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BNI & The Power of One
BNI 777: Business Matters 112 - The Importance of Training
00:21:47
We are back with our Business Matters episodes! This week we discuss the importance of continuing education in business.
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- [00:26]
A
Welcome back to the Business Matters podcast, part of B and I Power of One. We are finally back with the Business Matters episode. Mike, how are you?
- [00:36]
B
I'm doing well, I'm doing well. Yeah, we, we finished up right kind of early on in Q4 and I know life got real busy for the both of us.
- [00:46]
A
So it happens that time of year.
- [00:48]
B
Made a schedule and, and all that. Although I know we had every intention of trying to help you get to your, your goal.
- [00:56]
A
But we're going to work at it this year. We're going to work out. Even though, even though I'm, like I said before, helping helping the competition a little bit, but. All right, it's been great. Yeah. I've had the opportunity to host a couple of the BNI official podcasts, which is a, I mean, an amazing opportunity and thank you to Dr. Miser for giving that to me and.
- [01:15]
B
Yeah.
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A
But we've got a lot to talk about this year. I think it's going to be an interesting year. Just a lot of different things going on, whether it's economy based, politically based. There's going to be a lot of change areas every year, even those that are some somewhat predictable and unpredictable. Before we get started, obviously, anybody who's listening out in Southern California, the LA area, our thoughts are with you. Those freaking, incredibly crazy stories and stuff going on there.
- [01:40]
B
Yeah, it's, it's tough to look at. And you know, I, I know I have friends out there and accounts I used to call on out in that neck of the woods when I was in the shoe business and I don't even know if some of them are gone. Yeah, but they're in those areas that are, you know, obviously affected. And you know, besides people losing their homes, you know, people are losing their ability to earn income, which I think is, you know, gonna make it extra hard to rebuild 100.
- [02:10]
A
I was listening to something there and they're just talking about rebuilds and tens of billions of dollars to rebuild like all these homes, all these businesses, all these things and then the impact on the insurance and what that's going to do. It's going to be crazy.
- [02:24]
B
Yeah. And unfortunately, you know, a lot of the insurance, you know, companies had backed out of that area in terms of fire coverage.
- [02:32]
A
If they hadn't, they will. And that's going to be like the future of it is going to be the problem.
- [02:36]
B
It's going to be hard to rebuild. So very, very sad. And hopefully, you know, the most important thing I think I hear is, and, and I believe this is that, like, eventually you can replace any thing that was gone, but you can't replace a person.
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A
Right, right.
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B
You know, so safety is, is paramount. And man, there's, there's firefighters out there and, and first responders from all over the country, from up in Canada. And, you know, it's, it's. That's the amazing part to see when people kind of come together.
- [03:09]
A
Yep.
- [03:10]
B
And, and do these things together and, and the power of working together to win and, you know, hopefully that can continue.
- [03:17]
A
Yeah. So thoughts and prayers to everybody out there in the jump into 2025. Our big focus in, in my regions anyways, is one of. I always talk about in bni, and I think it's. These are the three pillars to success in networking in general. They're probably very much standard pillars for a lot of people in any industry, but in BNI in particular, we talk about, you know, it's. It's your activity, how active are you, it's your skill sets, how effective are you, and then it's how many people you're doing that with. I think that's probably same with sales and everything else. Our big focus this year is to put some emphasis on the second one around effectiveness and around training and the importance of continuing training. And so I wanted to talk to you about that from a business standpoint. Obviously, in bni, it's always been one of our key elements of your membership to get the training opportunity. But unfortunately, it is one of those things that you can put on all the training opportunities in the world. You can give access to all the training opportunities in the world. There's only a small percentage of people who actually take advantage of it.
- [04:22]
B
Yeah.
- [04:23]
A
And, you know, it's just kind of this thing that people have access to, but they just look past or they take a training one time and they're like, okay, I did that. And it's like, you know what I mean? So I know you. You know, we could talk, I will talk all year about the importance of it in networking, but just in general, in business, what kind of. When you were in these big corporations, what kind of emphasis did they put on training? And, and where did they put emphasis on training?
