Talking Networking With The Father Of Networking, Ivan Misner

On Networking - EXCITING EPISODE as James interviews the person dubbed as the "Father of Networking"... The founder of BNI, Dr Ivan Misner! Clearly this episode will be on all things networking... from productive 1-2-1's to giving presentations... building real relationships vs selling yourself... the power of listening... how to make the most of large events... and so much more. This is an episode not to miss!

 

• The BNI Global Convention 2024 will be held in Honolulu, Hawaii, November 13-16.  https://bit.ly/44DsJ3x

• Dr. Ivan Misner's latest book is The 3rd Paradigm, https://tinyurl.com/The3rdParadigm

• If you have marketing questions for James, contact him at: [e-mail]
• If you would like to learn more about James, click here: https://mediavisionadvertising.com/james-danella-strategist/
• If you would like to be considered as a guest on the show… or if you would like James to speak at your event, reach out to [e-mail]

Episode Transcript

Unknown (00:04):
Welcome back to the marketing perspective. Today is
an exciting day for a lot ofreasons. One of my favorite
topics that we're talking aboutis networking. Why is a marketer
talking about networking?Because networking should be in
every single marketing plan thatyou have, it is understood. I
don't care if you're B to B, Bto C. I don't care what industry

(00:26):
networking should be at the coreof everything you do. Why is
that important? Because if wordof mouth marketing is not at the
top of the list, and this comingfrom a traditional advertiser
who makes money when you spendmoney in advertising, word of
mouth marketing needs to be themost important thing. Why?
Because it speaks into yourinternal culture. It speaks into
the quality of your product andservice, and it's also speaks

(00:47):
into your sustainable brandgrowth. Long term, it is
critical. So you've heard metalk about networking before. I
believe today I have brought ona very special guest who knows a
little bit more than networkingthan I do, and I'm very excited
to bring him into the fray.Before I do that, I want you to

(01:08):
understand that networking is soimportant to me and it should be
important to you. I'm going toask you to do a little test in
your head. I want you to thinkabout the five wealthiest people
in the world today, try to namethem, and then name the last
five Heisman Trophy winners in arow, and then one more. How

(01:31):
about the last five people thatwon the Nobel Prize? It's not
that easy, right? It'sdifficult. All right. Let's flip
the script and do somethingelse. Now think about a teacher
or coach that made upsignificant difference in your
life? What about an individualthat helped you through a
difficult time?

(01:51):
A person that appreciated andheard you
did those faces and names pop upa lot faster than the first
round the questions? Of coursethey did. It's kind of obvious
that that would happen. Why?Because real networking is
relational. It is not atransaction. We need to
understand how to really connectwith one another, even if it is

(02:12):
just business to business, salesto sales. You are building
relationships with these people,and networking is critical to
your success. So I hope you'rewith me on that one, because
sometimes I feel like I'm aloneon the show. I would like you to
chime in. As you know, I alwaysask if you get a chance to email
us or text us or on socialmedia, comment on the show. Let

(02:36):
us know what you're thinking,especially after this one, I
believe you're going to be quiteexcited about it. So that was
one of my favorite examples. NowI can go on and on regarding the
importance of networking today,but you're really not tuning in
to hear me talk aboutnetworking. I would like to
introduce my very special guesttoday. My guest founded BNI in

(02:59):
1985 that's your first hint.He's dubbed the father of modern
networking by Forbes and CNN andprobably even more. BNI now has
11,000 chapters in 76 countriesthroughout populated continents
around the world. I'll have toask him, but I believe it's the

(03:21):
largest networking organizationin the world to date. 15 point 2
million referrals weregenerated. A Matthew to $23
billion and that might just bethis year. We'll find out. He is
a New York Times best seller. Hehas written 29 books to date.
His newest book, by the way, thethird paradigm is, I think it's

(03:42):
available right now, but we'llfind out in a few minutes. He is
a columnist in forentrepreneur.com Do you know who
I'm talking about? Yet? Come on,raise your hand. I know you too.
He has been a universityprofessor. He's been a guest on
numerous TV and radio shows,such as CNN, BBC, The Today
Show, that one I'm reallyjealous about, just for the

(04:04):
record, NBC, and on and on andon. His big claim to fame,
though, is he is an amateurmagician, which I really would
like to hear more about. Andhe's also a black belt in
karate, so do not mess with him.It is my honor and privilege
today to introduce the one andthe only. Dr Ivan Meisner, to

(04:26):
you to our show. Dr Meisner,thank you so much for coming on.
It's great to be on the show.Thank you for that wonderful
introduction and the Today Showwas a hoot. Most of the funny
stuff that I could tell you, I'dhave to do off air. I wouldn't
repeat it here, but there was alot of fun. I
appreciate that, as is mylisteners. You know, that takes

(04:47):
me to my first point. One of thethings we're going to start to
talk about is the power ofnetworking. But before we do
that, you and I were introducedby a man that we both know,
Frank durafli, who's a friendand. One time colleague of mine.
And years ago, I helped, and Iwas, I was involved with and
marketed one of your books,business networking and sex.

(05:09):
Dot, dot, dot. Not
what you think. It was that bookthat got me on the Today Show,
by the way,
well, that makes sense, speakingof all the off color comments,
because, yeah,
I remember watching and by theway, all those off color
discussions were done off air,not on air. Oh, thank
goodness. But I do remember youbeing interviewed when you were
doing the book tour, and Iremember your face getting a

(05:31):
little rosier when certainquestions would come up, so it
was kind
of funny. Yeah, well, you know,Frank and Hazel, who co authored
the book with me, they did kindof go off the rails a little bit
in talking about gender. And Iwas, I was, so he was, that was
an interesting book. It's stillavailable on on Amazon. It was,
we did a survey of 12,000people, and every topic had

(05:56):
three sections, he said, shesaid, and the survey says,
actually it started with thesurvey says, the survey says
and, and I was the survey saysguy, Frank was the he says guy,
and Hazel was the she says lady,and, and so they did it from the
perspective of gender, and I didit as best as possible in a
neutral way. It was a fun bookto do, and they were a blast.

(06:20):
And so if somebody wants to see,you know, read a book on, you
know, how do you network with inthe context of gender? It's a
great book to get. I'll giveyou, you said earlier, you like
Cliff Notes. I'll give you theCliff Notes for the book. Women
are more likely to be relational

(06:40):
and men are more likely to betransactional.
Men are more likely than womento be transactional. Women are
more likely than men to berelational. And the interesting
thing was that women generatedmore business based on the
survey of 12,000 people, higherpercentage of business than men
did, and they spent less timenetworking, which was

(07:00):
interesting, a little bit lesstime networking. They got a
higher percentage of theirbusiness. And when we merged the
gender and just looked atrelational versus transactional,
we found out that it didn'tmatter whether you're a man or a
woman, if you were morerelational, which was a phrase
you used in your opening aboutrelationships and relation

(07:20):
networking being relational. Ifyou were more relational in your
networking, you were much morelikely to generate a higher
percentage of business than ifyou were transactional. You
know, hi James. My name is Ivan.Let's do business. You know,
going right for the sale. You
know, I use that reference allthe time, like when I speak
publicly, and I've made thepoint that men are

(07:41):
transactional, women arerelational. I will use dating as
an example. Women are morerelated, right? It's the
obvious, like we're the guy thatwe hit the women over there with
the cave with the club, and wedrag it to the cave where the
woman wants to be relational. Itsounds a lot more impressive
when it comes from you, and I'vebeen saying it for such a long
time, I'm listening to you as ifI heard it for the first time

(08:03):
just now.
But you know, the beauty, thebeauty of that book was that we
was, it was backed up by asurvey of 12,000 people. So it
wasn't just the three of ustalking about what we thought.
It was based on a data, harddata from men and women, not
just in BNI, was open to thepublic. So it was, it was a
great experience to do thatbook. It was
even so I'm a data guy. I lovebacking things up with data, and

(08:27):
it's important. But I think itstands to reason. It just made
common sense to me. You know,
can I give you one other thingwe discovered from the book?
Because in the data, we found,you know, that men and women
there was, there was absolutelya difference, and it was a
statistically significant,distant difference, but not, not
a huge, huge mathematicaldifference. And based on the the

(08:50):
survey open ended comments, wecame up with the concept that
really was the cornerstone ofthe book, which was the
exception becomes theperception. The exception
becomes the perception, meaningmost women, you know, most men,

(09:11):
when they went to a networkingevent, most men behaved
themselves. They behavedthemselves appropriately, right?
But it was a handful that becamethe perception that women had
about going to networkingevents, and from the male
perspective, and this is this,you know, this is the data. You
guys don't get mad at me. Thisis the data. This is what men

(09:32):
said. Men were frustrated thatwomen would dress provocatively
as a way of, you know, gettingattention. This is what came up
in the data so but the truth isthat's the exception. Most
women, my experience, and I'vegone to a lot of networking
meetings. Most women dresstotally professional, completely

(09:53):
professional. But the exceptionbecomes the perception, and
that's what you talk about. Andand there are, you know, if we
can just focus on appropriaterelational relationships,
appropriate relationalinteraction, then you're going
to have people networkingeffectively.

