The One With Ivan Misner (Founder of BNI) - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #19

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast.

Hello, this is Joe Polish and today I'm going to have a very special interview. This is going to be a dual purpose. This is going to be a genius network interview for those of you@gieniusnetwork.com and I love marketing with me. And who's my very special guest on I Love Marketing? Would that be Dean Jackson?

That's me, Dean Jackson.

All right, Dean, it's your birthday today. It is, yeah. So I appreciate you working on your birthday to do this very special day.

And I didn't do that for very many people, but we have a very special guest today.

Yes, we do. And his name is Mr. Ivan Mizner. Let me give you some background on who Ivan is, and then I'll ask if he's out there and then we'll start asking him some questions that will help all of our listeners make more money, build their businesses and increase their network. So who is our special guest? His name is Dr. Ivan Meisner. He is the founder and chairman of BNI, the world's largest business networking organization. It was founded in 1985 and the organization now has over 5,000 chapters throughout every populated continent of the world. Last year alone, BI generated 6.5 million referrals, resulting in $2.8 billion worth of business for its members. Pretty cool. Dr. Ivan Meisner is a New York Times best selling author who has written 12 books including Networking Like a Pro. He's a monthly columnist for Entrepreneur.com and he is the senior partner for the Referral Institute, a referral training company with trainers around the world. In addition, he has taught business management and social capital courses at several universities throughout the United States. He's called the father of Modern Networking by CN and the Networking Guru by Entrepreneur magazine. Dr. Meisner is considered to be one of the world's leading experts on business networking and has been a keynote speaker for major corporations and associations throughout the world. He's been featured in the LA Times, Wall Street Journal, NY Times, and as well as numerous TV and radio shows including CNN, CNBC and the BBC in London. Dr. Meisner is on the Board of Trustees for the University of La Verne and he is also the founder of the BNI Meisner Charitable foundation and was recently named Humanitarian of the Year by a Southern California newspaper. He's married and lives with his wife Elizabeth and their three children in Claremont, California. In his spare time, he's also an amateur magician and a black belt in karate. So Ivan Nice to have you on the line with us for Genius Network. And I love marketing. Did I say everything correctly in that bio?

You got it. All right. I think you did. The CNN father of modern networking. I'm just glad they're not calling me the grandfather of modern networking.

Yeah, then it gets a little scary once you get to that title. I wonder how long take for that.

Yeah, I'm not looking forward to that one. So you're an amateur magician, huh? Yeah, the operative word being amateur. I am a member of the Magic Castle in Los Angeles, the Academy of Magical Arts, and I am a full magician member. Which you actually have to try out for. You have to audition for it. I got to tell you, I'd rather stand up in front of an audience of 2000 people and do a one hour talk than to do another 10 minute audition to professional magicians. That was scary.

Oh, yeah, no, I can imagine. Well, I guess if people don't like your magic, then you're a black belt, you can beat them up or something.

Yeah, that was my B plan. Well, cool.

Well, first off, you created bni, which a lot of my Piranha members are members of and utilize. And you literally every day there's all kinds of businesses being transacted all over the world as a result of you setting up a system for people to do face to face. Connecting, marketing, selling, etc. And so that's what we're going to talk with you about. I guess the first question before I get into asking you about the secret to being a successful networker is what got you to start this in the first place? I mean, why did you build this business?

Well, you know, I'd like to tell you, I had this vision of an international organization with groups all around the world. We now have close to 6,000 groups, almost 50 countries. But the truth is, I needed some referrals for my consulting practice. I was a management consultant and I put together some people I trusted. They trusted me and I hoped that they'd be willing to refer me. And I was willing to refer them. And we met and it was just one group. We passed referrals to each other. Someone came to me who said, you know, I can't join. Because from the very beginning we took only one person per profession and her profession was represented. And she said, I can't join. Would you help me open up a second group? And I'm like, I don't really do this, you know, I'm a business consultant. And she said, well, this is sort of consulting, you Know you're helping me with my business. I was like, okay, fine, I'll do a second one. And we opened up a second group. About 20, 24 people came to the first meeting of the second group. Two couldn't join because of the conflict. And both of them said, wow, this is great. I could get a ton of business out of this. Would you help me open up my own group? I'm like, okay, well, I can do three or four of these. And I opened up a couple more, and we had three people come who couldn't join. Two in one and one in the other. And all three of them said, hey, this is great. I could get a ton of business out of this. And it just ended up snowballing. We opened up 20 groups the first year by accident. And it was really at that point that the light bulb came on, and I realized I had struck a chord with the business community. And that chord is that we don't teach this in colleges and universities anywhere in the world. We don't teach business networking and referral marketing and emotional intelligence. We don't teach those kinds of things. People were looking for an opportunity to be able to really develop their networking skills and to find a place to do it. And that's what BNI became in a large way. Now, literally, we have almost 6,000 meetings every single week of the year all around the world. Wow.

What I really was impressed by, even when Joe was doing your introduction, that you actually measure the referrals that you generate that you knew that you had generated. I think it was 6.5 million referrals.

Yes.

And it's very interesting because most people who. Most business owners who really even get referral don't really take a measurable approach to it. It's just something that happens almost serendipitously. And here you are taking something that you measure and really track what's happening.

Yeah, I think it's important to do that. We actually, the first few years, we did not. It was right around 1992 or so that we started measuring. And that was as a result of the completion of my doctoral dissertation, which was published in 93. We started measuring. Not only we know how many referrals are passed, because we keep track of that. It's the value that is problematic in determining the value. And so we started doing that as a result of my doctoral dissertation back in the early 90s, where we could measure the value of a referral and from that, determine if we know how many referrals are passed, determine what the value of the referrals are. And as was mentioned, you know, we did about $2.8 billion worth of business for our members. Now, just so you guys know, 2.8 billion is the same as the gross domestic product for the country of Lichtenstein.

I thought I knew that. But, you know, it's a small.

You don't have to laugh. Put you on the list.

There you go.

That's right. It was like Lichtenstein and then bni. I'm looking for a bigger country next year, but I think it's pretty cool that a business organization could actually get together every week and pass as much business as a small nation in the world. It just still blows me away.

That is cool. And that's why I really like. I like really talking to and meeting and then bringing to all our listeners what we call industry transformers, which is a Dan Sullivan term, one of my good friends, founder, strategic coach. And you certainly are the top guy in the world for transforming the networking industry. And what's funny with genius network, which is my marketing term for a lot of different things that I do, But I tend to think of networking as how do you network not just like a normal networking thing, but how do you network at a genius level where you actually go out and meet the very best, most influential, most important people so that you're a genius networker. And while you're genius networking, you can actually create what I call a genius network. And so we actually create a genius network around bringing the very best minds and the very best thinkers to our listeners so that they can learn from them. And so that's, you know, hence the reason to interview you on the subject of networking. And so a couple things. I mean, how would you even define networking? And maybe how would you define marketing? There are two questions here, but I'd love to get your take on. What is networking to Ivan Meisner and what is marketing to you?

