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Welcome back to BNI and the Power of One. Thank you for joining me again. Welcome to 2025. We are excited to to be back and get started with the new year and new episodes. And again today we're going to jump right into Questions submitted@bnipowerofone.com so if you've got a topic question this year of any kind, whether it's BNI related, business related, weekly presentation submissions, go to bnipowerofone.com and leave it there. With the new year, one of the things that we focus on in our regions and I think everybody should be kind of thinking about is the different seasons throughout the year of BNI and different focuses. What should you be focused on? Not that you stop any side of anything, but you know, which one do we really put a little bit more emphasis on throughout the year of the three pillars to your success? Those pillars being how active are you, how effective are you, and how many people are you doing it with? There are different seasons where you can put a little additional focus on each of these elements. The new year, it's around activity and it's around training and specifically inside that activity. Okay. As we get into the spring, that's when we really start focusing on rapid growth, really expanding our opportunities. And the spring air time for that is because of just the market opportunity that's presented during that time. The weather is nicer, kids are not in school yet, et cetera, et cetera. We'll get more into that. Remember, extravaganzas during that time. We'll, we'll really be leading up into that. Today's question kind of fits into this first part of the year as we we've new goals we have, hopefully you have new goals of how much you're trying to make from your membership in terms of return. And this question that came in I think kind of fits part of that. And it's just for clarification around chapter education units. So this comes from Hannah in Canada. She says in our chapter, there's some confusion around reporting CEUs, especially given the wide variation in how many units members submit since education is encouraged, tracked and considered part of active membership, whether through referrals, mentorship, or sharing knowledge, can members who teach or mentor others count the time spent educating their peers as CEUs in addition to reporting their own learning? If so, would there be any limits to what could be counted? And the simple answer is no. Okay. What chapter education units are about is giving credit to those who are seeking and investing time in BNI training. Okay. So that is specific training on how to be more effective as a BNI member. Now, that goes both ways. That helps you become more effective in getting more referrals. The more effective you are, the more results you're going to see, but it also impacts the results you're going to be giving to others. We can't. Oh, the. The question's coming in the past when you know about people who, like, have to take continuing ed for their professions. Right? There are certain professions that require education every year, every couple years and so forth, and people have asked, can that count? And it doesn't. Okay. This is about making yourself a better BNI member through BNI specific trainings. Now, this question, when you talk about mentorship and how we might teach each other how to be more effective, you know, you might have a member who's been there 10 years teaching a new member, hey, this is what I've learned. That's all fantastic. I don't discourage that at all. But it's not a sanctioned BNI training. Right. We have no control, no real insight on what is being taught. I've had plenty of experience having to teach members that everything their peer taught them was 100% wrong. 100% wrong. You know, we can actually end up hurting each other in some ways based on what are they teaching them? What are, what have their experiences been? We've talked about in the podcast a lot of times how we do some advanced trainings in my regions, and I know not every region does that. I've had people reach out and say, can I have that? And unfortunately, it's just not something we share openly because there's no there there, meaning, you know, I can give manuals, but they're. They're kind of blank manuals and stuff. You have to really understand the training. I do encourage any directors, executive directors and stuff that may be listening to this. Those are things you should be investing in. But long story short, we used to do these trainings regionally. Okay. We used to offer them as a separate course that you would go to outside of your chapter meeting. One of the things that we learned was it wasn't the most effective way because we would teach a small percentage of the chapter at a time. And then we were in an uphill battle where they would go back to their chapter, we'd teach them how to do one to ones, let's say, and they would go back to their chapter, and none of their members were doing it that way or even worse. And this happened some of their more quote unquote seasoned Members told them, well, we don't do it that way. So it can be kind of messy when we rely on members to teach members. We do have a mentoring program. You should be following the mentoring program. Hopefully your mentor, coordinator and chapter are picking good mentors who would not be doing that and would be encouraging new members on taking training. Right. They can be giving advice, they can be giving some experience, sharing. That's what mentoring is. But they should not be training the members. It's really about making sure the new members are meeting with the right people. They're kind of learning what's going on inside the chapter. They're training on the skills. Things like weekly presentations, featured presentations, one to ones, how to invite, those kind of things come from your BNI membership in that way. And that's what CUs are about. Again, it's. There's a ton of education opportunity. There's a ton of intrinsic value in BNI that you're talking about here in this question. We can't track and give credit to everything. So this is again, you should be taking training in your own businesses, even if it's not required in your industry. You should be trying to increase your skill sets in your own