(10:14):
That is excellent advice. Iappreciate that greatly. I want
to get us into into what we'retalking about regarding the
power of networking. And wementioned how we talked how you
and I met, and how powerful thatwas, and that was really
awesome. Can use from yourperspective, as the founder of
BNI, can you speak into thepower of networking today?

(10:36):
Well, I think networking is moreimportant than ever. You
mentioned in the introductionthat you know you're you're an
advertising guy, and this maymay surprise you, but if you've
read my material, it won't,especially my older material. I
believe in advertising. I'm afirm believer in advertising, I
think. And it depends on thebusiness you're in. Certain

(10:58):
businesses need the advertisingmore than other businesses, but
generally speaking, I'm a firmbeliever in advertising. I just
think that word of mouth is aform of advertising. Networking
is a form of advertising, andyou need to plan and structure
your networking in the same waythat you plan and structure your

(11:19):
advertising. And so it should beall part of a marketing plan,
advertising, social media, allthe different variations of
marketing and networking shouldbe a piece of that, and you need
to plan and structure it thesame way you plan and structure
your other forms of advertising.
We own an ad agency here, and weactually put networking in the

(11:43):
experiential marketing category,and it's every single it's just
in there with trade shows andeverything else that some
businesses need to do. Butnetworking is across the board,
and I can't count how manytimes, oh, we don't need to do
that, like we're probably not afit for each other. We actually
look at their internal culturefirst. And if I think they can't
do good word of mouth marketing,something is wrong. And we

(12:04):
usually refer to them a businesscoach before we decide to take
them on. So you're right.
I agree. Part of the problem isthat people don't like to
network because they've beengone to networking groups that
they've been sold to. I mean,the truth is, I started BNI
because I went to networkinggroups, two different kinds of
networking groups. Oneunbelievably mercenary.

(12:27):
Everybody I met was trying tosell to me. I'd leave those
meetings feeling like I'd beenslimed and I needed to go get a
shower. It was just nasty. Andthen I'd go to these other
groups that were totally social.It was happy hour and hors
d'oeuvres. You know, nobody waswearing badges. There was no
business being done. I didn'tlike either of those groups.
What I wanted was a group thatfocused on business but wasn't

(12:51):
mercenary, and a in a group thatthat focused on relationships
but wasn't totally social. Andso the what I formed back in
1985 was one group. I didn'thave this vision at that moment
of 11,100 groups, but, um,taking business and relational

(13:12):
and merging it with thisprinciple core value of givers
gain this idea that if I helpyou, you'll help me, we'll both
do better as a result of it andand so most people don't like
networking because they don'tknow how to interact. They've
been sold to. It's a skill likeanything else. Just like you

(13:32):
teach people how to do a goodad, people have to learn how to
network effectively. And theproblem is we don't teach it in
colleges and universities
anywhere in the world.
You know, I've been in BNI for18 years, and I started in the
Hudson Valley when I was in NewYork. That's where I met Frank

(13:52):
giraffe Lee. And now I'm inNashville, and in that time
frame, I mean, I my first twoyears, I'll tell you, my company
netted $1.2 million that year,and it was the first year in
BNI, and the majority of themoney came from BNI. So for
traditional ad agency to makemoney in a word of mouth
marketing organization, BNI hadto be doing something, right? So

(14:15):
I started waving the fly,drinking the Kool Aid. I was a
big fan, and I would telleverybody that BNI works, and
here's why it works. And I cantell you that I look at BNI like
because I was an ad. I don'tknow if you knew that was
Frank's ad in the Hudson Valley.And when I assistant director,
Yeah, correct. When I read thebook, it's perfect on paper, but
then you put people in the roomand it messes it all up, you

(14:38):
know?
Yeah, I understand, believe me,you
know so, and I'm sure youprobably, I built this thing,
and you take it and you don'tfollow the rules, and then you
wonder why it's not workingcorrectly. And, yeah, the
biggest pain, right? When, whenyou, you said mentioned before
about when you started, BNI, youdidn't know, get to this point,

(14:59):
but what? Did you envision?Because every entrepreneur that
I know starts with here's whereit is today. Here's where I want
to take it. So what did you seeback then?
Well, I got
there. It just took me about ayear to get there, because when
I started BNI, I started B and Ito get referrals from my
consulting business. I was amanagement consultant, and I
didn't like the mercenarygroups. I didn't like the social

(15:21):
groups, so I formed a group thatI could that I thought was the
kind of network that shouldexist. And someone came to me,
and as you know, James, we takeonly one person per professional
classification, and so shecouldn't join because her
classification was taken. Andshe asked me if I would help her

(15:43):
open a second group. And Iactually said, No, this isn't
what I do. I'm not I don't runnetworks. I'm a business
consultant. And so she's like,well, this is kind of
consulting. You're helping mebuild my business. I thought,
well, that's a stretch, butOkay, fine. So we opened a
second chapter. Two people camewho couldn't join the second
group because of aclassification conflict, and
they said, Hey, would you helpus up on two more groups? I'm

(16:05):
like, No, this isn't what I do.I'm a business consultant. And
they talked me into it. And atthe end of a year, we had 20
chapters, 20 I started inJanuary, by December. I always
take time off around New Year'sto reflect, you know, to look,
where do I want to be next year?Where do I want to be in five
years? How was last yearcompared to my my plan? Well,

(16:26):
that year is like, What the heckjust happened? This was not in
my plan at all, and that was myBrody moment. Okay, you remember
the movie Jaws
Sheriff Brody,
at the end of the movie, isthrowing chum out into the
ocean, and for the first time,you actually see the shark come

(16:48):
out of the water, and he, youknow, it's like he almost has
his hand taken off, throwing itout there, and he turns around
to the captain, and what's hesay? You're gonna need a bigger
boat, right? That was my Brodymoment. And I thought, Okay, I'm
going to need a bigger boat.This is going to be way bigger
than I anticipated. And Istarted thinking that week, it

(17:09):
was December 1985
why? Why did
this take off so well? Andthat's when it hit me, like I
said earlier, we don't teachthis in colleges and
universities, just not taught.And so people are hungry for
networking, but they want to doit right and and have a system

(17:30):
and a process. They don't wantit to be social, they don't want
it to be mercenary. And so thatwas the point at which I then
sat down and created a plan toscale the business, and we now,
we're working now on 40consecutive years of growth year
on year on year. Every year,we're at almost 40 years of

(17:55):
consecutive growth, even duringCOVID. We grew
right? And you went mostlyonline and
completely, yeah. I mean, weliterally went. We had, when
COVID started, we had 9800groups meeting in person every
week. Can you imagine moving9800 groups from in person every

(18:17):
week to online? That was amassive pivot of our
organization. But we did it. Wepivoted 9800 groups, and we grew
that year. We at the end of2020, we hit the 10,000 chapter
Mark during the middle of COVID,during Yeah, the middle of

(18:39):
COVID, and we've continued togrow since then. Now, since
then, we've gone to 68% inperson, 16% totally online. And
by the way, in 2019, if I justsaid, in a few years, 16% of our

(19:00):
Well, 16% totally online, 16%hybrid. They meet once a month
in person, the rest of the monthonline. If in 2019 I would have
said to my group, 1/3 of ourorganization will not meet in
person every week, they'd havethought I was crazy. But COVID,
first of all, I knew it wasinevitable because of the

(19:21):
technology, but COVID expeditedthat need. And so we have gone
mostly back to in person, but wehave online and hybrid groups.
And I think hybrid is thefuture, to be honest with
you, really, so a little bit ofboth, because it makes it easier
on the individual. I mean, yeah,it
does, yeah. I mean, you know,you can go to a meeting in your

(19:41):
sweatpants, wearing, you know, ashirt. Don't ask me to stand up,
and it makes it and you don'thave to drive anywhere. It just
makes it easy. But, but then youadd to it the need to and I
think meeting someone in person,shaking their hand, looking them
into their three. Threedimensional eyes. Is more

(20:02):
powerful. This is great. This isamazing. This is absolutely
amazing. I mean, what if COVIDhad happened in 1990
instead of 2020,
we would have had way morebusinesses
go out of business. We wouldhave had way, way more deaths.

