[EP 31] Networking Secrets for Business Growth with Ivan Misner

Foreign.

And welcome to our podcast. Today is a special day because I have the pleasure of chatting with someone who is not only a world renowned expert in networking, but also a very good friend of mine, Dr. Ivan Meisner. Now Ivan, as many of you know, is the founder of bni, which stands for Business Networking International, which is the largest business networking organization in the world with 1000, I think it was, 199 chapters. I learned today, over 314,000 members in 79 countries around the world. And Ivan can correct me, it keeps growing day by day. The New York Times best selling author, written 29 books. He's been featured in the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, as well as the BBC and the Today show on NBC. He's been called the father of modern networking by CNN and one of the top networking experts in the world by Forbes. He's considered by most to be one of the world's leading authorities on the topic. And the John C. Maxwell Organization actually named him the transformational leader of the year. And in our rapidly changing world, as you know, where we connect and build relationships, that whole area is constantly evolving because of all the AI things that are happening and so forth. And I believe understanding the power of networking is more crucial now than ever. And Ivan's insights into this are profound. And his new book called the Third Paragraph, which he co authored with our mutual friend Dawa Phillips, tackles some of the most pressing challenges we face today in the areas of collaboration and conflict resolution. Now Ivan and I have shared many great conversations over the years and today we're going to dive into how effective networking and resolving conflicts can not only improve our professional lives, but also enhance our personal connections. So whether you're dealing with a tough team dynamic, a challenging boss, or simply looking to broaden your network, Ivan has very practical and actionable advice that he can help you with. So Ivan, it's always a joy to catch up with you and I'm thrilled to share this conversation with our listeners. So welcome.

Thanks. It's, it's great to be on your podcast. I appreciate the invite.

I appreciate that too. You're being here because I know how busy you are. I just came back from I think like two weeks in Vietnam and so glad to be here. You don't look jet lag to me.

So not, not too bad. And you know, I, I stopped saying that I'm busy and I've, I've, I've tried to say that I have a very full life because everybody says they're busy. But, but I have a very full life. Sometimes it's a little more full than others.

Yeah, I can relate as you know. So anyway, let's talk about the importance of networking today as we're seeing seismic shifts in global business landscapes. And now we got digital transformations like AI. Everyone's in the zoomiverse like we are right now. Can you talk about why networking is more important than ever for professionals across all different sectors of business, which I know BNI deals with.

Yeah, listen, networking is all about building relationships. We tend to look at networking as a transactional process and one of the reasons for that is that we don't teach this in colleges and universities. We don't teach networking in colleges and universities to this day. And, and I understand why. You know, most full time tenured professors, they control the curriculum and they've never run a company. So they don't understand how important it is to network and to, they don't understand sales and closing techniques and so they don't teach networking. But yet networking is as important as ever. The key is that it's about building relationships, not about transactions. Transactions about sales. Relationships are about networking and I think that's the best way to build a business.

Talk a little more about that trend. I mean, I remember that you know his name right now, he's from Texas. He was running for president and he was a big sales guy. And he said, I'm not interested in transactions and sales, I'm interested in long term relationships. Talk about the difference between that for a minute.

Well, one of the things that's interesting is a book that, that I did a number of years ago was about networking and gender, the difference between men and women and how they network. And we found that men tended to be more transactional in the way they networked and women tended to be a little more relational in the way they networked. And we, we found that women actually spent less time networking and generated more of their business through networking than men did. And they were more relational in how they did it. So we then took a look at, we merged men and women, the data of men and women and looked at transactional versus relational. And we found that men and women who were relational in the way they networked generated more business through their networking efforts than men and women who didn't. And what happens with networking is that people oftentimes, because they're not trained to build relationships, they say, hi Jack, my name is Ivan, let's, let's do business. Or where she at? Here's three or four of My business cards. Maybe you'll give, you know, three of them to some other people. And I'm like, really? When people do that to me, it's like, I don't even. I don't even know you. I'm not going to give your business cards to other people.

Yeah, you will go back to the basics a little bit for a few minutes. I know we want to talk about your new book as well, but you talk about visibility, credibility, profitability. Can you unpack that a little bit?

Yeah. You invited me to contribute to your. Your success principles book on that, on that very topic. And it's really the foundation of what I teach, you know, people generally. Let me set it up by telling you this, this event that I went to in London where I saw people just, you know, trying to sell, sell, sell, and there were like 900 people in the audience. And I said, how many of you are here today hoping to maybe, you know, just possibly sell something? And 900 people raised their hands. I mean, the whole room's like, yeah, I want. That's why I'm here. I want to sell something. I said, how many of you are here today hoping to buy something? No one raised their hands. Not a single person. And this is what I call the networking disconnect, where people show up wanting to sell, but nobody's there to buy. So why go to a networking meeting? You go to work your way through the VCP process. Visibility, credibility, profitability. First you have to be visible. People have to know who you are and what you do. Then you establish credibility where people know who you are, they know what you do, they know you're good at it. And then, and only then, can you get the profitability where people know who you are, they know what you do, they know you're good at it, and they're willing to refer business to you on an ongoing basis. Now, you talked about how many chapters BNI had. We have 11,000, almost 200. But we generated last year because our focus is on relationships. We generated 24 billion, billion with a B. We did 15 million referrals, $24 billion worth of what we call thank you for closed business. That's the amount of business that members generated. And that's based on members reports, not ours. They put the data into our system. Now, just to put in that in perspective, this is the power of relationships. Based on United nations estimates, there are actually 100 countries in the world with a lower GDP than than what BNI generated in thank you for closed business for our members last year. That's the power of relationships and networking.

