Master Effective Business Networking Strategies: A Masterclass with Dr. Ivan Misner

 

The Origin of BNI: Solving the Problem of Mercenary Networking

Anagha: Welcome everyone. Dr. Ivan Misner is the founder and chief visionary officer of BNI, the world's largest business networking organization, which he founded in 1985. Today BNI spans more than 11,800 chapters across 77 countries and has generated over $26 billion in business for its members last year just through referrals.

Ivan is also called the father of modern networking, and Dr. Misner is a New York Times best-selling author of 32 books, including the book Networking is a Marathon, not a Sprint. And he's the recipient of the Maxwell Leadership Award. And beyond business, he's a philanthropist, world traveler, black belt in karate, and also a magician. So I feel very privileged. Amateur magician, all right.

Dr. Ivan Misner: A amateur, amateur magician. Amateur, yeah.

Anagha: I feel very privileged to have learned so many principles of business from Ivan. Dr. Misner, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Ivan Misner: Thank you. Thank you. And please call me Ivan.

Anagha: So Ivan, can you please take us back to 1985, all the way back to 1985, and you had this one idea, and what problem were you trying to solve when you created Business Networks International?

Dr. Ivan Misner: Yeah, I started BNI because there was no platform that I liked that was focused on, you know, helping people get referrals in a structured way. Sort of the idea began in 1984 when I went to a lot of networking organizations that were really mercenary. Everyone was trying to sell to me. And I would leave those meetings feeling like I'd been slimed.

You know, people were just sell, sell, sell. And I had to go and get a shower. And then I went to these other groups that were totally social, as happy hour and hors d'oeuvres, and nobody was doing business. What I wanted was an organization that was business oriented but not transactional, and was relational but not totally social.

And the glue that would hold it together is this philosophy of Givers Gain. So I ran it by some friends in December of 84, and we agreed to do it in January eighth 1985. We started one group, and I'd like to tell you I had this vision of an international organization, but I just wanted to help my friends get referrals and I wanted them to help me get referrals for my consulting practice.

And it just took off. I mean I struck a chord in the business community that I hadn't anticipated, and people kept asking me to help them open up a group for them and another group and another group. And I think the reason for it is that we don't teach this in colleges and universities anywhere in the world. We don't teach networking and referral marketing. None of that.

Culture Over Strategy: The Power of Core Values

Anagha: Right. That is so breakthrough for those times in 1985. And we didn't have internet and we didn't have AI. So it must be through papers and hard copies that you were broadcasting about it, right? Or was it on radio or TV?

Dr. Ivan Misner: Well, yeah, we didn't do too much radio until I started writing books. What I discovered, I hoped this would be and it was. You know, when I went to the media, getting on the radio wasn't easy back then. Now with podcasts, you get a lot of media coverage. I do about 150 interviews a year.

But back then it was hard to get it because if I didn't have a book, you know, if I went to them and said, Hey, you know would you talk about this networking thing that I've done? They'd say, take an ad out. We're not going to talk about BNI. But I was hoping when I started writing books that the media would interview me about the content, which is what I wanted. I wanted to get the content out.

Along the way, they'd ask me something about BNI. What I discovered is the media will interview any idiot with a book, and I have 32, so I get lots and lots of interviews. And but that happened after I really started writing books in the nineties, early nineties.

Anagha: And when did you start calling it Business Networks International? So when did it go global? What was the pivotal moment for you?

Dr. Ivan Misner: Yeah, it was in the late 80s that we changed the name to BNI. The trademark name is BNI, because the original name was The Network, and that was not trademarkable. You couldn't trademark that, it was too generic.

So I had to come up with another name. And at that time I couldn't get Business Network International as a trademark. For whatever reasons. So we just went with the initials BNI. And we do have the trademark on both now, but we go by BNI.

Building Global Consistency through Tradition and Innovation

Anagha: Wow, fabulous. You have the trademark now. So there was something I have learned from you, which is very, very valuable. I learned from you that before strategy for any business, for any founder, values come first. Can you please tell more about that? Can you expand on that or why values come first?

