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Sam, welcome back to BNI and the Power of One. We were back after a little bit of time off due to travel and everything else. Back with your show submissions, topics, questions etc submitted@BNI power of1.com today we are hearing from Elizabeth in South Carolina says hi. Love your practical advice in your podcast. Thank you for sharing your experience. We have a group of 80 plus members in embarrassment of riches. A big question come coming up in the group is how do we go deeper developing relationships with such a big group when you could have a one to one every week and still not meet with everyone or the same people twice? How do you get from gains to referrals with 30 second presentations and a full presentation every nine to 10 months. So great question and one I hope many, many more chapters ask and have to deal with because your chapter is a great size obviously and it's effectively achieving the third part of how do you make more money from bni? Right. So the three things again are how active are you, how effective are you? And how many people you're doing it with. Now you're doing it with quite a few members. So it comes down to the other two parts. How active are you and how effective are you? So let's talk about the first part. The first part of the question which was you could, you could have a one to one every week and still not meet with everyone or the same people twice. That is correct. If you're shooting for a, a one to one every week and I know that everybody hears B and I say you, you need to be doing a one to one every week. That's a minimum expectation. That should be the minimum bar you're shooting for. In terms of your activity level. I believe you should be doing significantly more than that for the very reason of that's when the real change in a relationship from gains to referrals really happens. Okay? That's when we can deepen the relationship not only personally, you know, the level of trust and confidence we have in one another, but really deepen the understanding of what it is you're doing, what it is you're looking for and have really strategic conversations about referral production. So number one, I'm looking at both of the first two parts. Are you active enough and you're effective enough? Number one, I would say you need to be doing more once more than one one to one every week. Especially when you have a chapter of this size. When you have a chapter of this size, your opportunity is so much more significant than most BNI members that doing More one to ones will will amplify your results beyond anything else you're going to do the rest of the week. My chapter, when I was a member and this was 24 years ago, it was like 27 members and I did a one to one every day. Every day I would tell you you should be looking at how do I do three one to ones a week? Because again, you have so many members in your chapter. It's not about, oh, I need to do more just so I can check the box and say I met with everybody. It's I have such a massive opportunity in front of me, I need to capture it. And the only way to really capture it is to be meeting with these people and having these strategic conversations. So the second part is how effective are you? That means how effective are each one to one? Again, if you're just like, hey, I gotta schedule one to ones and have coffee at Starbucks with a bunch of people every week, that would still be pretty effective in terms of like, you should be at least doing that because you have this opportunity. But it's not really effective in terms of terms of referral production. It's good in the relationship development side and maybe it triggers an idea here or there, but if you're super effective in them, meaning using your worksheets, going in with a plan, going in with questions, reviewing who you're meeting with in this upcoming week, etc, you can really set yourself up for massive success. So what do we do with a group that size? Meet more often. Meet more often in your one to ones at least three times a week. I would tell you I'd be shooting for one a day if I could. And it's not a lack of opportunity to do it with that many members and then be looking at. If I'm going to invest that kind of time, if I'm going to go from an hour investment each week in one to ones to five hours a week, are they being productive enough to really warrant that return on investment? The second part of your question, like, how do you get from gains to referrals with 30 second presentations? And full presentations every nine to 10 months is not really where the gains to referrals happens. The 30 second presentation is just strictly about, all right, I've got 80 people in the room. I got to train them all on a very simple thing to be looking for, listening for this week. You know, what are you specifically training them on to be aware of in their upcoming week when they're out there in the world and you're not with them and they're frankly probably not thinking about you. So whether it's 30 seconds or a minute, yeah, obviously a minute gives you more time. It doesn't make you more effective. And if you listen to the weekly presentation coaching episodes, you'll see a lot of examples of that. You'll just fill in the time with a lot of stuff that's not really helping you. And again, that's not where the relationship happens. Let's just talk about what is, you know, going from gains to referrals, what that really means. It means you've accomplished two things with somebody and the first part is the most important part, which is I've developed a relationship with you to the point where I'm willing to risk my reputation on you. That's a very big deal. I'm willing to risk my reputation on you. Do you think talking to me for a minute at a time with a week off in between each time is going to effectively accomplish that? Probably not. Right? So you, that's where the one to ones come in. That's where, you know, showcasing yourself by taking leadership team roles in the chapter comes in. That's where that activity, I mean, frankly, the most important part of the meeting for that for you is open networking. The part, you know, that a lot of members skip, kind of mosey in during, find their seat, don't really talk to anybody, don't. That's like the relationship building part of a BNI meeting. The second thing you need to do with somebody to get the referrals is then teach them how to do it. That's what your weekly presentation is about and that's what the featured presentation is about. So if you have 30 seconds, you just need to be again, more efficient and more effective than if you had 60 seconds. Because 60 seconds just gives you more time to, you know, add in fluff and add in stories and you just, you can be less efficient. It doesn't mean you're going to be any more effective just because you have 30 extra seconds. The full presentation, it's a cool part of the meeting. It's a training part of the meeting. Obviously, I would assume you guys are probably doing two a week. You're getting five to six minutes. Again, gives you more time than your weekly presentation. This is the part where I see the people be the least effective in BNI because again, they think of it as a different thing than what it's supposed to be. They look at it as I'm presenting on myself who I am, you know, what my products and services Are I've seen people really do displays of their products and services. It's really not meant to be that. It's again meant to be a training time. It's meant to be like, okay, what I trained you on in 30 seconds. Now I'm going to get five minutes to train you on. So not necessary, not, not crucial to your success. You should definitely do them. You should not be skipping them. You should do them as many times as you can because it's just more