So talk a little more about building relationship. You have a wonderful story I'd love you to share about two guys that didn't want to interact with each other, didn't think they had anything in common. Then you did an exercise with them that you've sometimes done in groups that I've co led with you about common interests and how that evolved. Can you share that story?

Do you know what if it's the one I'm thinking of? I can't believe you remember that. Is that the two insurance agents.

What had to do with soccer coaching? I think something like that.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. The gains exchange. So, yeah, so one of the things that we do and that I recommend when people are doing one to one meetings with someone is to do what we call the gains exchange, and that's an acronym. Goals, accomplishments, Interests, Networks and Skills. We had these two gentlemen and I was doing this exercise where we were testing this out to see if it worked. And one of them said, we don't want to do it. And I was like, why? And they literally. He said, because it's weenie. It's. It's weenie. It's silly. I, I don't want to do it. He was an architect, he thought it was silly. And, and I'm like, okay, well do me a favor, just do it. And, and I'm going to give a review at the end. And, and you can write in the review that it was weenie, it was silly, and you didn't want to do it, and. But you did it. He said, okay, fine. So he did it with another guy, which was an attorney. And the two of them are talking and they're going through each other's goals. So one person gave their goals, then the other gave their goals, then their accomplishments. They got to interests and they found out they were both soccer coaches of their son's soccer teams. Forget about the rest of the games. Exchange. They spent the rest of the half hour just talking about soccer and coaching techniques. And they decided that they would film for each other. So one would go scout the other team and film and the other would scout. And they ended up really making a great connection. Well, that was fantastic. And they did a good review on, on the technique which we've incorporated in books. But what was amazing was these two guys had never actually referred business to each other. Never. Not because they didn't like each other. They just didn't know each other. And yet they'd been in the same group for nine months after 30 days, they had both given each other a referral. How did that happen? It happened because they built a relationship. They cared about each other and they were looking out for each other. And so soccer, the fact that they both coached a soccer team was the glue that built the relationship, that made them want to refer each other and help each other. And I see that over and over again now.

When I started asking this question, you started to smile and you said, I can't remember. You remember this story? And then you talked about two insurance agents. I want to hear what that story is about.

Well, that was, that one's definitely different. But it, it's about how sometimes it's really about coopetition, cooperation and competition. And there was two insurance agents. That one was an older guy, very, you know, he'd been in the insurance business for quite a few years. He did a lot of financial planning, big companies. And the other one was a very young, new, I say insurance, but it was really investment planning. And he was new, he'd only been in the business two or three years. But he grew up in a very affluent family and he had a lot of really affluent contacts. And so he started getting this business with these high, high net worth clients. And the older, more mature investment guy was like very frustrated that this young kid is getting these big clients. And he was talking to me about how annoyed he was. But I said, look, just talk to him. You're both with the same company. Mentor him. He's like, I don't know if I want to mentor him, but okay, I will. And so he did. He mentored him. And the funny thing is the young man was like, to tell you the truth, I don't know how to handle these big, high net worth clients. Could you and I partner up and I'll bring them in and you, you run the, the admin of it. Because I don't know how to do all the investments with it. I'm reasonably new, but I've got the great contacts. So these two people who certainly the, the older guy looked at the other one as competition. But the truth is that by working together, the older guy ended up getting way more, making way more money because he worked with somebody that could have been a competitor, but because he cooperated, it ended up being a great relationship. And it was such a fantastic story. Coopetition. That's a great example of coopetition.

If I was open, I go coopetition. She always does that when there's a new word. So I'm curious. Well, I want to share with you a story. We had two guys, we had this little mastermind group we were running and, and we're trying to recruit this new one to join it. And he was a financial planner and this other guy was already a financial planner in the group. And I know you normally don't get two people in the same industry but anyway, for us we really wanted him. We knew him from another training. They were both great guys and he thought like, you know, he's going to steal my ideas and that, that, that and I don't want to go in there and. And after about three sessions they started, they became mastermind of partners. Like every week they would talk to each other, share things together. They actually became best friends, went on vacation together. It was amazing. The fears that get in the way of just being open and supportive. And you talk about givers gain. Talk about that for a moment.

Well, givers gain is a really powerful concept that I incorporated into BNI years ago. And it's really about the concept of what goes around, comes around that if I help you, you'll help me and we'll all do better as a result of it. And but to me it's more than a phrase. It's a way of living one's life. It's a perspective to view and interact with the world. It's an attitude, not an expectation. And when it's applied properly, it'll change your life. And when it changes enough lives, it'll change the world. And that's what we're trying to do in BNI is change the way the world does business by this cooperation with other business professionals. It's an abundance mentality instead of a scarcity mentality.