business. Many do. Those don't count, right? It's not about you becoming a better business person in terms of this tracking. It's are you investing in becoming a more effective B and I member again for yourself and for everybody else. So our chapter education units are track, specifically it says per hour of BNI training. Okay, so that is our listening to podcasts, usually more than one to get that time going to member success programs, going to advanced member success programs, if those are available in your region or any other outside training activity that may be available in your region. There's many regions who do additional kind of training opportunities and even we don't do. So those kind of activities are what you're getting credit for in the POMS report. All the other stuff is valuable, it's great. But that doesn't, doesn't count because as you can see, there's a lot of confusion when you open it up. Outside of that, it's a lot of. There's a lot of wiggle room for people to play games too, right? I mean it's just like one to ones. You know, you think people wouldn't do it, but they do. Like, hey, we happen to run into each other while, you know, Christmas shopping, let's put in a one to one. So we get credit for that. There's games played even in the cus. But the more stuff we say you can count, the more of those games are going to be played. And that's just an unfortunate side effect. So great question though. Now just to add to it in a couple minutes here, I believe the access to training you have is one of the most underutilized resources BNI members have, and I'm kind of preaching to the choir a little bit. If you're listening to this podcast, you are one that probably seeks some additional training, hence why you're you're listening to this. But you can encourage your fellow members more than your director or executive director can. The training opportunities are part of your membership. Okay? It is the only organization that offers the level and depth of training around networking in the world. There just isn't anybody else offering the same depth, the same experience, the same quality, the same quantity of training opportunities that are out there for you between the podcasts are just the tip of the iceberg BNI business builder. I mean thousands upon thousands upon thousands of hours of access to material there for you 247 right on your phone. Member success program trainings, both online or in person in some regions, advanced trainings, leadership trainings, chapter success trainings, all of these things are available to you to make yourself better. I've never met a member who has said they want less referrals in a new year, or even that they want the same amount of referrals in the new year. Every member states they want more. But in order to get more, you're going to need to increase one of, if not all three of those pillars. You're going to need to be more active. You're going to probably need to be more effective in that activity. And you're probably going to need some key people around you who weren't there. For some members they are extremely busy. The hardest thing really to do is become super active there you probably there's a lot of them who already are very active. There's a lot who aren't. I mean you can take a look at your power one, but that consistency of activity can be challenging. Making yourself more effective in everything that you're already doing is a key lever. Making your weekly presentations better and more effective is a key lever to getting more referrals each week. You're already doing it every single week. You can't do more weekly presentations unless you're just not showing up. So you got to make them better. You probably can't do very many more one to ones than you're already doing. So you got to make them better. You're not going to get to do many more featured presentations than you're already doing. So you got to make them better. You, you definitely need more people around you. Likely key people, right? Strategic. Who are you strategically missing? Best to learn how to find them and invite them effectively so you're not wasting your time throughout the year. Because when it comes to adding those people, if you want the results in 2025, you better be adding them right now as quickly as possible so that you have all of 2025 to utilize that learn how to do that. There is a plethora of free training at your fingertips right now to do that. And the best thing about training, unlike weekly presentations and unlike one to ones is you can do it at any time. You can do it in the car, even on the way somewhere. You can do it at night, you know, when you're just sitting around. You could do it first thing in the morning before because it's 24 7. Your weekly presentations at once a week at a set time. Your one to ones are dictated by both your availability and the other members availability during the week. You can't be probably doing those at 9, 10 o'clock at night. But you can listen to a podcast or you can jump on your computer and take a training or you can do those types of things. Some of the training you have to jump on a schedule. Right. Our our member success trainings we do every single week but they're scheduled. But you can find one of them. Invest in training this year. It's going to be a massive push in my regions is that we have a lot of members who've been around for a long time, which is amazing. Training isn't for new members, it's for every member. Reinvest. Go back through it, okay. And pull that lever this year because it's one of, if not the biggest one to really change your results to make yourself more effective in what you're already doing. I hope you use the podcast for that this year. The best way for the podcast to really be, I think helpful in that is to let us know where you feel like you might be struggling or what questions you might have and what education you might be missing or you feel like you need more information on. Go to bnipowerofone.com submit it there and we will definitely make sure to get to it again. It could be business related for business matters which we're going to be recording again later this week and get back to the that it could even be skill set stuff, like your weekly presentation. Thanks for listening. Talk to you soon.