Dr. Ivan Misner: Yeah, well, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Culture is the secret sauce to a successful organization. It is the healthy organizational culture that is the DNA of the company. Now, what creates culture are core values. And so an organization has to get really good with their core values.

Now, if someone's watching or listening and they're wondering, okay, well, I need to start thinking about my core values. Take a look what your organizational traditions are. The traditions that your organization is applying that are effective and that are positive, those are what can become your core values.

And then your core values create your culture. Now, as the founder of an organization or the executive of an organization, you have to be the culture champion, which means you need to be talking about core values regularly if you want to get people to really implement the core values of the organization.

One of the things that I just love about BNI is that our principal core value is Givers Gain. That if you're going to join a network, you have to come on in understanding that you have to give first. You have to help other people and build a relationship, and then they'll help you in return.

Now, what I love about it is you can go anywhere in the world and walk into a BNI chapter, any of the 11,800 chapters that we have, and you say, what's the principal core value of this organization in a couple words? And I am telling you, 99.9% of the chapters will say Givers Gain, or whatever the translated version of that is in all the different languages. It has become part of the DNA of the organization.

Anagha: So you truly are a magician. I mean it's hard to get that culture all across so many chapters across the world. What is your magic trick behind it? What is your secret that it has the same culture across any country you go to in spite of its local culture? How have you maintained this value?

Dr. Ivan Misner: Well, let's talk about the local culture for a second. There are many different cultures, and obviously with us being in more than 75 countries, we're in countries that are significantly different culturally. But what we forget is that there is a culture of entrepreneurism.

That entrepreneurs in every entrepreneurial nation want to do things more effectively or more efficiently. And if you can teach these entrepreneurs, these business people how to do something more effectively and more efficiently within their cultural context, we're not asking them to change their culture.

But what we have done is put an overlay, a system on top of the existing culture. And that overlay or that system helps people generate referrals. I mean, you said it, the latest number for the last 12 months is 17 million referrals, and I think it's 27 billion with a B, US dollars, in closed business.

Now, that's what members report. That's self-reported, how much money they made. Now, here's the amazing thing. I just love this. If you take a look at United Nations estimates of GDP, gross domestic product, there are actually a hundred countries in the world with a lower GDP than what BNI generated for its members in the preceding 12 months. That is just to me, that's just humbling what BNI has become. We are impacting communities all around the world.

Managing Performance vs. Living the Values

Anagha: Have there been any other organizations that have modeled after you and trying to emulate the same culture and grow?

Dr. Ivan Misner: Sure, absolutely. Every business has competitors. You can replicate a system, but replicating core values are hard. Implementing core values and then doing it at scale, that's what becomes really difficult.

And we've been successful at doing it at scale because we've done such an impressive job really implementing the core values. Now, a lot of competitive organizations, and I love these organizations—one in particular was here in Texas years ago. And they put it on their website: "We're BNI without the rules."

My local director was just furious, "We need to have lawyers take that down." And I'm like, no, no, you got to keep that up. And she said, "No, I've lost five members to that organization." And I said, okay, all right. What five members?

We have a system called traffic lights that tells you how strong a member you are, how active, how engaged you are. And if you're in the green, man, you're one of the top members. Yellow, you're good. Red, you need some more. Gray, you're a problem member. You're what we call a minnow, a member in name only.

All five were in the gray. And I said to her, they're doing you a favor. They're taking away your bad members. You can replace them with good members because we only take one person per profession or professional classification.

So yeah, there are competitors and they tend to try to replicate the system, but you can't replicate the culture. We do have rules, and we apply the rules, but we say apply the rules more like Mandela than Attila. In other words, it's tough love.

When you got a member that's not engaged, sit down with them and ask, how can we help you? How can we help you bring more referrals or bring more visitors into the group? Hockey without rules would be boxing on ice. You gotta have rules.

And a lot of business people don't get that. And so they want to do what's easier, but what's easier is rarely best.

Anagha: Thank you for sharing that. That's profound. And I want to ask you a little bit more digging here into how do we bring in values into our organization? So to the founders and leaders listening to this, let's say somebody has a very large organization like yours across the globe, and on the walls the values are written there.

How does it become a fabric of the company? What is the journey and what should these founders do for that?