Well, I love that. It's an attitude, not an expectation. You're not giving because you think you should get back, but you're giving because it becomes kind of who you are. You're coming from a more generous perspective. And then the rules of the universe seem to be that what you give out comes back and often multiplied. So that's way cool. So you got this new book, Third Paradigm addresses the topics of co creation and resolving conflicts with teams. And so let's talk about your new book. How would you like to introduce the concept of that? What's it about and what do we learn from it?

The first paradigm of business was competition. And you're talking about the transition from the 1800s to the 1900s. The management theory, the Galbraiths, Gantz, Frederick Taylor. It was all about productivity. The second paradigm was about cooperation Theory X, Theory Y with McGregor and MBO Drucker. It was all about people. And you know, today and in the 2000 and 20s, it's like obvious, but back in 1960, you're talking about people being important in business. It was, it was radical. It was crazy. And I studied under Warren Bennis at the University of Southern California and He worked with McGregor and he said they were getting bomb threats because, because it was radical thinking that people were important.

Oh my God.

And, and, and now the third paradigm is about co creation, which is collaboration on steroids. It's, it's actually producing something together. And the best example of it is crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is a great example of the third paradigm. So in, in the process of co creation, there's a lot of conflict because if you're working together with a group of people to actually create something, you get conflict. And so in the book, we have a whole series of recommendations in dealing with conflict. One of which is, is I, I called listen till they drop. And the, the concept is just shut up and listen. And that's not easy. I mean, and I, I talk about this in the book. And, and there was an example where I had to sit and listen for two hours as people complained about something. Two hours they complained. And it was like, shut the bad word, bad word up and listen. And I would write on a flip chart every complaint they had. I wallpapered the entire room. I listened until they dropped. It was a little bit like the Rumble in the Jungle with, I think it was Foreman and Ali, where Foreman just beat the heck out of Ali until, you know, he just took all the punches until boom, he came out and ended up, I think, in the eighth round with a knockout. And it was because he listened until Foreman just got tired. And then once people have, once you've listened, they're open to ideas, but they're not open until you've really let them vent. And in this particular case, and we share this in the book, Dawa and I share it in the book at the end of this two hour beating that I got. And by the way, we never say it's me. We talk about some guy named Richard. Richard's my middle name. And the online platform we talk about is BNI Connect. But we never say that because we didn't want it to be about me. We wanted it to be about the story. So I said, are you guys open to an idea? They said, yes. And I told them, okay, how about we put together a project board that we work together and we create the solution together. And I handed out buttons that said eggbakk, E G B O K eggbok. And they're like, what's this? And I said, everything's going to be okay, you guys. Everything's going to be okay. And you're going to love this. I had Fred Johnson at the conference sing a song. I know it sounds crazy, but he came in and he sang a song. Everything's going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay. And I had people who were so mad at me, Jack, they were like ready to draw on chord me in the courtyard and they're standing up singing with Fred. Everything's going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay. So that's part, you know, learning how to deal with conflict is an important part of the third paradigm. Do you want, you want two or three more techniques to use?

I love. Yeah, yeah, go ahead, please.

So one is allow barking dogs in the room. People are going to complain, they're going to be upset and you got to make sure that some of the barking dogs get in the decision making room. And that's very frustrating and very difficult. But if you don't allow the barking dogs in the room, they're going to bark outside of the room and they're going to undermine whatever you, whatever plan you have, they're going to undermine because they're going to be barking with everyone. It's better that you bring some of them in the room. Not a lot, but, but bring in one or two so that they're represented with whatever issue that they're dealing with. You gotta allow everyone to speak, everyone's gotta be able to talk. And one of the things that you have to constantly deal with is it's okay to disagree without being disagreeable. I can't tell you how many times in this particular project that I'm referring to, I had to sit down with people and say it's okay to disagree, but you got to be polite about it. You can disagree without being disagreeable. And that's what a co creative leader does, is they coach and guide people to work together rather than to fight one another. Can you imagine politics if it were like that, working together? Oh my goodness, what a strategy that would be.

So you're in a room with someone, you say it's okay to disagree, but it's not okay to be disagreeable. What's disagreeable? Do they get it? What, what behaviors do they then realize that this is not okay to do, like unpack that just a little bit, if you can.

