Chris Attwood: Dr. Ivan Misner is the founder and chairman of BNI, Business Network International, and since 1985, BNI has built over 4,100 chapters around the world. Last year alone, BNI generated over 3.3 million referrals for its members, resulting in over $1.5 billion worth of business for its members. So there are a lot of people making a living doing what they love at BNI.
Dr. Misner got his PhD from the University of Southern California, and he's written eight books, including his New York Times best seller, The Masters of Networking, and his number-one best seller, Masters of Success. He's been called "The Father of Modern Networking" by e-academy.com and "The Networking Guru" by Entrepreneur magazine.
He is one of the world's leading experts in business networking. He's been a keynote speaker for major corporations and associations around the world. He's been featured in the L.A. Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, as well as many, many TV and radio shows, including CNN, CNBC and BBC in London. Ivan, thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. Ivan Misner: It is my pleasure to be here, thank you.
Chris Attwood: Well, it is our pleasure and honor to have you with us. I'm excited and thrilled that this interview with Dr. Misner is going to be conducted by a man for whom I have great respect. Dave Buck is the CEO of CoachVille, one of the largest, most successful coaching organizations in the world.
Dave, it's an honor to have you as my co-host and I'm going to turn it over to you now to conduct our interview with Dr. Misner.
Dave Buck: Thank you, Chris. I'm very excited to be here. Ivan, how's it going, partner?
Dr. Ivan Misner: If I were doing any better, I'd cancel my life insurance.
Dave Buck: Oh, you always say that!
Dr. Ivan Misner: Now listen, my life insurance agent is probably on the line-he's a BNI member-so just so you know, Mike, I'm just joking.
Dave Buck: Good! I know you wouldn't do that because I have met your family and they are delightful, and I know you would not do that to them.
Dr. Ivan Misner: That's right, but things are going great.
Dave Buck: That's awesome, and I'm very excited to be here. Ivan and I are good friends, we've worked on several projects together, so it's really a thrill for me to be able to interview Ivan. He is an amazing human being. He is one of the best people I know, and it's a thrill to be his friend. I'm very grateful for that and for the opportunity to get to talk with him for a while.
He's really pretty hard to get ahold of, so this is actually a treat for me to get some face time with Ivan! Obviously, we're in "Chris's house" tonight, and in his house the topic is "passion." I'm very excited to find out about you from the passion perspective.
BNI is an incredible organization. I know that it's a heck of a story, how it all came together, and I'm sure that story will unfold as we're talking. How did your passion for life and for business fuel the creation of BNI?
Dr. Ivan Misner: I was a management consultant in the early to mid '80s and I was looking for more business through referrals. I really didn't understand how much the average business person really needed referrals for his business. I loved what I was doing. In a way, I was actually doing coaching before the coaching industry.
We called ourselves "consultants," but I was aiming at the smaller market-the market today that many of the coaches you work with are aiming at-start-up companies that maybe have a single entrepreneur, all the way to maybe 100 employees.
Probably only 5% to 10% of my clients were big, big companies. Ninety percent of them were small, and I loved helping consult with them and coach with them on building their business. That was my passion in the early '80s.
Dave Buck: I agree with you. I would say that knowing and having spent time with you-you are a coach. When I think about what a coach is, a coach is someone whose primary aim is to unleash the greatness in others and that is what you do. I'm sure that's what you were doing in your consulting work.
Dr. Ivan Misner: I had never thought of it that way, but yes, I like that-that's good. I certainly try to do those kinds of things.
Dave Buck: Yes, you do it. It's really exciting, but a little strange having a chat with your good buddy in front of your 800 closest friends around the world. I would say that having been in Ivan's company, in his office-you walk in there and the place is just jazzed.
It's not a "normal" company. It's exciting, people are fired up and they love what they're doing. When you hear Ivan's passion, and you will hear it as we continue to talk, but the thing you need to know is that it's not just him. He infuses this in everything around him.
Dr. Ivan Misner: It's funny that you say that, Dave, because I literally just came back from a movie-I took my entire office staff of about 20 people to lunch and a movie, just because we had such a great year last year.
This kind of things helps build camaraderie and helps keep the passion for the business alive, and it keeps it focused on having a good time as well as doing a job, and we have people having a good time; they do a good job.
Dave Buck: Yes, they do, and the passion that you have for BNI has been translated to all the folks on staff there. Everyone I talk to there is really fired up, and it's not mysterious how that happens, because that happens from you and your passion for what you're doing. Let's get back to the basics. You had this great consulting practice-how did that turn into BNI?
Dr. Ivan Misner: I'd like to tell you that I had this vision of an international organization with 4,100 locations in 26 countries, but I'd be fibbing. That's what we have now, but I absolutely did not have that vision when I started BNI. I was looking for some referrals for my consulting business.
I put together some people I trusted-people I knew and they knew me-we trusted each other, we agreed to refer one another and we took only one person per "flavor," so there was only one lawyer, one banker, one chiropractor. We got together every week and passed each other referrals.
