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Foreign welcome back to B9 the Power of One. Thank you for joining me again today. This month continues to. To drag on. We're still in January, which is kind of crazy to me. This is the month that just never ends. A little bit different today than what we've been doing. We're not going to go to any direct questions in this episode though. Keep them coming in. Please go to bni powerofone.com and suggest your topic can be any question B and I related, business related, what have you or your weekly presentations. We definitely have a few and we'll be getting back to them. But I want to talk about a pressing issue that seems to be popping up. It does every January. It's a new year, so it's not uncommon. I've addressed it before, but I think it's important to kind of revisit just because it's popping up in our regions in a couple different places. And it's around BNI competition, it's around one person per profession, networking groups in particular, and how the BNI policy is currently written, but how that will be being updated as well. And really the spirit behind the policy and why it matters. So forever BNI has had a policy around belonging to one person per profession groups. The this is a policy that we hold ourselves accountable to. Meaning you cannot belong to 2B and I chapters as an individual. Your company can. There are many companies with multiple members, but it's individual members in each individual chapter. So I want to talk about the spirit behind that. Okay, why is that? Why can we only belong to one? And what it comes down to is your relationship development and a level of trust and a level of loyalty, a little bit trust. More importantly, there is no Kool Aid stand when you join bni. There is no policy or ceremony that says all other relationships you have out there no longer exist. That doesn't exist. However, when we join a B and I chapter or any one person per profession group, there's a level of trust that is established that we are going to focus on helping each other. That you are now part of my group and I'm committed to learning how I can best help you. And you are committed to. To how you can best help me. Now, help can come in a variety of different ways, of course, but the majority of the time when we talk about help, we're talking about referring one another. Now, I said earlier, there's no, you know, Kool Aid standing stuff. We understand that you're gonna have relationships. It could be friends, it could be family, previous Ones that maybe preclude you from giving direct transaction based referrals to someone. I always use the example of when I was a member, my father was a member, you know, two different chapters. If he came across somebody said, hey, you know anybody that sells life insurance he would refer to me even though we were in different chapters. But there are other ways we can help each other. There are relationship based referrals, there are connections we can be making that's on us to learn. That's why we do one to ones and those kind of things. But there's a level of trust that even if there's a previous relationship that would absolutely preclude you from referring that you're still going to seek to help. Our givers game philosophy is you're going to seek to help me and I'm going to seek to help you because you probably want my referrals, right? It's not often that that's a two way no go, so that matters. It's really the underlining thing that drives the success of any BNI chapter is that we are creating this team and I have loyalty to you and trust that you have the same and that we're seeking to help. And again, 95% of the time that means direct referrals. Some of the times it could be in other ways. When somebody joins another one person per profession group, it breaks that level of trust. It brings into question, well, who are you seeking to help? It brings in the question of if a referral opportunity does pop up, am I going to get it or am I only going to get some of them? Because you know, you are now in a group with my competitor who's expecting and trusting, you're going to help them as well. You're, you're trying to divide this up. Now I get the natural thought is oh, all right, if I'm in a BNI chapter and it works, if I'm in something like it, that will work too. I'm expanding my resources, I'm expanding my opportunities, when in fact it has the opposite effect, you actually end up hurting yourself, you end up hurting your relationships and once there's a strain there, you limit your results. You know, if you're in my group, and I know you're also in a one person per profession group and I'm questioning where your referrals are going to go. I'm not as likely to try to help you either. This is why again, BNI holds ourselves accountable to this. I get asked at least monthly by people if they can belong to another BNI chapter at the same time. And the answer is always no. And there is no well, what if scenario where we say, yes, there's no, well, what if I represent a different business in that chapter? Is that okay? No. What if I represent my spouse's business in that chapter? Is that okay? No, because it goes by the individual. You are still you. It doesn't matter the profession you're representing in that moment. You still have your contacts, you still have the relationship with me as your fellow member. It is necessary for the success. So much so being. I learned this the hard way many, many, many years ago. This is the beauty of belonging to an organization like BNI is there's now decades of experience. BNI thought and tried that you could belong to two chapters as long as they were a certain distance apart. I forget what the exact distance. Let's say it was like 30 miles or something. Like you could belong in a chapter in