(20:23):
But the fact that we had thetechnology to go online was a
game changer and a literally, alife saver and a business saver,
and we were lucky to be able topivot during that time. You
know, one of the things I foundthat BNI taught me. So I opened
my business 20 years ago, and Ijoined BNI a year later. I

(20:48):
didn't want to be a businessowner. I loved what I did for a
living. I was corporate. Workedin the city 911 into my career
in New York, my listeners knowthe story, and it made me an
entrepreneur. It kind of forcedmy hand that year, because
advertising died in New York foralmost two years after 911 so
here I am a business owner. Ididn't know all the things I

(21:08):
didn't know. And I was a reallygood consultant, but I didn't
realize I was good at salesbecause I was a good consultant.
I don't, I don't sell. I would,it was funny. It was Frank, who
was my consultant at the time,who would say, Well, do you go
in front of the person and youask questions? Yes, because do
you take that information andcome back with a proposal? Well,

(21:29):
yeah, but it's a it's discovery.He goes, Uh huh. Do they get a
signature? I went, Well, yes. Hegoes, Uh huh. He goes, you're in
sales,
yeah. But you, you doconsultative sales. You're
helping to solve somebody'sproblem, rather than, you know,
let me sell you this widget,correct?
So I was always natural at it.BNI definitely honed my skills.

(21:51):
It made me a better publicspeaker. It educated me on
really right and wrong when itcomes to networking. And my
biggest pet peeve as a networkernow as a BNI, or, more
importantly, is I can see a badnetwork coming from a mile away.
I guarantee that person justgoing to walk up to me, barely
introduced himself, not ask meany questions. Hand me their

(22:11):
card, give me their pitch. I'mlike, why would I want this
information? I know nothingabout you. You could care less
about me. I want to know fromyou, from the we'll say the
horse's mouth. What do you thinkthe core strengths are of a
great networker?
Well, I think, I think there
are a number of ways that onecan be great at networking and

(22:33):
let's take it from theperspective of introvert versus
extrovert. There's an assumptionthat an extrovert is a natural
networker. I would, I would, Iwould confront that assumption.
Extroverts are great atintroducing themselves. They
have no problem talking topeople. They'll walk up, they'll
introduce themselves. But what'stheir favorite subject? Them

(22:57):
themselves. That's right, and soAnd
actually, I wanted to say, I'msorry, what did you say? Yeah,
I mean, the extroverts lovetalking about themselves, and
there's nothing wrong with that.That's that's fine, but if you
want to be good at networking, agood networker has two ears and
one mouth, and should use themboth proportionally. It's almost
like an interviewer. A greatinterviewer, you're interviewing

(23:19):
me. You're asking me a question.What are you letting me do?
You're letting me elaborate,right? That's what a great
networker does. A greatnetworker asks a question and
lets the person elaborate. Soextroverts are great at meeting
people, but they have to learnhow to shut up and ask
questions. Ask questions andlisten, right? Ask something

(23:40):
then pay attention. Asksomething else, then pay
attention. Now, introverts, theyassume that they're not good at
networking because they have ahard time meeting people, but I
would argue that there, theyreally can be very good at
networking because they're greatlisteners. What they have to
learn to do is to meet people.And there are techniques that

(24:00):
I've talked about in many of mybooks, about how does an
introvert meet
people? But once they meet
them, they're really good atbuilding a connection, because
they'll ask a question andthey'll listen. So the bottom
line is, both have strengths andweaknesses. You have to, you
kind of have to know which oneyou are, an introvert or an
extrovert, and then, and thenlearn how to take that strength

(24:23):
you have, use it, and then thatweakness you have, and develop
skill, a skill set in thatweakness that you have. And if
you can do that effectively,you'll be very good at
networking.
That's great. But do you do yousee other than listening? Do you
see any other blind spots that anetworker could have? Yeah,

(24:44):
I think most networkers usenetworking as a face to face
cold calling event, which youbasically said, somebody comes
up and hands you a card and, youknow, wants to sell you
something. I did an event inLondon years ago, and I asked
everybody, there's about nine.100 people there. I said, How
many of you are here today? Itwasn't a BNI event. I was

(25:04):
brought in as a keynote speaker,and I was, I was towards the
end, and watched everybodynetworking. And I said, How many
of you are here today hoping tomaybe, you know, just possibly
sell something? James, 900people raised their hands. The
entire room raised their hand.Great. That's fine, super. I
said, How many of you are heretoday? Second question, how many

(25:26):
of you are here today hoping tomaybe buy something? Nobody
raised their hands. Not onesingle person. This is what I
call the networking disconnect.People show up at networking
events wanting to sell, butnobody's there to buy. So why
go? Here's why, and this is theyou asked for an important

(25:49):
concept. This is the concept goto networking events to work
through the VCP process,visibility, credibility,
profitability. You've been inBNI a long time. You know this
many of your listeners may notthe first you have to be
visible. People have to know whoyou are and what you do, and
once they know who you are andwhat you do, then you got to

(26:11):
move to credibility, and that'sthe one that takes the most
time, where they you know,really get to trust you become
credible. They know who you are,they know what you're doing,
they know you're good at it,because you build a good
reputation. That's the secondphase. The third phase is
profitability. And it's not justprofitability where somebody's
buying your product or service,it's profitability where someone

(26:32):
is referring you to someoneelse, because this is a referral
process. So first you bevisible, then you establish
credibility, then it leads toprofitability. What tends to
happen is that people try tojump over visibility, over
credibility, and get right toprofitability. And it was in the
gender book the business nowwe're getting sex book that we

(26:54):
came up with this phrase calledpremature solicitation, which
you don't want to say fast threetimes, it'll get you in trouble,
where you just jump over and youget you try to get right to
profitability. And that doesn'twork in networking or other
things. It definitely doesn'twork in networking.
So when, when a networker doesall the right things, if they're

(27:18):
if they're really drinking theKool Aid, drinking
the Kool Aid, because that's acult. So, okay, so the word
cult, the word cult, first ofall, BNI is not a cult. If BNI
were a cult, everyone would dowhat I tell them to do, and they
don't. I try, but they don't.Occult leads by fear and

(27:40):
intimidation. We lead by supportand giving. That's right, and,
and. And the word cult is a
form of the word culture.
And so I think culture eatsstrategy for breakfast. Culture
is the secret sauce for asuccessful organization, and so

(28:02):
I love the culture that we'vecreated of giving, and that's
really the way I would describeit, rather than the
people say the word cult,usually they're the ones that
are trying to do their own thingand do it just a little bit
differently, and take yourmodel, but tweak it. Just tweak

(28:23):
it just enough to not getslapped. So, yeah, I think it's
an incredible organization. Sowhat would they expect from the
outcome? What, when a goodnetworker is really doing their
job? I'm not I'm not sayingmathematically. I just mean,
what? What would they eventuallystart seeing if they're doing a