That was it. I thought that's all it would be. Then someone came and couldn't join because of a conflict and she asked me, "This is great-it's organized, it's structured-would you help me open up my own group?" I said, "Sure, I can do that." So we opened another group and about 25 people came to the first meeting of the second group.
Two people couldn't join though, because of a conflict, and both of them said, "Wow, this is great! I could get a ton of business out of this. If you help me open up my own group, you can run four of these." I thought, "Okay, I can run four of these plus my consulting practice."
We opened up two more and in both of those groups, three people couldn't join-two in one and one in the other-and all three of them said, "Wow, this is great! I could get a ton of business out of this…" and it snowballed.
Dave Buck: So there was a pattern happening here.
Dr. Ivan Misner: Yes, I realized just how passionate people were about referrals and about word of mouth and how important it was for their businesses. I understood at that time how important it was for me, but I hadn't really thought about how critical it was for most businesses. We opened 20 locations in the first year by accident. I think that's when I started to get the vision. That's when I started to say, "This could be bigger than just Southern California."
Dave Buck: I really appreciate you sharing the idea that you didn't have this big vision because I think vision is overrated. You have so many people sitting around and carving out these big visions, but sometimes you've just got to start doing something.
Bill Gates just wanted an operating system for his computer; he didn't have a vision of a global software behemoth. He didn't have this vision for a huge thing, he just got started doing something that made sense.
Dr. Ivan Misner: It made sense and I really enjoyed doing it. I think both of those things are really important. Once I found something that I loved doing, I wanted to see how I could improve it, make it bigger and spread it first around the United States, and then worldwide, and that's where the vision started to come in.
For me, vision is just a matter of setting goals. You set goals further out than you can actually see. Do they all come together? No, but the truth is, you're much more likely to hit a target that you actually set for yourself than a target you don't set for yourself. From that perspective, I believe in vision, but vision's always 20/20 in hindsight only. You don't get it all right from the beginning.
Dave Buck: I'm going to herby confirm my premise that you are a coach.
Dr. Ivan Misner: Thanks, I appreciate it.
Dave Buck: You are definitely a coach, there's no doubt about that in my mind at this point. I think you said an interesting thing. You started off with an idea just to get some referrals and you were passionate about your consulting. Then you were like, "This networking thing is pretty cool and there's an opportunity here," plus, you were really enjoying it.
Today we're talking about passion, and I'm wondering if, as this business evolved and grew, did your passions change in some way, did you add new passions, or has it always just been a passion for helping people get referrals?
Dr. Ivan Misner: It's a great question, and the answer is yes to the last part, but also yes, it changed along the way. I think that's the one constant in the process. I believe that a successful company stays on mission. Our mission is to help people increase their businesses through word of mouth, so we have stayed on mission with that.
With me personally, yes, my passions have changed over the years. My role has changed. It was really exciting to hear Chris introduce me as founder and chairman of BNI because I just stepped up to the chairman role effective January 1st, 2006. I hired a CEO who's been with BNI since 1987, so he's been with the organization for a long time. His name is Norm Dominguez-he's a great guy.
Dave Buck: Yes, Norm is a fantastic guy.
Dr. Ivan Misner: He's a perfect person to be the CEO. When you're in a business and doing the same thing for a long time, it's easy to get stale. I want new adventures, but I want to stay on mission, so how do you stay on mission and have new adventures?
It was a matter of changing my job description. I've got to tell you, I'm living the dream right now. I'm doing exactly the kinds of things that I want to be doing. It's taken me 21 years to get there, but I'm doing exactly the kinds of things that I want to be doing, which is acting as the spokesman for BNI. I'm working much more on the business than in the business today-by far.
Dave Buck: That's what you should be doing as the outside guy. You've got Norm in there running the show, and he's perfect for that. Then you can be the ambassador for BNI. I think you actually have a bigger role in the world than the ambassador for BNI because you have a particular perspective on business that I think is valuable, especially in this super-connected Internet age.
There's something about face-to-face, meeting people, helping people in your community build their businesses while they help you build your business-I think it's so profound and so needed. I'm really grateful for the work you do to keep the face-to-face side of business thriving. You keep a balance with the "hyper-connected, I've never met you, never seen you, but we're doing the business together" Internet world.
Dr. Ivan Misner: We truly do live in a high-tech, high-touch society. I believe it was Alvin Toffler who first coined that phrase. He said this 25 years ago-that we were moving toward this high-tech, high-touch society. Well, we've arrived, we're there. Online networking, I believe in, so don't get me wrong.
I believe it's a great way to connect with other people, however, I don't believe it's the only way. I believe that you still need to actually connect with people face to face. I think most business people are cave dwellers. They get up in the morning, and they're in this large cave with a big-screen TV.
They go out to their garage, get into this little cave, with four wheels, called their car. They drive to this other really big cave, with computers, called their office. They stay there all day long, then at the end of the day, get back into their little cave with four wheels, drive back to their large cave with the big-screen TV.