Yeah. So when they start raising their voice, when they start, I wouldn't say yelling, but really, really, when they start raising their voice and when they, if there's any name calling or if there is any comments like you don't know what the hell you're talking about kind of thing, uh, that's, that's when on multiple occasions, I said, okay, let's take a break and, you know, get some coffee, have a drink and, you know, some water or whatever, and let's get back together in 10 minutes. And then I would pull that person aside and I'd say, your point's valid. It's totally valid. But they're not going to hear what you have to say the way you're saying it. They're just going to get defensive and confrontational. So bring it back down a little bit. Address the issue. And, you know, sometimes, particularly, you know, when you get a diverse group, you get someone from marketing who is talking to an IT person in the room and they're like, they don't know what they're. They don't know anything about marketing. Why are they here? And of course, the funny thing is the IT person is saying they don't know anything about the technology. Why are they here? Well, you both need to be there. You both need to listen to each other and have a conversation with each other. And you can disagree. Here's the key thing that we say in the book that I think is really important. Hold the vision, not the obstacles. So in this particular case, the vision was to complete this online program, this online project. Hold that vision, not the obstacles. There are always obstacles. Mutual friend of ours, Mark McCurgo wrote the book Solutions Focus. And in there he said, if all you do is focus on. On the problem, you become an expert at the problem. What you have to do is focus on the solutions. And I quote Mark in the book, you know, you have to focus on the solutions. Hold the vision, not the obstacles. Does that make sense? And, and, and so in the conversations with people, I'd keep. Let's go back to the vision. Here's the vision. How do we get there? Oh, and Crucial Conversations, the book, Crucial Conversations, there's a great technique. They call it the feasible. And how can we do what you're talking about and do what he's talking about? How do we put those together? The feasible and.

Right. I always call that a synthesis. You get two opposites.

Yeah.

And something above that that synthesizes and integrates both of them. You know, I've Been on Fox News and I've been on CNN and msnbc. And the reason is I think people should be held responsible for their actions. But I also think we need compassion in the world. And when I do both of those together and not one or the other, they both can hear me. You know, I want to share something else too. It's interesting because I agree with everything you're saying. I have an exercise I'll do with people when they get confrontational. I'll bring them up on stage and I'll say, put out your hand. And I'll push on their hand. They instantly resist me. And then I say, go ahead, push on my hand again. They push on it. I simply step back, grab their hand and redirect it the other direction. It's like I'm listening and now we're. Now you'll listen to me because I listen to you. You know, it's an aikido technique, but basically it tells people you have to be listening. And I'm sure Dawa and you. I don't even put it in the book. I didn't read the whole book yet. But the idea that the Zen Buddhist teacher guy comes in and he's. They're going to do a tea ceremony. Starts pouring the tea and eventually the tea is overpowering. And the guy says, wait, wait, wait, it's over four in there. He says, there's no more room in the cup. He says, I know. It's like your mind. There's no room in your mind for anything new. We have to empty the cup before anything new can come in. Yeah, and I think that's so true. You know, I think that.

I think that martial arts thing that you're talking about, I think it's called 10 con.

And then.

Yeah, I think that's what it's called. And the idea and the full concept is as you push, you let the person in and then you put your arm around them. And so.

Yeah.

That you really draw them into you. And. Yeah, it's a. It's a martial arts technique.

Yeah, yeah. I should tell everyone you're what, a black belt or beyond first degree back belt. Yeah, so yeah, that's so true. Like, you know, they can even turn them around and walk with them and say, oh, I hear what you're saying. I get your idea now. Well, listen to me. And you just instantly turn them, you know, it's so, so illustrative. Okay, I cut you off. You said there was more.

Oh, I got lots more. Here's, here's, here's another technique in the book. Don't go too fast to get where you want to go. And here's a great story to go with it. I have a good friend, Dr. Emory Cowan. And when he was a young man, he lived in Atlanta. He was driving down the highway and they were selling peaches on the side of the road. And he bought a big bushel of peaches. And he lived alone, but he loved peaches and he was eating them every day. But after about three or four days, there was still a lot of peaches left. And he walked downstairs from his bedroom and he could smell the peaches and they were maybe getting a little too ripe. So he went to his parents house, they had a recipe for peach wine. And he, he, he did the, you know, he got the recipe and he emulsified all the peaches and ran them through cheesecloth and put in yeast and whatnot. And he took it down to the basement and then he would check the, the, the wine in progress every two or three days. And it just wasn't going very fast. And he's like, I, I want to speed this up. We brought it all back up. He ran it through the blenders again. He put in some more yeast, emulsified, he put in some more stuff and took it back down to the basement. And he said, he went down three days later and he tasted it. He said it was the best peach vinegar he'd ever tried in his life. He said sometimes if you push things too fast, it just goes bad. And so you got to take your time and work through the issues. Don't force the issues.

Right. I'm reminded of the old thing where someone's growing carrots and every day they pull them up to see how they're doing.

Not a good idea.

Doesn't work. Doesn't work. What else?

Well, let's see. So in co creation, you absolutely have to give up control to gain engagement. And that's very difficult for the CEO of a company, for the founder of a company to give up control in order to gain engagement. But it's very powerful. And if you are willing to give up a certain amount of control. And so in this project that I was talking about, I gave up all control on what things got done first. It was completely up to the project board. The only thing I stepped in on was the budget because I can only afford what I could afford. So I gave them a budget. Otherwise I said to them, I will not veto anything you decide. It's all up to you. That's difficult for an owner to let go of. But by letting go, I gained so much engagement that the project, the same project that one year earlier they were ready to draw and quarter me in the courtyard over, got released to. To great success. It's now the. It's now the basis of our organization. When I, when I told you that, you know, we. We did 24 billion. That's because we. We know that from this platform, by the way, as of this morning, we had 326,000 members. 326,540 members. I get a daily report from the platform that was almost a disaster.