Well, networking is the opportunity to connect and share information, knowledge, resources, referrals with other people. So it's about making connections with other individuals to either enhance your business or enhance the community. There's a lot of different things increase your knowledge. So there's a lot of different ways that you can apply networking. I tend to focus mostly on networking as a way of referral development. That's my area of expertise, is helping people build their business through referrals. So I do that element of it. But there's knowledge networking, there's networking to share information. There's corporate networking in terms of sharing context and resources within an organization. But mine's mostly really the market that you're working with primarily. And that's people who are out there where the rubber meets the road and they need to generate business. Yeah, yeah.

Just entrepreneurs out there making it happen. And so as it relates to marketing, how would you define marketing?

Well, you know, I'm not really an expert in marketing. I think you're probably more the expert than I am. My expertise is in networking, so I wouldn't. I think you probably have a better definition for it than I do.

And I probably have a better definition than our pal Dean here, too, because I don't.

You know, though, I mean, you're being very modest when you say that, though, because there's certainly a lot of marketing principles that you apply to networking. And everything that I know about you, you take a very scientific approach to networking. Not just that it's something that you put yourself out there and hope that it happens. I mean, you have specific strategies that you endorse and use, and everything is measurable. So in the purest sense, you're really. You're using networking as a marketing tool.

No question about that. And there's certainly elements of traditional marketing that we teach to help people in their networking efforts, beginning with personal branding. You know, you really have to differentiate yourself from your competition in order to network effectively. And that's a marketing strategy. Building your personal brand, building your expertise, standing out from your competition in a number of ways, and how you do that and how you build that are part of your overall networking strategy. I think networking is a leg under the overall arching marketing strategy that a company should have. I think that networking should be part of a marketing plan. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's not in most cases. Most business people think that networking is a little bit. Word of mouth, is a little bit like the weather. It's fairly important, but not much you can do about it. And that's just not true. There's a lot you can do about building your business through networking and marketing your business through business networking. You need to incorporate a strategy. You need to have a strategy to.

Do that through by referral only. We focused a lot on the referral process, and one of the things that we found was that there were three different types of referrals. And most people focus on the first two, which are passive referral and reactive referrals, meaning somebody shows up and says, hey, Ivan, my friend Joe told me that you could help me sell my house, and here I am, ready to go. Or Joe calls you and says, hey, Ivan, My friend Dean is going to be selling his house. You should give him the call, which is a reactive referral, meaning you now have to, to do something. But what most people don't focus on and where the big opportunity is, is in this third type of referral called an orchestrated referral, where you go out and you orchestrate a scenario where you ask for and get a very specific type of referral. So most people look at their referral generating activities as something that they are not in control of. But we always taught people, you know, focus on orchestrating those referrals, setting up situations where the person that you are in conversation with or in communication with can refer somebody that's right in their wheelhouse.

Right.

In somebody that they have a high likelihood of coming in contact with. And I know that you endorse a lot of those strategies and approaches.

Well, absolutely. That third category is where we kind of live is in orchestrating the referrals. And there are multiple levels of a referral. A referral can start with, hey, I've got a name and number of somebody that wants you to contact them. They're expecting your call. To me, that's a low level referral. And that might be high level for some people, but that's a low level referral. When I give you a name and a phone number and I tell you this person's expecting your call, that's the lowest level of referral. The highest level of a referral is me bringing that person to your office to sign a contract because I've already told them how good you are and they're ready to buy. Yeah, and there are many, many levels in between that first and that last level. But all of which are that third category you're talking about where you're orchestrating it. And people sometimes will say to me, well, why would anyone do that for me? Well, that's an easy answer. They do that for you because you're doing that for them and they're doing that for you. It's this whole philosophy of giver's gain that we talk about in bni that if I give you business, you'll give me business. And it's actually predicated on the social capital theory of the law of reciprocity. And the law of reciprocity is a theory in social capital that basically says that the sum of the whole is greater than the individual parts, that by people who work together to help one another, they're going to be more successful. And Dr. Wayne Baker, who wrote the book Success through Social Capital, he Talks about the law of reciprocity. If it's done in a transactional way, it doesn't work. The law of reciprocity has to be relational, not transactional. I love his example, transactional. He calls it coin operated networking. That's transactional. I'm going to put the coin in. Give me the candy. I'm going to help you. Now give me something. If you do networking that way, it doesn't work. It's got to be, I'm here to help you. I'll do my best to help you and you, you do your best to help me. And if we do it together as a group, that's bni. We have this group of people. I may give you a referral, you may give someone else a referral, that person may give another person a referral, and then that third or fourth person will give me a referral. What goes around comes around. And so that's what the kind of networking that I try to teach is all about is people working together to achieve more.

Yeah, no, totally. I completely, I mean, even before I even kind of knew what to even call some of the, the ways of approaching people in getting what it is I wanted in life, I kind of figured out early on that you're not entitled to anything until you can create value for someone else first. And if it happens without that, just consider yourself lucky. But for the most part, life gives to the giver and takes from the taker. And if your whole approach with people is, oh, I just want this, I just want that, and you don't instill reciprocity, true, genuine, real reciprocity, then long term you're just going to be viewed as an annoying individual versus someone that people really like working with and really want to go and help and assist and connect and all of the things that you set up BNI to represent.

Well, you're absolutely right. You bring up a great point. I think oftentimes networking people view networking sort of as a face to face, cold calling opportunity. They meet somebody and they try to do business and that's not the way to do it. I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. About. I was speaking in Europe over the summer and There were about 500 people in the audience. And I said, how many of you are here today hoping that you might be able to sell something? Raise your hand. Like every person in the room raised their hand. I said, great, okay, because this was a networking event. So I expected everybody raise their hand. I said, all right, great. Now how Many of you are here today hoping to buy something. Raise your hand. And not one person raised their hand. Not one. And that gentleman is the networking disconnect. Everybody shows up at a networking event wanting to sell something and nobody's there wanting to buy something. And so if you're there, if you're doing networking as a face to face, cold calling opportunity, you're doing it for the wrong reason. Networking is about building relationships. Networking is more about farming than it is about hunting. It's about cultivating relationships with other people. So if you go to these events to try to make connections that you can start to build a relationship with, to help them and then they'll reciprocate, that's doing it the right way.

Yeah, that's great. Dean. I've got to just. Based on what Ivan just said, you've got to tell the story of the mouse with the cheese versus the. You know what I'm talking about. I think Ivan will like it. I think all the listeners. Yeah, we just did one of my genius network mastermind groups. Ivan, which is the highest level mastermind group in the world for direct response markers. And we had Dr. Daniel Amen in the room. He's the brain doctor. We had David Bachelor, lot of high level people. There's like 20 of some of the top people. And so Deed was explaining this whole approach, which completely is what you just said. So Deed, if you could maybe tell that story.

Yeah.