They can't figure out why no one is referring them! Well, networking is a contact sport. You've got to get belly to belly with people and talk to them if you want to build trust and relationships with them.
Dave Buck: I totally agree. In fact, we have an initiative at CoachVille to do the same thing, to open a city director program where we get face to face. I think it's great for people to know that we have 30 to 40 people joining CoachVille every day, and we call every one of them and ask, "How did you hear about us?" As it turns out, about 25% of the people from the US who join CoachVille heard about us through someone in BNI!
Dr. Ivan Misner: That's good to hear! Word of mouth works.
Dave Buck: It is definitely working for us!
Dr. Ivan Misner: We're glad to hear that, and I think part of the reason for that is the community that we've developed at CoachVille-the Social Capital & Networking community, which is free to participate in many of the functions.
We do monthly networking fear-buster calls for people who have some fears about networking. They can throw them out there and we talk about them on a telebridge. People can go there by visiting: www.NetworkingCommunity.com or by going to www.CoachVille.com
. We really do focus on educating people on how to do this better.
Dave Buck: I wanted to ask you about that. How do people learn how to become a great networker? Whenever you talk to someone successful-and I talk to successful people all the time-you always get the idea that it's always been this way, they've always been successful. You and I have had some great conversations, and It wasn't always so rosy.
Dr. Ivan Misner: I'm a 20-year, overnight success.
Dave Buck: Right! I love your book, Masters of Success, and I'm grateful that you've passed all your books along to me. That's one of the good things about being friends with Ivan-you get a lot of free books. There's a place in that book I really liked where you describe a story where someone visits your home and says, "Ivan, you're so lucky."
Dr. Ivan Misner: I've got to point out though that you know that, because I told you at one point that he was talking about my home, but in the book, I don't mention that it was my home that he was looking at. You've given a little tidbit that's not in the book, which is good.
Dave Buck: I'm giving them a good reason to pick up the book because Masters of Success is a wonderful book. It's very informative and inspiring. I want to touch on this topic with you because this idea: "You're so lucky to have all of this" is not really true.
Dr. Ivan Misner: No. In this story you're talking about from the book, I had a friend who looked around in my house and said, "Wow, man, you're really lucky!" I looked at him and thought, "He really doesn't get it." I said to him, "Yes, I'm lucky. Would you like to know the secret to my luck?" He said, "Yes! I'd love to know your secret."
I said, "Here it is. First, I went to college for 10 years. During that time, I started a couple of businesses. Then during the next two decades, I worked about 60 hours a week, mortgaged my house a couple of times for the business and wrote eight books. If you apply that kind of effort to whatever you do, you can be just as lucky."
The funny thing is, the guy didn't get it. He heard me, but it just went through and he's like, "No; I hear what you're saying, but there's got to be something else. You just had good breaks." I talk about this a lot in the book, and I don't think he was paying attention to the fact that success is about making good choices and hard work.
You've got to do both; not just one. People work really hard all their lives, they keep making really stupid choices, and can't figure out why they're not successful.
Dave Buck: I'm going to once again confirm my theory that you are a coach. Yes, it's about making great choices and returning to "Chris's house" and talking about passion-you mortgaged your home a couple times, you worked 60 hours a week-the fuel has got to come from somewhere.
It's the fuel to go through those obstacles. I talk about the same thing with me. People say, "Oh, Dave, you have CoachVille. You're so lucky," I'm saying, "Ten years ago I was living in my car and eating one meal a day at all-you-can-eat diners, so if you want to call that luck, then I guess I'm pretty darn lucky."
It's the passion that gets us through these times. I think it would be great to hear some of the challenges you've faced and how your passion got you through them.
Dr. Ivan Misner: We've certainly had a lot of challenges. Any successful person-anybody who is running a successful business has had many challenges in his life. I certainly have. All the way from the beginning-finding the right people in any company is always difficult.
As we're growing and becoming national and then international, continually finding the correct people is a problem. In creating a system, one of the things I did early on was to listen to Michael Gerber in his book The E-Myth, where he talks about writing everything down.
When you're doing something, write it down so you can make it replicable and as you grow, you can replicate that. He even says in there to do it like you're going to create a franchise, even if you're never planning on franchising. I took that to heart and started doing it. Five years later, I was franchising.
One of the reasons that made it so easy to start franchising was the fact that I had done all of this work that was suggested by Gerber in one of his books. But it was a lot of work along the way-creating the systems by trial and error. If you've ever visited a BNI group and you've said, "Wow-this is great and it's really organized," it's because we screwed up so much along the way that we finally got it right.
We made so many mistakes along the way. We had no idea what we were doing as we were creating it, but we had such a passion for what we were doing that I think a lot of people were forgiving us for the mistakes we made. Some weren't, but many were.
Dave Buck: That's a very good point. One of my mentors said, "Anything worth doing is worth doing wrong," at least for a little while.
Dr. Ivan Misner: We've certainly done that, there's no doubt about it.
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