You know, it's so funny, I can remember telling the world, oh, yeah, they have 60,000 chapters and then now where you are. And literally when we were getting together to do this podcast, I had one of my staff do some research, and it was like 100, I don't know, 314. Anyway, whatever it was, it was way below what it is now. And I'm just going like, my God, it just grows so fast. But that's the nature of things. As they get bigger and you got more and more people enrolling people and inviting people and so on and so forth. Let's talk about. I know that you are the. You're the founder of this organization. You're still kind of the figurehead out there.

They call me the chief visionary officer.

Chief visionary officer. And you've got other people running a lot of the logistics now and growing everything. But as you're running all this and talk, let's talk about scaling up. You know, you started this business. As I remember, you were living out in Southern California and you started one group, and now you have all these groups all around the world. And a lot of people watching this, listening to this, are going, okay, I'm starting a business. And how do you. What if you had some, like, here's some scalability principles or ideas? Share that with you.

So I'm actually working on a book called Garage to Global. How do you take your business from your garage?

Well, that must be intuitive. See, here we go.

You are. You are. How do you take your business from your garage? Which my. My business liter. I started in my home. It was in my garage and in a spare room above my garage. And how do you turn it into a global enterprise? So there are a number of things that you want to do, and the first is you have to create systems for your business, and you have to write everything down. And when I started bni, I read the E Myth by Michael Gerber. Michael's become a good friend. And one of the things he says is write everything down as though you plan on franchising your business, even if you have no intention of franchising your business. I had no intention of franchising my business by that. That's a pretty good idea. So I wrote everything down. And a few years into it, it's like, well, why not franchise this business? And so because I had created systems and written everything down what worked and what didn't work, I was able to franchise the business. The next thing is understand that teaching people your business is a leaky bucket process. Meaning when you teach me how to do something, some of the information leaks out and when I teach somebody else, more information leaks out. And so having everything in writing helps to make sure that the leaky bucket is filled a bit so that you're not constantly making up stuff. Because people love to make stuff up. And if you only have a half a bucket of information, people start putting in their own, their own stuff, which is not generally good. You want to scale your business. Here's the secret to, to delegating. We're all taught in business school. You know the importance of delegation, but we don't learn it quite the way I, I like to describe it. You have to just, you have to delegate not only responsibility, but you have to delegate authority. You delegate responsibility and authority. Now you can't delegate 100 authority to a learner. So somebody who's learning their job delegate 50% authority. So you have, you have the authority to make decisions within this box. Anything outside that, you go to your supervisor, come to me. But then as they grow and as they learn the business, you give them more and more and more authority. And I would, when I was running the company, I don't run it the day to day operations now, but when I was running the company, I would give people up to 95% authority. The only two things I held back was if an attorney was involved, come see me, and a budget. You had a number. Now, the budget for the receptionist was different than the budget for the coo, right? Different number, but still a budget. If it's over that number, come see me. So you have to delegate responsibility and authority. And here's where people really take it wrong. They go, it'd be quicker to do it myself. Yeah, for a little while. But if you want to scale, you can't do everything yourself. Yeah, but I do it better. Yeah, but you can't do everything better. You're going to actually do it worse. So you Got to train people and then delegate responsibility and authority. And they say, well, what if they make a mistake? I said, well, don't worry about them making a mistake. They will. It's inevitable. That's part of their learning. I remember woman came to me. She had the authority to. To make a decision up to like $5,000. And she made this decision, and it went completely wrong, and we lost $5,000. And the company was a lot smaller then, and that was big. And I remember she came into my office and she said, are you going to fire me? I said, well, let's talk.

Did you.

Did you learn anything from this? And she answered the question as to what she learned. And it was clear to me that it wasn't carelessness, that it was just a bad decision that she made and it wasn't on purpose. And so she gave a good answer as to what she learned. And I said, if you were confronted with that in the future, what would you do different? And she gave a good answer to that. I said, okay, no, I'm not going to fire you. And she said, why? She said, thank you. Why are you not going to fire me? I said, because I just invested $5,000 in your training. It doesn't make sense to fire you. And. And that's the kind of attitude that you have to have if you want to scale, is that you have to give people responsibility and authority. Once they're in a position of understanding the job, you give them almost complete authority. Does that make sense?

Totally. You know, Raymond Aaron and I are writing a book about the power of creating wow experiences for your customers and your clients.

Yeah.