(28:44):
really good job at
networking? Well,
the first thing that if they'redoing a really good job, they're
doing really good weeklypresentations. Let's say. Let's
take it in a BNI context, wherewe're meeting every week, or a
group like BNI, where they'remeeting every week and they're
doing presentations. But thething is, you have to remember
that you're not trying to closea sale in these weekly
presentations. You're trying totrain a sales force. You're

(29:05):
teaching people how to referyou. So if you're doing that,
and you're doing one to ones,one to ones are really
important. And we've we've gotdata on this that shows that you
can actually double the amountof business you generate by
doing more one to ones withpeople in a networking group,
because it's that building, it'sthat relationship building so
and we have hard data on thisstudy that was done in Europe,

(29:28):
in BNI, and we found that peoplewho did four, one to ones a
month versus one, one to one amonth, actually received twice
as much business. I mean, comeon, think about it. Would you
like to get 100% more businessif you just do one meeting a
week? Yeah, I would. So, youknow, it's one of the things. So

(29:49):
if you're doing all the rightthings, you should be generating
a fair amount of business. Butremember this, the credibility
takes time. Networking is amarathon. On, not a sprint. And
so in a number of my books, andI know you've seen this, we have
what we call the time confidencecurve, that it doesn't matter
what business you're in, ittakes a certain amount of time

(30:12):
before people have confidence inyour ability to provide a
quality product or service. Andyour business determines the
amount of time to some extent.For example, a florist the time
confidence curve is quick,right? You hit that confidence
level pretty quick. A printermight be a little higher. A real

(30:32):
estate agent higher. A financialplanner. Investing somebody's
retirement income is at the topof the scale. So you have to
think about what business you'rein, and understand the time
confidence curve as it relatesto your business, and then work
towards achieving credibility atthat right time confidence curve

(30:55):
where you're generating enoughbusiness to really, really make
The networking worthwhile.Remembering that you still have
to advertise. There's nothingwrong with advertising. I'm a
fan. Preach it, yes, and by theway, and this isn't new stuff.
This isn't new stuff. And thisisn't just because I'm on your
show. You can go back to my bookthat I wrote in 1994 called the

(31:17):
world's best known marketingsecret, and you will see in that
book, it's now in its fourthedition. But if you went back to
the first edition written in1994 you would see a section on
it where it says, advertising isimportant for a successful
business, and word of mouth is aform of advertising, and in the
same way that you do traditionaladvertising, you should also do

(31:40):
word of mouth advertising. ButI've been saying this literally
for 30 years,
and we don't even preach to someindustries, like business to
business focus, they don'treally need to advertise as
much. It's more marketing. Andthere's a difference between
advertising and marketing. It'smore of a B to C kind of thing
that they would need to reallyadvertise. And right now, it's
going I think this is verytimely, which is why I like that

(32:02):
we were able to get it in now sothat this will launch in mid
September. By the way, consumerconfidence is down out there for
20 million reasons that aregoing on, right? Yeah, right. So
with that happening, people arerolling quarters a little bit
more, and I'm seeing that peopleare not making adjustments in
their marketing effort or theirnetworking effort and and going

(32:26):
back to your VCP principle,which is, which is very true,
they are trying to jump the gunand get right to profitability.
New people are coming in, andthey're they're viewing their
chapter, or even they're adifferent networking
organization, as, oh, if I don'tmake money in like five minutes
I'm leaving. Well, what did youbring? You know? What did you
bring to the table? Are you areyou helping others? Are you

(32:47):
listening? Are you taking part?Are you building relationship?
So when I say those things, it'seasier when everything is great
out there, but when it's notgreat, people get a little
antsy, you know? So I know thatyou see it statistically. You
see that people will, there'stransition that happens
sometimes in BNI, and some ofthose people that are just
takers aren't a fit in downeconomies, because they just

(33:08):
need to take,
well, they're not a fit in downeconomies or up economies, to be
honest. Yeah, but,
but they can, they can be underthe radar a lot more in the in a
good economy, that it'll, it'llbe a better perception for them.
What
you got to set a baseline forpeople and say, Look, networking
again. Networking is a marathon,not a sprint. You're not going
to get business overnight. Ittakes time. And here's the

(33:28):
analogy I give. Okay, so let'ssay you plant an orange tree,
brand new, little, little orangesapling, man, you plant it and
you water it and you care for itfor a year. Are you going to get
any oranges? No. I mean, let'ssay it's even a pretty big. It's
a pretty big. After a year,you're not going to get

(33:50):
anything, right? So would youwould anyone in their right mind
grab the tree, yank it out, andsay, well, it's not growing
here, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna goplant it over here and water it
for another year and see if anyoranges come up in the second

(34:12):
year. And of course, they won't.And it's like, well, it can't.
Maybe it's, this is a badlocation, so rip it up by the
roots over here, and I'm gonnaput it over here. That's so
incredibly obvious that youwould not do that, but we do
that with networking groups. Youjoin an organization, you're in
for a year, you're just gettingthe fruit is just beginning to

(34:33):
kind of slightly emerge, andthen it's not enough, and you
tear it out by the roots and youplant it somewhere else. It's a
really bad idea. It takes time.I've got this way. I'm sure
you've seen it on BNI podcast.I've got this photograph when we
used to have referral slips,actual referral slips. Now I do,

(34:56):
I do too, I know so. But he wasin for six. Years. He was a guy
in Portugal, and there's aphotograph on one of the
podcasts of the number ofreferral slips he got the first
year and then the second year,and then the third year, and
then the fourth year, and thenthe fifth year, and then the
sixth year. And he's got it justin this line. They're stacked up

(35:18):
side by side. He said it tooktime. The first year paid for my
dues and my time. The secondyear was great. The sixth year,
I'd be insane to leave. It takestime to build those kinds of
relationships. But let's goback. Networking is more about

(35:39):
farming than it is abouthunting, right? Well, if you're
hunting, you basically eat whatyou kill that day. But if you're
farming, you get this harvest.You could go on vacation. You
could be gone for a week, andit's still out there growing
referrals are showing up to youroffice, even if you're not
there. That's the beauty of apowerful network. But I'm

(36:04):
singing to the choir. You knowthat? Oh, that's a,
you know what? For listenerstoday, that is a very powerful
point. I agree when you when yougave the orange tree analogy, I
really thought you were becausesome you need two trees to
germinate, and they have to bemale, female. Same thing with
point. Yep. So it can't. Can'tdo it alone. It has to. It takes

(36:25):
two people in networking. It'sthe same thing. You can't you
some people come in, they justsit and wait to receive, and
they're not going to getanything until they start
building those relationships.
So I got a podcast, and I don'tknow what number it is, being a
podcast, and I've written aboutit on my blog, a true story
about this gentleman in theMidwest who won year after year.

(36:47):
He won for the best years ofcorn. He would just grow these
amazing ears of corn, and thiswas decades ago, before
genetically modified corn thathe would grow these great ears
of corn and and a reporter wentto him and asked him, How do you
do this? Every year you havethese great harvests of this

(37:09):
immense corn? And he said, Well,what I do is I give the seeds to
my to my best corn. I plantseeds in my in my fields, but I
also give it to my neighbors.And the guy says, Why would you
do that? He said, Because theygerminate each other. And so my

(37:30):
neighbor, if my neighbors havelousy corn, I'm not going to
have award winning corn. For meto have award winning corn, I
need my neighbors to have reallygood corn, and so he actually
shared his seeds with neighborsso that they so he could also so
he could be incrediblysuccessful. He helped his

(37:51):
neighbors be successful. And ifthat isn't the best example of
networking, I don't know whatis. And that was the point that
I think you were making. It
is, and that's an excellentpoint. I whole, my favorite
thing to do is to put two peoplein the room together and get out
of the way, yeah, and let themsee value in one another. And I
love being able to do that. Willit come back somehow? Some way

(38:13):
it does
eventually, yeah, one way oranother, and it comes back
sometimes in ways you would havenever expected.
That's right, agreed. Like this
story, if you got the time, I'lltell you a quick story. I call
it. I call it the butterflyeffect of networking. And the
butterfly effect is part ofchaos theory, which is a

(38:34):
division of mathematics. And itsays the flapping of the wings
of a butterfly changessomething, some minute thing in
the weather, which is just someminute thing in the air that
changes something else thatchanges something else that
changes something else that
changes the weather. Okay,
that's the concept of chaostheory. And, and the butterfly
effect is part of that. And, um,I once was on Necker Island in

(39:00):
the Caribbean, and I had towrite an article for
entrepreneur.com that day, and Ihad no idea what I was going to
write, and I was reallystruggling. And the only place
that I had internet, this wasback in oh seven the only place
there was internet was in thegreat room on Necker Island, and
up walks Sir Richard Branson ofVirgin Atlantic, Virgin

(39:23):
Galactic, Virgin voyages. Imean, everything, right? Virgin,
everything. And he walks up andhe says, So what are you doing?
I said, Well, I've got anarticle. Is deadlines today. I
got to send this article in, andthis is the only place where
internet back in the oh seven.
And he said, Oh, listen,
I get it. You know, deadlinesare important, but when you're
done, we're all done by the poolat the ocean and on the ocean.