The funny thing is when you take this outward approach, you think about things from other people's perspective. And I always use the example that you realize that when you're talking about prospects, but it's anybody in this situation that they're basically, if you think about them like a mouse, like somebody who's very, doesn't like to be approached or is kind of afraid, they're imprinted with two basic thoughts. And the two basic thoughts are get cheese, avoid cats. That's the two driving motivators of any mouse. And it's the same thing with any really. We're motivated by avoiding pain and getting pleasure. And so when you really take the approach of focusing only on the cheese, whatever that cheese is for the person that you're talking to. By just being a source for good things, it's so much more attractive as soon as you start, we call it kind of showing your whiskers, you immediately tip people off that you're, that you're a cat, you know, and they immediately go into that retreat mode. And it's, it's something that happens so behind the scenes that it's not even on a conscious level. This is just the way that we, that we operate. And you clearly pointed that out. When you're saying to people that what they're hoping is that, that they're going to sell something today, they're thinking about themselves because they're hoping to get that cheese right.

And the cat analogy is a great analogy. There's one of my partners in the Referral Institute, which is a training company that I co own, her name is Don Lyons. And when she does a presentation, she talks about meeting people and she literally uses the cat analogy and she has this hysterical video of a cat pouncing. You know, she does this sort of conversation like hi, it's nice to meet you. Oh, it's great to meet you. And she's doing this like conversation where two people are meeting each other at a networking event. So tell me what you do while I do this. And then she shows this cat pouncing video where the cat just goes boom and jumps and he goes, well, I'd like to do business with you. Can we do business? You know, maybe we. And it's a great analogy and it's absolutely accurate. Yeah. By the way, I call that premature solicitation.

Premature solicitation, but you don't want to.

Say fast three times so I don't get you in trouble.

Premature solicit, I love that. That is so true. And so many people do that and they're not aware of it, or if they are, they're hopefully more aware of it. Now if there's any of those premature solicitators listening. So Ivan, what are the. I mean, it sounds kind of cliche, but what is the secret to success of necessary networking? I mean, what does one do? And I will say that knowing that we've got a limited amount of time and you've written a couple of fantastic books. Well, you've written 12 books. But there's networking like a pro. I think everyone should get a copy of it. The 29% solution. Another one of your books. I mean, people should read these because they'll enhance everything we're talking about now. But like, what are some of the secrets to success as a networker?

Well, let me answer the question in slightly more general terms than just networking because one of the books I wrote was Masters of Success. And I think that success really is the uncommon application of common knowledge. I'll repeat that, success is the uncommon application of common knowledge. Now here's how I came to that. I started asking business people People that were really members of BI to a large extent. Average business person out there selling products and services. What they thought was a key, give me a phrase, that's one of the keys to success. And the kinds of things I would hear were things like, like you can have vision, you have to have passion, you have to have good people skills, you have to be able to deal with adversity, you have to use systems. These are the kinds of things that I heard from the average business person. So when I was writing Masters of Success, I started asking people, some of the big names that were in there, like Aaron Brockovich and Buzz Aldrin contributed to the book. I'd ask people like that what their secret to success was. And I thought they said goals, vision, system, people skills, dealing with diversity, passion, the exact same list. So I thought, this is really interesting. The average business person says this, and these millionaires and really well known people give me the same list. So then at the time I was still teaching at a state university in California. So I started asking my college students what they thought the secret to success is. And you know what they said? Besides beer, what's that? They said goals, vision, system, passion, people skills. They gave me the exact same list, with one exception. They said luck. Almost always they said luck. And virtually no other groups of people that I spoke to said luck. And so my answer to them was sustained success as it relates to luck is the harder you, the harder you work, the luckier you get. And that they didn't get, but everything else is exactly the same. So here's the question that I posed in the book Masters of Success. If we all know what it takes to be successful, the average business person, the really well known person, the millionaires, the college student, then why is it that we're not all as successful as we'd like to be? And I think the answer to that is that success is the uncommon application of common knowledge. If you go to somebody who you really admire and respect and you say, what's your secret to success? You'll never hear a secret. I've asked this question for years. I've never had someone say, well, it's X. And I go, oh my God, Nobody's.

Ever told me it was that, yeah.

We know what the secret to success is. It's that uncommon application of it. Take networking. I didn't invent networking. It was around long before me. I just created a system and a mechanism to wrap around the concept. And I did it with a lot of passion. A very uncommon application to a Very common idea. And that to me is one of the keys to being successful at whatever you do, whether it's networking or how.

Much having a single minded focus has played into that too. Because you've been fairly single mindedly focused.

On that, haven't I have? Yeah, there's no question about that. And it's ironic you say that because I just did a podcast, I do podcasts for BNI and somebody asked a number of questions about my background before bni and I address that issue about that single minded focus in my podcast. And I say, you know, I may be in a room full of people, I'm not always the smartest person in the room, I'm often not the most successful, but I am the most determined person in a room that I am like a dog with a bone. And so if there's something I want, I will gnaw at that until I get where I want to get. And that single mindedness has served me well. It doesn't necessarily work for everyone. Everybody has different skill sets and mine is certainly single mindedness in many ways.

Let me ask you kind of an off the cuff question about it relates to networking, but it's more so about doing just behavior. Because single minded focus in a lot of ways is a behavior that has served you well and will probably serve anyone well. Being the creator of BI and probably having lots of people that want to access your time. How do you determine what to say yes to and what to say no to? I mean, how does Ivan Meisner actually prioritize if you want to call it that, or manage and juggle the numerous opportunities and individuals and people that come your way? Do you have any philosophies or thoughts about that that you can share?

I do. The first thing that I because I get connected, a lot of people connect with me to want to sell me stuff, to do some face to face cold calling or they want to build a relationship. And so the first thing I look at is this person trying to cold call me or they want to build a relationship and the next thing I ask is, does this fit my mission? And that's a real important question. If the connection that somebody wants to make is a connection that fits my life mission and my business mission, one or the other or both, then I need to listen to what they have to say because if it's in alignment with my organizational mission or my life mission, then I should pay attention to it because it's part of where I want to have. If the answer to that question is no, then it's an easy response. This really isn't the business I'm in. I appreciate it. I think you'll be successful and I wish you the best of luck. But it's not what I do. If it fits my mission, then it becomes a little more complicated. Do I have the time? Does it fit? What can I do? What do they want? But that's always really the overriding question, does it fit my mission? And there's many things I turn down that are great ideas because they don't fit my mission. I mean, I'll give you a really classic example is I have a lot of people say to me, ivan, BI is a great organization, but we need to learn how to sell better. We get all these referrals and we can't, you know, people don't know how to close a sale. You get a referral, you still have to close the sale or close the referral. And B, and I would be a much better organization if we taught sales techniques. And I always, I wrote a book called Giver's Gain, which is for members. And it's got our mission in there. And basically the mission says that BI is a word of mouth marketing organization that meets on a weekly basis to help increase one another's business through referrals. And I say, where does sales training fit into that mission? And they'll go, well, it doesn't. I said, well, one of the reasons why BI is as successful as it is is we've been very myopic about our mission. We know what business we're in and we stay in that business. And because of that, we have become the world's largest business networking organization. And I think if we start getting off mission, that's where you really get sidetracked, is getting off mission. And so I'd rather refer people who do sales training, marketing training, the kinds of things that you do. Joe, I'd rather refer people to you on marketing and sales and other areas than to try and do it myself. If I stay on mission, I stay successful.

I love it, I love it.