And we interviewed the head of culture or something like that. I forget his exact title now at the Ritz Carlton Company. And he told us all these stories. I didn't know this, but everyone at Ritz Carlton has the ability to make a financial decision in the favor of the hotel guests. For example, if you missed your flight because we didn't call you in the morning, and the room service wake you up in the morning thing didn't work, the person at a desk has the authority to actually book you a new flight, make your next stay free, you know, whatever it might be. And the reality is they all have different levels of how much they can do that with, but they all have that authority, even the people that clean the rooms. And this one guy told me this story that would create a Ritz Carlton for life customer, about how this boy had come and he had brought his little pet, like a stuffed giraffe, and he left it there. And they got to the airport and he didn't have any. He was inconsolably crying. And this guy sent someone out to find him and they text him, said, we found him, tell him no, we talked to him. And the giraffe said he just wanted two more days of vacation. And so then they took pictures of him with sunglasses on a chaise lounge at the pool, playing golf, eating dinner, getting a massage. And then they sent all those pictures with, with the stuffed animal in a leather bound, whatever, you know, to the family. And it was a brother with him. So they sent something to the brother. And these people have gone back to that same risk called now for five years in a row because they had that ability. They didn't have to go to a manager and say, can I do this? It was like, yeah, we're going to make that right for you. You know, so, yeah, that's really a big deal what you're talking about. People have the authority to make a decision.

It is a big deal. And too many companies are afraid to give people authority. And again, you don't do it overnight, you do it gradually as they, you know, learn the business. But you got to give authority.

Very good. So conflicts, I mean, you talked a little bit about what happens when people are yelling at each other and they're not listening and so forth. But any other conflict resolution techniques that help ease tensions in companies or groups that work together?

Yeah, one of them is a strategy that I call communication saturation strategy that when you are in the midst of this conflict or you're trying to co create something, you really have to over communicate communication saturation. And it's got to be very, very transparent. So on the platform that I was talking about, I literally put out a weekly budget or certainly at some point it became monthly. But a monthly budget, this is where we are in expenses. And you can look at it and people, the barking dogs would be like, well, that's not real. Well then call, call the project board, have a conversation, direct. You don't need to talk to me about it. Talk to the people who are managing the project, which is the project board. And then when they talk to a peer and the peer says, yeah, that's accurate, then the barking dog gets quiet. We literally did meetings like two or three times a week by back then it was by Telebridge line. And then webinars go, go to Medias really before Zoom became active. And we'd get everybody on, on a webinar once or twice a week and just Share all the information that we could. So it was. We just saturated people with information. You know, things are going in the right direction when complaints decrease and participation decreases. Now, if.

What does that mean, participation?

You know, people. Not as many people are showing up on the webinars. Oh, but you have a lot less complaints now. If people aren't showing up and you and the complaints are the same, then you're not giving them information that's helpful to them. But if complaints drop and you can slow down the saturation of communication, then, you know, things are smoothing over and. But we literally had one year of communication saturation where just people were constantly given the opportunity to drop in on calls and webinars and ask questions, and nothing was off limits. Whatever's on your mind is okay. And we would allow people to talk. We'd allow the barking dogs to talk. We'd allow, you know, people that are happy with things to talk. Everybody. Everybody has a say. The IT people and the marketing people. Everyone gets to talk.

That's really good. That's really good. Let's talk about. Here we are, we're post Pandemic. Everyone got on Zoom for a long time networking. Like you're talking about 900 people in London or people in the chapters at BNI. Did it change for you running this organization during the pandemic? In terms of people getting together? I mean, I imagine they weren't allowed to go out in certain countries and meet. And how has that affected. How has that affected it now? And do you have any suggestions for people that are networking online versus networking in person?

Yeah, I do. We had, obviously a lot of changes. So I'd like. It started, I think, with me at a big convention, a BNI convention, where people said, hey, you're the chief visionary officer. What do you see as the future of networking? And this was in 2017. I said, the future of Face to Face is online. And they were like, are you kidding me? No. You're the founder of this organization. And at that time, all of our groups met in person. And I'm pretty sure Jack, I heard a couple of guys over in the corner say, he's getting old now. He's not quite in touch with reality. Um, and. And I'm like, no, seriously, I think the future of Face to Face is online. And. And I realized I said it too quickly. It was just, you know, it's what I believed, but I didn't lay it up properly. So I spent the next year talking about disruption. Disruption like Kodak and Sears and Blockbuster and how they were disrupted by competitors. So I made people a little nervous about the technology because I was saying the technology, not Covid, but the technology was going to. The metaverse 3D technology, holographic imaging was going to change the way we meet. And then Covid hit. I'd like to think that I planted the seed, but it was our CEO, Graham Weimiller, who saw that Covid was going to be a really big deal. We transitioned 70 countries in three months, a country at a time. From on, from in person to online. We literally moved 9,800 groups who met in person every week to online every week. And we. We did that for almost two years, and it was really, really painful. But, you know, if you listen to some of my podcasts and you've been on my podcast, I kind of do a podcast. Like, I'm doing it here. I'm excited and I'm talking about. But my podcasts then were calmer, and I was trying to calm people down. And, you know, I would say things like, look, your network. Your network is a beacon of hope and a sea of fear. We live in a crazy world. We can get through this. We can get through it by working together. And during COVID we grew. We actually grew. We're one of the few companies in the world, I think, that have 40 years of consecutive growth as an organization, and we even grew during COVID Now, what's interesting is that everyone thought I was crazy when I said we're, you know, future. Face to face is online. Today, 68% of our organization meets in person. They've gone back to in person. 16% meets completely online. They never meet in person except for maybe mixers or parties that they'll get together. And 16% is a hybrid where they meet once a month in person and the rest of the month online. Now, back in 2019, people would have said, well, they did say I was crazy. But today, that's what we have. And I think the future is going to be more and more online 3D holographic imaging, like Star Wars. When we get there, I want to be Obi Wan Kenobi. That's what I want. Now here's something amazing.