(39:47):
Come on down and join us. Youknow, let's have some fun. And
if I don't see you down there,sit next to me at lunch and tell
me more about this networkingthing that you do. And he walked
off, and I remember Jamessitting there going. Hey, how
did I get here? How did I gethere where this billionaire

(40:07):
comes up to me and says, Hey,you want to come out and play,
and if I don't, if I don't seeout there, sit next to me in the
lunch room and let's talk,right? How did that happen? And
and that's when my article cameto me, because I couldn't think
of what to write. And I wroteabout the butterfly effect of
networking. Because, to take itback to your statement, you

(40:29):
never know where
an introduction can lead you.
I got on Necker Island. NeckerIsland, by the way, for those of
you who don't know, is isRichard Branson's private island
in the Caribbean. Okay? I got onto Necker Island because of an
introduction two and a halfyears earlier. Not an

(40:50):
introduction to a CEO, not anintroduction to a multi
millionaire, an introduction toa solopreneur. Life Coach and
that introduction led to anotherintroduction, to and then to
another one, and then toanother. And this is the
butterfly effect, right? It wasthe ripple effect one after, and

(41:12):
it took two and a half years.And two and a half years later,
someone said, Hey, there's aseminar going on on Necker
Island. You're invited if you'dlike to come with your wife. And
we went, and I remember I calledthe woman's name was Kim. I
called Kim, and we'd kind ofstayed in touch over the two and
a half years, but I called Kimand I I said, Kim, I want to

(41:34):
personally thank you forintroducing me to Richard
Branson.
Kim on the phone, going,
Ivan, this is Kim, George, Idon't know Richard Branson. I'm
like, Well,
let me tell you a story Kim andI tell her how the introduction

(41:55):
to her led to something that ledto so your point is so relevant
to networking that you neverknow who someone knows, but more
importantly than who they knowand then who they and it's all
about building relationshipsalong the way. If it was just a
transaction, it would have neverled to another introduction and

(42:17):
another introduction and anotherintroduction. They were all
relationships that led toanother introduction and another
introduction. And that's the keyto networking. I agree. A couple
of weeks ago, one of my chaptermembers because I announced that
you and I were going to get tospeak. Oh my gosh. How did you
get Dr Ivan Meisner on yourshow? I said, I asked. I just

(42:44):
asked, we I we know each otherthrough this, this, this, and to
your butterfly effect, it wasthree or four different steps.
And when you mentioned RichardBranson, by the way, do you
happen to know the name diner?Dinah liver sledge. She's a
British woman, yeah.
Diane.
Yeah, I know who you'rereferring to. Yes,

(43:06):
I do know her. Her story refersto Richard Branson, yeah,
wasn't that the
she was? She was in a world,yeah, yes.
Well, I was speaking, and sheshe went on before I did, and
she told her story, and here sheis standing and doing her thing
and and then she dropped the micthat she had been in a

(43:26):
wheelchair for years, and thenshe talks about Richard Branson.
I said, I have to follow thatlike, that sucks. So I had to,
like, somehow spin the power ofbrand and how Richard Branson
literally personally took careof the situation for her,
because it was such a bad storythat he solved the problem. You
know, that is a great story and,and I'll tell you it was, it

(43:49):
was, I was back on NeckerIsland, back in like 2010 it was
my second visit.
I told him that story.
I told him I know the woman whohe, for those of you who don't
know Diane's, I think it'sDiane, right? Her wheelchair.

(44:12):
Dinah, okay,
so her wheelchair was broken ona Virgin Atlantic flight and was
unusable, and she filed acomplaint. And rather than the
customer service correct me ifI'm wrong here, James, but
rather than customer servicereaching out to her, Branson
reached out to her and replacedit with a better wheelchair than

(44:37):
what she had, and she was justso unbelievably impressed. And I
said, Look, I know the woman whoyou did this for. And he's like,
oh my goodness, I remember, Iremember that. And he said, You
know her. I'm like, Yeah, I knowher. And let me tell you
something. She's going allaround the world telling that

(44:58):
story. You. And he's like, Well,that's very nice of her. I
didn't do it for that reason. Idid it because virgin needs to
do a good job for its customers,but I'm really glad that she is
happy.
Yeah, the prelude to that
was two other airlines did notdo the right thing. It happened
to her before, and she used tobe a very overweight woman. Oh,

(45:21):
it was a horrible story. Andthen finally, Virgin did do the
right thing. And it turns out,at the time, she used to travel
the world because she worked forPfizer back then. I'm not saying
names, because I want them tosponsor us at all. They would be
okay, but I'd be okay. She didthe she chose what airlines the

(45:44):
corporation used,
so she switched their account
version. Nice, Richard, I'll
tell him that add on. I didn'tknow that. Yes, he got the
entire account. Just didn't knowit at the time. Yeah, yeah. So
of course, I had to get on andspeak after that, which, that
was a blast. But anyway, I didnot get to go to knicker Island.

(46:08):
Just say,
Oh, knecker is an amazing place.I've been there five times now,
must be beautiful. It isbeautiful. And let me tell you
some Branson's an interestingguy. His ego does not enter the
room before he does, which, youknow, is a little unusual for a
billionaire. He's very easy totalk to. And here's the thing I
here's so I love that, buthere's what I love even more. He

(46:32):
treats his staff like he treatsmillionaires. Okay? I mean, he
talks to his staff like he talksto millionaires. He doesn't talk
down to them. He doesn't hetreats them professionally and
and when on one of my trips, hehad to leave the island for a
day on some business trip justfor one day. Boom, God. And so I

(46:56):
had a staff around, and I'mlike, Okay, talk to me.
How is he really
to work for? Really, come
on, tell me
to an employee, they're like,he's fantastic. We love working
here. He's amazing to work he's,you know, he has expectations,
he wants things done, but he'sreally reasonable and he's

(47:17):
friendly and he's fun and he'sinteresting. We love working
here, every single employee, intheir own way, shared how much
they loved working for Richardand I just love that's the kind
of guy that I want to be around.I want to be around really
successful people who treat

(47:37):
people really well,
people that are authentic too?Yeah?
Well, it could be an authentic ahole,
I guess you could. Yeah,
I met those. I met those, thepeople whose egos enter the room
before they do, and they're veryauthentic about that. That's who
they are.
And to be

(47:58):
authentically kind
so one of the trips we took toNecker, we did a, this is crazy,
bar hopping trip by boat tothese bars. Some of them were on
boat, other boats, right? And inone of the locations, I forget
the location, but one of thelocations literally had a metal

(48:20):
sign up in their bar, becauseBranson would drop in once or
twice a month. He would justdrop into this it would be a
dive bar right on in theCaribbean, on the ocean, on the
on the water, and a sign thatsaid, Be nice, like Branson and

(48:43):
and if that doesn't
tell you who he is as a person,I don't I don't know what does
so why is this important toeveryone who's listening? Humble
people don't think less ofthemselves. They just think of
themselves less. I'm going torepeat that humble people don't