That totally makes sense. And I mean, that's one of the biggest underminers of success is when people try to go outside of their, you know, their core. And so I guess, you know, Ivan, it was kind of funny. We ran into each other at the very cold Mojave Desert for the unveiling of the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo. And so you're clearly a guy that actually really sets out to have a great personal life and really do cool stuff. How does one Properly balance their business and their personal life.

I love this question, and I don't get asked that question very much anymore. After I wrote the book Masters of Success, I was asked that question a lot. So I haven't been asked that a lot. And I really enjoy this one. So when I'm asked that question, especially in a big audience, I'll say to the audience, I'll say, okay, so I have have the secret to balance in your life. And I'll ask the audience, would you like to hear the secret? And they're all, yeah, of course. Lean in closely. Here's the secret to balance in your life. Forget about it, you'll never have it. Some people laugh. There's usually someone in the front of the audience that goes, oh, God, I thought I was really going to hear a secret. So I have good news that's sort of. I say that for a little bit of fun, but I do have good news. I think that if you're a business professional, if you own a business, it's almost impossible to have balance. Your life is way out of balance, but you can have harmony. And it's more than semantics. It is a way of life. I don't believe I live a balanced life. My life is way out of balance.

I travel, I go all over the world.

I'm gone for weeks at a time. I work long hours. But I do have harmony in my life. And that is. Harmony is where you have to spend time. Okay, well, first let's look at balance. It's like the lady justice with the scales, and people sit down and they think, well, I've got to spend X number of hours this week doing this and X number of hours doing that. I've got to spend time with the family. I've got to do this, I got to do that. If it's not all in balance, I'm not in balance. Balance. Well, if you are an entrepreneur, your life tends to be out of balance. So you can create harmony. And the ways that you create harmony, the ways I've created harmony for myself, are a few very simple techniques. First of all, I determine what are the important things in my life. And I want to make sure and spend the proper amount of focus and time on that. But it might not be all in the same week. So I might travel a lot and then take a few days off and take the kids up to the mountains. I got a lake house, you know, take the family up to the lake house for a few days. One of the core elements of harmony is three simple words. Be here. Now, three simple words, really hard to apply. Wherever you are, be there. And so that means that when you're at the office, don't be thinking about, I didn't spend enough time with my son last night. And start fretting about what you're not doing as a parent when you're at home, don't be thinking about the crap you have at the office. Be here, be present, be fully present. And if you can do that, and there's other techniques that I've used, but if you can do that, you can create a life of harmony. And I remember and you got to get creative. You got to get creative with your time management. For example, the first big book I wrote, it was my second book, but it was the first book that was distributed nationally. And I think the first book sold about 20 copies. But this one's done much better. World's best known marketing secret. It came out in the early 90s. And I wrote that book from about 11 at night till 6 or 7 in the morning. Once a week would do an all nighter. And I wrote that book. And I'll tell you the coolest thing when that book was done was when my eldest daughter, the book was printed, it came out. My eldest daughter looked at me and she said, you wrote a book? When did you write a book? She had no idea I wrote a book. Why? Because I put my wife to. I put the kids to bed, I'd put the wife to bed and then I'd start writing and I would do it once a week. Now can everybody do that? No, but what you do is you find creative ways in your life to manage your time more effectively so that you can in fact have harmony. Harmony is different than balance. And that is what I strive for.

Love it. I love it.

That's fantastic. Dean, you can jump in any point in time. I'm just going to ask Ivan about how important networking really is because obviously your whole business is really built around networking. And for me, if I think about my own life, the value and what I have is truly my relationships. There's that whole saying of time is money. And well, I understand what that means, but really I've never hit my alarm clock and had money pop out. The money in my life comes from relationships. It comes from all of my sphere of influence. It comes through what I call my genius network. So I consider networking a critical sort of thing. And I just want to get your perspective on it because the whole point of us delivering this message to our audience is we want them to be better networkers. And so I really want them to get what this means.

Yeah.

So, like, how important is networking for successful entrepreneurs?

Well, clearly I think it's important, but forget about what I think for a second. I just did a survey which is part of a book. I'll give you the title of the book in just a little while. But it was 12,000 people we surveyed from all over the world. This is a book that's been five years in the making. And I'm going to share one piece out of that book and it comes out in January of next year. But one piece I'm going to share with you. One of the questions we asked was, has networking played a role in your success? 12,000 people all over the world. Over 91% of the respondents said, yes, networking has played a role in my success. Now, 91%, when have you ever seen 91% of any group of people agree to anything? That is a gigantic number.

Right.

It's huge. Only 6% said no. And about roughly 3% didn't know. And those were probably college professors that took that.

Yeah, definitely.

Tenured college professors.

Yeah, tenured, that's right. Because they don't teach this stuff. So we don't teach this in colleges and universities. Yet 91% of 12,000 business people who took the survey said networking has played a role in their success. It's important in their business. So, yeah, I think it is very important. And I think the more we can learn techniques on how to do this effectively, the more successful we're going to be in business.

So, Dean, go ahead.

Well, you know, what you're saying is that 90 plus percent of people realize that it's an important part. But I wonder how many of those 90% actually take this orchestrated approach to actually revering it and putting some time into actually making it happen. Do you have a sense of how many business owners actually proactively take an approach to network?

Well, yeah, you know, define proactive. I think a lot of people think they're proactive and they may not be. When we asked questions about, do you have a system to track your referrals? Do you have a system to track your money? Do you have your system to follow up with people? We found that the majority of people did not, you know, close to 55, 60% of the respondents had no system whatsoever to track the business that they're getting or the people that they're meet. And so from that sense, I'd say no. From the sense of do they actively do some elements of Networking? Yes. You know, most people, most business people belong to some kind of organization like a chamber or a BNI group or a service club. They're trying to get out there, but there's still a lot of people out there that are cave dwellers. You know, these business people that are cave dwellers, they get up in the morning, they're in a large cave with a big screen tv, and they, they get out, go to this little cave with four wheels called their car, they drive to this other cave called their office. They stay there all day long, get back into their little cave at the end of the day, drive back to their large cave of the big screen tv, and they can't figure out why no one's referring them. Well, networking is a contact sport and you got to get out and get belly to belly with people. And there's still a lot of people who aren't doing that because they haven't been taught to do that. They don't know how.

I love the whole portable cave sort of analogy here with the cave on wheels. What about four? Do you consider yourself an interesting introvert or extrovert?

You had to have. Did you read my blog on this? Do you know the answer to that?

No, actually, I did not read the blog on this, I swear.

Okay, well, so I had an epiphany about a year ago, and so I've always considered myself an extrovert. And I was having. This is a true story. I put this in my blog about a year ago. I was having dinner with my wife and the kids were out at some high school thing, and one daughter was away at college and the other two were in high school and they were away. And it was just my wife and I, really nice, quiet. We're talking and we're having this conversation, and I said to her, oh, honey, you know me, I'm such an extrovert. And she looks at me and she says, not so much. And I'm like, what do you mean not so much? Of course I'm an extrovert. She said, okay, if that's what you think. Like, what do you mean, if that's.

What I think of?

