ivan:
The answer is no. Not really so much. You look at the change and go, BNI has changed a lot over the last 26 years. Even the name of the organization. I talk about this in Givers Gain. We started as Dawn Network but we couldn’t trademark that so we had to change the name. So we changed it, but here’s the thing. They have been incremental changes. We have experienced ongoing incremental change, layer upon layer of nuance, new ideas, continuous improvement. But not monumental change. Monumental change, overnight, rock your boat, monumental change.

The example that I used when I spoke at the conference was Motorola. Motorola is a great example of a company with monumental change. They started manufacturing car radios. Then they did the first portable FM radios. A lot of people don’t know this, but I said this to some people, the millenials and genXers that Motorola was one of the world’s biggest television manufacturers. Really? Motorola TVs? Yeah. Motorola TVs were really big. They did 8 track cassettes for about five minutes before that business went under. Then Motorola was known for the Bravo pagers. I don’t know anybody who was in business in the 80′s and 90′s who didn’t have a Bravo pager. Now, of course, what is it? Digital mobile devices and many other things.

There’s a company that has gone through monumental change. BNI has kind of gotten a little comfortable, I think, because we have lived for 26 years in incremental change. Now, not long after I heard Dr. McKurdow speak, I heard Dr. Warren Bettis talk at an event and I had a chance to go out to dinner with him.

He talked about something that I thought was really amazing. Now, I studied under Dr. Warren Bettis at USCE, if you don’t know who he is, listeners, look up any book on leadership. He has either written it or quoted in it- any major book on leadership. He’s really the world’s leading expert on the subject. He talked to me about adaptive capacity and our ability to adapt and change in a chaotic environment and how important contextual intelligence is to ability to understand the context of the challenges that we live in.

I sit on the Board of Trustees at the University of Laverne, and he asked the audience when he spoke at the university event. He said, “You have a new president here. And you’ve gone through a long process to select her. She has really done her homework and she’s going to be ready on day one, isn’t she?” And they all said yeah, she was going to be ready. He said, “Are you all crazy? She’s not going to be ready on Day 1. You are crazy if you think she is going to be able to start on the job and understand all of the potential problems that exist. We can never conceive of all the potential problems in any given situation.”

This means that our ability to truly adapt to the context of the problem and focus on the solutions is, as McKergow said, will make a difference between our success and our failure as leaders and I submit to you that same thing applies to chapters, that it will make or break our ability to address and be successful as an organization. BNI Connect is a great example. I talked about all the challenges and issues we were having in the creation process. They system going down, the reports were not exactly what we wanted. The system went down and you don’t know what to do and the group function isn’t what you want. It’s not really easy, and the system went down. The sky is falling. You get all of this stuff.

Everybody, take a deep breath. Take a deep breath. Take two or three deep breaths because everything’s going to be okay. And that’s EGBOK. Everything’s going to be okay. It’s not going to be okay just because someone says it’s going to be okay but because they do the hard work necessary for that vision to become a reality. So you know, it’s going to be okay because of one’s ability to adapt, one’s adaptive capacity.

I am here in this organization with people who know how to work hard. I am here in an organization with people who are committed to the philosophy of BNI. I am here in an organization with people who are committed to what we are doing and have a shared vision of where we are going as an organization. That’s why I can say everything is going to be okay.

Although this came to me and I had this realization because of a technology issue this is something that I think applies to every chapter in every country in every city all around the world. Chapters have challenges and problems and controversies and chaos and change. If the chapter focus on looking for solutions, and taking a deep breath and understanding there is a system with people who are committed both regionally and nationally with national directors and internally with HQ, that there are people who will help make this process work and will help you get through the process. I even handed out buttons at the conference that said EGBOK.

So I tell you what. If you are listening to the podcast and you think the button is a great idea, post a message for me. Let me know. I read your messages. When you post stuff, I read them. If we get enough people who say they want an EGBOK button, we’ll start producing them. I just made enough for the conference, but we’ll start producing enough for members all around the world. I really believe that if people really focus on the solutions to a problem, that you can get almost anything done.

See, what happens is people start to get into this sort of panic mode. Right? Panic is contagious. Panic is easy. Panic shifts responsibility away from ourselves. Leaders know that panic reinforces counterproductive impulses. What we need to do instead at a local level, at a national level, at an international level, is when there are challenges, focus on the solutions that exist out there because there are many solutions that people can apply. We try to be as transparent of an organization as possible, particularly with all levels of the organization, particularly with directors and what is going on and why we’re doing certain things.

Connect with your directors if you have questions. One of the things that I’ve learned is if you don’t tell people as much as possible, if they don’t feel involved, they have a tendency towards quietly criticizing and passively resisting. That’s an important concept and especially at the chapter level. It’s very important to be open at the chapter level with where you’re going, why you’re doing it, why it’s important, because if they don’t feel involved, they will have a tendency towards quietly criticizing and passively resisting. It’s one of the reasons why we have an international board of advisers. We get members from all around the world involved and issues to help think through the problems and challenges that we have.

So BNI has gone through incremental changes off and on over the years. By that I mean little tweaks, modifications, how we manage ourselves. We have never experienced the monumental change that we are going through wight now with the technology. We are in the middle of that monumental change. Big stuff. Earth shaking stuff. I get it 100%. Change makes me uncomfortable. You have no idea how strongly I hate change. We are all human. I know very few people who can honestly say that they thrive on change. Very few people do. We like the predictability of knowing that we can depend on our work to produce the same kinds of results. The beauty in BNI is that the system is still a system.

So don’t worry about all the stuff that is going on around you, particularly with things like technology. Focus on the fundamentals. Focus on the fundamentals. Focus on what is going on in your chapter. Focus on doing things right. Remember that panic is easy and it reinforces a counterproductive impulse.

Leaders need to learn that real life is messy. It’s full of changing circumstances. It’s full of challenges. Leaders learn to tolerate anxiety, both theirs and others’. That’s my tough one. I can tolerate my own anxiety, but other people’s anxiety is where I start to get frustrated. Leaders understand the importance of all that.

I know I need to wrap up, but I ready Michael Grouper’s material for years. Michael Grouper wrote this and over the last year or so I have gotten to know him personally and we’ve become friends. He recently told me that the real hallmark of a high performance organization is its ability to see change as a resource, as an opportunity to test assumptions and systems, to add to the collective knowledge and to grow the business. Change creates opportunities to see things in ways that you don’t ordinarily see them and to do things in ways that you don’t ordinarily try. If you can use change to your advantage, it can fuel your company’s growth in ways that are amazing because it removes everybody from their comfort zones and forces them to take a fresh look at the business.

We can’t take our high performance for granted. We have 26 consecutive years of growth. We are working on our 27th consecutive year of growth. We have a core system that works and works really well. From the top down, there are times when there will be change and our ability to adapt to that change and to focus on the fundamentals and calm people down- if you can calm a room down and let them understand that everything is going to be okay. EGBOK. If we all focus on fundamentals and focus on solutions, we are going to get through this because the difference between successful people and others is not a lack of strength. It’s not a lack of knowledge. It’s generally a lack of will because the ultimate measure of us as leaders is not really where we stand in moments in comfort but where we stand in times of challenge, chaos, and controversy.

This podcast was meant for members. Not just the BNI Connect that is being implemented with technology, but the next time that you have a challenge or you have chaos going on in your chapter, come back and listen to this podcast. Take it to your members and understand that if everyone calmly focuses on solutions, you can get through almost any challenge if you learn to have an adaptive capacity. And that is my message for today.

Priscilla:
That’s a very good message. I think the main point is that BNI is so big and there are so many different types of personalities, countries, cultures, and so forth. I just think it is apt to be difficult to make change, but you put it out there really well.

Ivan:
Thank you. And it’s an organization of leaders. Everybody in the organization is an owner or salesperson or manager. There’s no factory line worker person in the organization, right? So when you have an organization of leaders, it’s like herding cats. I think first we have to understand that and secondly, we have to understand that by everyone working together you are going to achieve the kinds of success that you want to achieve as long as everyone keeps a clear head and focuses on the solutions, which is McKergow’s concept. Focus on solutions, not problems and Bettis’ concept of being willing to adapt, having a strong adaptive capacity.

Those two things and EGBOK in a chapter can get through almost anything. Thanks Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay. That was great. I think that’s it for this week. I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Dr. Mark Goulston is back with Dr. Misner on the podcast today. (He was on Episode 127, “Get Through to Absolutely Anyone,” and Episode 128, “Turbo-Charging Your One-on-Ones.”)

This week’s topic is about planning an “Xtraordinary” year by imagining yourself in 1, 3, or 5 years and saying “Wow!”

If you applied this plan to BNI, you would imagine yourself getting referrals effortlessly, having conversations in which they could say, and you could say, “Wow, you get it! You get us! You get me!”

Think of what it is that has caused people to “Wow” you, and then do it.

Visit Dr. Goulston’s Xtraordinary Outcomes website, where he and his partner figures out how the most talented employees do what they do and help them to do it more consistently.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 195 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the web for networking downloadables. I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California, and I’m joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you and who do you have with us?

Ivan:
Hello Priscilla. I am doing great and I have a good friend on the podcast with me today, Dr. Mark Goulston. Mark is an MD but he is a business advisor. He is a consultant, trainer and a coach. He is trained as clinical psychiatrist who honed his skills as an FBI police hostage negotiation trainer, which I think is just amazing. He is the author of a book called Just Listen- Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone.

If that sounds at all familiar to some of my podcast listeners, that is because we did a podcast with Mark back on how to get through to absolutely anyone. It was such a great podcast that we carried it through to yet another podcast right after that. So if you have a chance and are listening to this podcast, go take a look on BNIpodcast.com and just type in Mark’s name. Goulston. You will find a dew podcasts with Mark, Podcast 127 and 128.

Mark, you are one of the few people who I have had on my podcast three times. You have great content. I welcome you to our podcast. I want to introduce you with one more thing. I want to tell people what led us to do this podcast today. We got together at a play recently, written by Chet Holmes, who is most well-known for his sales and management training. He did a play called Emily’s Song. It was really good. I was amazed at how skilled he is at in another area other than business. We went to dinner afterward, and you told me something at dinner that just resonated with me, and I said, “ We have to do a podcast on this.”

I appreciate you taking the time to do it, Mark. Tell everybody what the topic for the podcast is and I’ll let you run with it.

Mark:
It’s called how to plan an Xtraordinary year. We spell that X-t-r-a-ordinary. I mentioned, that a lot of times, it takes a lot of energy for people to pump themselves up and try to do a little bit better than what they are doing. But if you ask people to imagine it is a year from now or two years, three years, or five years from now, and you wake up, it’s a Monday morning, and you do a 360 of your life- you look at your job, you look at your career, you look at your wife, you look at your kids and say , “Wow”.

If you ask people to do that, they usually see much more clearly when you ask what their goals are for one, two, three and five years from now. For instance, if one of those things with regard to your business is you say , “Wow” and you’re in BNI, I think the “Wow” would be it’s really amazing that when I go to my meetings, I don’t have to ask anything. People are just coming at me to give me referrals. I have to say very little. I blush and I just say I am proud, glad and pleased to be part of BNI.

