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BNI & The Power of One
BNI 845: Business Matters 129 - Solopreneurs and Success in BNI
00:22:43
In this episode of Business Matters we discuss the challenge many solopreneurs have when BNI, or any marketing, really starts to work!
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A
Welcome back to business matters, to BI and Power of One. Tim Roberts with me. Michael Martin. How are you?
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B
Good morning.
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A
Good to see you.
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B
Are you on and up? Have you readjusted to the time zone yet?
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A
Not completely. Not completely back from the. It was funny. I had a call with our CEO the other. Yesterday. Yesterday.
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C
I don't.
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A
I think so. And he pops on and I was like, what's going on? He's like, I'm exhausted. And he's like, he's like, I just got back from Singapore. I was like, I just got back from Shanghai. I was like, you want to just take a 15 minute nap and pretend we had to discuss. It's like we could just both be like, yeah, we're on a call. Yeah, crazy. But no, starting to. I actually like have been doing fine during the day. I've been. The first day I was exhausted, but it's just, I'm popping up at like 3:30, 4:00 clock in the morning now. Like wide awake, just ready to go. Like even today I was like, all right, let's open the gym. I'll go to the gym a couple hours. So yeah, it'll slowly get back. It was a long, long journey. So it was like. I know we talked on the podcast about how to prep for like the international travel. I did great going out. I did exactly what I wanted. I had no issues when we got to China. No like jet lag, no nothing. Great time, great time on the boat. Like I would get up pretty early in the boat, but just normal six o', clock, five, like whatever.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But our way back, it was basically impossible to do it because of the. I told you off the air, it was like a 40 hour trek home. That it was just like where you were and how you were. There was no way to really time out, sleep in the right pattern and everything else. You just kind of powered through and then, you know, dealt with it. So I got home at 10am on Sunday and like passed out until like 6. So that the best one is my son who's 11, has been popping up at like 3:45 in the morning. I see the lights go on and oh my God, Jesus, he's.
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B
He's waking up.
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A
Yeah. My daughter, not a problem. She's right back. Boom. Good. All this, that. But he, because he passed out too. Like I took him to see the new Fantastic Four movie.
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B
Yep.
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A
And because it was like 4 o' clock in the afternoon and I was like, all right, this will be good. We'll like see the movie, get Tired and like kind of get to a normal time or whatever. He passed out so hard and I couldn't wake him up. And this is not a quiet movie. We're in an xd, like almost IMAX level theater. This character, you know, barreling through New York City, like rumbling seats. And I'm like opening his eyelids and he just was. And then the movie, I was just like, what happened to him? Like, dude, I couldn't. I couldn't physically wake you up. So he's struggling, but it is.
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B
Yes.
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A
We're back. And we're back. Yeah.
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B
So I could just see him slumped over.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Just curled up. And I'm like trying everything I could. I just gave up. But the Griswolds took China and Japan. We did get hit. We did get hit with the. Couldn't go to Tokyo because of the. We were on the cruise ship when the earthquakes hit and stuff. But it was gorgeous day. We didn't feel a thing, didn't see a thing, just weren't allowed in. So we missed that one city. So we're excited to go back someday. Someday.
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B
But Nice, nice. Well, welcome back.
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A
Yeah, thank you. All right, so we did get a question. It's kind of bni, but business related. A topic that's been discussed, but because it keeps coming in, it's good to kind of revisit. From Lori in Oviedo, Florida. She says, hey, Tim, it's been a huge issue not only for our chapter, but others. Solopreneurs start to get so much business that they no longer quote, have time for bni. So they leave and probably expect to continue getting referrals. Would you please talk about how to scale your business to grow with your BNI referrals into and continue to increase your income. So back to that, you know. You know, I guess it's a good side of BNI is when it starts working. But that can also be a troubling time for a lot of people when it starts working. And the real question is, as your business starts really growing, how do you. How do you scale it so that it can continue versus what ends up happening? Is a lot of these people leave and they do believe all the referrals will keep coming, but it doesn't. Like, if it worked that way, there'd be no sense in being on. Right. It's kind of an out of sight, out of mind or you get replaced, your competition comes in, so now they're working with somebody else. That business tends to slow down.
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B
One of the heart, I think, I think this could touch on a few facets that we've talked about over the years, but I think kind of self reflection on your personal expectations is an exercise that does well, because what ends up happening is they join BNI because they're not getting referrals. They think if I join bni, I'm going to get referrals. And then once their business ticks up, well, my business is where it is, and so I can leave BNI and everything will be fine.
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C
Right.