- [04:49]
B
Well, you know, it really depended on the role you played within the company. So. So in the. When I was in the footwear world and we're doing wholesale business, our training was on product knowledge, product awareness, how to pitch, you know, how to actually go in and try and get people engaged in a conversation about the product. So we would have, I'd say, semi Annually. So depending on the time of year, we do two or three of these group meetings every single year where everybody comes in, we kind of, we present the product. This is how we think it needs to be positioned. This is how to go into a conversation about it. And then in the interstitial spaces, our sales managers would go to each geographic region of the country and work with the sales teams in those locations, go on store visits, observe how are you doing it, and then critique, work together, demonstrate, you know, how we thought it was best done based on best practices and what we knew worked in other places. So that was kind of an ongoing effort and the people that did that internally. So typically the larger sales groups, they would even have their own internal kind of management that would then take those best practices and make sure that we call them agency principals. And typically they would go around to all the people that worked under them and help them do those same types of things on an ongoing basis. And most of those people had lots of different brands. So if you're a retail store and you've got lots of brands in your shop, the training you provide to your people on those products is really, really important. So even if you're just a service business, so you're just selling plumbing or painting or whatever, training your people to be able to talk to consumers the right way about what you offer is a, is a massive thing because it's a true statement in my experience, and it always has been true, that when people understand something, they will talk about it. If they don't understand about a product or a service, they won't talk about it because they're embarrassed that they're going to look dumb.
- [06:57]
A
Yep.
- [06:58]
B
And so in those cases, training is super critical. When I was in the financial services industry, ongoing training was mandatory because from the government, number one, that you had to be compliant with lots of different things. But also we had a sales arm and ongoing weekly training on how to network. And in fact, BNI became an integral part of that prior to my departure. You know, like, here's how you network, here's the importance of networking and, and you know, there are other avenues of networking that they did, but it's a weekly thing. You got to come in and meet, you got to understand about the product, what's working in the market, and then pass that good knowledge on to the whole team so they can utilize it.
- [07:49]
A
Yeah.
- [07:50]
B
So, you know, training is massive and it's like anything, it's an old adage. Right. Practice makes perfect. So, and listen thing, the idea of perfection is just a fallacy, right? So you always practice so that you get closer towards that perfection. And if you understand that you're never going to be perfect, you will always practice, right?
- [08:11]
A
I, I always use this time of year. Um, we used to do big trainings in the spring. We've moved them to the fall, just weather based and stuff like that. But I always use the, the analogy of like training, especially in like bni, you know, people, again, they'll go to this training one time and be like, that's it. And I go, you know, in a couple weeks, which is crazy. In a couple weeks, spring training starts. And what goes on at spring training? I go, you got the best of the best people in the world at what they do. Baseball players, some of whom are making literally hundreds of millions of dollars because they're so good at what they do every year, go and spend a couple months at spring training. And what do they do at spring training? The most basic of basic fundamental things, right? The pitchers pretending to pitch and running to first base to catch a lob pass. Over and over and over and over again.
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B
Rounders in the infield, right?
- [09:03]
A
Again, the best at whatever they do in the world. And yet the importance of spending time on the basic fundamentals of over and over again. And yet as professionals, we'll take a training and be like, yeah, I got it, I'm good. And it's just like that mindset of like, I've done that once, I'm fine, blows my mind. You know, most of the people who are listening to this, you know, in your industries, big industries, you know, the shoe business and everything else, a lot of training based on people's specialties within the overall organization. Right. But a lot of our listeners are small business owners, solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, which means you've got multiple facets to what you do from everything from product knowledge like you talked about, which is probably the most critical, obviously understanding what your product, how to talk about it, what are the updates, what are the benefits, all that. I think a lot of people probably spend most of their training time in that aspect. But there's a lot of ancillary skill sets that go along to being an entrepreneur, right? From general sales tactics to networking to even things like.
- [10:08]
B
Yeah, like inventory. Exactly.
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A
Management.
- [10:11]
B
How do you price things properly? I mean, it's a, it's a science. It's a lot of things. You know, one of the things I hear a lot about when I'm in networking groups, you know, I'm always turning an ear just to See, like, how are people talking about stuff? And people get really excited. They're there, they meet and they hear stuff. That sounds great, you know, or they go to some sort of a seminar. Right. Training seminars are very popular. And you go. And I'm always like, well, what did you do when you left to pra. Put that in action. You. You know, and listening is not enough. Like, you could say, hey, listen to business podcasts. That's the thing you can do as a business owner. Yes, that's true. We want people to listen to us. We want. There's lots of great ones out there. But you have to actually take those things that you're hearing and put them into action somehow, some way. So practice isn't listening to podcasts and going and getting inspired.
- [11:06]
A
Right.
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B
That inspiration is not putting things into practice.
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A
Yeah. Inspiration is worthless.
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B
Lead you to what's supposed to lead you to put things in practice.
- [11:14]
A
Right.
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B
And so if you don't put things in practice, whether you're a solopreneur, you're managing a huge company, you know, that's a problem eventually.