I'm an extrovert. I'm a public speaker, I'm an author, I run the world's largest networking organization. I'm an extrovert. Whatever you say, honey, you know, that's what you feel. I'm like, what do you mean, if that's what I am? She then starts to go on and talk about what an introvert is because she had been Doing some, some stuff in her master's degree on, on introverts and extroverts. And she, you know, naming all these things that represent an introvert. And one really hit home with me. Introverts recharge their batteries by being alone. They don't want to go to a party, they don't want to go out. They want to go hot, go sit in a room, watch a TV show, read a book, be in their office, maybe with family, but they're not with grips. Extroverts recharge their batteries by getting out.

Right?

Introverts. Now that one really hit home with me. I couldn't argue that one because that's totally me. So I'm now mad that she's calling me an introvert. And I leave the dinner table and I go to my office at home and I kid on the Internet I find on Google some test take whether you're an introvert or extrovert. And I hit the button, you know, I hit that button and it says, congratulations, you are an introvert. Right. You are a situational extrovert.

Yeah.

That under certain situations you come across as an extrovert, particularly when you're talking about topics that you're knowledgeable about. Otherwise, left to your own devices, you're an introvert. So I had to go back into my wife and say, you're right. Go figure. I'm an introvert.

I'm an introvert too. That those people don't. Wouldn't think that, but that it's true. Did you do the Myers Briggs test? Is that what you.

I have not done the Myers Briggs. I've done discs and behavior profiles like that and the high D and hi I. But that doesn't necessarily indicate. Yeah, it doesn't necessarily.

Well, yeah, the reason I mentioned that is because I know a lot of people. One of their red flags are, well, you know, I just don't feel comfortable going out and talking to people. And, you know, I'm a public speaker also and I always tell people, you know, when I was in, you know, even growing up, I was incredibly shy. I mean, I had enormous social anxiety and fear of going out and talking to people. But then I realized early on that, you know, that's how you get checks, is you actually have to go out and interact with people. And. And if you're going to build a business, you need relationships. And so I literally have rigged my life in order to make it fun. You know, one of my whole things is elf. You know, do things that are easy, lucrative and Fun. And I really only want to do business with people that want to do business with me. I only want to align myself with people that want to align themselves with me because it's just, you know, it's just the way to make business enjoyable. And, you know, for a lot of people, people that are out there that consider themselves well, I can never go out and network. I mean, I think one of the greatest services that you've created for entrepreneurs is that you've developed a place where the meetings are held, where they're facilitated, and you've made it very easy for people to go that have a mission of building and growing their business and going out and meeting with people that have that same goal. And I think that's a huge value creation. And if someone's listening that considers themselves extraordinarily shy, they don't like going to parties. I would encourage them to visit a BNI group and really see that you've set it up. So this just works. It doesn't matter if you're an introvert or an extrovert, it just works well.

You really strike the heart of the issue, because that was my epiphany, was I created an organization that fit my personality. And the truth is I didn't. 26 years ago, 1985, I could have created any kind of group, people of I wanted. I could have done a big, big party, big mixer, get a lot of people together. But that made me uncomfortable. What made me comfortable was a small group of people who I could get to know and trust. And, and it was like, wow, you know, I created BNI because of that introverted tendency that I have. And, and, and one of the things I've learned is you can be good at networking, whether you're an introvert or an extrovert. It's a different skill set. Extroverts are great at meeting people. They can walk up to anyone and introduce themselves and start a conversation. And that's a skill, that's a benefit. The problem with extroverts is they can't shut up.

That is hysterical.

They go on and on. So a good networker has two ears in one mouth and uses them both proportionately. So an extrovert needs to learn the skill set of asking questions and being quiet. And that's difficult for the extrovert. The introvert introvert has a terrible time meeting people. That's their weakness. And so you have to develop the skill set. And there are things to do, by the way, to get out and meet people without just walking up and introducing yourself cold. So they have to learn how to do that. But they're great at the second part. They're good at listening, they're good at asking questions. So each has a strength and a weakness. And if you play on that strength and work on that weakness, whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, you can be good at networking. I've seen and I've seen both do very well using different skill sets.

Yeah, that's awesome.

That's awesome.

You write about three fundamentals in networking.

Can you talk about those? Yeah, it's absolutely the foundation of everything I teach. Without this, nothing else you do in your networking efforts work. It's called the VCP process. The VCP process. It stands for visibility, credibility, profitability. It's a chronological process. Process. You have to move from one to the next. So it starts with V. Visibility. Visibility is where people know who you are and they know what you do. They get to know who you are, they get to know what you do. Credibility is where people know who you are, they know what you do, and they know you're good at it. Now, they may know you're good at it because they've heard other people talk about your products or services. They may have used your products or services so that you have credibility with them. Profitability is where people know who you are, they know what you do, they know you're good at it, and they're willing to pass you referrals on an ongoing reciprocal basis. Now, this is a referral process, not a sales process. So I'll ask people, where are you with your clients? They generally say profitability. And my answer to them is, well, are the majority of your clients giving you referrals? If the answer is no, then you're not at profitability with your clients, because this is a referral process, not a sales process. So who are. Who's giving you referrals? That's where you're at. Profitability at where networking goes bad, where it goes wrong is where people try to jump over the VCP process. We've all met them. We talked about that. Premature solicitation. You meet someone at a networking event and they go, hi, my name's Ivan. We should be doing business. Or it'd be great if you could refer someone to me. And they're at a stage I haven't mentioned yet. It comes before visibility. It's called invisibility. If you met this guy, if you met him a week later, you wouldn't remember who they are. Sometimes they Keep coming at you and coming at you and coming at you. So they're actually at irritability with you, just plain irritating because they're doing that face to face cold calling thing. They don't understand that first you've got to be visible, then you've got to be credible, then you can get to profitability. And that takes time. It doesn't happen overnight. And that's where people, I think that's where the networking disconnect comes in, is that they're trying to sell rather than trying to build a relationship.

Yeah, you know, selling is rarely an event, it's a process. You know, I mean, there may be some situations where, you know, you're in the middle of some, you know, say a baseball or sporting event, you're a very healthy eater and you're really hungry and there's no other option other than maybe, you know, hot dogs and cotton candy and popcorn and you know, sometimes you will pop and just go for one of those sorts of things. And that might be, yeah, someone sold you something because of the circumstances. But rarely, rarely in real life does it operate that way. I really believe people love to be sold. They hate to be pressured. Part of it is selling, the whole definition of selling. One of my favorites is from my friend Dan Sullivan. It's getting people intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. And when you're with someone that has a bigger future, whatever that is, they want some result, they want fun, enjoyment, solution to a problem, whatever, as long as it's good for them to develop and nurture that sort of relationship, is hugely profitable. So like you'd mentioned, you're in the relationship business, not the transaction business. And getting people to understand and develop and grow their list of people that they're aligned with there. So I guess that will lead to another question I have for you. For someone that's just listening to us, that hasn't really thought of themselves as doing orchestrated referrals or networking, how does one start growing their list of people and relationships?