time. But it's not crucial to your success. And it's again, not what moves you from gains to referral. For a chapter this size, it's about meeting with people. Now my final piece of advice is with a group of that size, you've got some opportunity to really start developing deeper relationships with certain people. You've got the opportunity to really develop a power team here. My definition of a power team and BNI's are different. Excuse me. As I try to fix my throat. For me, power teams are highly dedicated. Highly dedicated. There we go. Focused groups. Okay. So they come from within your contact sphere. It's not everybody that is in your contact sphere. Context spheres and power teams, two terms that are kind of like lead and referral, almost interchangeable in a lot of ways. And they're really not meant to be. When you have a chapter this size, my hope is that your context sphere is pretty well developed inside that context sphere. You should be identifying, okay, who really is targeting the same people I'm targeting. And we can strategically come up with questions that I could ask every time I met with a client. Right. What professions are in the room right now? And I have no idea what Elizabeth's profession is. I'd give examples if I did. But for me, when I did life, disability, long term care and stuff, it was the accountant in our chapter, PNC insurance person in our chapter. Right. I could go in every meeting and ask and if I had like an estate planning attorney, there'd be the same thing. I didn't have one, but I could go in every meeting I have with a client and ask questions that would potentially open the door for them. When was the last time you looked at your homeowner's insurance? When was the last time we looked at your car insurance? Who's doing your books right now? Who had accountant are you using to do your taxes? Do you have a will? Do you have a trust set up? Do you have an estate planning attorney? All natural questions based on what I'm already talking about that are designed to not only support my client, but open the door for my members. I can't do that for every member that's in my contact sphere. Even though we might be seeing the same people we want to be targeting. Unless there's like that clear, hey, let's, let's develop an internal strategy that we try every single time with or almost every single time with. It's just a different thing. With a chapter of this size, you probably have that opportunity to say, okay listen, I'm going to do three one to ones a week, four one to ones a week with my members. But with this segment of members, maybe it's three, four, five people. I'm going to meet with them together once a week as a power team because that productivity and that opportunity is the greatest of all the people in the room. And so yes, I need to develop relationships with everybody and I need to because that's how I capture the opportunity the size has granted us. But within that big mass, there's a small segment of people that we can really become strategic with. And so I'd be looking to meet once a day, three to four days a week with, I'm going to call them regular B and I members and once a week with my power team. And that's how you fully capture this opportunity that's in front of you. If you don't do that, if you just rely on one one to one a week and your 30 second presentation, you're going to probably get more results than a lot of BNI members will just because there's so many more members in the room and you're going to get luckier more often. But if you want to really amplify and strategize and almost make it predictable and the number of referrals you're going to get a year and if you really want to say you really want to take your referral production to that next level that takes your business to the next level, you've done the hardest part, which is get the opportunity around you. It's really about do more than the minimum. Don't do just like because BNI says hey, you should do one one to one a week. And the power of one scores you 100. If you do one one to one a week, do more, do more because you just got so much more opportunity to capture. It's going to require that. And but you have so much more opportunity than your average B. And I remember, I know across my three regions that I own and operate, our average chapter size is about 27ish. I think so. Creeping up to 30, which is great. You are four, almost four times bigger than that. So are you capturing that? And that goes for anybody, really. You might say, oh, this is a podcast for large chapters. Not really. This is a podcast for how I would do it in any chapter is what opportunities in front of me and how much am I capturing and how do I capture more of it. It's not going to be by doing 60 seconds versus 30 seconds. It comes down to what are you doing outside the meeting. I teach my kids this and because I believe in it. And I think it's true for all of us in business in general, life in general, which is, you know, what really matters is what we do when nobody's watching, right? What character and discipline. And all that is all about is what are you holding yourself accountable, what are you doing when nobody's paying attention? It's the same thing in bni. The power of B and I comes in. What do you do when you're not in the B and I meeting? Most members generally think of BNI as the BNI meeting, but the real power, the real production, the real opportunity exists outside of that. And it's, what are you doing? What are you being disciplined about? What are you being committed to outside of that meeting? When nobody's watching and nobody's holding you accountable? What are you doing then? Right? So it's on you to do the trainings. It's on you to schedule and conduct your one to ones. It's on you to work on your skill sets. It's on you to prepare for your weekly presentations or your, your full feature presentation when it's coming up. It's on you to ask yourself, you know, where are your opportunities this week to find referrals for somebody else and be prepared to see them. It's on you to be listening all those kind of things. It's not a, hey, this is this thing I show up to once a week for an hour and a half and I kind of see how that meeting goes. And when you treat it that way, your results will never be what they could be. You're getting a fraction of what they could be. And, you know, with a big chapter, it's very easy. It's almost easier in a big chapter to, you know, be less active and, and a little bit more invisible because there's so many members and this, the cumulative results are so big that, you know, I've heard in the past from members be like, oh, I was in a bigger chapter, but I was, I felt lost or you know, that kind of thing. And it's like, well, that's your fault because you weren't engaging. You were sitting back waiting for people to come up to you and ask you to do one to ones. You were waiting for people to come up and ask you to do things. When everybody, there's so many members, people are busy being asked by others or whatever. So you need to be proactive in those kind of things. So hopefully that answers your question. I think it's a great question. It's a great problem to have. And I wouldn't even say it's really a problem so much as just a okay, where am I? Where's my strategy? Where what I have? What have I been doing? What else do I need to be doing? And if I'm going to do more activity, how do I make them more effective? Take training. Learn how to do your one to ones really effectively and I think that will be a great help. As always, appreciate everybody listening. If you've got topics, questions, anything of the sort, go to bnipower of1.com if you're finding value. Leave us a review. I'd love to hear from you. Leave your weekly presentations for review. All of that. Have a great day.