That would be a wow as opposed to, oh, do I have to do a hard sell to other people? I think most people would say how do we do that? I have even ratcheted that down to how do you do that in a meeting? I’ll tell you whenever I go to meetings now or meet people going to one on ones for lunches or breakfasts, I go there saying to myself, “What will cause them, after I leave, to say, ‘Wow. That was a great meeting! That was a great use of my time. I want more meetings like that with people like Mark.’?”

If you ask yourself to do that, I think what you would come up with if you were the other person is three things. One of the three things is the other person would say, “Gee. You really get it. You get my situation. You get my opportunities. You get the things that I am facing. You get what is happening in my business.”

The second thing is, “You get us.” If I am in a company, you kind of get our culture, our restrictions, and the kinds of things we have to deal with.”
But the real kicker is, “You get me.” Meaning, I have opened up to you and this is more than just a transactional conversation. When other people feel that “you get it, you get us, you get me,” you get them. The key is give to get.
What I write about in Just Listen is be more interested than interesting. Be more fascinated by people than fascinating. My mentor, Warren Bennis, whom I love dearly- and I’m not the only one who loves him dearly. One of my favorite lines from him is, “Boredom occurs when I fail to make the other person interesting.”

Ivan:
I think you know, Mark, that I studied briefly under Warren Bennis at USC. You went to UCLA, but you still like Warren; I’m impressed. He is truly an icon in the field of leadership. There is nobody stronger in that area.

Mark:
What’s fascinating, because I have been going to a lot of tributes to Warren is he will be interviewed, often by a very respectable person, and it’s fascinating because when the other person talks, you nod in kind of respect to the other person, but when Warren speaks, he speaks with you and you lean into him. The reason he speaks with you is he really is interested in you.
I think the secret to an Xtraordinary year is to project yourself into the end of this. And the secret to an Xtraordinary conversation that will increase business is what is it that comes out that will cause them to say “Wow”? I think what will cause them to say, “Wow” is you get it. You get our situation. You kind of get our company, what we’re going through, and you get me.

I have a really fascinating anecdote. A good friend of mine is the CEO of Abbot Medical Optics. He told me how Abbot Laboratories bought his company called Advanced Medical Optics. They make the opthomalic solution, Blink. What my friend, Jim Mazzo, said is, that the CEO of Abbot Laboratories flew in from Chicago to Orange County. What Jim told me is, “He didn’t tell me anything about Abbot Laboratories. He told me everything about my company, and he told me about me- where I was in my career, how I really wanted to expand my business. If another company took us over, I still wanted to be able to run my successful company the way it was being run- and that I want to do that.” That is exactly what Abbot gave him. And he said to me, “ How could I say no?”

Ivan:
That’s powerful. That’s a powerful story. Let me ask you a question. You say project yourself. Would it be safe to say that you can project yourself backwards? I tell BNI members to look where you want to go and then reverse engineer it. How did you get there? Would you say that in order to say, “Wow” a year from now, the have to look back and say how did they get to the wow? Did they do this, this and this?

Mark:
Absolutely. I would say for them to practice. As you are driving to the meeting. Imagine to yourself that it’s the end of the meeting and when you leave, you say to yourself that was the best meeting yet. That was the best meeting yet for me. Some people will say that’s because everyone had all these referrals for me. Okay, let’s think why would people have all these referrals to give you? I think part of it is because there is something that you did for them that triggered generosity and gratitude. What would it be that would trigger that? I will give you at tip that you and I know very well. There is a saying that if you do something for someone, they will thank you. If you do something for one of their children, they will never forget you. So care about the person and their family outside of the business negotiation, and see how you can help them.

Something I do, and some people would be uncomfortable, but I can get away with it because I was trained as a clinical psychiatrist- sometimes when you are having a conversation with someone, if you can pause, look them in the eye, and say, “What’s really going on with you?” But say it like you care. And say it because you care. Don’t just say it because you are going to shift them into a sale or a close. It’s interesting. One of my mentors who I just listened and dedicated to said, “If you just listen for pain and fear and stress in people, they will open up and share it with you. And then they will share their dreams and hopes with you, and they will be grateful to you forevermore.

Ivan:
That’s powerful information for our BNI members. I think what you have given us, Mark , is basically the law of attraction with some hands on application. How do you attract that end life? How do you take this where you want to go and apply it. We are almost out of time, Mark. Any wrap up closing comments that you have?

Mark:
Maybe one of the ways to produce “Wow” in a meeting is think of the conversations that you’ve had with someone that wasn’t just strictly I’ll give you a referral. Think of what it is that has caused people to wow you and then do the same to others.

Ivan:
Now, you have a website that talks about some of this. It’s in progress, but you’ll be adding content. I wanted to share it with everybody. It’s called Xtraordinaryoutcomes.com. What will you be having up there very soon, Mark?

Mark:
Well, what we’ve discovered is the difference between an outcome and a goal. A goal is often something that you aim a dart at in the future and it’s built upon a wing and a prayer. But an outcome is preceded by something. An Xtraordinary outcome is preceded by extraordinary actions and lousy outcomes are preceded by lousy actions. So what we are focusing on is what are the extraordinary things that occur that cause an Xtraordinary outcome?
My partner, Doc Barrum, one of the things that he does- and I am so honored because he is a genius at this. One of the things is to try to hold on and preserve talent. One of the things that we can do is take your most talented sales person, manager or operations person that you can’t reproduce and we can figure out the way they do it so they can do it more consistently. Also, we can teach others- we can basically clone your best and give it to the rest. That produces Xtraordinary outcomes.

Ivan:
Mark, thank you very much for being on our podcast. I love the concept. It’s a year from now and you say , “ Wow.” How did you make that happen? That’s what we talked about here today. It’s Dr. Mark Goulston, author of Just Listen- Discover the Secret to Get Through to Absolutely Anyone. A great expert in this field and a person I consider to be a friend. Mark, I thank you very much for being on our podcast today.

Mark:
It’s always extraordinary to be with you, Ivan.

Ivan:
Okay, thank you. Priscilla, back to you.

Priscilla:
Okay, thank you so much. Thank you both. I think that is it for this week. I would just like to remind the listeners that today’s 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, and we hope that you will join us again next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

This week is BNI’s International Conference; we’re celebrating 25 years since our foundation.

Today Dr. Misner has a rant in response to an e-mail he received after posting to his fan page on Facebook. It comes from his book Masters of Success.

Success is not an entitlement. It’s not a right or a claim that we should have. Yes, people have the right to pursue success, but that’s it. Success is most often earned, not handed over because you are entitled. If being successful were that easy, everyone would have the success he thinks he deserves. I think I was in my thirties before I truly understood and internalized that idea.

The secret to success without hard work is still a secret.

You can read the excerpt on Dr. Misner’s Entrepreneur.com blog.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 180 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the web for networking downloadables. I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California, and I’m joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you and where are you?

Ivan:
I am doing great and this is the International Conference Week for BNI. We are celebrating the end of our 25th anniversary.

Priscilla:
That’s fantastic.

Ivan:
We’ll have hundreds of BNI Directors, probably 600 or more from all over the world, and several hundred BNI members at our event this week, which starts toward the end of the week.

Priscilla:
That sounds great.

Ivan:
Yeah. It’ll be fun, a great celebration of 25 plus years of the organization.

Priscilla:
Congratulations.

Ivan:
Thank you.

Priscilla:
So what are you planning to share with us?

Ivan:
I have a rant for you today. You know, I received a few weeks ago a really disturbing email message berating me for sharing what he felt were some aspects of my success on my Facebook fan page. BNI has a fan page and Ivan Misner has a fan page. Maybe on this podcast, we can do a link to the Ivan Misner page for those people who want to see what it is that I am referring to.

It was mostly relating to my discussions about my business travel and corporate meetings that I did from my lake home over the summer, which I have talked about on these podcasts many times. I have to say that it really brought me down a bit when I read this. I was very frustrated, and I went to my library and picked up a book that I wrote years ago called “Masters of Success.” I read a piece in it that I wrote, called “Success Is Not an Entitlement,” which I hoped would sort of refocus my mindset after receiving this, what I thought was a vitriolic piece of email.

I would like to share this excerpt with the listeners of the podcast today. I have updated some of the material, but it is pretty much a direct excerpt from the article. I think it is important to understand. I feel like I am a 20-year overnight success. It has taken at least 20 years. BNI is now 25 years old. I hope that everyone, including my critic, can see some value in this message because I found value in reading what I had written years ago.

Everyone wants some degree of success. We might want it in different forms, but I have never met anyone who didn’t want to be successful at something important. This is good. I believe everyone is entitled to pursue success, but success is not an entitlement. Not long ago, I wrote- this is years ago. Not long ago, I was talking to someone I had known for many years about personal success, the growth of my company and some other personal goals I had recently met.

He looked at me and said, “You are really lucky. It must be nice.”

I said, “Yeah. I am lucky. Let me tell you the secret to my luck. First, I went to college for 10 years. During that time, I started several businesses. For the next 25 years, I worked really, really, really long hours. Along the way, I mortgaged my house a couple times. “ Actually, it was for BNI, but I didn’t say it in this article. “ And I wrote 12 books. If you apply that kind of effort to whatever you do, you, too, can be just a lucky.”

The guy laughed and said. “Okay. Okay. I get it.” But did he really get it? I don’t think so because he really never changed his behavior or started making different choices.

For about 20 of my 25 years of hard work, I didn’t feel very lucky or incredibly successful. It took hard work and it took good choices before I felt a modicum of success.The problem is that many people want to go from Point A to Point Z and bypass all the challenges in between. They work hard, so they feel that they deserve the success they want, and they tend to resent the success that other people have.

Success is not an entitlement. It is not a right or a claim that we should have. Yeah, people have the right to pursue success, but that is it. Success is most often learned, not handed over because you were entitled. If being successful were that easy, everyone would have the success they think they deserve.

I think I was probably in my 30s before I really understood and internalized that idea. I have been trying to instill this wisdom- and I wrote this a number of years ago. I have been trying to instill this wisdom in my then nine-year old son- he is now 17- by teaching him my mantra of success. Years ago, I asked him- I would do this all the time with him. I said, “Tre, what is the secret to success?”

He said in his young boy’s slightly bored sing song tone – you have probably seen it with kids. He said, “The secret of success without hard work and good choices is still a secret. Can I go out and play now, Dad?” I laughed, and I remember thinking nine might be a little young to start withthis kind of training. But then, maybe not. Any age is good to start with this kind of training. Success is not an entitlement. We are all entitled to pursue success.

I read this article and I started thinking, you know what, I am proud of what I have done with BNI and I am glad to share some of the successes the organization has had. In these podcasts, I talk about some of the places I am at for the organization and some of the things that I am doing for the organization. I do that because, including time- and you and I have done some interviews where I was at my lake home in Big Bear.