Well, as I mentioned earlier, networking is more about farming than it is about hunting. It's about cultivating relationships. And I think one of the first things that I try to teach people, people, and this is really counterintuitive, is diversity is key in building a powerful personal network. What tends to happen is people will go, okay, so who's my target market? My target market is big corporations. So I need to hang with CEOs and vice presidents of major corporations. Well, they're hiding from you. They don't want to meet you because they know you're going to try and sell to them. And so they're constantly looking to try and hang with those people and sometimes to try to meet people who hang with those people. And although there's nothing wrong with that alone, that's where people tend to try to live. And the truth is, the more diverse your network is, the more powerful it is. Diversity is key. What you want to do is surround yourself with people who are different than you, that have different backgrounds than you, that come from a different socioeconomic background as you. I mean, diversity in the normal sense. Race, religion, color, sex, but also types of professions. And what happens is a lot of people, you know, I see this certainly in networking groups like B and I, where they want just a business to business group. I don't want a chiropractor in my network. You know, they're not going to have the kind of contacts I have. I don't want to. Oh, heaven forbid. I don't want a cosmetics person in my network. And you know what's really funny is one of the largest referrals given in the United States a few years ago came from a Mary Kay consultant who was at the house of a woman doing a facial. It's a long story. To make it short, she was at a house of a woman doing a facial. And the guy walks by the husband and he's got a sheet of paper and he's, you know, bad word, bad word, bad word. As he walks by, and the lady says, honey, what's wrong? He says, oh, I got to fire this graphic designer tomorrow. They're doing a horrible job. And the Mary Kay consultant says, well, gee, I know a great graphic designer. If you. If you'd like, I'll be glad to have him contact you. Gets his card. He said, yes, please, I don't have nobody to take this project over. Gets his card, goes to the BNI meeting the next day, gives his card, says, hey, I have no idea what this guy does. I'm not sure what the referral is, but I know he's highly motivated. He's firing your competition today. Calls the guy, turns out he's a movie producer. His card didn't say that, just a plain card. He's a movie producer. The job was for a movie. It was all the marketing work, the graphic design work, work for the PR and marketing for the movie. The graphic designer did such a great job. He get the next movie as well and ended up being a substantial six figure referral that came from a Mary Kay consultant. You never know whose homes these women are in. And so the more diverse your network, the more likely. See, networks are by nature clumpy. That's the technical term. They're clumpy, they're cluster like. We tend to hang with people like ourselves. So if we're hanging with people like ourselves, guess what? Our network is all people we know. If you have a diverse network, you have people who are connectors who will connect you with different clumps with different clusters of people. So the first thing I tell people, you want to grow your list. Diversity is key. Only one thing should be consistent and that is you find quality people in many different areas. Quality is the only thing that needs to be consistent.

That's great. That's fantastic. Well, the question of who do you know versus what you know? I would love to ask you what matters more. You hear it all the time. It's not who you know, it's what you know or it's not what you know, it's who you know. I mean, what's your take on that?

I don't think it's what you know or who you know. I think it's how well you know each other that really counts. It's not just your list. I mean, you know, I've had people who, you know, they had this great contact list of all these people that's really, really nice, very impressive. But could you pick up the phone, make a telephone call? Would they answer your call? And if you ask for a favor, would they be willing to do it? That's where it really counts. That's where the rubber meets the road. It's not just who you know. I mean, clearly, clearly it's not just what you know. Knowledge alone is not enough. That contact, that social and emotional intelligence is very important. So it is who you know, but it's how well you know them.

That's the.

Can you pick up the phone and ask for a favor, ask for some help and would they do it? And that's where you're at. Profitability. You're way past visibility, you're past credibility. Profitability doesn't mean just making money. It may mean needing help with something. And when you're at profitability with people, then it's working for you. Which, by the way, is one of the things I recommend people do. Sit down, down with your database and ask yourself, where am I with this person? Am I at visibility? Or maybe I'm at Pre visibility. If I call them up, they wouldn't even recognize my name. Am I at visibility? Am I at credibility or am I at profitability? Because you communicate differently with people that you're at different levels with. You know, if I send out an announcement that I'm doing a presentation somewhere and I send it to people that I'm barely at visibility with, they call that spam. But if I send out an announcement, I mean, we're doing this interview, I'm going to put this out on my social media. I'm going to put this out at bni. These are people who follow me. These are people that I'm at least at credibility with and mostly at profitability with. So they're not going to consider that spam. They're going to go, oh, hey, cool. You know, I've been doing an interview, I'd like to hear it. But if you send that to people that are total strangers, they're going to go delete. Give me that address. I'm going to put this in my spam filter. And so it's how well you know them accounts. Absolutely.

I mean, I love. I have a friend named Richard who has this. He made this simple statement once. He's like, you know, the number one question running through people's minds is who can I trust? And, you know, I thought about that a lot. And that's like the number one question going through consumers minds, through everyone's minds, is who can I trust? In your job as, as the entrepreneur, as the marketer, as the networker, is to establish rapport so that they not only trust you, but they're comfortable with you. And, you know, like, I do a lot of stuff with foundational work. I do a lot of stuff with Make a Wish. I'm Richard Branson's largest fundraiser for Virgin Unite. And, you know, a lot of networking is critical in the causes and the fundraising in the nonprofit world. I mean, absolutely, just as much as it is in the entrepreneurial world. And I'm constantly surprised how many people come at me with, oh, can you have Richard Branson look at this? Because I know him personally. I've been to Necker island three times. I have a cell phone. I've talked to Richard on a regular basis. And people come to me constantly trying to get that contact, but they never do anything for me. It's like they just want something.

But they.

People that, you know, if I was like you just said, if I was to say, where am I at with this person? People that are visible, credible and profitable. If they called me up and said, yeah, I've got something I think would be really benefit Richard's foundation or whatever, I would really, if it made sense, I would make that connection. But so many people want connections, but they don't. They don't have the right setup in order to make it a natural sort of occurrence.

And that happens so often. My whole thing on Premature Solutions solicitation came about because of that exact kind of dialogue. Somebody came up to me and said, hey, I understand, you know, Richard Branson, would you mind. I've got this product that's really great that'll help his company and merchant services. Would you mind making an introduction? And I'm sitting there thinking, I don't even know this guy. I've never met this guy before. If I saw him a few weeks from now, I wouldn't remember who he was and what business he is. And he wants me to make a connection with somebody who I'm really at visibility with. I'm probably not even at credibility. I mean, I'm close to credibility with him. And he wants me to sell this product from a guy who I don't know to somebody who's important in a contact that I have that I haven't really built a relationship with. There's a snowball's chance in hell that I'm going to do that. That's what went through my head. That's what went through my head. Do you want to hear what I said? Yeah. Hi, my name's Ivan. I didn't catch yours.

Yeah.

And that just threw him. He's like, oh, well, you know, I'm whatever. I'm John. And it was like. That was sort of a little water in the face. It's like, I don't even know who you are. And you want me to introduce you to Richard Branson? Yeah, like, that's not going to happen.