Dr. Ivan Misner: Yeah, well, it goes back to being a culture champion. The executives have to be a culture champion. And there's a lot of ways that you can do that. Starting with in our organization, every employee goes through what we call employee boot camp.

Boot camp is usually two weeks long, could be longer for some positions. They don't start their job full-time until they complete boot camp. And one element of the boot camp is learning the core values. To be able to repeat back the core values.

One of the other aspects of boot camp is their last final is to have an hour with me where they just ask questions about the core values, about the history. That's a chance for me to be the culture champion. Then you do other things like the previous CEO—I need to find out if Mary, our current CEO, does this. I think it's brilliant.

Previous CEO, Graham, every staff meeting he started, he would pick an employee and say, "What's one of your favorite core values in BNI and why?" So people knew when they came in, he was gonna pick somebody and he's gonna say, "What's one of your favorite..." and those core values were not on the wall.

So they had to know what the core values were and then talk about it, which I think is brilliant. On top of that, every single member is required to go through member success program training. And guess what? In member success program training, we talk about the core values of BNI.

We have a program called BNI Academy. For everybody who's listening to this, I'm giving you BNI examples, but there's no reason why you can't do these same things. You as an executive can pick somebody in a staff meeting to talk about the core values. You can do a boot camp where they have to go through the core values.

And then on top of that, I've done videos on all seven of BNI's core values. And actually there are eight videos. One is "Why are core values important?" Culture eats strategy for breakfast. So it's the big picture. And then I do seven additional videos that all the members worldwide can see.

I think we have 356,000 members right now. They all can see these videos. And they're short, three, four, five minutes. So the answer to your question is touch points, communication. Don't—it's not a one time, it's not a program, it's an ongoing process. And if it's an ongoing process, you can inculcate it into the culture of the organization.

Anagha: And what happens if there is an employee who is a high performer, but they're not exuding these values? You've already talked to them or noticed them a couple of times and they're not becoming a fabric of the company, but bringing a lot of revenue to the company.

Dr. Ivan Misner: So, I've had people who were good at what they did, but they didn't live the core values of the organization. And we would sit down and talk. And if that behavior didn't change, I let them go. The problem is it's not just productivity, it's behavior.

It is the attitude that you bring to the table. It's the environment that you create around you. And one person I'm thinking of in particular was very productive, but he created chaos in a large department because he was difficult to get along with and he didn't practice the core values.

I had lunch with Harvey McKay, who wrote the book Swim with the Sharks Without Getting Eaten Alive, years ago and he said something very profound to me. He said, "I have lost more sleep over the people I've kept than the people I've let go during my career."

He said, "I don't like letting go of people, but I've lost more sleep over the people I've kept because they kept creating chaos within the organization." And so you throw them a lifeline, you try, you ask them how you can help them. And if they don't turn around, cut them loose.

And let me put this to your audience. I bet you your entire audience, and I bet you've experienced this, where you've taken on a client who you know they're gonna be a good client, you're gonna make good money. And then, a year later, you'd be like, "Why did I take on this client?"

They're nothing but trouble. They're good money, but they're nothing but trouble. And then you end up cutting loose your own client. Or you keep dealing with the trouble, which I don't recommend. And so we all know this to be true, but it's hard to turn down the money sometimes or the productivity.

Anagha: I have tried to remember that always while working with a client because when you're a founder and you're having new business, new clients, you're not so mindful about their values. While hiring employees, I've been mindful about this guidance from you about values, always. But with clients, it's so hard when you're a founder, you're going, "Wow, this is big business," and you lose sight of, well, they don't really drive with my values.

Dr. Ivan Misner: Yeah, and they don't have to be the same values. They just can't be incongruent, right? They don't have to have the same values that you have, but they have to be congruent with your organizational values. That's important. And when they're not, that's when it creates chaos.

Anagha: So can you expand on that please, like give more examples of what do you mean by congruent and incongruent values?

Dr. Ivan Misner: Yeah, so I talk about this in a book I wrote called Who's in Your Room? And it's about the people that you surround yourself with. And I use an example—now I'm not a musician, but I've seen this happen. I've seen it with my own eyes, I've heard it with my own ears.