These are not the droids you're looking for.

That's right. I want to be Obi Wan. So in December of last year, we had our first BNI meeting where the president was a holographic image at the meeting.

Wow.

It was in Dubai. And one of the members did holographic events where a speaker could come in as a hologram and they used that equipment and she showed up as a holographic image, not in person as a holographic image. She was able to see the room, she ran the entire meeting as a holographic image. And that was just last year. And so what was crazy sounding four years ago has started to happen today and I think we're going to see more and more of that.

Yeah, my nephew is actually involved in that right now. He's, I don't know, he's about 30 something and working with a number of companies like Disney and so forth to develop that kind of meeting potential. And so you'll be able to go to the movie theater and you can talk. You'll be on stages all over the world looking like you're right there. That's pretty cool.

I think it's inevitable.

Yeah, yeah, no, I think so as well. And my nephew certainly hope so because he's doing well. So let me ask you this question. And you know, you started out young, you were a professor for a while and then you got more into the business side of things. There are new entrepreneurs. We talked about scaling a business, we talked about some of the things you mentioned, like systems and you know, that kind of stuff that Michael Gerber teaches and any other. If you were mentoring someone right now that says, hey, I want to be successful, whatever it might be, a speaker, coach, trainer in this world that we're in of like helping people, et cetera, what advice would you give them?

Yeah, there's a handful of things. One is know your numbers. And as you can tell, I know my numbers. I, I, you know, I know the number of chapters that we have, I know the number of members we have, I get a daily report. And so when I tell people you got to know your numbers, you really, really need to know your numbers in order to understand where you're going. And as a, as an organization, I think one of the biggest mistakes to give you another one, I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make is chasing bright shiny objects. And I think that most successful business people understand that you have to do six things a thousand times, not a thousand things six times. And a lot of entrepreneurs do a thousand things six times. They're constantly chasing bright shiny objects. I, I talk about this subject a lot and I keep this in my desk drawer. It's like, don't chase the right shiny object. It's not going to take you where you to success, what you want to do. And by the way, it doesn't have to be six. It could Be five, it could be seven. And people say, well, what, six? Well, the key is, what business are you in? What mentors do you have? What podcasts are you listening to? You know, what experts mentors or virtual mentors do you have that tell you what things that you need to be doing, Then take those themes. Those are the five or six things that you do over and over and over again. If I have any superpower as a business person, it is that I am a dog with a bone. I am relentless with whatever it is that I'm working on. And that's how we built, built the company.

That's great.

All right, you want some more on scaling? Okay, so all kinds of people are going to come to you with great ideas. Oh, my God, I've had so many people come to me with, oh, I have got this incredible idea. It's going to change your business. It's going to make you so successful. I remember one, one idea was. It was just off the top of his head, this is great. It's going to build bni. And his idea would have cost more than the total gross revenues of the company. Let's do the math. And I showed him the math. He was like, oh, okay, nevermind. But he was ready for me to go that direction without understanding anything. So on those ideas that are pretty good, but if you don't want to chase those bright, shiny objects and you really want to stay focused on six things, what you do with people is rather than say no, because that, that, that makes them, you know, it makes them feel like you're not paying attention or you're not willing to hear what they have to say. What you do instead is you say, okay, that's an interesting idea. I like it. Let's put that in the parking lot. And what I used to do when I was running the company is I had a whiteboard in my office, and I'd open up this door, and I had this thing that said the parking lot. And I would list these ideas. I said, I'm going to put this idea here. Let's connect again. And depending on what the idea was, it was either six months or a year from now. And I put the date next to it that we would connect. I said, let's talk again in six months and see if this idea still rings true as a good idea to pursue. And I got to tell you, Jack, 90% of the time, six months later, they'd go, yeah, never mind. I thought it was a good idea at the time, but no. So you don't make them feel like you're not listening to them. You write it down, and then you connect with them. And most of the time they'll say no. And occasionally they'll say, yeah, this is still a fantastic idea. Okay, let's see if we can work that into our strategy for the following year to incorporate and test out. So the parking lot strategy is a great way of avoiding bright, shiny objects.

Whenever possible, given that you have this amazing international reach. If someone was wanting to go international with whatever they're doing, Any core, basic thoughts about that?

Yeah, you know, a lot of people want to do it online. It's really hard to make that personal connection online. You really need to go to that country, and I'd recommend that you go to that country with somebody that knows the country so that, you know, you know, the culturally, you know, the things to do and the things not to do. That's really important. Like, you know, in Japan, the maishi ritual where you hand a card and you bow and.

Yeah, exactly.