- [11:23]
A
100. And again, I think the little ancillary thing. A little. But the ancillary things are the ones that are often miss. That can actually drive the biggest results. Right. Improving your skill sets in sales, improving your skill sets in networking, improving your skill sets in management. Those kind of things are the ones that actually can move the needle for your business this year, versus just knowing how the product works. It's like you can know the product and how it works to the end of the days. If you don't know how to talk about it, how to network with it, how to sell it, it doesn't really matter. Right?
- [11:54]
B
Right.
- [11:54]
A
There's a lot of people who go out of business who are experts in whatever it was.
- [11:59]
B
Yeah.
- [11:59]
A
And that's the sad part about it. And I just think this time of year, as we're getting into the new year, it's really important. I love podcasts. Like, ours is short term, ours is like shorter versions. Right. I would use stuff like this to figure out, get ideas of what's coming, what's out there, and then go, okay, now I need to learn that. So my big thing this year, and I'm behind, like, I admit, like, way behind the ball on it, is AI. How is AI going to affect our business? What ways can we implement AI into our business to make things better, easier, more effective? Which takes learning just on, like, what is AI Like? To me, it's like, all right, I got a first Leap and learn. What am I talking about with it? And then, all right, we've got all these ideas of things I want to do, and I see some things some people are doing, and it's like, okay, that's really interesting. I don't want to just go and take that and be like, hey, can you just put that on mine? Or I want to learn. Like, all right, how does that work? And try to really get. I'm not that I'll ever be an expert at it, like you said, but I got to be dangerous enough in every aspect in order to truly implement it. And so this is going to be our big theme, our. Our big push this year. Like, in my regions, I'm. We have a goal of getting every one of our members to go back through our basic training again this year. Every single one.
- [13:13]
B
Yeah.
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A
It's going to be an uphill battle for some to motivate them and encourage them and all that, and. But it's that important of doing. Would you guys spend a lot of investment? This is kind of the season for conferences and stuff like that. Trade shows, Those kind of things?
- [13:29]
B
Yeah, I mean, well, we had trade shows several times a year, you know, in the footwear world and in the ski world that I was in before, you know, you had regional. You had regional trade shows, then you had national trade shows, and you had seasonal trade shows. Right. So you're trying to preview new things for the next buying season or two buying seasons away or something like that. So we would do those pretty much on an ongoing basis. And. And, you know, we've always talked about the. The importance of setting time aside to actually do these things. Like, you need to have time to spend. Focus on these, like, techniques or things you want to put into practice. So in our case, you know, we would have. So the ski. Ski season is not done yet, and we would already be having our trade shows for the following year before this year's done.
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A
Right.
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B
Because we need time to prepare. So that's the kind of planning you sometimes need to go through now. Bigger. Bigger industry, bigger corporation, but those principles are still the same. You know, you. You need to set that time aside. So we're kind of forced as an industry and forcing each other, forcing ourselves to be diligent about timelines and deadlines well in advance of the following year's business.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And, you know, I think that's super important to do. So. Yeah, we had lots of conferences, lots of things, but at the same time, we knew about these things all that time ago. We knew when these conferences were coming up, I think a lot of people kind of finish the year and, and, and they just think that the clock reset somehow. January 1st. No, it's. It's just an. It's just another day. So you have to have these processes like going on and be diligent in these processes, then always be looking for ways to improve and things to do. It's not really a fresh start on January 1st, because all the problems you had on December 31st, you still have on January 1st. They're not gone.
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A
Right.
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B
You know, if you've been doing things right, all those right things are there as well.
- [15:26]
A
Yeah. Momentum and all that. Yep. All right. I think this is. So I want to build on. In future podcasts, we'll talk about conferences because I think it's is kind of trade show conference season and tips and tricks and pitfalls of those because I do enjoy them. But I think there's a lot of downside to them, too, if you're not cautious. BNI's big conference is coming up in April, so that's only a couple months away. That's. We could talk about that kind of stuff. But in general, my big push for everybody. Yeah. What's that?
- [15:56]
B
I was gonna say part of the challenge, though, at some of these conferences is that they're not like you as a presenter. You can talk about the ABCs and the basic blocking and tackling type things, but you have to make sure that the way you deliver it is fresh because people will say, I've heard this all before.
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A
Right, right.
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B
And if you make it engaging, you can get the same things across without making it sound just like the same presentation. And here's the worst thing. Presenters just changing the dates on their slides.
- [16:35]
A
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We've seen all that. Yeah. We'll talk about conference and that.