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B
So they have the wrong expectation of what BNI is and what they can get out of it. And I think that's a risk because, you know, I'm not talking about, you know, how do you scale it? Because we can talk about hiring people and all that, which, which we should. But I think that if the thing that's buttering your bread is doing that and is good, you don't stop buttering your bread.
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C
Right.
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A
It's like when people have slow times, like, the first thing they cut is marketing.
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B
Yeah. You know, and, and when you should be, you know, at least looking at what your strategy is. So I think you have to be disciplined enough. We've talked about discipline in the time management area of saying, I know I'm getting busier, but I don't want to lop off the hand that's been feeding me. So I need to make time to continue to go to those meetings. And then what I would do is solicit help from, from your BNI group and say, who has gone through this that I'm going through and how did you address it successfully?
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A
Yeah. And there are multiple avenues to that. Right. There are multiple, like, possibilities. One we've talked about before, we can talk about gettings, like, all right, is it time to hire? Right. That's one, like, do I grow my team now to be able to handle it? Two is, and I had this conversation back in Covid because when Covid happened, there was a couple professions that got really super crazy busy. And. But also, we're having a super hard time hiring because of the whole situation. So I remember talking to a landscaper in particular, and my advice to him was, you know, another avenue. Instead of hiring more or hiring anybody if you don't want it, maybe that's just not your business plan. You don't want to have a team. You is start changing your requests. So if you're in there and you're asking for, you know, for lack of a better term, you got A, clients, B, clients, C, clients kind of thing. And if you're in there and you're building bbbbbbbbbbbb and those are coming in fast and furious or at a good pace that you're, you're even having a hard time keeping up. Maybe the plan is, well, how do I get better clients? Whether that's so the landscaper is example. I was like, what's your ideal next level client? He's like, like hotels and stuff. I said, great. Those are going to take a lot longer to find. Right. There's going to take, you have to retrain your team now what to be looking for the odds that they know the person that is going to be the right person in the hotel or slightly less than, you know, the neighbor, mowing the lawn type of thing. They're harder to find. It's going to take time for them to understand how to find it, how to bring it up, who to talk to, all of that. Now you've had the time to invest in retraining your BNI chapter or your team and how to elevate your clientele because you've got the business going that will keep you steady while you invest that time. So instead of just saying, oh I can't take any more B clients could start asking for the A clients now.
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B
Yeah, right.
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A
That are going to take time to find for all the reasons that B and I takes time to find. And then you can figure out whether you need to hire more or you just start shifting. All right, I'm instead of working with B level clients, I'm going to start working with A level clients. And maybe I'm now having less clients, but I'm making more money, whatever that could be. So.
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B
Right. Because you got bigger jobs. So. But again it's, it's kind of sitting back and figuring out, well, what are my goals, what I want to do. It's that constant, you know, looking at your business, keeping eyes on it and determining is what you're doing today, where you, what you need to be doing, are you going, where you need to be going and then making these kind of strategic adjustments to your plan along the way and they're going to entail all of it. They're going to. Who are my clientele? Well, if you start getting a clientele, you may have fewer and possibly make as much or more, which is great. But you're still probably going to be leaving a clientele off to the side because you aren't staffing up. So it may be you have to do multiple things to achieve your goals. But I think the prevailing, the over dominant thing is don't move away from the thing that's been successful. If. And I'm not like trying to make a plug for, for purely BNI reasons. But if you're doing things, say you're not in BNI and you're doing really good things, you have really good process and it's giving you business, then why would you stop doing that? You know, as your business increases, that. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
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A
So logically it doesn't.
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B
But when you find best practices. Yeah, I understand. Yeah, when you find best practices, you should stick with best practices. That's why they're the best.
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A
Right. Logically, it doesn't make sense. But there's the emotional aspect to it.
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C
Right.
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A
It's the anxiety of like, sure. Keeping up. There's the, you know, you get super busy, be very overwhelming. A lot of people might not have the best practice operationally. So they, they get into BNI and it starts working. And they've never implemented the things to actually keep up with what. Especially solopreneurs. And that was part of the question, right, Because a solopreneur means you're doing all things. You're offering the services, you're doing the billing, you're doing the marketing, you're doing all of those things. It can be. Become very overwhelming. So it couldn't even be. It's not a matter of hiring, like staff. It could be hiring professional help, get a bookkeeper. Maybe that's the first.
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B
That's what we talked about the last couple weeks, you know, and. But again, that's. You have to be in that mode of introspection and saying, okay, what is it that I have to change? Because, you know, you, you, if you get over inundated with work, some would say a good problem to have, but you might be upsetting people and, and you know, if you've gotten a referral from somebody and you can't execute to the level that your referral partner kind of gave you your name and said, hey, you know, I have somebody in the group, they're really great. And then you don't perform up to that. That is its own can of worms and potential problems. So you have to be looking at, what are the things I can do. So at some point, do you want to be a solopreneur forever? I guess that's the thing. So if you're. If the answer is, yeah, I just want to work for myself by myself and do all the things, then you have to basically stop your business at a certain point.