And it's always important to know what hand gestures not to do in certain countries. And you'd be shocked. But you know what? Some hand gestures that are real common in North America is like, no, no, don't. Don't do that when you're in Malaysia. I learned that the hard way. And so you got to go to the country, and if you. If you're part of a network that has an international reach, connect with those people that you have a good connection with already and ask them if they would, you know, walk you around, introduce you to some people there while you're there. That personal contact is still the most important thing. That's the way I opened up in 70. All but two countries of BNI opened through referral where somebody knew somebody. Only two countries opened where no one knew somebody.

Oh, cool. No, I find, like, where we have the biggest international presence. Dubai, India, Malaysia, Japan. All because I knew somebody there or they reached out to me and I went there, ran seminars, met with them, maybe wrote a book with them, et cetera. And then that relationship became the conduit for everything else we did. That's way cool.

You want one more?

Sure.

Okay, here we go. Peter Drucker. Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast. Culture is the secret sauce of any successful organization. If you really want to build a successful organization, you have to build a healthy organizational culture, and that's got to be based on the core values of the company. So you've already named one of our core values, Giver's Gain. But we have Six other core values. And we constantly reinforce those core values within the organization. We have education coordinators of every chapter, and they talk about the core values. I've done videos on the core values. And you constantly reinforce the core values like education and traditions and recognition. All of these things are part of the core values. And when you. When you have an organization that lives the core values, you create an amazing culture. And culture beats strategy every day of the week. Strategy is important. I started with Strat. I started with systems and talking to you about scaling. But the secret sauce really is culture. That's the key.

You know, it's interesting. I go back to my interview with the Ritz Carlton people, and one of the things they do, they have a certain set of values. I don't remember all of them right now, but every morning they have these, what they call standup meetings. They don't last more than five or 10 minutes. They said that we stand up because as soon as you sit down, it's going to take a whole lot more time. And all the people in the front meet together, the room cleaners meet together, and the people in the kitchen, and they'll have one value that day. And they often say, how are you going to make sure this value is manifested through your behavior today? What are you going to do to make sure we live this value? And they cycle through those over and over and over. And that's like. I think what you're saying is so critical.

It is. And we have staff meetings, and at our staff meetings, we have usually one person pick. You know, somebody will be called on and say, you know, what's one of the questions values that you really like about the organization and why does it resonate with you? And so we have people talk about that. We also do with all new employees. Boot camp. Employee boot camp, which is like four weeks long, and they can start their job, but they're spending a lot of time going to B and I meetings, learning what B and I is, talking to different staff, talking to people globally. And boot camp Final is meeting with me often by zoom, to talk about the culture of the organization. And because the culture is so incredibly important. As a matter of fact, I did a boot camp this morning with three new employees, two from India and one from Charlotte.

I love it. I love it. You know, there are people who read, and then they do what they read. There are people who learn, and they actually put it into practice. I would have to say you're probably in a top 1/10 of 1% of people in the world who live that. So I love it. Thank you so much.

I love what I do. And I'll leave you with one more because I know we're almost out of time.

Yeah.

In terms of scaling a business, you got to work in your flame, not in your wax. And if you want to really scale a business, work in your flame. When you're working in your flame, you're on fire. You're excited, you're passionate about what you do. When you're working in your wax, it takes all your energy away. People can hear that in your voice. They can see it in the way you behave. And so find your flame and work in your flame and hire people to do your wax. I remember the first person I hired in the wax was a bookkeeper. And I remember the bookkeeper one day came to me and said, you know the book. First month she was with me, the books weren't balanced. They were off by five pennies. Five cents. She said, I. It took me two hours, but I found the five cents and I said, well done. Good for you. And I told a friend of mine that. And he said, did you reprimand her for 2 hours to find 5 cents? I said, no, I congratulate her. He said, why would you do that? I said, because two reasons. One, if it were $50, she wouldn't go home at night. She'd stay there to find the $50. Me. The second reason, if it were 50 bucks, I'd be like, eh, it's close enough because it's not my flame.

You know, it's so funny. I tell a similar story where this woman. I'm not one of those guys that bounces my checkbook to within a dollar. The bank wins by $5. I don't want to spend time looking for it. But the person that works for me, I mean, I think she has orgasms when she finds those things. You know, literally, we talk about it being your happy place. You know, what is it? Where's your passion? And when you're in your passion, then your genius comes out. We all have different geniuses, so that's great. Good for you. One thing I love about you too is you always have these great phrases working. Your flame and not your wax. All these different things makes it easy to remember. So thanks for that. So as we end up. As we end up this, which I'm reluctant to do, but we have to tell people how they can find out more about your books, about BNI, about you, give them some contact info.

Well, thanks, BNI. You can find information about bni.com and that'll take you to all the different countries that we operate in. I also have a blog, Ivan Meisner.com I've been blogging since 2007 twice a week. There's tons of free content up there. And my books, you can get all my books, pretty much all my books on Amazon and at bookstores.

Good. That are great books. And we'll put all that in the show notes as well. So anyway, Ivan, this has been a, a 10 plus experience on a scale of 1 to 10. So thank you very much for joining us today and all of you listening. Thanks for joining us as well. And we'll see you in the future. And Ivan, I'll see you in a week. We're going to a conference together. So looking forward to that.

Look forward to it. Thanks.

All right, everybody. Yeah, take care of. Bye.