I think it’s really important to share those kinds of things with people because they can see what hard work can lead to. More important than anything else, it makes them feel like they are connected in some way. It makes you feel more personal, when you are talking about some of the personal things that are going on in your life and in running a network. I say this to BNI members who are being introduced to speak at a BNI meeting: talk about some of your personal background because people are interested in people, not just professions. Thatis why I share some of the personal stuff that I share because people are interested in people. They are interested in the kinds of things that I do for the organization, and in me as a person- not just the business stuff.

So I am going to continue to do it and I am going to continue to talk about some of the things- usually I tie it into business in some way. I am going to talk about the time that I take off, and those kinds of things that I am doing, especially as they connect to BNI.

Priscilla:
I personally think that it’s really fun. Some of us just can’t leave our businesses as often, and we’re not working on the road. You go all over the world. I think it’s fun to see some of the places that you visit and some of the unique things that you do. It’s kind of a treat.

Ivan:
True. But remember, my business is all over the world. This summer I went to South Africa, Amsterdam, the United Kingdom, Scotland, England and Ireland. Those were business trips. Although I certainly took some time off as I traveled, those were business trips. I like to share what I am doing. Listen, I want members to know that I am not sitting in an ivory tower at BNI headquarters everyday of the week. I am out traveling and visiting regions. I have seen members. I meet members. It’s the fun part of my job, to go out and meet people and talk to them about how I am doing in the organization. I am going to continue to do that as long as I am associated with BNI.

Priscilla:
I think that is great, and we get to enjoy it with you.

Ivan:
Good. I am glad. We are going to continue to share it on these podcasts an on my blog. Thank you very much.

Priscilla:
Okay great. Thank you, Ivan. Well, that is it for this week. I would just like to remind the listeners that today’s podcast was brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope that you will join us again next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Synopsis

Sam Schwartz, National Director and franchise owner for BNI in Israel, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, and the Director of Training for BNI in Europe, joins Dr. Misner on the podcast today.

Any business coach or entrepreneur would tell you the business model of BNI doesn’t make sense. We give our members the power to choose our future clients. We tell successful entrepreneurs, “You have to volunteer your time, you have to help other people to get business, you have to play by BNI’s rules, and you have to pay a membership fee. Not only that, you can’t join a chapter without being sponsored by an existing member.”

But BNI gets results. Not only does it bring its members business through referrals, but also personal growth, knowledge, and all the other benefits of being in a room full of people you trust. This model works all over the world, counter-intuitive or not.

Brought to you by Ask Ivan Misner.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 171 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by AskIvanMisner.com, which is a Web site where you can ask Ivan any question you have about networking.

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

Hello, Ivan. How are you? And I hear you have a guest for us today.

Ivan:
Hi, Priscilla. Yeah, I am doing great, and I have a guest today. His name is Sam Schwartz. Sam is the national director for Romania, Israel, Hungary. Hungary is one of the fastest growing countries for BNI. He’s also the executive director for Northern Virginia, and he’s our director of training for BNI Europe, but most importantly, Sam is a good friend, really great director.

And it’s a real privilege to have you on the podcast with us today, Sam. Thanks for joining me.

Sam:
Thank you for inviting me.

Ivan:
Well, we have an interesting topic with an interesting title, Business Model That Doesn’t Make Sense. And we’re actually talking about BNI, and we want to talk a little bit about why that business model doesn’t make sense, but we also want to make sure that our members get a take-away towards the end of this podcast that will help them understand a little bit more about BNI and why it works the way it does.

So tell me Sam, I think we came up with this topic in South Africa a few months back, yeah?

Sam:
Yeah, we were kind of relaxing on the patio there looking at the beautiful view, and I told you that BNI is really a business model that doesn’t make sense. If you go to a business coach and say, “Hey, I have this idea that I’d like to do,” and you tell them all the things you’ll be doing, they will tell you it will never work.

Ivan:
Tell me what you said that day, because I was like, “Wow, I love that!” Because if you tell a business coach, “Here’s my plan,” and what would they say? What was it you told me?

Sam:
Well, I told them that if I’m going to go to a business coach and tell them that I’m thinking about opening up a business that I’m going to give my clients the power to choose who’s going to be my future clients and I will not have anything to say about it and it will work, what do you think his comment will be?

Ivan:
Yeah, he’d say you’re crazy. But there are other things, too, like you had to follow some rules and pay for it. What were some of the other things?

Sam:
Well, if you think about it, I’m sure that one day there’ll be a study about BNI, because here’s what we do. We take successful entrepreneurs and we tell them that, “You’ll have to volunteer your time; you will have to help other people to do; you will have to play by our rules. And, oh, by the way, you’ll also have to pay a membership for the time you’re going to be a member in our organization,” and yet it does work, even though it’s counterintuitive to any entrepreneur.

Ivan:
I want to hear more, but let me just say one thing about that “play by our rules.” I think it’s important to understand that the “our rules” is really the rules that were created by the members of BNI. BNI created – the members of the organization through the Board of Advisors created the policies. With that said, there’s still rules that people have to play by, and that sounds like a crazy business model.

Sam:
But isn’t that true than any entrepreneur, as soon as they get some rules, they want to break it, because they know better?

Ivan:
Yeah.

Sam:
So we eliminate them, but the question is: If we have all these – and I should say maybe an oxymoron of what we’re talking about, things that doesn’t work, how do they work? And I think there’s only one answer; it’s one word: results. Because if the members wouldn’t have gotten the results they’re getting, they wouldn’t play, they won’t continue doing it. So I thank what’s important for us to look at, even though on the surface, this business model doesn’t make sense, especially when you think about it in a way that I said earlier, we give the power to our member to choose who is going to be our future client.

I, as an executive director in Northern Virginia, cannot go to any of my chapter and say, “You should pick this person” –

Ivan:
Right.

Sam:– “to be a member in your organization.”

Ivan:
You can’t say, “You have to take this person.”

Sam:
No, because they have to pick the people they want to do business with, because they’re going to meet with them on a weekly basis. Every time you pass a referral, a little piece of your reputation goes along with it. And I cannot tell them who they should do business – that’s why the power is in the hand of our members who actually pick the people they want to do business, and it’s true, our old fashioned word-of-mouth recommendation. That’s why you need to have the sponsor.

Often people said that, “Well, if I pay my membership, can I be a member,” and when we tell them, “That’s not enough; you have to go through the membership committee process, and there’s no guarantee that you’re going to be a member,” they look at me, “You don’t want to take my money?”

Ivan:
And that goes back to your business model statement that it’s a crazy business model because, you know, we turn down people with checks in hand, because it’s not a good fit, and we have our existing members select our future clients or members. And that’s a crazy business model, but I think you hit the nail on the head as to why that model’s important, because these people have to do business with each other. And I don’t think – it’s not in a member’s best interest to have other people pick who they’re going to give referrals to. It’s got to come from the member.

Sam:
And it’s also about building long and lasting relationship. Would you like to build relationship with somebody I force on you if you don’t know them?

Ivan:
Yeah.

Sam:
So it’s all about picking the right people to be within your sphere of influence with the people you do business, and it’s also – I think it’s a mindset to say it’s a privilege to be a member in our organization. So the members of a chapter should look at it that they are really doing a favor to anyone that they’re bringing into the chapter. I mean, it’s a privilege to be a member with their group rather than begging people to come and join us.

And you do a great presentation sometimes about how we invite, but I’m not going to go into that, but I think understanding that they have the power to pick and choose who they want to do business with, it’s a very powerful tool for them to recognize and follow through, because that gives them control on who they’re going to do business [with] in the future.

And I think the only reason that works for us and for them, it’s, again, one word: results.

Ivan:
What about results? What are some of the results that we talked about and had discussion in South Africa?

Sam:
The result can be varied, depending upon each person, what the desired result they want to do. You just did a podcast, the last podcast you did, you talked about the added value, the benefits to member over having like a mastermind group, a support group, somebody you can go and ask a quick question and get a reliable answer.

Well, some people are looking at it as a personal growth. Often in BNI, we are talking about the bottom line, the bottom line, you know, money, referrals. If you look at our Web site, we do publish the results of how many referrals we’re giving and how much money that’s created. But I believe these are a lot of added benefits or results to other people, such as the support group, the team, the personal development, the ability to have likeminded people that you know and trust that can give you the true answer to your question.

Sam:
And those results can only really take place effectively when you’re in a room full of people you trust, and that’s why the crazy sounding business model has to be the way it is, which is our clients choose our clients, because the clients are working with each other. And when they’re working with each other, they’re have to have people that they know and trust. And as counterintuitive as the model sounds, it works because of that. And we really don’t tinker with that very much at all.

I mean, I’ve had people that were friends that were not accepted into a chapter because it wasn’t a good fit for some reason or another. And they came to me and they said, “Well, you own the company. Make them take me!”

It’s like, “So, if I go in and I say, ‘Okay, you know that person that you said wasn’t a good fit, well, you’ve got to take them,” how much business do you really think you’re going to get from these people?”

“No much.”

“Okay. Well, let’s find a chapter where it’s a better fit.”

But that’s exactly what happens, our clients pick our clients.

We’re about out of time. Any closing thoughts?

Sam:
Sure. That this crazy model not only works in the United States, but it works globally. It’s overcome boundaries of culture, religion, location, states, and the proof is in the pudding, as they say in the U.K. It works all over the world even though it’s counterintuitive and it’s a business model that doesn’t make any sense.

Ivan:
You’re right, and nobody knows that better than you. I mean, you’re a national directory, co-national director of several countries. You’ve been running Israel for a number of years.

And, by the way, since I have you on this recording, you’ve done an amazing job, you and Yarden, the national director there – your co-national director. You’ve done an amazing job of taking a country that was struggling a few years back and really turning it around, and using this business model, I think, to its utmost.

Sam:
Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. [Inaudible] and I wouldn’t replace it for anything.

Ivan:
And it is a fun business. I love doing it, and I just finished doing a director’s training. We had about 20 directors here going through basic training, and I’ll tell you what I said to them as I wrapped up the training was, you, as directors, certainly as leadership team people, the education coordinators who are listening to this, you’re making a difference in people’s lives. People in a BNI group are making a difference for other people. In these tough economic times, this is a great way – I tell people that BNI is not only a great way to get business, it’s an even better way to do business. And I think the members and directors, like yourself, are really making a difference in a lot of people’s lives, and I really appreciate it.

Sam:
And I believe that our slogan that we came up, Changing the Way the World Does Business, it’s absolutely on the money. We not just changing locally, but globally.

Ivan:
Absolutely.

Listen, Sam, thank you so much for being on my podcast. I really appreciate it. It’s a great concept, The Business Model That Doesn’t Make Sense, but it sure as heck works, doesn’t it?

Priscilla, back to you. Thanks.

Priscilla:
Okay, great. Thank you both. That was very interesting.

I think that’s it for this week. I would just like to remind you listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by AskIvanMisner.com. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Synopsis

People sometimes come to Dr. Misner and ask about how to deal with competitors. His philosophy is best summed up by Henry Ford: “The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own  business better all the time.”