Two pianos sitting side by side. Two people sitting at each piano, one person at each piano. One person hits the middle C key of piano number one, and the second person on piano number two just presses the sustain pedal, doesn't hit a key. And the second piano hums.

It vibrates, even though he didn't hit a key. That's resonance. And you see that with people who work well together. There's resonance and not this dissonance or incongruence. And you want to look for resonance people. That doesn't mean that you always agree. You just can disagree without being disagreeable. And that's the strategy that I try to employ within my organization: to disagree without being disagreeable.

Embracing Technology: Why AI Won't Replace Connection

Anagha: That totally makes sense. So now when AI is coming in and every all the skills are looking the same and maybe even the values, on the top might look the same because AI might be throwing words out there. How are people going to really adhere to this particular aspect of holding on to their values when AI is changing everything so rapidly?

Dr. Ivan Misner: Well, AI doesn't have to change your values. Givers Gain doesn't change because of AI. AI doesn't change lifelong learning, it doesn't change traditions plus innovation. As a matter of fact, that's one of our core values, traditions plus innovation. AI fits traditions plus innovation.

It doesn't change accountability, it doesn't change recognition. These are our core values. So AI doesn't have to change your core values. Your core values should be applied within the context of AI. Now let's talk about AI. Talking about AI right now is a little bit like 1995, talking about what the internet's gonna be like.

It was the wild west. I mean, people really didn't, they had this internet and you could email people, but then they started doing websites by ninety-five or so. And we had no idea. Look at us. We're talking to each other from completely different cities, but possibly different countries.

I talk to people from all over the world face to face. Yeah, it's two dimensional, but we didn't really predict that with the internet because it was dial up back then. It was really, really slow. So what I tell people, business people, is embrace the technology because if you do not embrace the technology you will be disrupted.

Absolutely AI will disrupt any business that doesn't embrace it effectively. Now people think BNI is an in-person networking organization although when COVID hit we went to online, but we've always embraced technology. You can't have a three-letter domain BNI.com if you didn't embrace the internet early.

And so I don't want my company, and the viewers and listeners, you shouldn't want your company to be disrupted by new technologies. And it happens to so many. My favorite example is Kodak. Kodak invented the digital camera. Kodak had the patent on the digital camera.

And their executives decided that they didn't want to pursue digital cameras. So they licensed it out because they didn't want to take away business from their film processing. There was even a vice president who wrote a memo that said, "Yeah, let's license the digital cameras out. Besides, who's ever going to look at photographs on a computer?"

That was in his memo. Talk about disruption, right? Now think about this. Kodak could have been the iPhone. Apple did computers. Why would they go to phones with cameras? Kodak was closer to that industry. What if we did phones with cameras? Let's use our digital patent to do that. Kodak could have been Apple, but instead they said, "No, we don't want this technology to disrupt us."

So that's my point. If you're gonna say AI, "I don't wanna embrace AI," you're gonna get disrupted. You're gonna either embrace it or be out of business. That's my opinion.

Anagha: That's great. That's a great tip for everyone, especially the Kodak example. The bend in the road, you have to be aware about the bend in the road and try to move along with it. Yes, that is very profound. And I'm taking it very seriously and trying to observe the patterns and what other businesses are doing as well. So looks like values will in fact differentiate companies rather than making them look the same.

Dr. Ivan Misner: Yeah, I think if you have good core values that are being effectively implemented, AI shouldn't impact your core values. Not really.

The 24-7-30 Rule: A Masterclass in Following Up

Anagha: Now I'm gonna switch gears a little bit and ask you about networking. I've learned from you firsthand about the rule 24-7-30, and I will confess that I really don't always get to it because sometimes life just gets busy. But can you please talk about it so our viewers and audiences can also use the rule about networking?

Dr. Ivan Misner: Yeah, well, I could spend the whole day talking about the techniques to network. But let me start with before I hit the 24-7-30, which is the follow up. How do you follow up when you meet people? Let me talk about what I think people do wrong with networking.