(49:04):
think less of themselves, theyjust think of themselves less.
And if you want to be great atbuilding relationships and at
networking effectively, humilitygoes a long way.
Oh my that's the nugget of theday without a doubt. Thank you
for sharing that. That wasawesome. I want, I don't want to

(49:28):
abuse your time. Have a coupleof more quick questions just to
touch on. Do you happen to havelike, your favorite testimonial
or story regarding networkingand BNI is there's one that
stands out for you?
Well, there's, there is one.I'll give you the short version
of it. It's, it's incrediblytouching to me. And it has
nothing to do with business. Ithas nothing to do with

(49:51):
referrals, and, and, and, youknow, we generate a lot of
referrals. You mentioned 15million referrals, 23 billion. I
just saw the numbers. Yes.Today, the previous 12 months
from yesterday, 12 months ago,we did 24 billion in thank you
for closed business. That's howmuch business we generated for
our members, right? And that'sonly recorded, yeah, that's

(50:12):
what's recorded by members,right?
And I say that, so if you'relistening and you don't know
about BNI, it's recorded. Sosome members don't record their
stuff. So that's only the stuffthat's actually trapped it on
records. And here's what I love
about this. If you take a lookat the United Nations estimates
of GDP gross domestic product,there are actually 100 countries

(50:35):
in the world with a lower GDPthan what BNI generated for its
members in the previous 12months, that blows my mind. That
absolutely blows my mind. So wedo a lot of business, but the My
favorite story actually hasnothing to do with businesses.
It's a member who who had a hardtime just standing up and

(50:57):
speaking. You know, he said itwould take all my effort, and he
was in a chapter that they woulddo 62nd weekly presentations.
Some chapters do less becausethey're bigger groups. And he
had 60 seconds. He said it tookall my energy, all my all my
emotional power, to do 20seconds of my 60 seconds,
because I just didn't, Icouldn't speak in front of

(51:18):
people. And he said I got betterand better. And my wife and I
decided that we were going toadopt some twin twin boys,
fraternal twin boys fromKazakhstan. And the process took
a year, and they were toddlers.These these boys, four or five

(51:39):
years old, something like that.I don't know if that's a toddler
or not, but they're around thatage and and they found out about
halfway through six monthsthrough, that one of them had a
heart condition and would notsurvive more than a couple more
months, three months at themost, but it took another six
months to Get to be able tocomplete the adoption. And so

(52:03):
the member said, you know, heflew to Kazakhstan, and he
talked to the attorney, said,let's see if the judge will
approve the adoption earlier.And the attorney said, the judge
isn't going to do it. They just,they don't do it. It's a year.
Takes a year at best, you know,maybe 11 months, but it's often
1314, months. It takes a year.And he said, Well, let's, let's,

(52:23):
let's see what we can do. And sothey went to the to the judge
and and here's a guy who youknow, like, two years earlier,
couldn't stand up in front ofpeople he knew
and do a presentation,
and he stood up in front of ajudge
in a different country, in adifferent language, with the

(52:45):
translator, he stood up and hestarted, yeah, well, first of
all, he asked the attorney, canI speak to the judge? And the
attorney said, we know theattorneys only speak to the
judge. And he said, we wouldjust ask him. And so he asked
him. The judge said, Yes, fine.And so through a translator, he
talks to the judge, and he's andhe starts. He

(53:05):
literally started
with his weekly presentpresentation. It's like, This is
who I am, this is what I do.This is how I'm able to take
care of these children. And hethen did this really heartfelt
thing with the judge, where, youknow, this young boy isn't going

(53:26):
to make it. Here's, you know,you've seen the medical papers,
he's not going to make itanother three months. I have the
ability to get him heart surgeryand he can survive, and his life
is in your hands. And the judge,you know, took the gavel and
went, approved. You took thekids on the spot. Wow, wow,

(53:51):
that's powerful. It's hard ifyou didn't have that background,
if you didn't have the abilityto stand there and do that, it
may not have happened, right?Yeah,
and, you know, to me, you
know, you see all this businessthat's generated in BNI and how
people have, they've they'veraised families, they have

(54:13):
employees, they've had success.But that story, to me, is so
emotionally powerful thatsomeone who couldn't stand up in
front of people he knew just acouple years earlier could stand
up in front of a judge inanother country and and convince
a judge to do something that wasjust Never done was a testament

(54:41):
to the human spirit that takesplace in a good BNI group where
people are supportive. Becausedo you think he could have done
that if he was in a chapterwhere the members were not
supportive of him? You know, hisfirst year, he could barely
talk, but they were, they werethere to coach him and help him
and support him. And he got.Better and better and better.

(55:01):
Because he got better. He wasable to do that. I mean, it just
all adds up. It's a it's thisripple effect of givers gain.
I'm
seeing more and more. I'm seeingbusinesses get very self
focused. And I don't know ifit's the market that I'm in
right now or the climate? I'mnot sure, but I know that I

(55:24):
preach about we have to cometogether as businesses to be
able to work off of each otherand help one another not look at
each other as competition, andreally help each other grow. I
am involved in economicdevelopment in the county that
I'm in, and I talk about itthere. I say, we have to come
together. We have to be as one,especially in down economies, if
that's really what we're aboutto look at. I said this is the

(55:46):
time to come together, becauseif we don't, a lot of businesses
are going to go under.Historically, I've seen that,
and we live in very divisivetime, so correct, yeah, and get
that to happen
being pulled apart. I don't wantyou know we don't go there, but
we are divided, in a sense, andI said we have to come back
together as businesses,especially small business. I

(56:06):
mean small businesses, anyanybody with 200 or less
employees, by definition, that'sa lot of businesses in our
country. I you know my favoriteI want to give you my favorite
part, because I have a questionabout this. But what I love
about BNI, ultimately, is peoplefrom other groups can reach out
to you, and you can reach out tothem and say, we're like
brethren in a sense, and let'sopen the door and have a

(56:29):
conversation. And we bothunderstand that it's about
building a relationship. Somepeople don't, and they just use
it as a sales tool. And I'm surethat's a pet peeve of yours, but
in general, I love being able totalk to people around the world.
I have business relationships inother countries because we have
been talking, and little bylittle we became friendly, and
little by little, we becamereferral partners or vendors to

(56:52):
one another. It's a verypowerful tool, and it's
underestimated.
So people who are listening maynot understand how that happens,
because we have 11,100 plusgroups, but we have a platform
called BNI Connect, which issort of like LinkedIn, but
online with LinkedIn for but forBNI. And so only BNI members.
It's called a walled garden.Only BNI members get to

(57:13):
participate. And so you cannetwork with people anywhere in
the world who are part of BNI.We may think, well, that's so
what? Well, think about this. Ifyou, if you were going to
Nashville, if someone were goingto Nashville, and you didn't
know anyone in Nashville, and hegot on LinkedIn, and you found
people in Nashville, and todayI'm coming to Nashville, would

(57:35):
you introduce me around? They'relike, who are you? What? No, but
if you, if you reached out tosomebody in if a member reached
out to you, James, or to otherpeople in Nashville and said,
Hey, I'm from the United Kingdomand or I'm from Australia or
Malaysia, and I'm coming toNashville, can I visit your

(57:56):
chapter? Would you introduce meto some people? BNI members roll
out the red carpet. So this,this ability to connect online,
all 327,000 BNI members online,is a very powerful tool that no
one has. BNI is the largestnetworking organization in the

(58:17):
world, and it's for reasons likethis that we have been able to
to be the 600 pound gorilla inthis field. You know, I'll give
you the
short version, when I first gotto Nashville. So I'm in business
20 years, but five years ago wecame to Nashville, big f4
tornado came through here. Itwas bad. So it took me a hot
minute. I'll wait and not openmy office yet. And then right

(58:41):
after that, COVID started, andmy number one way to grow
business is speakingengagements, by the way. So it
cut my knees out from under mefor quite a bit. So I was in
several different types ofnetworking groups, and they all
have their place and all thatkind of stuff. I never felt
accepted in a new market. AndI'm new here, and I'm an Italian

(59:02):
kid from Brooklyn, so anythinganybody just thought, yeah,
probably at one point, you know.So when I got here, it was very
challenging for me, until Iwalked into a BNI room, and then
all of a sudden, I felt a littlebit like home. Yeah, you know,
this one group was a littleclick ish, which I isn't
interesting, how differentgroups of people, you know, yes,

(59:25):
yeah, that goes back to the BNII called the BNI Bible is
perfect. You got to follow theprogram.
And part of the program is, isreally being there for each
other and supporting each other,
correct? Totally agree. I Ivan,I can't tell you you have
created something that no onecan replicate, and as many have
tried, and I've, I've witnessedit on numerous occasions, and

(59:49):
it's a very powerful tool that Iknow small businesses should be
utilizing if they're not. I wantto wrap up today. Is there
anything on the horizon for BNI?Like, is there a new toy, a new
tool? Power teams is a reallybig topic. We didn't even go
there, you know, is theresomething new coming that you
can share?