You know, what amazes me is how many times per day throughout the world that sort of stuff happens and people are oblivious to it, which is. Yeah, that's hysterical. Now, can I ask Ivan for our I Love Mark and listeners who are used to us doing about an hour. Do you have a few more minutes? Because I'd like to ask you a few more questions.

Absolutely, my pleasure.

Wonderful. And Dean, since I tend to dominate these things, would you like to ask Ivan a question?

Well, I was going to ask how. And we can do this towards the end of the call, but I was certainly going to ask what's the best way for all of our listeners to get started with a BI group.

Well, we have BNI groups all over the world. I'd go to bni.com and look for. It says look for chapters, but what you'll get is the director, the regional director and connect with the regional director locally and ask for a chapter in your area that has an opening. Even better yet, if you know somebody who's a member, just ask them if you could go visit the chapter. You've got to see what it's all about. You've got to experience it and see that we're all about business and building relationships. So go to bni.com and you can get information on where a chapter is near you. 50 countries, every state in the United States, all over the world. Awesome, awesome.

Thank you.

Thanks for asking. Totally.

And we will say it again towards the end. Now let's talk about social media networks because obviously in the last few years, social networks, social media, what does all this mean as it relates to networking and what's your perspective on the importance of social media networks?

I love social media. A lot of people are surprised about that. They think that I'd be opposed to it because I run the world's largest face to face network. But to me it's not either or, it's both. And it's one of the ways that you build visibility. I mean some social media is great for visibility, pretty good for credibility when you have a relationship. It's also good for profitability because it's a way to stay in touch with people. So I'm all for social media. Let me tell you a story that's in networking. Like a pro. I was doing an interview in Stockholm and the newspaper, the local, well, the Stockholm newspaper, the big paper there, sent some guy out to interview me and it took an hour and a half for him to get me. And he was at 25 something kid, young man. And he spent the first, this is not a joke. He spent the first five minutes berating me for running a face to face network because he said it was the buggy whip business of the networking industry, that it was going to go away. Right? You know, because face to face, nobody's doing face to face now it's all online. So I sit there and listen to this kid talk about this and I, I said to him, okay, so why are you here? And he said what do you mean why am I here? I said, well, why are you here? He said, well, because I have to do this interview. My boss said I had to do this interview. I said, I get that you don't want to do the interview. That makes sense. But why are you here? Why did you drive here? It took you an hour and a half to get here. It's going to take you that or longer to get back. He looked at me without skipping a beat and said, oh well, because a face to face interview is always better. That's a true story. And I kind of looked at him and shrugged my shoulders and he went, oh, I get it. You know what I mean? Having a telephone conversation is better than an email and having a face to face conversation is better than either. There's something about seeing somebody talking to somebody, shaking their hands, having that conversation, that's very powerful. But it's not either or. I think it's both. And I think if you want to build a powerful personal network, you have to to get engaged in social media. And I'm walking the talk with that. Bni. One of the things that I talk about in the future of networking is the integration of face to face. I've written some articles on this. The integration of face to face networking with online networking. I think that's really important that online networks who integrate face to face are going to be more successful and face to face networks that integrate online are going to be be more successful. And BI, in the middle of this recession, has done the single largest project in the history of the company called BI Connect. And what we're doing is creating an online network exclusively for BI members so that when you join a local BI group in a small city, you immediately become part of a global network with the same philosophy of doing business. We even trademarked the phrase local business global network. The idea is that you can be a local business and have a global network in a walled garden community where you can connect with people all around the world who have a similar philosophy of doing business. So both. And I like it.

That's fantastic. And the thing with social networking and stuff, I think I love the term I heard years ago when it related to when people were visiting a website, they'd say how many hits did you get?

How many hits did you.

And I love the definition of hits is how idiots track success because it doesn't necessarily could have nothing to do having a bunch of people go and visit your thing or click your friend on Facebook could have absolutely zero relevance to converting that into a useful, profitable, valuable relationship. So it's about going deep with people and the quality of the relationship versus going very shallow. And I think what one of the mistakes that people make with social media is they can spend all day long building a Twitter list of people that don't really care about anything that they have to do with other than they click follow. So I think using it to enhance a face to face, really nurturing sort of relationship with real human beings, not electronic friends, is critical. I couldn't imagine being able to do anything that I do if I was not able to truly network with people at that sort of level. But again, like you said, it's not either or. It's using both of them. So it's utilized. So do you have.

Can I just say something about that? Because what you said there was so powerful. It really was about the shallow thing. If your network is a mile wide and an inch deep, it's not going to be very successful. You need a personal network that is both wide. And a great analogy for that is I live in Southern California and you know, every year you have these big Santa Ana winds kick up and you always see these trees knocked over after the Santa Ana winds. And if you see that on television, take a good look at the trees. They're almost always the Southern California variety of eucalyptus tree. And that tree has a root system that is very broad but doesn't go deep. And the reason they always get knocked over is that when the wood winds hit, their roots don't go deep. And so the tree goes right over. Now let's take that to today's times. The economy, when the economy's bad, when the economy is tough, if your network is broad but not deep, your business is going to go right over. You need a business that has a network that is both broad and deep. That was such an important comment that you made. And a lot of people don't understand that. They're looking for numbers and not. And numbers are important, but you also have to have deep relationships.

When you were saying that, Joe, about how online people measure hits, and it just struck me that the networking equivalent might be two people saying, how many business cards did you get at this meeting? Thinking that getting a business card is the answer.

Yeah, exactly. That's translatable into. So, yeah, it really needs be about the substance and the quality and the connection, the alignment. And so that's why I think it's, you know, and if people really are not masters at doing this, but clearly, like you had said, Ivan, 91% of people have said, you know, how important networking has been to them. I mean, everyone listening, it would seem to make sense that probably visiting a BNI meeting and becoming a member and picking up some of Ivan's books. And mastering this particular topic would pay huge notes, not only profitable dividends, but I think this extends itself way beyond just networking because you have products and services and you have a company and you want to sell. I mean, clearly do it for that reason. But beyond that, I think this will help you in all areas of your life because it just allows you to connect with human beings. And I mean, more than anything, that's what I think people want. We're more connected in the world right now than we ever have been electronically. But we're more disconnected than we've ever been in terms of face to face human socialization.

Didn't Alvin Toffler get it right like 30 years ago when he said we're becoming much more of a high tech, high touch society. The more technologically advanced we become, the more important it is to connect with people. And I think that's really. We've achieved that. We've reached that. We're technologically advanced, but we still need to have those connections.

Yeah, yeah, totally. And I mean with what you said about the current economic state, I mean, I mean it reminds me of this quote by Warren Buffett. I'm not sure exactly how it goes, but something along the lines of it's not until the tide goes back that you find out who was swimming naked and who wasn't. I like it.

That's good.

Yeah. I mean you build your network now while you're doing well because there will come a point in time when if something really happens, it takes years in some cases to develop and build great relationships. And one of the early on someone told me this in my career because I've had my marketing company since 1994. One of my very best friends is a guy named Brian Kurtz. He runs a company called Boardroom Inc. Founded by Marty Edelston. They're $100 million a year company. Publishers of Bottom Line Personal, the largest non paid for consumer newsletter in the world. Met Brian Kurtz 20 years ago. And you never think that today, you know, I was a young guy back then and I think I'm still relatively young, but for the most part I heard this saying, be nice to the people you meet on the way up. They're the same people you meet on the way down and that you're going to run into people 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now when you're in business, when you're first starting that you would never even think you're going to, to run into. And now fast forward that has come.