Everyone has competition, but it’s a waste of time to focus on it. Just go on making your own business the best.

Some people think this philosophy contradicts BNI’s policy of having only one member per profession in a BNI group, but it’s not an either-or scenario. BNI is supposed to be a safe environment where people can share openly, and that’s not likely to happen if a direct competitor is sitting next to you and taking notes.

When you encounter a competitor, look for opportunities to collaborate rather than competing. It will make both of you more successful. An example: Priscilla’s BNI group, No Ordinary Chapter, is a member of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce.

Read Dr. Misner’s blog post about competition on Entrepreneur.com.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 166 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

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

Hello, Ivan. How are you and where are you?

Ivan:
Well, I just got back from South Africa, where I did the BNI Conference, the BNI South African Conference. Some incredible members there, great event, and it’s always a pleasure. I’ve been traveling a lot over the summer. It’s always a pleasure meeting members all around the world, so if you’re listening to this podcast and I’m ever in your region a presentation, come to the event, introduce yourself to me, I’d love to meet BNI members. To me, that’s the best part of the event is meeting all the BNI people.

Just got back from South Africa.

Priscilla:
Great! Well, what is this topic on competition?

Ivan:
Well, I’m doing this for a couple for a couple of reasons. One is that sometimes ask me questions about how to deal with competitors. I’m doing it because my very own BNI director has come to me and said, “Hey, there’s this other networking organization out there, and they’re saying bad things about BNI. How should we respond to it?” And so I did a blog on the topic, got a lot of responses, and I thought it would make a good podcast.

My philosophy about competition is best summed up by Henry Ford who once said, “The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.” I love that quote. “The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.”

In BNI, members or directors will often express concern some about other competitive groups that are forming and bad mouthing our company or attacking our program in some way. And I tell them what I would tell you as members in terms of competitors to your own businesses. I tell my team that if they feel like someone is biting at our backsides, it’s because we’re out in front.

Priscilla:
Um-hmm.

Ivan:
Success in business is about constantly improving your product or your service and making it better all the time. And the process is a journey, not a destination, however, if you are constantly working to improve your business, improve your systems, improve the product, improve the culture, improve the team, the people who are in your organization, if you do these things, you’ll also improve your position in the marketplace.

Priscilla:
Right.

Ivan:
Almost ten years ago, I had a particularly aggressive competitor publicly state that he was going to bury our organization, he was going to bury BNI. And I’ve got a competitor like that right now who’s saying horrible, very vitriolic things.

Well, that competitor from ten years ago, since then, BNI has grown almost 400 percent since he came into the market, and it’s interesting, because I haven’t heard about his company for years, haven’t heard about it for years; they’ve disappeared. I’m not even sure whether they’re still in business or not. I really think that Ford got it right, keep making your business better, and you’ll have no need to fear your competitors. Your business will be the one that your competitors fear the most.

And that’s my philosophy on competition, and I think it’s very timely within my organization to share it, and I hope it’s a value to BNI members, because everybody’s got competition.

Priscilla:
Yeah.

Ivan:
There is no business without competition.

Priscilla:
Well, I think you’re right, and you have to create – if you do what you just suggested, you create very loyal customers. And then they keep coming back to you, because you did such a good job.

Ivan:
And you know it’s easy, especially if you’re talking about an organization like BNI where people participate and they go to meetings. It’s easy to get into this sort of online shouting match. “Oh, yeah, well, then this about you!” And then you shout back. And that’s really wasted time. To me, time is much better spent focusing on improving the product, improving the service, improving the delivery. And the more you can focus on improvements and education and training, then competition becomes irrelevant.

Priscilla:
Um-hmm. And then you also created an organization that doesn’t have any competition within itself.

Ivan:
Yeah, that’s true, and I think that sometimes people may – they’ve heard me talk about my philosophy and competition, and they see it as a contradiction because I created an organization that has only one person per profession.

And I don’t view my philosophy in competition as being an either-or situation. BNI was sort of a safe haven for people to be able to talk about their business. It doesn’t mean that I don’t believe there’s competition out there; there’s competition out there in any business, and so it’s not that I’m saying avoid interaction at all with competition. As a matter of fact, I think in some ways, there are some competitors, there are some people that you might potentially view as competitors who you can actually collaborate with. But let me come back to that thought.

To me, it’s not an either-or scenario. I created BNI to provide a safe haven for businesses where they could talk openly, somebody could share openly their marketing techniques, their questions, their problems, who they’re looking for as a client and not have to worry about their competition sitting right there listening, taking notes.

Priscilla:
Yeah.

Ivan:
And it just makes it a safe environment, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize competition out there, and there is! And my philosophy in dealing with them is to just improve your own product or service rather than get into a head butting match with the competition.

And also, and I didn’t talk about this in my blog, look for opportunities to collaborate, if it’s at all possible. I remember when BNI first started, so many Chambers of Commerce thought we were competitors. And from a big picture perspective, you might look at BNI and Chambers and say, “Well, they are kind of competitors. They both talk about networking and they’re both organizations.” And you can find ways that we do, in fact, compete.

But I view groups like Chambers as compatible to BNI, not competitive, and I recommend my members go out and participate in a local Chamber of Commerce. And so whenever possible, if you can find someone who, yeah, there might be a little bit of competition between, but if you could find areas to collaborate rather than compete, then you’re both much stronger. I think today BNI has really great relationships with many Chambers of Commerce, and that’s a testament to trying to find opportunities rather than – it’s really a testament to a law of abundance rather than a law of scarcity approach to doing business.

So when you can, find opportunities. Otherwise, somebody’s out there and they’re gunning for you. Focus on your products and services and improving it.

Priscilla:
I just want to say one thing about the Chamber of Commerce. Our BNI group, as a group, is a member of the Berkley Chamber of Commerce. Our actual group, No Ordinary Chapter, is a member.

Ivan:
I love that idea. And we did it, I think, by the second or third year of BNI, we were recommending the chapters join a local Chamber as a group. And some Chambers are receptive to that and some aren’t, and the Chambers that are really all about collaboration have no problems with it, and I think everybody ends up, I believe, benefiting.

One of the things I recommend in BNI and in The Referral Institute, listeners know I am also the senior partner for The Referral Institute, is that the people who run The Referral Institute programs or BNI programs offer to your local Chamber to be an ambassador, to even train – one of the things I really recommend, train the Ten Commandments of Networking to your Chamber of Commerce. Teach the ambassadors about the Ten Commandments. Now that’s a way to really collaborate with the Chamber.

On a different subject with competition, but I think an important one, as it applies to BNI.

But just to wrap up, Priscilla, Ford’s quote, I think, is a thing of beauty. “The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.” That’s my philosophy about competition. I believe it works; based on results, it kind of works. BNI is, by far, the world’s largest, most successful networking organization, and, I think to some extent, it is because we constantly look to provide better training, more training, more material, better material, systems, and programs that are just better than what everybody else has out there, and that’s why people are drawn to our organization. So when people are biting at our backsides, it’s because we’re out in front.

Priscilla:
That’s great, Ivan. Well, thank you.

I think that might be it for this week. I think we’re out of time.

Ivan:
Yes, thanks, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay.

I’s just like to remind you, the listeners, that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 109 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

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

Hello, Ivan. How are you?

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

Priscilla:
What do you have to share with us?

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

Priscilla:
Is it free?

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

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

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

Priscilla:
What’s that?

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

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

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

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

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

Priscilla:
Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Priscilla:
I want to ask one question.

Ivan:
Sure.

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

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

Priscilla:
Yeah.

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

Priscilla:
I see.

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

Does that make sense?

Priscilla:
Yeah. Okay, that makes sense.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Priscilla:
Well, thank you very much.

I want to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Dr. Misner wants to ask listeners “What’s your BNI story?” His own favorite story is that he met his wife through BNI; that was the best referral he ever got. So today he’s sharing some stories from other BNI members. You can read more of them in BNI SuccessNet.

• Tim Seitz says that BNI took his business from the verge of collapse to new heights of success in seven months.
• Patty Chakales reports that 51% of her new business in Q1 2009 came from BNI referrals.
• Paul Williams prevented layoffs at his company by infusing his office with the BNI mentality and refusing to participate in the recession.
• Carl Frazier credits $6000/month of his income to BNI referrals.
• Carolin Bennett is a second-generation BNI member; her mother was on the original BNI Board of Advisors.
• Javier Unzueta has increased his income 723% as a result of joining BNI.
• David Lewis got a $4.9 million referral.
• Ian Holligan from Barbados says his 3 years in BNI have improved his leadership and public speaking skills.
• Richard Swan wrote a BNI Song. Watch it on YouTube!

What’s your BNI story? How has BNI helped you? Post your comments here and share your story.

Brought to you by Networking Now.
Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 106 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

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

Hello, Ivan, how are you, and where are you?

Ivan:
Hi, Priscilla. I’m doing great. And, shhh, I can’t tell anybody where I am.

Priscilla:
Why is that?

Ivan:
Well, it’s actually that I’m on an anniversary trip with my wife, and so it’s just kind of pulled away just to do this podcast. My wife and I got married 20 years ago yesterday, and we’re taking a little getaway, and we don’t want to tell anybody where we are because we don’t want to have to break up our anniversary trip. We are out there right now in one of your regions. Somebody listening to this, we’re in your region. But we just did a little getaway; I almost never do this, and that’s what we’re doing this time. I married my beautiful bride 20 years ago yesterday. I know I’ve told many members this before, but she was a member of BNI. It was the best referral I ever got, and we’re still married 20 years and going strong. So I’m in one of your regions right now.

Priscilla:
That’s great. Well, congratulations to both of you.

Ivan:
Thanks.

Priscilla:
So what are you going to share with us today?

Ivan:
Well, I thought I have certainly an interesting story with having met my wife in BNI, and I thought it would be a good topic today to basically ask members, “What’s your story? What’s your BNI story? What is that you have gotten out of BNI? How has BNI helped you in some way, either personally or professionally?” And I say that because this is a people business; it’s a people organization. It’s all about people helping people to increase each other’s business through referrals.

Interestingly enough, we found that there are many other benefits that have cropped up along the way, some that I just didn’t expect. And what I thought I would do in this podcast is to talk a little bit about people’s stories, because many members have been sending me their stories. We’ve published some of these in SuccessNet, and I think that they’re really powerful. So I just wanted to share some of them today with BNI members because I think it’s good to see some of the kinds of benefits that other members have gotten.

Priscilla:
Great. Okay.

Ivan:
Tim Seitz from Bay Ridge “Morning Money Makers” chapter said that seven months ago he was afraid he had to close down his business during these recessionary times, things were difficult. He said, “Today my business has been doing so well that I’ve been putting sales people in other BNI chapters,” yet, seven months ago he was afraid he was going to have to close. Here’s a member who has not only survived these difficult times, but has thrived during these difficult times.

We have a couple of other members who said something that was almost identical. They both said words to the effect that, the expression that I’ve used for a while now, “I refuse to participate in a recession.” Both of them said words to the effect that, “I refuse to participate in a recession is not just a slogan.” It’s not just a slogan to them.