They use networking as a face to face cold calling opportunity. They say, "Hi, my name's so and so, let's do business." And they try to jump right into direct selling. They use it as direct selling as opposed to relationship building. Networking is more about farming than it is about hunting if it's done right.

So a lot of people ask, "Okay, so I meet people at a networking event. How do I follow up?" And I have a simple, simple process. It's called 24-7-30. Within 24 hours of meeting somebody, reach out to them and, you know, drop them an email, write a note or a card and send it to them.

And say, "Hey, it was really nice meeting you at the event last night. I enjoyed our conversation on such and such." And that's why I recommend that you take a little notepad and write comments about the people you meet. Or in—this doesn't work in all cultures, you may be aware of this. In North America, people don't care if you write on their business card.

In Asian cultures, don't do that. Don't even ask if it's okay. It's inappropriate to write on a card in many Asian countries. So take a notepad with you. Write something down that you can state when you reach out to them within 24 hours. It was nice talking to you about XYZ.

Then within seven days, connect with them on social media. Now, one of the things you want to ask when you're talking to them, when you meet them, is "What's your favorite social media platform?" So for me, it's Facebook, LinkedIn. I've got almost I'm getting close to 600,000 followers on Facebook.

So that's where I have most people following me. And so find out where their favorite place is and then connect with them there, even if it's not your favorite place. And here's why I learned that's important. When my kids were teenagers, my oldest is 40, my youngest is 33, but when they were teenagers, my oldest, I would call her and she wouldn't answer.

But if I texted her, she'd respond immediately. I remember sitting down at dinner with her once and saying, "You know, honey, this is a telephone. You can hear here and you can speak here and you can actually talk." It's like, "Whatever, Dad." I so I just learned that if I wanted to talk to her, I had to text her.

My next child, I would call nothing. I would text, nothing. I spoke to my wife and I said, "Dorian's not responding." And she said, "You have to connect with them on WhatsApp." Now, Dorian's 35. WhatsApp was new. So this was 15, 20 years ago. And I said, "What's WhatsApp? I don't even know what that is."

And so my wife had to download WhatsApp and I tested it. I called, I texted, nothing. I WhatsApped, Dorian, boom, responded. Go where they go. Last one was my son. He didn't like talking on the phone, he didn't text, he didn't like WhatsApp, but he was a gamer. And he was on this online platform called Steam.

And so I got onto Steam and I bought a game because there was an instant messaging feature on Steam. So I could instant message my son and he'd respond immediately. "Yeah, what Dad? What do you want?" He'd respond immediately. Now I'm telling you this story about my kids because if I wanted to communicate with my children, it was important that I go where they were.

It's the same in your follow-up. You want to go where they are, not where you are. And so find that's why you want to find out what their favorite social media platform is. And then the last, and by the way, on both, don't sell to them. Don't sell to them. It's about building a relationship.

The last is within 30 days, reach out to them and say, "Hey, I'd love to do a one-to-one with you. Ideally, in person, a cup of coffee, glass of wine, whatever. Get together and have a one-to-one. I'd like to learn more about what you do." And of course, hopefully they're going to be willing to learn about what I do as well.

Don't sell to them. Even then, I call it a sales seizure. People just can't help themselves and they just start trying to sell to someone. This isn't, you got to build a relationship first. There has to be trust. If you want people to refer business to you, they have to trust you. And that's the 24-7-30 follow-up system.

Anagha: I have used it and I will tell you it is very effective, like night and day. I didn't take networking that seriously until I met you in person and you talked about this rule. I take it seriously, but also I take a notepad with me. You mentioned that writing by hand is different because usually people just put on their phones and take a note.

The notepad part really helped me. Especially earlier this year, I worked with a lot of Oscar nominees. As they were coming and visiting, I was writing this down, thinking about you, and I was putting where do they want to be reached. Sometimes it was cell phone numbers, but sometimes it was reach out to me on Instagram. I didn't think it would be so different for all these people in the acting industry. Everyone had a different platform.

So that is when I truly understood what you're talking about, that reach to them where they want to be reached out at. And you took it, you know, you just went the extra mile with your son. Go and sign up for a video game and then go there. I would never do that. But actually, that is so effective. I try to call my son downstairs for dinner, and sometimes in the summer vacation, he's talking to his friend.