True so many times.

I simply run into people all the time and these relationships that I've developed and I've maintained have become so valuable. You know, not only is Brian in my 25k group, but he's, you know, he's one of the legends of direct marketing and anything I can call upon, I mean, he's just one of many, many people that I know. But it's just the impact of doing this and working on it is such a gigantic lifelong benefit that my hope for us introducing you to the genius network listeners to I love marketing is that everyone really starts to place a tremendous amount of importance and significance on not only their network, but just going out and relating to people because you want those roots. Those roots will hold, hold you up when many other people will be knocked down. And it's one of the greatest competitive advantages you can have. And I think it's just a great way to run your life. I mean, why wouldn't you, you know.

Yeah, people may terminate a relationship with a vendor, but they're really resistant to terminate a relationship with a friend.

Exactly.

And if you build those relationships, you build friendships. And they may be professional friendships, but they're still friendships and they're a little more hesitant to terminate that relationship.

Absolutely, absolutely. Before I forget, and I did ask you the question about social media. What suggestions or ideas do you have just to kind of bring some real meat to that topic is what's the ideal use and strategy for effective and efficient social media and social networking? Do you have some thoughts on that? Because we did talk about it, but I'd like to get sort of deeper perspective.

Yeah. By the way, I have a blog and I talk about this a little bit on my blog. It's businessnetworking.com, a lot of free content obviously up there. And one of the blogs I wrote on was five Common Social Media Mistakes to Avoid. And I think I'm all for social media, but I think it's really easy for you to get online to click on somebody's friend request that takes you to their page and then there's some video that you click on and. And now you're on YouTube, which takes you to something else. And some crazy thing happens to the space time continuum and two hours has gone by and you're like, oh my God, that's two hours of my life I'll never get back. What did I just do? And so you have to plan your time. You really do. You have to budget your time. You want to get on the social media on your normal off Hours. I think the. The more you can do it on off hours, the better. You don't want to do it during the middle of the day. You don't want to do it during prime selling, marketing, networking time. You want to do it while you're watching some crazy American Idol show or something. Get on and do your social media. You want to engage in the conversation. It's really important to not just post stuff, but to engage in it. People are always surprised. I had somebody wrote on my Facebook page, my public Facebook page, because I guess I put three or four things up in a row that were business oriented. And she said, if I would have known better, I would have thought this was a robot, not actually Ivan Meisner. And so I got on and I said, hi, Agnes, this is the robot speaking, and here's why we posted these things that we posted. And oh, by the way, I'm in a coffee shop in Idaho, just in case you want to know. And you got to engage in the conversation. You've got to let people know you're out there. Otherwise it just becomes more white noise that's going their way. There's at least two or three things.

That's great. That's really helpful. And I really want to reiterate what you said about time. Because you could spend two hours watching some video, the person doesn't even know you, you've had no real connection whatsoever, and you can go down a bizarre rabbit hole that could just waste an exorbitant amount of time. So when it comes to any sort of electronics, people really need to think about utilizing them, not letting them use you. My experience is most people don't use email. It uses them. Most people do not use social media. They get used by it. And I think it's really important. And more than anything, the strategic byproduct. One thing that you said about diversity is really, really important. I mean, people ask me all the time because I am pretty known to be a pretty darn good connector. I mean, most people come to me because they want access to my relationships, and I've established a pretty big network and I love hanging out with all kinds of different characters. I mean, I think it's fun to be like, you know, in the Star wars bar, where there's like all kinds of different weird creatures and all kinds of different things because of the strategic byproducts that come out of it. I mean, you'll learn and hear about things that you'll never even think about until you put yourself in that sort of environment. So One of the things I would like to encourage everyone at I Love Marketing and Genius Network to do is go to a BNI group. Even if you don't join, just go visit one and do it. Because I think you'll actually want to join and you'll see the big benefits. And I say that not because I got Ivan on the line here with me. I've had members for years in product marketing done dozens and dozens of our members have talked about how they utilize education based marketing that we teach and they go to BNI meetings and they give out consumer awareness guides and they meet with people and they help people. And so I know that just tens of thousands probably, you know, I would even probably venture to say it's probably at this point in the millions has been transacted through just my network of carpet cleaners as a result of BNI meetings and stuff. And so I know this works. And when you combine the direct response marketing, you're learning it. I love marketing with it. I just think it's going to enhance everything that you're doing. That was one of the main reasons I wanted to bring you on. Ivan, I really appreciate you sharing your message, sharing your thoughts and having been an industry transformer in the whole networking business and creating what you've done. Having said that and with enough babbling for me, Dean, anything else you'd like to ask?

See, of all of your books, what would be the best place for somebody to start? Which one would you recommend?

Well, I think the last one that I had is a great place to start. One of the first books I wrote, World's Best Known Marketing Secret is a good place to start. But Networking Like a Pro is a really current book that has some new stuff in it and it's a great primer for people. If on the other hand, you're really systems oriented and you want a plan, you want to really create a plan week by week, it would have to be the 29% solution.

I was going to recommend that.

I love that book because it's based.

On week one, do this, week two, do this. And here's something I tell people which you never hear from an author. Don't read the whole book at one sitting.

You don't need to.

It's too much, it's overwhelming. So read a couple of weeks at a time at the most. But let me tell you a book I got coming out. I mentioned that we did that survey of 12,000 people. Yeah. So I'm going to give you one more blog. It's the name of my book that's coming out. It'll be be out next year. It's called Business networking and sex. Not what you think.

Wait, say this again.

Seriously. And that's the website businessnetworkingandsex.com and it's about. This is going to be really disappointing now it's about the difference between men and women and how they network.

Oh, gotcha.

That's a great question. I will have to give him credit for being in the market. That is quite a title.

Yeah.

Business networking and sex dot com.

Yeah, go take a look at the website. We're putting up some preliminary material that will be in the book, some things that won't be in the book. And it's really all about the difference between men and women. And it's a fun book. I have two co authors and I've got a few video blogs up there that I think your listeners might enjoy watching. Keep an eye out for the book. It's going to do well.

Awesome. Well Ivan, on behalf of myself and Dean and all of our I love marketing and genius network listeners, we really appreciate the time. I would tell everyone right now, go get a copy of Networking like a Pro. In chapter 29 there's a thing called the networking scorecard which lays out very, like you said in the very beginning, uncommon application of uncommon knowledge of common knowledge. And I would recommend that people just pick up that book and use it as a roadmap. And yeah, check out bni. And thank you Ivan. And in the future we'll keep our listeners posted and maybe as we go along we'll maybe do a future interview and we really appreciate it.

Thank you gentlemen. I really appreciate the interview. It was a lot of fun. Awesome.

Thanks. And everyone at I love Marketing, give us your comments@ilove marketing.com and over and out. Dean, happy birthday. Thank you.