Patty Chakales from North Carolina said it’s a way of life for them as a member. She said, “I’m one of the owners of Brank Insurance Agency in North Carolina, and the economy is affecting a lot of people.” But she said she’s using her BNI resources to keep that from happening to her. She’s attending training, serving on a leadership team, doing one-to-ones every week. And in the first quarter of 2009, 51 percent of her business came from BNI referrals, 51 percent of new business came from her new referrals. That was just amazing to me.

Priscilla:
Yeah, that’s fantastic.

Ivan:
One of the most incredible stories I’ve heard recently was Paul Williams. Paul is with the Achievers Chapter in the United Kingdom, and Paul said, “About four weeks ago I was informed that there’d be layoffs in my company, and the thought of any of my team members being laid off was just devastating. So I decided I would do whatever it took to ensure that that didn’t happen.”

So he wanted to infuse some of what he called the BNI mentality into his team, and he talked about my articles on refusing to participate in the recession. They, as a team, resolved to look for changes that could be made within the business for the long term benefit of that organization, not just to get through the recession, but to really do well. And on a large white board, he wrote in the North-West Office of his company, “We refuse to participate in the economic downturn.” And every one of those employees signed their names on the white board, and then they sent an e-mail out to members and staff all across the company offering them the opportunity to join them in their stance in refusing to participate.

He said the reaction was unbelievable. Within just one week, the financial situation had turned around enough so that no layoffs were made in the organization, and the staff actively looked for increased business opportunities and had their best week since November of 2008. So the North-West Office of this company generated more business than any other four-week period over the last two years, and he said in his closing comments to me, “If it were not for BNI’s mentality, one of my team members would now be out of a job. And for that, to me, this is worth the membership alone.”

Priscilla:
Oh, that’s a great story.

Ivan:
These are just incredible stories, and I get these every week from members. And I think if you, as a member, are listening to these – and I’ve got some more. If you, as a member, are listening to these, take a look at SuccessNet because in SuccessNet there’s always a My BNI Story, and there’s some great stories in there about how people have benefited from the organization.

Carl Frazier from Hawaii said, “I love BNI. Someone offered me $100,000 for my seat. I would not sell it.” He said, “I can track back $6,000 a month in income I’m making from my membership in the organization.

You know, it’s really amazing is that these stories are now coming from second generation members of BNI. Second generation members. I’ve seen people who were children when BNI started. One is little Carolin Bennett. I have a photograph of Carolin Bennett. When I first met her, she was, I think, 11 years old, and there’s a photograph I have of her in a tree at the house that I used to go to for Board of Advisors meetings when she was a little girl. And we’d have Board of Advisors meetings at her mother’s house, Raoul Bennett, in Glendale, California. And that was back in 1986.

Today little Carolin Bennett is now a BNI member and in an acupuncturist in a chapter in Southern California. She used to kind of sit in on the side of the these original Board of Advisors meetings that her mother helped to get started back in 1986 when I was running them, and more than 20 years later she’s a member of a BNI chapter today.

Priscilla:
Wow, that’s great.

Ivan:
And so I’m seeing more and more of these kind of second generation members, people whose parents were involved, and now they’re involved.

There are new people like Javier Unzueta. Javier is with Speedy Signs & Engraving. And Javier, if I mispronounced your name, I’m so sorry. You can call me Misner from now on if you want!

I’ve met Javier, and he’s a sign company. Great guy, and he told me personally, I asked him to write this down, he sent it to me. He said, “My gross income has increased 723 percent because of BNI. Thank you, Javier; it’s great having you in the organization.

One of the biggest success stories that I heard this year was from David Lewis in the BNI High Flyer Chapter in Dubai, and he said that he had been a member for quite a few months. I don’t recall exactly how many months, but I think it was as much as nine months he had been a member. And he hadn’t gotten any referrals, and he was a little concerned because he hadn’t gotten a referral. And one of the very first referrals he got turned into a $4.9 million referral.

Priscilla:
Wow.

Ivan:
It was the biggest referral that the company had ever gotten, turned into business. He said, “I think this is a 480,000 percent return on my membership!” He said, “I’m not exactly sure if I did the math right.”

I said, “That’s okay. It’s close enough, David.”

480,000 percent return. I think David’s story is a great one because he said, “I was in for nine months. I didn’t get any referrals. None.” But when he finally got one, it was huge. Some businesses take longer to get, but when they get them, it’s incredible.

And it’s not all just about the business. Ian Holligan from Bridgetown, Barbados, said that his three years in BNI has given him great leadership skills and improved his public speaking, which is really incredible because he told me a story in something he sent to us in SuccessNet that he had to speak at his father’s funeral, and there was a time where he could never stand up and speak in public. And he said from his years of experience in speaking in BNI he was able to stand up and give the eulogy at his father’s funeral, and he said, “My dad would be proud. My dad would be proud of me and what I was able to do.”

And so there’s so many things, so many stories that members have about how this program has helped them, not only increase business, which was my intention when I started BNI, but things they’ve benefited from that are just incredibly powerful.

Here’s one that you’ve got to listen to. Go to YouTube and listen to The BNI Song by Richard Swan. We’ll make sure and put a link in this podcast. The BNI Song. You want to see how BNI has impacted somebody, you’ve got to watch this six minute song. Richard did it to the tune of American Pie, and he changed the lyrics; very powerful.

I know we’re running out of time. Let me just give you a couple more. Lou Brockman said he was a sales and leasing consultant. “BNI has changed my life both professionally and personally.” He’s gotten over a million dollars in referrals.

Here’s a letter I got from someone who wasn’t a member but affected their life, little ten-year-old Liam. Liam is in elementary school, and the BNI Foundation contributed to musical instruments for their music class. And I got a handwritten note that said, “Thank you, BNI Misner Foundation,” and I love this. There’s a little drawing of Liam with a guitar rocking away, and he says, “Your company rocks for helping our school.”

Priscilla:
That’s great.

Ivan:
We are changing the way the world does business, and we’re changing people’s lives. And nothing is more an example of that than Calvin Cheng, who, when I was in Hawaii, told me a story. He came up to me and he said, “I have my adopted children today because of BNI.”

Priscilla:
How’s that?

Ivan:
And I said, “Wow, how can that be? How did that happen?”

And he said, “I went to Kazakhstan to adopt my children, and you have to speak in front of a judge. I was petrified to speak in the past, but I was able to stand up, and it takes six weeks go get an adoption through in Kazakhstan, but,” he said, “my first time I was able to stand up and speak to the judge and tell him what I do and tell him how important it was to get the children as soon as possible because one of the children has a heart condition.” He said, “I spoke so convincingly and so well that the judge approved the adoption right there on the spot, and I was able to get my children.” And he sent me a photograph of he and his two children and his wife. And he says, “I have my adopted children today because of the skills that I learned in BNI.”

Priscilla:
Wow, that’s a beautiful story.

Ivan:
Well, I know we’re way over time, so I just want to wrap up and say BNI truly is changing the way the world does business. We’re helping people in so many ways, so my last comment would be: How has BNI helped you? What’s your BNI story? What have you gained from the organization either in terms of business or personal skills? I would love for you to put your comments up on this podcast and share your BNI story with the rest of the BNI members.

Thanks, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Thank you, Ivan, that was a wonderful podcast.

Well, that’s it for this week, so I just want to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Until recently, Dr. Misner assumed that if he made an appointment with someone, he was going to be there, but there seems to be an emerging trend requiring people to confirm the appointment closer to the actual day. People have been saying “When I didn’t hear from you, I assumed it was off.”

Dr. Misner wants to state for the record that if you make an appointment with him, it’s firm, unless you hear otherwise. And he believes that should go for any BNI member: if you make an appointment, people should be able to count on you to show up.

BNI members who treat the BNI meeting like an appointment with prospects and business associates are much more likely to be successful. You don’t want to miss an appointment with your best referral partners. The chapters that understand this are the strongest.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 105 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

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

Hello, Ivan, and how are you?

Ivan:
I’m doing great, Priscilla. And I still want to know, did I miss the memo?

Priscilla:
I think you might have, but what does that mean to our listeners?

Ivan:
Well, there seems to be a new trend in keeping appointments that I was completely unaware of until recently. You see, I’ve always operated under the assumption that when I set an appointment with someone for a meeting, a breakfast, a lunch, or some kind of face-to-face engagement that it’s presumed that I’m going to be there unless I notify them otherwise.

Priscilla:
Yeah.

Ivan:
However, it’s recently come to my attention that I’m apparently no longer safe in assuming that that’s the case. Just last week I received this frantic call from a friend of mine who had confirmed a lunch meeting with me a few weeks earlier. And he called because he seemed uncertain if we were still on for lunch. I thought it was really interesting because he was about 90 minutes away by car, and he hadn’t left yet, and the lunch was in 30 minutes. So I was a little frustrated by that.

More and more I’m experiencing scenarios that are really similar to this, and there seems to be this emerging trend now. I’m beginning to see that if you schedule an appointment and don’t hear from the other party again before the scheduled date and time, this means that the appointment has been magically and mysteriously cancelled by the appointment fairies. Now, I’m not alone in this either, because my wife, Beth, had the same experience last week with a group of ladies that she was planning a brunch for. One of the women said, “When I didn’t hear from you over the weekend, I presumed it was off.”

Priscilla:
Yeah.

Ivan:
She was told that my one of the five ladies who didn’t show up.

I just want to know, when did this start happening? Did I miss the memo? Maybe it’s tied to the reminder call system that most of my doctors are using now where the front desk has the task of calling clients a day or two before their appointment to remind them that the doctor is expecting them at such-and-such time.

Now, my wife, Beth, told me that spas and beauty salons are now doing the same thing, but I really can’t vouch for that from personal experience. How about it, Priscilla, do they do that? Do the spas and beauty salons do that?

Priscilla:
Definitely. Especially the beauty salons; that’s what I can vouch for. Yeah, they do; they have to.

Ivan:
Well, if the doctors didn’t have the front desk call me to remind, or if the spas didn’t call you for you appointment and we went ahead and presumed that the appointment was cancelled because they didn’t call, I wonder if they would waive the no-show fee for not showing up. What do you think?

Priscilla:
No, I don’t think they would.

Ivan:
Probably not. So I’m just kind of stating for the record that if you set an appointment with me, it’s firm unless you hear otherwise, and I think that’s the way it should be for any business person. We’re all part of a networking organization, and we have to have a commitment to our fellow BNI members and to other business professionals that if we set up an appointment, we going to be there. Unfortunately, there seems to be some new trend coming on that when it comes to an appointment protocol and I’m just asking, “Can someone please send me the memo, because I must have missed the last one on this one.”

Priscilla:
You know, Ivan, I think it’s because we’re on such an overload, to be honest with you, that people are completely overscheduled and inundated with information, and it’s their way of handling things. That’s what I think, but it’s very rude, so I’m with you on that.