(01:00:09):
Well, we are continuing todevelop BNI connect and BNI web.
I think more and more you'regoing to see the program be a
platform oriented program wherewe're, you know, doing chapters
that are hybrid kinds of groups,and the education on Business
Builders is going to continue,but the core business is, is

(01:00:31):
relationships. And your networkis a beacon of hope in a sea of
fear. We live in a crazy world,but your network that's your
beacon of hope and and in BNI,that beacon is about givers
gain. And in any good network,that's what it should be about.

(01:00:52):
And to me, it's more than aphrase. It's a way of living
one's life. It's a perspectiveto view and interact with the
world. It's an attitude, not anexpectation, and when it's
applied properly, it'll changeyour life. And when it changes
enough lives, it'll change theworld. And that's what we're
trying to do, is change the waythe world does business through
this philosophy of givers. Gainone business at a time, one

(01:01:15):
business at a time. Hey, foryour listeners, anyone that
wants to check out BNI, go tobni.com or my blog, all free
stuff. Ivan meisner.com, a lotof free information. Going back
to 2007 on my blog.
Can they get to the podcastthere as well?
Um, no, the podcast is BNIpodcast.com. BNI podcast is very

(01:01:37):
BNI centric. So for yourlisteners, you may or may not be
interested in that, unlessyou're a BNI member, then you
definitely are interested inthat. Otherwise, I'd go to Ivan
meisner.com which is moregeneral, it's not just about
BNI, it's about networking, andit's about business, and it's
about scaling a business, manyother topics,

(01:02:00):
okay, well, I would not be ashameless marketer if I didn't
plug a couple of things thatyou're doing. So one of the
things I know that's up andcoming, the BNI global
convention for 2024 is going tobe in Hawaii. Feels so bad for
you on November 13 through the16th, and if you happen
to need a speaker, do you knowhow often I get out of the hotel

(01:02:22):
at these conventions?
No, don't get to go play. No,no, not when
the convention is over. It'sit's seven days of 12 hour days,
which, look, I could be diggingditches. This is way easier.
That's right,
but I am.
That's right. I was gonnamention if you need a Keynote

(01:02:43):
or, heck, a bag carrier, I'mhappy
to open to the public. Peopleare welcome to come to the BNI
convention in Hawaii, in Oahu.Non
members can go to a convention,I think so. Yeah. Okay, that's
awesome. BNI members,definitely. And directors, of
course, we're expecting over2500 people,

(01:03:03):
okay? And that's the globalconvention. So the global
convention,
and what's great about going toa global BNI convention, is it's
like going to a United Nationsevent, where all the countries
love each other, right? It's,it's amazing. You have these
flags from all over the world,these different languages and
accents. It's, it's anincredible experience. It's a
humbling experience to me to gothere and see what this has

(01:03:27):
become. Anyway, I
interrupted you. Go ahead.
Oh, you're fine. When is thenext national convention? I
don't, I don't think I have
the next US convention. I thinkis in April, May or June of 2025
I don't know which month. Andit's in Houston, Texas. I'm in
Austin. This is my home officein Austin, Texas, so it's about
three hours from where I live.And it's, it's, you know,

(01:03:51):
sometime after April,
is that big sir? Are you a bigsir? Austin?
No, yeah, I'm by Lake, Austin.Oh, okay, God,
it's funny, Houston, my onlyexperience in Houston, I used to
do all the I produced all theMonica muffler commercials with
George Foreman. Mr. Foreman onlystayed in this in Houston, so we

(01:04:13):
had to always go to him. Andquick short story, I was on the
back of a truck. We were doingproduction, and we were shooting
all these commercials. And Iactually asked him the question
that everybody asks him, whydoes he call or hit all his
kids? George, georgetta,Georgina. And I thought I was
going to get, you know, helegally can't touch me, but you
never know. And he said, becauseit's all I have to give them.

(01:04:36):
And I said, Well, what do youmean? He said, he goes. I worked
really hard to make my name meansomething, because in that
industry, boxers get abused, andpeople steal their money and
all. He said, it was verydifficult to go it wasn't Not,
not just being the athlete I hadto be, but I had to build a
brand. And he used the term, Ididn't use it. And he said, and
that that at that time, this isa while back, he was awarded the

(01:04:59):
George. Foreman Grill, which was$135
million just for his name,
yeah, well, as I recall, and Icould be wrong, he didn't get
that up front. It ended up, itended up happening afterwards,
and it was just a little thingthat he put his name to that
turned into something huge,
correct, and but it was for him,it was powerful

(01:05:22):
stories like that, because youyou know so many sports people
that just get off the rails and
and go the wrong direction,right? He's a pastor in Houston,
and the only thing aboutHouston, you're going to be
there for three or four days.When you do it, it's, oh no,
wait. Five minutes will change.What's that? Wait five minutes
and the weather will change. Oh,yeah. Well, I
live in Austin, which isn't toodifferent from Houston. So yeah,

(01:05:45):
the weather and we have realrain here, not like California.
Austin is
a little bit like Nashville. Ifind.
Well, downtown is, yeah, becauseit's alive. It's a live music
center for Texas, and it'samazing, but I'm about 40
minutes. I live on 10 acres byLake Austin. Very quiet, really

(01:06:10):
nice. You were in Colorado at
one point. No, no, California.
I lived I grew up in California.I lived there most of my life,
and left about 12 years ago,okay, and I don't want to talk
about why I was happy to leaveCalifornia.
Sorry, look at me bring
you I'm happy to be in Texas.Texas is one dropping the mic,

(01:06:34):
and I loved California when Ilived there. I grew up there. I
moved from Pittsburgh. This truestory. I haven't said this much
on radio shows or podcasts. Imoved to South Central LA, just
right around South Central LA,in the early 60s, and I lived
there for about a year, and thatwas a real interesting

(01:06:56):
experience for me as a youngboy. Yeah, it was very eye
opening. And then we moved toAzusa, which was at least a fair
amount better than SouthCentral. I grew up in Southern
California, and very humble,humble environment.
Got it. So the last thing wouldbe to

(01:07:20):
my office, this office, whichgoes back, it goes back a little
further. There's a storage roomback there is 300 square feet,
smaller than the house I grewin,
grew up in, right? Yeah,
I interrupted you. Go ahead.
No, you're fine. It's amazing.And well, 29 books later, I'm
sure you had a few dollars tohave 300 square foot of an

(01:07:42):
office
space, a little bit. And, youknow, real estate, honestly, I
would urge people, you know, asthey start to make money by real
estate, particularly commercialproperties. I've been investing
in real estate for 45 years.And, yeah, yeah, long term
investments in real estate. It'sbeen very, very good to me.

(01:08:04):
Yeah,
I'm getting to it too late. Iwish I'd done it long. It's
never too late. It's never toolate. Well, I'm doing it. So
the book that I wanted to askyou about was the new one that
you have out, the thirdparadigm, yeah. And I read a
paragraph that your assistantsent me. It was, sounds
fascinating, but I thank you. Iread more to learn than to

(01:08:27):
enjoy. Today I just done notenough hours in the day, and
have three kids, and I own abusiness and but give me the
clip notes of what's the secretsauce of the third part of
there's a couple of things, andI'd recommend, if you read
nothing else. There's, there isa section in every chapter I'd
urge you to read, but let me,let me give you the Cliff Notes
on the book, and then I'll tellyou what sections to read. The

(01:08:51):
first paradigm is aboutcompetition, and it's the turn
of the century, from the 1900sto the 1800s to the 1900s where
it's all about productivity andcompetition. The Frederick
Taylor, the gallblast, theGants, and it was all about
productivity. The secondparadigm is about cooperation.