- [16:38]
B
And that is a. And that is a problem that keeps people away. So if you're wondering, if you're out there and you're saying, well, where can I turn to for help or what can I go to do? You. You have to again, put time aside to do some research on what is going to be presented, what is the agenda, who's presenting? Do some background on it because you want something new to you. The real way to get engaged is by hearing new things and actually learning. Right, Right. And even if you're relearning, then you want someone who's going to engage you in that relearning so it feels fresh. And that's what. What's great. About the best teams in sports. And I would say all the teams you watch on TV are among the elite. I'm going to say I have a losing record. They're still professional. They keep things exciting. You know, they bring in motivational speakers because the coaches know that I'm just going to sound like a droning voice.
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A
Yep.
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B
So. And they bring in motivational people to give the coach's message to the team so that it's different. It's the same damn message.
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A
Yep. Just different voice, different tone.
- [17:43]
B
Somebody with a new voice and keeping it fresh. So, you know, I, I think don't just go into it saying as a passive participant, I'm going to sign up for this and I'm just going to show up and I'm going to hear what they have to say. Do your research, be it. Go there with a purpose, go there with a reason of relearning.
- [18:00]
A
And, and I think that's true for any training though. Right. So like if we just be on conferences like this year, if you haven't map out like where the, where are your skill sets that you need to improve or want to improve on, what's the best training opportunities for it? Is it a conference? Is it an online course? Is it. Beauty of today's world is like you can get training in any facet that you desire and you can get training almost at any time too. So it doesn't have to be like, oh, I don't have time. Hey, instead of watching that TV show, do an hour training. There's so much online material now or whatever, you know, compared to 20 years ago or 10 years, everything was, you had to go, you had to, you had to go, go somewhere, pay money to get there. Even in BNI that was the case. And now we have business builder with 24,7 access to training right online and like podcasts and there's, there's so much. YouTube University might be the best place to learn anything. A lot that doesn't exist. By the way, that just says YouTube. That's what I call it.
- [18:54]
B
All right, you heard it here first. This is, this is on this podcast. YouTube University. That's what we're gonna call it.
- [18:59]
A
Do you know how I learned how to do podcasts? YouTube? Yeah. Literally anything I've ever. I know how to do green screen videos from watching YouTube on, on like the programs they make movies on like, I know all that stuff just from spending some time researching on you. You can find anything you. I'm better at QuickBooks because of YouTube. I'm better at these kind of things.
- [19:21]
B
Here's the thing. You put the things you learned into practice.
- [19:25]
A
Right.
- [19:25]
B
Watching's not good enough. Listening's not good enough. You actually have to do something with it. And I think that's a key. So.
- [19:32]
A
But it was identifying first, like, what do I want to learn? Right.
- [19:35]
B
What do you want to watch?
- [19:36]
A
Yeah, what do I. Yeah, what do I need to learn? Like, I need to do this. I don't know how to do it. I'm gonna go learn it. There's today's world. You can find anything.
- [19:44]
B
And if you're a person who presents these things and we're helping you by trying to get people interested in these things, make sure you change things up. When I was on doing the speaking engagements for a three and a half, four year span, hard to believe that was over ten years ago. But when I was doing that, I was always asked, hey, can you present that story you did last year? It was great. And I'd be like, sure. And then I would change it. And the only thing I kept the same was the opening and the. The very end. And I changed everything in the middle because the messaging was the same. But I rearranged things, I changed things up. And it wasn't just moving slides. It was like redesigning it because I knew that the same people were going to be in the audience every year.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And they loved hearing the story. But I ended on the same thing because that was the punchline of and the point of the whole presentation. But I had to change it up to keep it relevant consistently. Was told that I was voted when in the surveys as being, you know, among the best presentations. And I was, if it was the same thing every single year, that wouldn't have happened.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So I want it to be meaningful and impactful. So if you're a presenter, make sure you're meaningful and impactful, exciting, engaging, and, you know, don't just drone on with the same thing you've done in the past.
- [20:57]
A
We'll talk, we'll do a podcast on presenting too, because even for B and I members, they get to do a presentation even at their B and I meeting. And feature presentation ties into it. It might be shorter time, but it's all the same kind of principles and stuff. But these are all skill sets. So. All right, very good. This will be the year of focus on fundamentals and trainings.
- [21:15]
B
And what's the goal this year for you for episode count?
- [21:19]
A
I want to hit a thousand. So I got to do something like 225 something like that. All right, so we'll get there More.
- [21:28]
B
Here than we did last year.
- [21:29]
A
Yeah. All right. Thanks, man.
- [21:30]
B
Happy new here.