one area and another chapter in another area because there'd be enough distance. And it didn't work. It didn't work for those members. They lost business. They got less. They were doubling their efforts and getting less for it. This is a policy that's been in place since day one because of this, and it's an important one now. What's happening and will continue to always happen is there are many, many people who will go to a B and I meeting, many who will join a B and I chap and then grab the agenda and say, oh, I can do this, I can do this on my own. We can do this over here. We could do it cheaper, we could do it free. We could do it, what have you. There's many competing organizations that have started who are one person per profession. Now what they're saying and where they try to compete is they will state, we don't hold our members accountable to referrals. The current B and I policy says you can only belong to. It literally says in the policy you can only belong to 1B and I chapter and you cannot belong to any other program that holds its members accountable to referrals. That is going to be changed because it's a workaround. These one person per profession groups will just build. We don't hold our members accountable referrals. I could argue that a lot of BNI chapters don't. It's not really about the accountability to referrals. There is no other reason to be in a one person per profession group. If it's not about generating referrals with each other, why be in why limit it? Why limit it to one person per profession? Why meet on a regular basis? It really doesn't make any sense. The only level that it could possibly make sense is in some kind of mastermind group where, you know, they share really intimate details about their business and they don't want their competitor in the room to get those details. That's like the, the only example I could possibly think of. That's not what these groups are, though. It's just not. They're networking groups. They literally call themselves networking groups. They'll just say, yeah, well, we don't hold our members accountable to referrals. Oh, are you passing referrals? Well, yeah, but we don't hold them accountable to referrals. Are they there to get more referrals? Well, yeah, but we don't hold them accountable to bs. These groups oftentimes are being run by somebody who they themselves is trying to get referrals from the group. I often say they're charlatans, they're con men. We have one right now in our Northeast Florida region, this lady Laura, who wanted to argue with us about belonging to a competing group, that it wasn't competing because it was free and because they didn't hold their members accountable. It's one person per profession. Who then we said, well, you can't be in it. She asked, well, can I be in it to represent my husband's company? And we said, no, because it's by your individual. And I gave her the option. I said, listen, if you want to be in that group, fine. You just renewed. You just added time. I'll give you a refund on the time you just added like two weeks ago. You decide. And she decided to leave us and then argued that she didn't resign because we, blah, blah, blah, blah. She's now starting her own group, so much so that she hijacked the chapter's Facebook account, which to me is amazing because talk about trying to literally piss off a group of people. You're not pissing me off. I'll get that back. You're really hurting relationships you had. But here's a lady who supposedly has been in BNI a long time, supposedly was a director or something in another region at one point, who literally doesn't get it, doesn't get it. And to me that's everything. Like, if somebody's saying like, oh, I'll belong to multiple one person per profession groups, I'll go and create my own and join over there. They are selfish, self centered individuals. They're only looking at what can I get from other people? Because they're splitting their loyalties and if they're going to argue that they're not, they're a con man, it doesn't make any sense. Again, I go back to, it's so important we hold ourselves accountable to it. We give up hundreds of members of probably thousands of members across the us maybe tens of thousands across the world of memberships we could sell because of this policy, because it's that important. I let her leave because it's that important. It's what drives everything. And people who start these groups, you know, they take the agenda and they go, and they go, oh, I'm going to do it on my own and I can do this. I mean, that's the equivalent of me being like, hey, I've bought and sold a house before so you should take real estate advice from me or hey, listen, I've bought and sold stocks before so you should take financial advice from me or I've bought insurance before so you should take insurance advice from me or I've or so forth and so on and so on. One of the benefits, probably one of the biggest benefits of being in this organization is not the agenda, it's the access to the brand, it's the access to a dedicated team which is driven by this policy. It's the access to like minded, accountable people who aren't out for themselves. But it's also most importantly, access to the experience, to the tools, to the training, to the coaching, to all of that that I would argue a lot of some members don't tap into. But that's what you're getting. This is the field that BNI are experts in, just like our real estate agents are experts in real estate. They probably would advise you not to listen to me on how to buy and sell your home. Just because I've bought and sold a home before, just because I can do it online doesn't mean it's probably the best idea for me, right? Just because I can buy insurance online doesn't mean I'm gonna buy the right one. Just because you can steal