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C
Right.
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B
You have to stop the intake. And that doesn't mean you leave a bni. You just have to, you know, kind of limit how many people you're going to work for or you have to do kind of what you alluded to a moment ago. What are the things that now I'm at the point where I can divest. Am I going to, you know, do I hire an HR firm to start looking for candidates to come in and work in the business if it's, you're in a hiring freeze, do I hire a bookkeeper? You know, am I, you know, do I subcontract out to a social media person, you know, that type of stuff or marketing firm? You know, those are types of things that, you know, you should consider again before you leave the very thing that's actually gotten your business to that point. But it's kind of an inflection point. Right. You've got to be able to sit and go, okay, what do I do now? Spend the time to do it. But growing is. Growing pains are the best pains to have. They're a pain, no doubt, but they're the best pains to have. Shrinking pains are a whole lot worse.
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C
Yeah, yeah.
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A
Well. And so I'll tell you what we've learned about this over the years, Frank.
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B
When you. And this is kind of the thing, right? Oscillation of, okay, get out of the thing that actually brought you your business and you think that business is going to go and suddenly it does it and then you're going, ah, well, what happens if you try and go back to a membership based organization like BNI and there are many, there are none exactly like it, aren't many that actually do it well, but maybe you can't get back in.
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A
Well, that I was just going to tell you. Let me tell you the lessons I've learned on this throughout the years. Number one is the mis expectation that referrals will just keep happening, which I go back to, if that was the case, you wouldn't be meeting weekly. It is very much an out of side, out of mind thing and you will be replaced oftentimes. So to think or assume like, well, I built a relationship, I'm good now, I don't need to keep working with them. No. In fact, we have talked to many chapters about how what happens when somebody comes in, they build their business and as soon as they get busy, they leave is the most insulting thing you can do to the rest of the members. Because it's like, oh, you helped me build my business. Now that I'M busy and I have all these opportunities to give back. I'm out. Like, you will ruin more relationships than you think will continue. Number two is they do often come back. They just never come back to the same chapter. They often come. We. We kind of have a running joke about it is like, they. I'll come back because things do slow down or change. But the problem with that now is you're in a new chapter, which means all over again. That's the big cost thing. And it's like, yeah, like you said, just to keep it going. Even if you said, hey, I can only handle fewer referrals, it's the lack of understanding all the intrinsic values of having that chapter around them too. I think people often get why they come back. It's not just like, whether business slowed down or whatever. It's like how having that team, not being alone, having the resources, being able to refer your clients to people you now trust and know, like, becoming more valuable to your. All those other intrinsic values sure come into play. We've actually started trying to help with this as we've trained membership committees. So each chapter is a membership committee that when they're interviewing to ask this question, we now ask it in a pre. It's like a video interview our applicants go through before they go to the membership committee.
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C
And.
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A
And I put in there the question of, what is your plan for when this works? To get people to start thinking about it before they're in. Like, what are you gonna do if. If and when this works for you? Because that's important to know that people are thinking that way. Cause there's a lot of people who come in, like you said, and they're like, whether they're new or they're just not getting the amount of referrals or whatever, they join because they're trying to grow their business. It's like, okay, what's the plan when the business grows?
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B
Right?
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A
If it's the bail.
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B
Not. Not only is that a good question asked, but I also think it's probably a question that can prompt your selection committees, your selection groups, on whether they're going to take a new member to have a conversation about, hey, you know, we. We want you in, and we want you in for the long haul. Because here's what ends up happening. And you give them a case study. Say, this is what happened to Joe. Joe came in. Joe didn't have a lot of business. Joe got great referrals from his chapter. Joe's business was awesome. The conversation can't stop. There it has to then be. Joe left. Joe's business didn't do so good. Joe tried to come back. Joe did find his way back in eventually. And then he had to start from zero with a whole new chapter.
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C
Yeah.
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B
You know, and so it can also be kind of like for you guys, you know, we talk about the hiring process. Well, you're basically hiring members. So if you're, if you're, you know, maybe, maybe I'd say to the BNI directors that, that have the conversation of this is what happens when you stay versus this is what happens. And then you stay short time and then you try and get back so that they understand. And then it gives you, you know, it gives your, you know, your chapters a better sense of longevity.
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C
Yep.
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A
I mean, our number one focus is member retention. Right.