Ivan:
It is. And all joking aside, I am seeing it start to happen more and more, and I think it’s almost a self-sustaining kind of problem. Because it’s happened more and more, people are starting to call just to confirm that everything is still one, and so there’s this sense of, well, this person didn’t call, so it must not be on, which is just crazy to me.

And I think that this is really relevant in BNI, don’t you? Isn’t a BNI meeting a little bit like an appointment?

Priscilla:
It is like an appointment, and it’s one that you’ve made a commitment to for the whole year other than a few absences.

Ivan:
Yeah, I know that this is sort of a side issue from the main discussion, but I think it’s an important one. BNI members who treat the BNI meetings like an appointment with prospects and fellow business associates are much more likely to be successful in this program, because these are appointments. These are appointments with your best referral partners, and you don’t want to miss an appointment with your best referral partners. It’s very important. I think that the chapters who have this sense of accountability where the members understand that this is an appointment and you need to treat it like a good appointment should be treated, and you don’t want to just not show up and have a poor attendance at the – I think that those people tend to be stronger business professionals and more successful, and they certainly are going to build better relationships because of their regular participation in the local chapters.

Priscilla:
Yeah, I agree. So we all need to be there. I agree with you.

Ivan:
Well, I’m not going to send a memo, so this podcast is going to have to do the trick. So everybody, if you set an appointment, be there, and treat your BNI meetings like an appointment.

Thanks, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay, great, Dr. Misner. Thank you so much.

Well, that’s it for this week. I just want to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Congratulations to Dr. Misner and BNI on producing 100 episodes of this podcast!

Imagine being dropped off in the middle of a foreign city with only a handful of cash and being told you have to start a successful business before you can go home. That’s the premise of the BBC series “The Last Millionaire.”

What does this have to do with BNI? A recent winner of this show, Lucy, looked up BNI while in Hong Kong and used a visit to the Hong Kong Attraction Chapter to help her make four times as much money as the other contestant.

The Hong Kong BNI members showed how BNI can really work. BNI isn’t just a great way to get business, it’s an even better way to do business.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 100 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

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

Hello, Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
Doing great, and I think this is a tremendous topic for the 100th episode, and I’m glad we could put it in on this episode.

Priscilla:
Congratulations, by the way.

Ivan:
Thank you. One hundred episodes. That’s a lot of podcasts.

Priscilla:
That is!

Ivan:
We’ve got a lot of content for BNI members, and I know many of them are appreciating it. I get emails all the time thanking me for these podcasts.

This is a great topic. It’s about a television show that played in the United Kingdom called The Last Millionaire, and it was brought to my attention by Sam Schwarz, who’s an executive director in the U.S. and co-national director in Israel, Romania, and he travels in Europe a lot, and he came and told me all about this.

Imagine being dropped off – this is how the show operates – imagine being dropped off in the middle of a metropolitan area of a foreign city with absolutely nothing but a few hundred dollars. Then you’re told you have to start a successful business that beats out your competition before you can go home. That’s the premise of the BBC television show called The Last Millionaire.

Twelve of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs competed this year on the series, and each of those contestants lead very plush lives, very successful lives. Some of them actually live in castles, and they all live in mansions, they drive luxury cars, they dine at the finest restaurants. And on the show, their lives of luxury are left behind because they compete in the world’s toughest markets to build a business from scratch. They’re stripped of all their home comforts. The live in hostels. They have to make money, more money than their rivals, and the last contestant is named The Last Millionaire, which, of course, nobody wants to be. So it’s sort of a flip side of The Apprentice where everyone wants to be The Apprentice, here, nobody wants to be The Last Millionaire. And if you keep losing, you keep living in the hostels and you don’t get to go home to your mansion.

Priscilla:
Oh, I see. It’s not like a victory to be the last one left.

Ivan:
No, not at all. You don’t want to be The Last Millionaire.

So, okay, where does BNI come into this mix? Let me explain. The show is down to the last two contenders, Natalie and Lucy. And they were taken from the United Kingdom and dropped off in the middle of Hong Kong, where they were given the equivalent of a few hundred dollars and were told to create a product and sell it in five days. They could recruit student helpers from a list that they’ve both been given, but otherwise, they had to do it all on their own. Natalie started calling the student contacts for help. Lucy, however, went to an Internet café and Googled business networking.

Now, I invite BNI members to go Google and type in business networking, and you’re going to see, as one of the top two names up there, you’re going to see BNI, not under the advertised sponsors’ names, but as a search engine name, we will always be in one of those top names. And you’ll see sometimes 50 million hits, and BNI will be one of those first ones.

Priscilla:
Wow.

Ivan:
So take three guesses. She did this search and BNI came up as one of the top names.

So what the show didn’t highlight is that Lucy’s company had been a BNI member, and she had a great experience with the organization. I had an opportunity to speak to her just a couple of days ago, and she loved the organization. Her company is now franchised, and she’s telling the franchisees to go join BNI. So Lucy was a little bit familiar with BNI. She was able to find it on the Internet in Hong Kong; she’s from the United Kingdom. There, she’s dropped off in Hong Kong. She does a search. She calls the president of one of the BNI chapters in Hong Kong and asks if she can visit their next meeting.

Now, you cut away to the BBC narrator who says, “Lucy has discovered a business networking meeting taking place in two days’ time. It’s a high flying group of Hong Kong executives and company owners.”

Then you cut away back to Lucy, and she’s there visiting the Hong Kong Attraction Chapter of BNI, Hong Kong Attraction Chapter. I’ve met many of the people that were in that episode. I saw them, and I thought, “Oh, my goodness! I just saw them a few months ago during my visit to Hong Kong!”

Well, the president is shown on the episode in front talking about how the meeting runs and, I love it, right behind him is this great big BNI banner, right there in the background. Nice. It was really great to see that kind of exposure for the organization.

And again, cue announcer: Lucy is in her element with Hong Kong’s top entrepreneurs,” and it cuts away to scenes of Lucy networking with BNI members and getting referrals for contacts that will end up designing, producing, and selling her product. And these were great contacts. Some of them were the top manufacturers in Hong Kong. She decided to do a shirt, and the referrals that she got from that chapter led her to the largest merchandising agent in Asia, a designer, and one of the top manufacturers in Hong Kong came from BNI members at the meeting that she went to.

Now, when the contest was over just a few days later, she earned 16 times her startup capital in five days.

Priscilla:
Wow!

Ivan:
She earned 16 times her startup capital and made more than four times the amount of money that Natalie made.

Priscilla:
Wow, that’s great.

Ivan:
Come on; admit it, Priscilla. You thinking the same thing I am? BNI rocks!

Priscilla:
Absolutely.

Ivan:
That was just so amazing to me. What a testament, first of all, to the Hong Kong members. I’ve met many of these members; absolutely class acts in business. These are the kind of members that you want to bring into a BNI chapter. They are definitely movers and shakers in the community.

And what a testament to the BNI program. I cannot think of a better episode to have on this podcast for our 100th episode than this story.

Priscilla:
I would love to see this episode. Is it possible to view it?

Ivan:
I would so much love to have people see it. I did have an opportunity to see it. It is great. It is very difficult. The BBC won’t release the episode. Maybe someday they will, but at this time, at the time of this recording, they won’t release the episode, and you can’t view it at their Web site. You can get some information about the episode from their Web site, but you can’t actually view it. And that’s unfortunate, but I’ll tell you, if it’s ever available, I promise you, we will make that available to BNI members because I think it’s a real powerful story.

But you know what? I’d like us to consider the bigger picture in this great story for BNI.

Priscilla:
Yeah, how are you going to do that?

Ivan:
Time when many businesses are struggling, it’s a testament to the BNI way of networking that someone can be dropped into a foreign city, with a little help from BNI members, as a past BNI member, her company was a BNI member, as a fellow BNI member can win an entrepreneurial contest to build a business in less than a week. I think it’s a great example of the brand we have built showing up in one of the number one spots on an Internet search and an even better example of the power of the BNI program based on the great contacts that Lucy received.

Today more than ever business people need BNI. When times are difficult, referrals are king. We, as business people, can not only survive, we can thrive during difficult economic times if we strive to build our business based on personal contacts, relationships, and support of our fellow members. I am proud of the BNI members in Hong Kong.

They showed how networking can truly work, and I think it’s a testament of their commitment, their skills, and to the effective application of the BNI program.

Priscilla:
Well, that’s really a fun story. I really enjoyed it, and I’m sure the other listeners will love that.

Do you have anything else you’d like to add?

Ivan:
Sure. I think if I could add one thing to the actual episode, in my mind, I can visualize one more scene where it fads away to Lucy winning, not being The Last Millionaire, because of her work with BNI. When I spoke to her, she said she loves BNI, and it absolutely was instrumental in her winning that episode and was very grateful to the organization. I could see a cutaway, fade-away to Lucy sitting on her veranda overlooking her beautiful pool as she sips her morning mimosa with her butler, once again, at her beckoned call, and I can just see her smiling slyly to herself and saying, “BNI is not only a great way to get business, it’s an even better way to do business.” And I think that’s a powerful message for our members all around the world.

Priscilla:
That’s great. Well, thank you, Ivan. That was a wonderful story and a fantastic podcast for your 100th, so congratulations to the whole organization.

Ivan:
Thank you very much, Priscilla, and thank you for your part in that. It’s been great working with you, and we look forward to continuing to do these podcasts with you over the years.

Priscilla:
Oh, good. Well, thanks so much, and I just want to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

What you should do is what you like to do. You can’t achieve sustained success if you don’t love what you do. More and more businesses are based on hobbies and personal interests.

Rather than finding out the hard way that you can’t stick it out at a job you hate just for the money, think about what you really love to do before starting a business or choosing a profession. Loving what you do is no guarantee of being successful, but if you’re not happy at what you’re doing, you can never achieve sustainable success over time.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 093 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

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

Hello, Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
Doing great, Priscilla. I’ve got a topic that’s near and dear to me. I really love this topic, and it is, as you said, “Do what you love, and you’ll love what you do.”

As an adjunct university professor for almost 20 years, I’d often have students say to me, “Well, Dr. Misner, what kind of business or profession should I consider going into right now?”

And I’d always tell them, “Well, what do you like? What do you really enjoy doing?”

And they’d say something like, “No, no. You don’t understand. I’m asking what I should do.”

And I’d say, “No, no. You don’t understand. What do you like to do? What are you really interested in?”

And they’d look at me like I was from outer space. They were perplexed. They’d stutter out something about trying to figure out what a good profession to go in would be rather than what kind of business that they like.

And I’d go on to explain to them that you cannot achieve sustained success over time. You cannot achieve sustained success over time without doing something you love. Therefore, I would tell the students, “You need to think about what you really enjoy doing and then look for opportunities in those areas.”

I don’t know if you know this, but according to the National Federation of Independent Businesses, it’s estimated that 60 percent of all businesses started in the late ‘90s were based on hobbies or personal interests. More and more you see people turning their dreams into their livelihood.