Dr. Ivan Misner: Sometimes you have to text them, "Hey, come for dinner."

Anagha: Absolutely. No, that's what we do. The other one comes downstairs, but the younger one is on the video game with friends. Now that's what I'm gonna try starting tomorrow or today.

Dr. Ivan Misner: Yeah, pick up your game. Yeah, you can buy an online game for forty dollars.

Anagha: Yes, I've seen some moms go on Snapchat and that's why they go. Now I know.

Networking Mechanics: Navigating the Room as an Introvert

Anagha: So you also talked about, you know, the open the V and standing across from each other and when to enter. Can you talk about that too, please?

Dr. Ivan Misner: Yeah, so when you walk into a room, and this is particularly important for introverts who want to network, extroverts can walk up and talk to anybody. And everybody thinks that an extrovert is a great networker, but that's not always true. An extrovert, they can walk up and talk to people, but what's their favorite subject? Their selves.

Whereas an introvert is better at listening. A good networker has one mouth and two ears and uses them both proportionately. And so you should ask questions. So introverts can be better at networking. The problem is they have a hard time walking up and meeting people.

So what you want to do is imagine you have a view from the ceiling or a balcony looking down on the room. Two people who are standing perpendicular to each other like this, it's hard to break into that conversation. But if they're standing like this, like a V, well there's a spot where you can come on in and introduce yourself.

Three people who are standing in a triangle, you can't break into that. But three people that are standing like a U, it's easier to step in. Now for the introverts, this is totally counterintuitive. The larger the open group, the easier it is for you to slip in.

Slipping into two people, you can really stand out. And introverts, they're little cautious about that. So look for the larger groups that have an open spot and just slide on into the open spot. And somebody at some point is gonna say, "Hi, my name's Ivan. What's your name? What do you do?" Whatever.

They're gonna start a conversation with you. And so it's counterintuitive, but the larger the open groups are, the easier it is for the introverts. But that's what you want to look for. Now, when I train on networking, I say if you're running a networking event, make sure to teach your members to stand in open twos, open threes, open groups.

Never stand in closed groups because it's hard for somebody to come in and join the conversation. And it's effective.

Anagha: Wow, that's very helpful as well. I'm gonna encourage everyone to try this. Be conscious about it when you stand with people. It has been so effective. It has worked for me. Absolutely phenomenal guidance on this one. Never thought about it before, before you told me this.

Dr. Ivan Misner: I talk about it in a book called Networking Like a Pro, second edition, which is available in bookstores and on Amazon.

Leadership Under Pressure: The "Listen Till They Drop" Technique

Anagha: And Ivan, you've been an icon in the leadership industry, the terrain of leadership, and you've got the Maxwell Leadership Award as well. Can you take us behind the scenes into your life? How are you built? You were not born like this. How did you build yourself and all these skills?

Dr. Ivan Misner: No, I was not born like this. When I was 13, my mom gave me this paperweight. I'm 70 years old. So I've had this paperweight for almost all my life. And the paperweight says, "Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way."

I'll repeat that. Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way. My mom said, "Son, I love you, but you're a bull in a China shop. You just like knock people over. You have got to learn how to collaborate with people. This is about collaboration, not manipulation."

And that was probably my first lesson on leadership, and it was effective. I have to remind myself of that from time to time. Here's my overall philosophy about leadership: Leadership is not about managing and complying. Leadership is about mobilizing and inspiring.

Management, systems, processes, they're important. I'm not saying they're not important, but that's not leadership. That's management. Leadership is about mobilizing people and inspiring people to be the best version of themselves. I did a book called The Third Paradigm.

If your audience is at all interested in seeing how I turned a disaster of really my own making into probably the most successful thing I did in my career, there are a lot of techniques on leadership during conflict in this book. First paradigm is competition, second is cooperation, the third paradigm is co-creation, which is collaboration on steroids.

We surveyed a couple thousand people, but we also in every chapter interwove a story about a guy named Richard and an online platform that he was developing. Everything that went wrong and all the things he did wrong and then what he did to help turn the process around.