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B
And I look at it this way, like if. Because case of solopreneurs. All right, let's face it. There's no 40 hour work week for a solopreneur. You're 80 to 100 hours a week at least. Okay. So if that's the case and you look at what's a BNI meeting, how long is it?
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A
Hour and a half.
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C
Okay.
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B
Hour and a half. So you're looking at six hours a month out of the four or five hundred hours a month you're working.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Even if you double it with one to ones and everything else, it's a.
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B
Small piece that, that's a little over 1% of your time. The decision that 1% though could be generating. Let's just be conservative. That 1% of time could be giving you at least 50% of your revenue.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Let's just be conservative. I bet you it's more in a lot of cases, probably predominantly the cases, it's more. So if I'm a businessman, I'm going, okay, so I can spend 1% of my time getting 50% of my revenue. I'm doing it all day long.
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A
Yeah. I would reiterate this final point, and this is the hardest part. It's not a logical decision people are making. It's an emotional.
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C
Right.
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A
It's a decision of being overwhelmed, being tired, stressed tired, you know, the whole thing. And I think one last piece of advice is if you're in a chapter and somebody says that, that they're leaving because they just don't have time. Take a second to see if you can reach out and talk to them about it. Because a lot of times it's just a gut like, I can't do this anymore. I got to. I got to cut something. What am I going to come to cut? The. It's like the easy thing to cut.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Which again, is also kind of not logical in the sense of, like, you prepay a membership.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Right. So it's like you prepaid the year, you're leaving six, seven, whatever. You're leaving time on the table, you're leaving all these things. It's an emotional, like, situation that I think if some people took some time to ask some more questions, could probably either realize, like, all right, this is not the right fit, but I bet a lot of them could come to a way to make it work.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And.
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B
And also, you know, if you're. If you're a solopreneur right now you're listening to this, going, I feel like this is me. I don't really know what I want to do just as much as the people in your chapter and the people in other chapters. Just the people, you know, give you business referrals. They can also give you advice referrals.
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C
Right.
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B
So, you know, if that's okay to ask for that, it's nothing wrong with saying, hey, you know, because the. Guaranteed at least half your chapter has been through the same thing.
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A
It's one of the most valuable parts of a BNI membership that does not get tapped into enough. For years I've been saying that, like, think of the number of business years of experience that exists in a BNI chapter every single week that we don't ever think of tapping into, and whether that's because of, like a. Like a ego thing. Almost like you're afraid that, you know, to admit that you're struggling with something or that you're having a hard time or whatever. But, yeah, 100. You're not the only one that's gone through it. There's just no way you are. There's no way.
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B
Here's the interesting thing, too, about people. Just to the same degree that people are afraid to ask for help, people are afraid to just outright offer help.
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A
Yeah.
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B
But they are. Everybody is willing to help if asked 100%. So, like, they just don't feel like, well, it's not my place to offer it. It's uncomfortable, you know, because what if I'm wrong? It's almost like, you know, assuming a woman's pregnant.
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A
Yeah. Right.
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B
Never do that. Right. So you don't say anything even though you want to say, hey, congrats. Even though we. Well, maybe I got that wrong. It's kind of the same thing. We. We're hesitant. But what you'll find is as soon as you ask, everyone's like, oh, yeah, you know, like, because they want to help.
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A
Listen, especially in a BNI chapter, like.
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B
And BNI specifically, givers gain.
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C
Right.
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B
So they want to give you their time. So it's not just again, that that transactional mind mindset of, you know, revenue type referrals. Ask for advice.
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C
Yep.
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B
You know, and just remember how great of a position are you going to be in if you ask for advice. Get advice, take actionable steps. Business continues to grow, you stay in. And now you are able to mentor somebody down the road going through the same thing that you did.
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C
Yep.
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B
You will feel very proud and honored to have been able to do that for someone else.
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C
Right.
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B
So, you know, there's just talk about the emotional upkick for that.
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A
Yeah, I think, I think that's good advice. Like if you find yourself in that situation, really, really ask for help. Think about it. Have the conversations before making the emotional decision. Because again, it happens so much that it's almost a running joke that they come back. Yeah, just it. Every single time. And it's just never back to that same chapter. But they come back and it's like, you don't want to be that situation. You don't have to come back. Yeah, exactly.
- [22:06]
B
Let's listen. Don't be afraid to ask because no matter what anyone tells you, a hundred percent of the people in that room have been afraid to ask at some point.
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A
100.
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B
All right, you're in. You're in great company.
- [22:16]
A
Very good. All right, as always, we'd love to hear from you. Leave us a comment. Question. BNI power of one. Mike, good to see you again. And we'll be back soon.
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B
Talk to you next time.
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C
Sa.