I saw a great example of this really in action when I attended a fundraiser at a local university here in Southern California, it’s Azusa Pacific University, and I was there at an evening fundraiser that the BNI Foundation was supporting. And the program highlighted a graduate from the Physics Department, and his name was Steven. He graduated in 2001 from APU, and after graduation, he went to work at NASA’s JPL in Pasadena. He had a great job. And while he was working at JPL, a close family member passed away in a really tragic accident, and Steven and his wife, she had also had a very successful career, sat back and really evaluated their lives. And they decided that they were going to make a major change, and they chose to pursue a hobby that they had for some time and to walk away from very, very successful jobs that they had. And their hobby was making all natural body care products, and they wanted to turn it into a full-time business, because they just loved it, and they loved what it did throughout the world. And I’ll explain.

One of the reasons they did it was, it enabled them to, of course, work from home. They had a new family; they could spend time with the kids. The name of the company is Anti-Body, A-N-T-I hyphen Body. Here’s the interesting thing is, it not only offers all natural body care products, but it promotes global Fair Trade. That’s what really interested them, was to have some product that was natural but to also help those in need. And so what it does is it sources out all its raw materials directly from workers in developing countries creating sustainability for those who might be exploited in those very same markets.

And to me, this was a classic example of doing what you love and loving what you do and the impact that it has on the community or on other communities throughout the world. This decision really changed Steven’s life; it changed the course of his life. And now he’s really happy doing what he’s doing. He loves working every day, and his business is thriving, and I think it’s because – and by the way, he gets to do what he was trained. You may not think it, but he basically runs the physics department of the company, which is what he was training – and although it’s not aerospace – part of his training was in physics, and so he is able to use some of that training in the labs to help create the products. And I think that’s an incredible story.

I understand that loving what you do is no guarantee that you’re going to be successful. That’s important. Some people say, “I love what I do, but I’m not successful.” However, I’m equally confident that if you’re not happy at what you’re doing, you can never achieve any sustainable success over time. And that’s important.

So if you’re thinking about starting your own business, you’ve got to find what you love to do. I use the crazy story, but it’s almost like what I used to tell my kids when they were really small and we’d go to an ice cream shop and they just couldn’t decide what they wanted to have for ice cream. I’d say, “Well, what do you feel like?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Stick your tongue out, wave it around. What’s it feel like?”

They would laugh and stick their tongue out and wave it around and say, “Well, it feels like chocolate chip.”

“All right. Well, pick chocolate chip.”

So what I tell business people and certainly what I tell college students now, “Stick your tongue out, wave it around. What do you feel like doing? Pick something you really want, something you really want to be doing, and you’ll be a lot happier in life.” And I’m not just talking about picking ice cream.

Priscilla:
Yeah, you keep talking to us about that hidden ingredient, the secret ingredient of passion and how it affects the energy that you bring when you talk about your business, and I think that this topic is an example of that.

Ivan:
Yeah, if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, you not going to be successful in the long haul. You can get by for a certain period of time, but certainly, when times are tough and the economy is a challenge, that’s when it really hits if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing. And that’s really important. I think if you can find something where you’re doing what you love, you’re going to love what you do and the chances of you being successful are much, much greater.

And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Priscilla, but I love what I do.

Priscilla:
I have noticed that, Ivan.

Ivan:
This is a fun business. I really feel like BNI is absolutely my calling. It’s the greatest business in the world. I’m able to help hundreds of thousands of business professionals in dozens and dozens of countries all around the world to build their business through a really great way. To me, BNI is not only a great way to get business, it’s an even better way to do business, and so I certainly have found what I’m passionate about. And anybody who’s out there that’s able to find theirs is going to achieve a much higher level of success.

Priscilla:
Well, thank you, Dr. Misner. That was wonderful.

I think that’s it for this week.

Ivan:
That’s it. Thank you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
I’d like to remind all of the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Dr. Misner and John Assaraf from OneCoach address three questions:

1. What causes entrepreneurs to plateau at a certain income level? Internal mental programming based on our genetic and experiential conditioning. You need to develop a clear vision and impress it into your subconscious in order to break out of your rut. Read The Answer for more details.
2. What are three of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make?
   1. Allowing circumstances to control their goal-setting exercises.
   2. Not creating a blueprint for success.
   3. Thinking they can do it themselves.
3. Why is it so important not to participate in a recession? Remember that 90% of your competition is thinking in negative ways. Don’t miss this opportunity to position yourself as the leader.

Go back and listen to Episode 86 of this podcast for BNI’s own positioning efforts for 2009. Visit ReadtheAnswer.com for a special offer on John’s book.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 092 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

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

Hello, Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
I’m doing great, Priscilla. I’m really excited today. I’ve got a good friend of mine, John Assaraf, whom I met in the Transformational Leadership Council. I’ve talked about TLC a few times on the podcasts, and John is the founder of OneCoach, a great coaching organization. We have many of their coaches in BNI throughout North America. He’s also one of the teachers from the movie, The Secret, and he’s the author of Having It All and The Answer.

So John, it’s a real honor to have you be on the podcast with us today.

John:
Thanks, Ivan. Great to be on.

Ivan:
There were three questions that I wanted to run by you that I think would be of value for my BNI members and particularly education coordinators.

And the first one is: What causes entrepreneurs to plateau or to get stuck at a certain revenue or income level, and what can they do to grow again when they get there?

John:
That’s a great question. One of the things that I have found in the brain research that I’ve done is that we become conditioned either through genetics or through our experiences to think, perceive, and behave at certain levels of revenue or income. And we tend to stick at those levels no matter how much information we gather, no matter how many courses we go to, or no matter how many programs we might do at home.

What we must understand is that any of the results that we are getting in our outside world, or our physical world, is an absolute duplication of the internal mental programming. No differently than software on a computer can do certain things, well, software of the brain is due to the genetic and experiential resources that we have in our life. So we’re going to see a direct correlation between how we’ve been conditioned and what our results are.

So anytime we hit a plateau, that tells us not how much information we know or gather, but it tells us what our mental financial conditioning has been up to that point. And in order to break through that, we really have to change the software of the brain so that we perceive and behave differently so we achieve different results.

Ivan:
You know, I ran into something similar, I think it’s similar anyway, to what you’re describing. I was talking to a friend of mine about creating territories, and he had some experience – and this was in Scandinavia – with this company where they were hitting certain dollar revenues, the sales people, and what they did, which was a little counterintuitive, was they actually split their territories in half. And everybody was really upset, but interestingly enough, everybody ended up bringing the revenues right back up to the same level that they were at before –

John:
Correct.

Ivan:
Even though they had half the territory. So the company split their territories again in half. And guess what happened? Within a few months, they were bringing the revenues right back up to where they were before. And they did it a third time before they really started to see any kind of impact.

And the whole point that the company kind of figured out was, the people kind of developed this comfort level with income, and they just want to reach that and they tend not to go beyond it.

John:
Yeah, what actually happens is any time there’s a deviation in the income, high or low, our brain will actually release a neurochemical that will either cause us to pick up the pace or to sabotage the success we’re having so that equilibrium, or homeostasis, is the order of the day. And in order for us to break through that barrier, we have to actually make some neurological changes. No different than an athlete who wants to perform at the next level or a musician who wants to perform at the next level has got to practice different things, business owners must practice mentally different things in their business that will get them to the next level so that their brain doesn’t trip up any of the success that they have.

Ivan:
Well, can you give us a couple of examples of what they can do to grow again?

John:
Absolutely. Number one is to set an absolute, clear new vision of what it is that they want to achieve. And so let’s say you’re earning $100,000 or $250,000 or $1 million, what you want to do is set an absolute, clear vision for the brain to be able to pick up, number one, on that vision.

Number two, you want to impress that part into the subconscious or implicit part of the brain versus the part of the brain called the explicit memory system that actually chooses what it is that you want. And we impress those images into the brain, Ivan, through, A, visualization techniques; seeing ourself playing at that level over and over and over again so that we create the new neural networks in the implicit part of the brain, which is the automatic side of the brain. Number two, we can create affirmations of declarations that when we do with emotion, we actually accelerate the neuron connections of the brain as well.

Number three, we can actually put ourselves into meditative states through self-hypnosis and use auditory technologies, or brain-and-train technologies, that will embed these new affirmations, or declarations, into the nervous system, basically, of the brain.

Those are three simple things that anybody could do inexpensively to make sure that our brains are being rewired at the part that actually is responsible for 96 to 98 percent of our perceptions and behaviors. And over the course of 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, we’re actually reprogramming our brains at the level that’s going to cause all of our perceptions and behaviors to change over time.

Ivan:
For my BNI members that would want to go deeper in understanding what you just described, because you described it very well, but I get the sense that you really have to go deep to understand it and apply it, which one of your books would you recommend that they go to to go deeper with those ideas?

John:
Without question, pick up the book, The Answer: Grow Any Business, Achieve Financial Freedom and Live an Extraordinary Life. It’s a New York Times bestselling book, and it really has all of the science behind what we’re talking about to be able to do a process that we create called the neural reconditioning process. And it’s simple, and it’s easy, and it’s brilliantly effective.

Ivan:
Well, let me ask you one other question. We’re running pretty close to being out of time, but I really want to ask this question. What are three of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make, and how can they solve them, in your opinion?

John:
Right. Number one, entrepreneurs must not allow their present circumstances to control their thinking or their goal setting exercises.

Ivan:
Like maybe a recession?

John:
Like maybe a recession. What I mean by that is, when we look at the results that we’re achieving right now, we’re looking at history. So we’re looking at history; we’re looking at your past thought patterns and your past behaviors.

What we want to understand is we could set any goal that we choose, and when we take that goal and we get emotionally attached and emotionally involved with it, we’re doing a couple things. Number one, we are creating the neurological chemistry that sends out that signal to this quantum field, this space in between everything. Well, we know that the universe is intelligent in response to it.

Number two, when we set a clear goal of what we want and we impress it into that subconscious part of the brain I’m talking about, we’re actually giving our brain an instruction to figure out how to achieve that. So number one, set big goals, and then figure out how to achieve them. Number two, most business owners don’t think in terms of: What strategies and tactics can I apply in order to achieve those goals and create the plan that is going to give them the road map, or the blueprint, to follow?

And number three, they’ve got to get out of the belief that they’ve got to do it themselves. I’ve got a saying that I’ve loved for 30 years, and it goes like this, “Hire people or barter or trade people who play at things you have to work at.” So discover what you play at, what your unique abilities are, and then get people on your team, either that you hire, you barter virtually, or in your local marketplace, that play at all the other things that need to be done in order to achieve your goal. And you will multiply your personal respect of this many, many times over.

Ivan:
Penny Power, who’s the founder of ecademy.com – I don’t know if you’re familiar with it; it’s a great online social business network – she uses an expression that I really like as well, “to be in your flame rather than your wax.” When you’re in your flame, you’re doing the things you’re really excited about, but when you’re in your wax, when you’re doing those things you’re not excited about or not good at, that you’re taking away all of your energy, you’re using yourself up. But when you’re in your flame, that’s exciting. It’s, I think, another way of saying a little bit about what you’re trying to say there.