Now here's the secret that's not said in the book. Nowhere is it said, we say it's a true story, but what we don't say is that Richard's my middle name. And the story is about me and an online platform that I helped to develop in BNI called BNI Connect. It's a very important platform. And in there I talk a lot about leadership during conflict.

One technique is you gotta let "barking dogs" in the room. Meaning the people who are complaining, some of them need a seat in the room when you're talking about a problem. If they don't have a seat in the room, they will in fact talk anyway. But they'll be talking without full information.

Here's another one. When things are really, really tough, it's a technique that I talk at length about in the book called "listen till they drop." Listen till they drop. I tell a story about how upset people were with me over my decisions on the original version of the online platform.

I decided what I needed them to do is to just let them vent. And I needed to just shut up. Me. And just let them vent and write down on flip charts every single complaint they had. In my mind, all I could say is, "Thank you, what else? Thank you very much. What else?"

Some of the things they gave me were stupid. I felt like saying, "But what's wrong with you? That's a legitimate complaint?" But I couldn't say it. I had to take them all. I let them do it for two and a half hours. I wallpapered the entire room.

Two and a half hours. I said, no breaks. People didn't want to leave because they were enjoying seeing me get beat up for two and a half hours. At the end of two and a half hours, they were so tired of venting that I then gave them the idea that I went in with.

I knew if I went in with the idea and just presented it, they wouldn't listen. They wouldn't hear me at all because they needed to vent. I said, "Are you open to an idea?" And they said yes. My idea was let's form a project board and we'll triage this list of hundreds of items.

I passed out buttons that said "EGBOK." They're like, "What's this?" And I said, "Hey, everybody, everything's gonna be okay. E-G-B-O-K. You've identified all the problems with the existing system. We as a group can make this right. Everything's gonna be okay."

That was leadership. I went into that meeting having no idea if it would work or not. I knew I was at a nexus point. It was either gonna be the worst day of my professional career, or it was gonna be the best day of my professional career. And I am lucky to say it was the best day of my professional career because I allowed them to vent and I allowed them to co-create the solution.

Anagha: You must have had so many moments like that where you had a lot of hardship or stress. How do you hold yourself together at those times?

Dr. Ivan Misner: Well, I earned all this gray hair. I was prematurely gray. I was in my 50s and pretty gray. And my dad was 85 and he had darker hair than I did. Stress absolutely does things to people. I've had a lot of stress and a lot of challenges. That one was probably my biggest.

Sometimes when I was really upset about something, you know, I'd throw myself a pity party and I'd be down. At some point you have to say to yourself, "Buck up, buttercup, focus on the solution." If all you focus on is the problem, you become an expert at the problem.

Instead, you have to focus on the solutions. In The Third Paradigm, I say "Hold the vision, not the obstacles." There are always obstacles. When I started BNI, there were obstacles. When we started franchising, there were obstacles. There are always obstacles in every business all the time.

Hold the vision. I think that's a key for being a good leader. By holding the vision, you may have to change course a little bit to get to that vision. But hold the vision.

Anagha: I know the AI tsunami right now is creating this kind of stress for some businesses. Is it doing anything for BNI? Are you trying to change some course here to adapt to the AI world?

Dr. Ivan Misner: Well, we're absolutely embracing AI. I had the tech team come to me and say we have this idea for "Ask Ivan." The Ivan stands for "Integrated Virtual Assistant Navigator." They're using AI on our BNI Academy, where any member can get on and ask Ivan any question about networking.

What the social media team did was with my permission scrape all the content off of my BNI podcast—I've got like 970 podcasts—and use that for my response. I got on and I started asking Ivan, "When you walk into a room, what's the first thing you should look for?"

And they said, "Well you should look for open twos and open threes." It was my answers. I think you can embrace AI. We have an external version of it for people who aren't in BNI. And it would answer external questions like, "Explain how BNI works to me."

I asked the external version, "Who's the founder of BNI and what's their story?" And it gave my story. I think it's important to have both. The AI can give deep answers, but at some point it needs to say, "We recommend that you contact your local BNI director."

It needs to go to a real human. I think banks and Amazon, their AI bots make it just too difficult generally to get to a human to talk about a problem that the AI can't respond to.