(01:09:11):
And the 60s theory, X, 3y,McGregor MBO Drucker, you know
about people collaborating andworking together, but by the 90s
and 2000s particularly by the2000s is about co creation. So
we went from competition tocooperation to co creation. And
co creation, the best knownexample is crowdsourcing, where

(01:09:36):
you crowdsource somethingtogether, you produce a product
or a service together. So that'sthe cliff notes, and it's also
based on a survey of 4000people. We surveyed people to
get data on what makes cocreation work. Now here's you
might find all of thatinteresting, but I would urge

(01:09:56):
you to read the story. It what?Had done is we intertwined a
story into every chapter about agentleman named Richard, and
it's a true story about anonline platform that Richard was
creating. And it started withcompetition, the story explains
why. Then it went tocooperation, the story explains

(01:10:18):
why. And then it went finally toco creation. Here's why I'd
recommend you read. If you readnothing else, James, read,
you'll see it's a differentcolor on the page and it says,
like the story continues. Readthat it we don't say this in the
book. Nowhere in the book do wesay this. We say it's a true

(01:10:40):
story, but the online platformis BNI connect, and Richard is
my middle name,
no way. It's your story. It's mystory.
We decided not to say it's mystory because it was too much
about one of the authors. Wewanted people to just know it
was a true story, so weanonymized it, but, but when I'm

(01:11:04):
doing interviews and when I'mspeaking, I say it's it's being
I connect and it's me. So if youwant to know the whole story to
the disaster that being Iconnect was at first and became
better and better and better,read that story. And here's why
this is valuable for yourlisteners, that story is a
master class in dealing withconflict. It is a master class.

(01:11:32):
If you read that book and readjust that story, you will get
techniques that will enable youto deal with conflict between
people effectively, let me, letme give you. You want one, maybe
two strategies, Heck, yeah. Allright. Here's one, listen till

(01:11:53):
they drop. That's one of thestrategies. Listen till they
drop, which means, in thecontext of this was I had a lot
of people who were really,really, really, really mad at
me, and I went in and decidedjust shut up and listen and
write everything down, and I letthem vent for two and a half

(01:12:14):
hours, two and a half hours, andI wrote stuff down on a flip
chart. It was almost like youmentioned George Foreman. It was
almost like the foreman Alifight the Rumble in the Jungle
were Oh,
with Mr. Foreman, though, yeah,
well, that wasn't good forforeman, no, but, but you know

(01:12:34):
the what did he call it? Alicalled it the rope. A dope rope.
A dope strategy. Beat beat onyou and so, and I talk about
that at length in there. Andhere's an here's another
strategy that might beinteresting when you're trying

(01:12:54):
to to co create something, youhave to let in barking dogs. You
have to let the people who arebarking some of them, not all of
them, because then it becomesreal chaos. You let in some of
the leaders who are barkingdogs, because they're going to
continue to bark, but they'regoing to do it outside, and

(01:13:15):
you're not going to know whatthey're barking about, and
you're not going to know whothey're telling what you want is
to bring them in and you want toyou want to make them part of
the process and let them barkwithin the context of what
you're trying to createtogether. And there's like 20
different strategies that I talkabout. And so if you want to

(01:13:39):
learn how to deal with conflictin an organization. Read that
section of every chapter, andyou'll walk out. It's a master
class in co creation, if
you're listening. It's calledthe third paradigm. I will have
a link along with our links thatare normally there so you can
find an easy way to get out andgrab it. I want to close today

(01:14:01):
I've been with we covered a lot,and I love some of the stories
you told, and a couple of them Iknew just from knowing you, but
a couple of them I didn't know.So thank you so much for that.
Is there something we didn'tcover regarding networking and
BNI that you would like to touchon and close us with?
Yeah, I'll close you with this,um, you know The oldest saying,
it's not what you know, it's whoyou know. I don't think it's

(01:14:23):
either. I don't think it's whatyou know or who you know. It's
how well you know each otherthat makes a difference. You can
have, I mean, I have somefantastic contacts, amazing
contacts in my telephone. Thequestion is, could I pick up the
phone and call them, and wouldthey take my call? And if I

(01:14:46):
asked them for a favor, wouldthey be willing to do me a
favor? So it's not just who youknow, it's how well you know
them that counts our mutualfriend Frank Durant. Definitely.
I just spoke to him a coupledays ago. I could pick up the
phone and call him. He'd take mycall. If I asked him for a
favor, he'd do it. That's whatnetworking is about. It's it's

(01:15:09):
not just who you know. It's howwell you know them that makes
all the difference in the world.
You just reminded me I owe him acall
he was doing well,
yeah, yeah, good. We both gonethrough some stuff that I'm
aware of, and I want toreconnect with him and get on
his back page. So thank you somuch for being on I can't tell

(01:15:31):
you how grateful I am that yousaid, Yes, it was a pleasure to
have you on the marketingperspective for listeners today,
I hope you learned something,because if you don't learn it
from the man himself, you'rejust not going to Ivan, thank
you really. From the bottom ofmy heart, I appreciate my
pleasure. I'll call you nextweek to try to build
relationship with Thank

(01:15:52):
you. Good, good being on theshow. Happy to be on the podcast
anytime.
Thank you. So you've heard ustoday talking about the
importance of networking and whyit's important in your marketing
plan? Well, if it didn't hammerhome today, it probably never
will. I hope you continue tolisten, and you've got it, and
now your eyes are open andyou're going to look at things a

(01:16:13):
little bit differently. Theconcept of givers gain is not
just a concept. It's not just aphilosophy. It's it's a living
by that life. And if you're ableto do that, it does change your
whole life, because Dr Meisnersaid it earlier, it really is a
life changing mindset. And whenI figured that out years ago, it
it really opened my eyes up verydifferently. I just want to

(01:16:35):
reiterate the importance of wordof mouth marketing and how it
needs to be in every singlemarketing strategy that you have
out there if you are strugglingright this second, know that
you're not alone. And know thatif you're doing more of the same
and expecting a differentresult, the sign of insanity,
right? So you have to do it alittle bit differently. So
either keep tuning into thisshow through marketing

(01:16:55):
perspective, I'm about to starta live show that's a weekly zoom
in our that are called smartmarketing that I did back during
COVID. I'm going to do it again.If you haven't heard about it
yet, you heard it here. Morethan likely, if you're on my
database, you've been given anoutreach and an invitation to
come and partake. If you arestruggling in your marketing
effort, please take advantage. Iam doing this for free, and I'm

(01:17:18):
putting this information outthere for you, for you to grow
your business. If you want toask questions beyond what you
learned today, for example, andyou have a networking question,
or if you have a BNI question,please reach out to us. I am
happy to put you in touch withthe right people to make sure
you're getting the right answer.If I can't answer it myself, I
stay in a marketing lane, whichis marketing perspective purely.

(01:17:42):
Remember to show the show somelove. If you like it, download
us. Make sure you follow us.Please say something nice about
it on socials if you feelmotivated to do so, I ask you,
why is it so hard to get peopleto do something nice, but it's
so easy for somebody to saysomething bad about a business
today. Think about that for asecond. I mean, I'm a PR

(01:18:04):
professional for almost 40years, and I can tell you that
we are heading in the wrongdirection. I personally think
social media caused this spiral.But we used to be a lot more
positive with one another.There's got to be a way for us
to get back to being positive,to helping one another, for
businesses to come together, towork together, to be stronger
and to be better. So thank youagain for listening to the

(01:18:26):
marketing perspective. I willprobably say this will go down
in history as my favorite show,because I got to speak to my new
friend COVID Meisner. And I hopeyou enjoyed the show as well,
and we'll see you next time onthe marketing perspective, you.