an agenda doesn't mean you actually know how to make it work or how to help the other members who are gonna join that group. This lady's gonna charge $300 for people to join her new startup group. That's a complete mock and steal of bni and they're gonna have no idea how to be successful in it and she's gonna gladly take their money and not probably not tell them that she's simultaneously also in another one person profession group. You tell me. I don't know, it sounds like this the definition of a charlatan. Pay me to be a part of my group. And oh by the way, I'm not going to tell you that I'm also in this other one person per profession group with your competitor. Ow. Sounds sleazy to me. So I highlight it not because it's just happening, it happens all the time, but to reinforce the focus of it and why it exists. The spirit again is about the relationship. You're developing that level of trust that's required to actually refer one another. Remember again what a referral is. A referral is me handing you my reputation. That's what a referral is. I have to trust you enough to risk my reputation on you. There's a level of trust that's required for that to happen and it's why this policy is in the place is to help develop that required trust. And when that trust gets questioned, the results fall. It's why most of these competing groups, including the one we got one in central Florida too, this one's I'm not even going to name because they're in tr. They've signed agreements and everything else. And I hope this Laura lady is dumb enough to make the mistakes I know she's going to make. That will open up her herself for lawsuits too. But it's why they don't last. These groups don't last. I gotta really spend a lot of time worried about it and I tell my chapters, don't worry about it. If somebody is willing to do this, to leave your group to be in some free one person profession group that doesn't know what it's doing because they think they're expanding their, their, their whatever exposure, let them go. They weren't the right fit anyways. They probably caused most of the drama in your chapter to begin with. That's historically what's been the case. Let them go. Don't even spend a second worrying about it. They're going to do all kinds of shady things like this lady again trying to steal the Facebook page. Like can you be more of a scumbag? Like let her. Whatever. Good luck. Focus on you. Focus on what you can do. Focus on your group. Focus on being right for each other. You will outlast that group by decades, I promise you. I mean you want to go back and listen to some old pocket. I don't remember the number. This was years and years ago. So it's deep in the, in the bowels of the episodes, I think I talked to the story. We had a competing group in New Hampshire years ago, national organization, got brought to New Hampshire by a couple past members. Two people who were literally kicked out of their chapter. And everybody was up in arms and da, da, da. They're starting this thing. And they. They kind of sparked for a bit. They probably started like nine chapters. They were all small, but they started like nine chapters across the state and da, da, da, da. Literally, the lady gets on a radio interview and first question the person asks is like, oh, tell us more about this organization. I won't even name it because it doesn't matter. And the first words out of her mouth were, oh, we're just like that much bigger organization, bni. And I was like, well, there you go. And wouldn't you know it, within a couple years, maybe two, the two people were fighting with each other. The whole thing fell apart. All disappeared. Members were complaining they weren't being held accountable. Nobody was showing up. Like, when you go to these free things and these mock things who go, oh, we're just like bni. But. Everything that they say after the but is what makes BNI work. And they try to change it, and then, shockingly, it doesn't. It doesn't pan out. So don't worry about it. If it happens in and around your area, don't worry about it. Worry about what you can control. It's what you can do. It's who's in the room, who is committed to you, who does want to help you grow, who do you want to help grow. And if you follow the program and you use the training and use the coaching and you use the resources and you commit to one another, your success is not going to be limited by some charlatan out there trying to do some shady stuff. They won't last. They'll be annoying. They'll be a distraction, as they clearly are now. This is why I'm doing a podcast on it. By the end of the day, they don't matter. And they won't matter. Not to you, not to us. So stay focused and remember, again, why that policy exists. Don't fall in the trap of thinking like, oh, if I. If I give myself more exposure to these, I'll get more. You actually will hurt yourself. You'll get less. It's why the policy exists and again, why we hold ourselves accountable to. I can't reiterate that enough. I've repeated that multiple times. It's so important. We. It literally says in it, you can only be in one B and I chapter if it didn't matter if it, if it was just so that easy, we would let people be in all kinds of chapters. We wouldn't limit our own revenue and membership sales and all that kind of stuff. But it's vitally important to your success, which is why we do. And so stay focused. And as always, if you got any questions, comments, anything of the sort, you want to criticize this, whatever, go to benipowerofone.com let me know. Love to hear from you, and I look forward to answering more of the questions that are submitted. And we'll be back again in a couple days with those and your weekly presentations. You want those reviewed Again, go to bnipowerofone.com Hope you guys have an amazing day.