Avoiding Benign Neglect in Long-Term Relationships

Anagha: Is there anything else that you would like our listeners to know about networking or anything about BNI?

Dr. Ivan Misner: If they are interested in visiting a BNI group, go to BNI.com and find a group near you. I also have a website, ivanmisner.com (M-I-S-N-E-R). I've been blogging on it since 2007. I have two or three thousand blog posts up there on how you network, how you become a leader, how you scale your business.

It can be a virtual mentor for you. And please leave us with one last thought. You know the old saying, it's not what you know, it's who you know. I don't think it's either one. I don't think it's what you know or who you know. It's how well you know each other that counts.

If your network is a mile wide and an inch deep, it'll never be powerful. You need a wide network, but in places it's got to be deep. I have some amazing contacts in my telephone, two or three billionaires who I have as contacts.

The question is not whether they're a contact. The question is: if I picked up the phone and called them, would they take my call? And if I ask for a favor, would they be willing to do the favor? It's not just who you know, it's how well you know them that really counts.

Would they be willing to help you if you asked for help? And I think that's the piece that people miss in networking. They just think it's, you know, they want the contact, but they don't know how to build a relationship.

Anagha: But let's say you have a relationship that's deep and you've shared a lot of dinners and coffees, you've helped them out. But then after two or three years, you just forget about them. How do you keep that relationship alive?

Dr. Ivan Misner: Yeah, that's benign neglect. Benign neglect is easy to happen if you don't stay in touch with people. And that's one of the things I love about social media is that you can stay in touch with people. There are people that I see often that will post on my blog or will post on my Facebook page.

And of course I post on other people's social media posts and comment. I text well-known friends two or three times a year, maybe have a conversation, just to reach out and say, "Hey, it's been a long time since we talked. How are you doing?"

One other thing to do is to say, "Hey, do you have any new project? If you do, how can I help you?" Reach out to those people, authors, writers, speakers, and you just say, "Hey, it's been a long time since we've talked. You working on anything new, I'd be happy to put it up on my social media."

Those people are going to stay in touch with you because you just reached out to them for no good reason really, other than to help them. And that's the way you avoid benign neglect.

Anagha: So the Givers Gain goes beyond just networking. It goes very far.

Dr. Ivan Misner: Yeah. It's about relationships. It's all about relationships. I've got a couple books on Giver's Gain. One is called Infinite Giving: The Seven Principles of Givers Gain. That's a very thin book, but it's about the key principles of what it takes to really learn how to practice Givers Gain.

One is important: being an infinite giver doesn't mean you're an infinite victim. If you're finding that you're giving to somebody that is absolutely unwilling to give back, it might be the wrong relationship for you. A relationship should be two ways.

I might be giving you referrals. Maybe you're not giving me referrals, but you're giving me ideas and knowledge and support and help. Okay, that's Givers Gain. It doesn't have to be I give you referrals, you give me referrals. It could be any combination of those things.

Anagha: But don't they say like you give to someone and then it comes to you from somewhere else?

Dr. Ivan Misner: Well, it does come around to you from other people. Oftentimes it comes around to you from other people because they've talked to somebody who you know and they've referred you. Sometimes I meet people who say it's just chance.

I met a man who had been in BNI for five years and he got this really, really good referral. He said that was just chance. And I said, how many meetings roughly are there? 50 meetings. So you've gone the 50 meetings for five years.

You've built a relationship with somebody that trusts you so much they referred you. And you think that's just chance? No. That was hard work. You could be digging ditches. That's hard work. But it's work. It's building relationships. It takes effort.

You've been putting in effort for five years. You've been out there fishing for five years. The fish that you catch, they may think it's dumb luck that they got caught, but you don't, because you've been out there with the effort throwing that net.

Anagha: So it's predictable. Persistence, resilience, all these things do count. Thank you, Ivan, for reminding us that strongest relationships do matter. Thank you for your time and your guidance.

Dr. Ivan Misner: Love to do it.

Anagha: And I would love to remind our viewers that you don't have to look outside for anything. Everything you need is within you. So go with it, enjoy your day. Thank you.

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