John:
Absolutely.

Ivan:
One last thing. You were talking about, in the very beginning, something that we agree on, that the recession idea that if you buy into the recession in terms of your actions, if you let the recession determine your actions that it’s going to take you to a different direction. Do you want to just talk about that? I’ve talked about that on a podcast a number of times. I’d like to have somebody else throw in a couple of comments.

John:
Sure. Any time we’re reading the newspaper or magazines or watching TV and we buy in to what’s happening in the marketplace, we’re going to modify our thought patterns and behavior to match what we’re hearing, listening, and buying into. And that’s the absolute worst thing we can do, and I want people to maybe just shift their thinking for just a moment.

If you’re in business right now, let’s assume that 90 percent of your competition is thinking in ways that’s going to be negative in their production and their thought pattern. That means that you have an opportunity now to actually gain market shares; to gain mind awareness, or top of mind awareness; to actually position yourself, your product, or your service at the leader. Why? Because you can buy advertising cheaper; you can get your message out cheaper. You can market cheaper; you can do everything that you were doing before cheaper with fewer competitors in the marketplace.

So now is the absolute time for you to shift your thinking to: How can I utilize my revenues, my investments to gain more market share, to gain more clients, and to make more money? And when you give that instruction to your brain, every one of us is a genius. So we can figure out how to versus why we can. So the quality of our performance is going to be dictated by the quality of the questions we ask and the perceptions that we ask our brain to give us in the marketplace.

Ivan:
And it’s really more of a solutions focus than a problems focus. Would you agree?

John:
You got it.

Ivan:
Focusing on the solutions and how do we get to where we want to get as opposed to “Woe is me; look how bad things are.”

John:
Absolutely. And I can share with you that in our company, we have not just coaching but consulting and a whole bunch of different tools and resources. We’re innovating right now. We’re asking ourselves, “Great; what’s happening in the marketplace,” and we’re responding to what’s happening in the marketplace by innovating our offers, innovating our services, innovating our product lines to match what the marketplace wants and needs. And so we expect to do better this year in these recessionary times than what more people are doing, and that’s how to scale back.

Ivan:
Well, thank you very much, John. That was really some great material.

And for those of you listening, go back and listen to Episode 86 where I talked about Raising the Bar, because the end of that episode was talking about exactly what John just spoke about. We are raising the bar in a time when everybody else is lowering the bar; we’re investing in BNI in one of the biggest projects we’ve ever done in the history of the company. And now’s the time to do it if you want to gain market share.

John, you had some great content. I’d love to have you come back again sometime, if you can. You’ve written some really good books. I’d like to send my BNI members to a particular Web site, ReadTheAnswer.com, which is about your book, The Answer. And you have a special offer. Do you want to share that with everyone?

John:
Yeah, absolutely. For anybody who goes to ReadTheAnswer.com, we’ve got a couple of free chapters for them, and they can also sign up for our million dollar business giveaway. We’re giving away a million dollars – actually, more than a million dollars – in prizes and cash to entrepreneurs all over the world, that we’ve been giving away the prizes for the last several months, and it’s been incredible.

Ivan:
ReadTheAnswer.com. John, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I really appreciate it.

John:
Thank you. Always my pleasure.

Ivan:
Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Well, that was fascinating. Thank you, both. I just enjoyed that so much.

I think that’s it for this week. I just want to remind all of the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Today’s podcast is based on a blog post Dr. Misner wrote this summer. As business professionals, we need to make sure we take time to notwork, not just time to network. Dr. Misner spends three or four weeks every year at his lodge in Big Bear with his family because he believes success is about having time to spend in a place you love with people you love.

But if you’re looking for balance and you own a business, forget about it. Strive for harmony instead of balance. Remember the phrase Be Here Now.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 077 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for working dowloadables.

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

Hello, Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
Doing great.

Priscilla:
And where are you?

Ivan:
I’m in Cleveland this week visiting BNI groups and having a great time. The best part of my job is to meet BNI members around the world. So, this week is in Cleveland.

Priscilla:
Well, great. Tell us about this topic. What do you have to share with us?

Ivan:
This topic really began in the summer. I wrote an article, a blog over the summer about this, and I thought it would be great. Somebody suggested, actually, that I share it on my podcast. It’s different that any podcast that anyone has heard me do, because I’m usually talking just about business or mostly about networking, but this one is about not working, not working instead of networking, which is sometimes good. People have heard me say for years say, “It’s not called Net sitter or Net eat; it called Net work.” And effective networking is all about learning how to network the network that you’ve developed effectively and appropriately. But I also believe that there are times to not work, and I think that many times entrepreneurs, salespeople, professionals don’t fully engage and understand that. I’m pretty confident that when I’m 70 years old, I’m not going to be sitting back saying, “I wish I spent more time at the office.”

So I believe that we entrepreneurs, business professionals, and salespeople need to make sure to take time to not work, not network but to not work. I do some of my best not working at my lodge in Big Bear. I’ve got a place up at Big Bear, California. I’ve done some of these podcasts from Big Bear. We have a tradition that each family member gets to pick two things that we’re going to do together during the time that we’re up there. And we’re usually up there three to four weeks, of which I’m working two to three weeks, and I take a week or two off where I don’t. I work from up there, but then I take time off up there.

We take two items each person, and we type it up. As each item is completed, the family member puts his or her initials next to it, and we post it on the refrigerator. We now have almost ten years of these things posted on the refrigerator, and it’s kind of fun for the family to go up – and we go up there fairly often – and to look at the things that we had done for part of our vacations over the years. Some of them are things like – this year, my son chose a mental health day. We hang around the house, watch TV, read, play games, mostly just veg out.

And I think it’s that kind of thing that recharges people’s batteries. And it’s important for us, as business professionals, to say from time to time, “Hey, you know what? Life is not just business. There are other things.” And success for many people, it comes to many people in different ways. To me, success is about having time to spend in a place I love with the people I love, and that’s what success is to me. I talk about this in a book that I wrote called Masters of Success, and it’s about having the time and the ability to do the things that I want to do, not just the things that I have to do. For me, family and travel and charitable causes are the things that bring balance or harmony in my life.

On that subject, Priscilla, would you like to know really the secret for creating balance in your life as a business professional?

Priscilla:
Absolutely.

Ivan:
Are you ready?

Priscilla:
Yes, I’m ready.

Ivan:
All right. For those listening, pull out a pen and write this down. Are you ready? Here it goes.

If you’re looking for balance in your life and you own a business, forget about it; it’s never going to happen.

Priscilla:
I thought you were going to say, “Do nothing.”

Ivan:
A good friend of mine, James Ray, talks about this, and he got me thinking about this concept of harmony versus balance. We, as business professionals, are going to be out of balance throughout much of our life. We have a mission. We have a vision. There are things we want to do. We want to achieve something with our business. So life is not perfectly balanced. I don’t spend 30 percent of my time working, 30 percent of my time with my family, and 30 percent of my time sleeping. You can’t do that every day successfully and run a business. But what you can create is harmony.

You can create harmony. It’s more than just semantics. There are times when I’m crazy busy where I’m traveling, like now when I’m on the road and I don’t have time to spend with my family. If my entire life was like that, if my entire life was out of balance, we, as business professionals, wouldn’t be as successful as we can be. There are times when you’re out of balance, but then what you have to do is flip it, because you can create harmony without having balance. You have times where you spend not working where you work from a mountain retreat. Not everybody can do that.

I’m a 20 year overnight success. It took me 20 years to be able to be in that kind of situation where I could have a retreat to go to. But before, I would take two or three weeks off and stay at home. Or maybe work from home. Does that work for everybody? No. But you’ve got to find what works for you as an individual to create harmony in your life. Don’t beat yourself up if you’re out of balance, because we are all out of balance if we run a business. But you can create harmony.

Let me give you another example of what I do. When I wrote my first book, I didn’t have time to it during the day. Now I take a day off a week and I write, every Wednesday, if I’m not traveling. But back then when I wrote the first book, World’s Best Known Marketing Secret, which was the first nationally distributed book, I wrote most all of it from midnight until 7:00 in the morning. And so I would work all day, come home, have dinner with the family every night, spend some time with the family, put the kids to bed, put the wife to bed, and then I started writing around 11:00 or 12:00. And I’d write until 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, sometimes 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning.

Priscilla:
And when was the sleeping?

Ivan:
Then I went home, slept for a few hours, maybe three, four hours, and went back to work.

And I could do that. Could everyone do that? No, not necessarily, but many people can do that. I’m now in my 50s. I’m not sure I could do that as easily now as when I was in my 30s.

Find things that work for you. See, that created harmony for me. My kids never knew I was working on a book. All of a sudden, I had a book out. They’re like, “Well, when did you write it, Dad?” I wrote it in the middle of the night. They had no idea. That’s the way you create harmony. Not doing that specific thing, but that concept of finding ways to achieve what you want to achieve so that you can have harmony in your life, because it might not be fully in balance, but you can still create harmony. Does that make sense?

Priscilla:
Yeah, total. You also sound like you have a very understanding spouse.

Ivan:
Yeah, well, I met Elizabeth in BNI. It was the best referral I ever got. So she knew what she was getting into; she was a BNI president when we met. Yeah, she understands. I think it took a while for her to understand what it’s like being an entrepreneur, but then on the other hand, I travel a lot, but then I get to take the family traveling many times. So if you can, again, create that harmony. If I was just on the road all the time and never took them, there’s no harmony in that.

Priscilla:
Right.

Ivan:
But if I’m on the road a fair amount and I get to take them on the road more than what would be normal or common, then that creates harmony.

Priscilla:
Right.

Ivan:
And I think one other thing that I would leave the listeners with – and this is a very unusual podcast because I don’t usually talk about personal things in my podcasts; it’s mostly strictly networking and business, but one of the things that I found that works for me right now is a real simple statement. It’s: Be Here Now. Wherever you are, be there.

So if you’re at work, don’t be thinking, “I wish I would have spent more time with the kids last night.” Be at work. Do what you’ve got to do. Then when you’re at home, be at home. Don’t be thinking about all the projects that you left unfinished that need to be done. Be Here Now.

Wherever you are, be there. And if you’re fully there, that’s one of the really important ways to create harmony. The power of harmony is that you’re a better person. And if you’re a better person, you’re going to be more successful.

Priscilla:
Yeah, and a lot happier.

Ivan:
A lot happier. And if you tie it to networking, I’ve got to do it. What can I say? I’ve got to do it. One of the top ten traits of a master networker is that they have a positive attitude. Part of having a positive attitude is being happy doing what you’re doing and having a happy life.

And so I see them as being part of the integrative whole of being a person. Although this is kind of a different podcast topic, I hope that the BNI members enjoyed it.

Priscilla:
I think it’s really important. Everything you said, I agree with, and it’s just a challenge to find a way to create harmony, but I think it’s a wonderful goal.

So thank you, Dr. Misner.

Ivan:
Thank you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
And thank you, listeners. I’d just like to remind you that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for working downloadables. Thanks for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.