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BNI & The Power of One
BNI 852: One chapter of 40 or Two Chapters of 20
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This week’s question is: Which is better—one chapter with 40 members, or two chapters with 20 members each?
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Sam Foreign welcome back to B9 the Power of One. Back with your show. Submissions Topics Questions submitted at bni powerofone.com if you ever have one go there, let me know. Love to answer them. Today we are hearing from Ross in Melbourne, Australia. I think last week we hit Australia as well. Thank you for listening. Really appreciate it. Says, which is better, two chapters of 20 members or one chapter of 40 members? Can you answer this as a regional director and from a member's perspective, sure. This could be a sticky one depending on where this question's really coming up from. I can see a scenario where I'm like walking into a trap of like, see, he said this. All right, which is better? I'm going to start with the most important perspective, which is a member's perspective. One chapter of 40. I'd rather be a chapter of 40 members. Look, there are only three ways you make more money from your networking and in particular your BNI membership. Number one is you pick up your activity so you do more one to ones you show up more often if you have an attendance issue, those kind of things. Number two is the activity that you're already doing, you do better so your skill sets improve. Okay? So that means every weekly presentation I'm doing, I'm doing more effectively. Every one to one I'm doing is producing more results because I'm doing it more effectively. That's a skill set thing. Okay, so you can control to a limit how active you are. You're going to be limited based on your availability, schedule, other commitments, all those kind of things. But are you maximizing your activity level? And a great question to ask yourself is if I had to be completely honest about my activity to people who are reliant on me being successful. So whether that be my kids, my spouse, my partners, my employees, whomever, if I had to sit in front of them and be completely honest about how active I really am and how much effort I'm really putting into it, would they and would I be proud of what I have to say? Feel like, yeah, I'm doing everything I possibly can. Awesome. Now I could probably be doing more. Start there, do more. Because it's an initial, immediate change you can make. The effective part is like, okay, are you sure you're doing it as effectively as possible? And the answer there has to be no, because even I wouldn't be able to answer that. So are you investing in training? Are you investing, investing in learning how to be more effective in implementing that information. So, you know, we do pretty much weekly, weekly Presentation reviews. Those people are investing time working on their weekly presentation, submitting it to get answers, getting feedback like that's a step to becoming more effective. Are you going to trainings? Are you going to MSP training? You go into advanced trainings if you have them. Are you doing B and I Business Builder? Are you listening to the podcast? Obviously, if you're hearing this, you are, you get it. Okay. The third and the most impactful, meaning the one that will produce the most results for you at the greatest volume and in the greatest speed is how many people you're doing it with. How big is your network? Because that's just the multiplier of opportunity. The more people hearing my weekly presentation, no matter how effective or ineffective it is, the more result, the more opportunity I'm going to have for somebody to find what I'm looking for. Thus the more likely that's going to happen. I can do amazing weekly presentations in a group of 10 or 20, and I probably won't get as much as if I'm doing lesser effective ones in a group of 40 because the opportunities are just significantly bigger. So ideally, at the end of the day, the answer to both is a chapter of 40 because it's the most effective for the members in who are active right now. So I would rather a chapter of 40 members running because I know those members are going to make more money, those members are going to retain at a higher rate, and that's better. And thus it's because it's better for the members. Bigger is better. In bni, it's just period, end of story. It gets to a tipping point. There is a tipping point, I believe. So this is just me going off memory, so don't. This isn't gospel or anything, but I believe the plateau is around 150 members. It starts to plateau on the. You know how much better it's getting. So there is a little bit of a tipping point, but that's so much bigger than 99.9% of the chapters out there. Like you got plenty of room. Okay, two chapters of 20, though, as a regional director gives me a couple things. One is more opportunity to get those groups up to 40, right. So why would I have two chapters of 20 instead of a chapter of 40? Because I probably can't blend them. And, and by the way, a little tangent. If your chapter is suffering, there are cycles to chapters. There's, there's life cycles to chapters even in BNI and in Business Builder, there is a chart that you can look up. You can, you can Even Google. And it comes up called BNI Life cycle chapter Culture curve. And it talks about how, you know, there's the growth period, there's this kind of this like plateau period where things are running and then, then BNI light they call it when it, when it goes in the other direction. And that happens for a variety of different reasons. But anyways, they, they cycle. So if your chapter is in a downward cycle, let's just say, or suffering cycle, and the chapter near you is also suffering in a downward cycle, the solution never ever, ever, ever has it ever worked. And my team members still will try combining those two chapters. It does not work. It's a very temporary band aid that pulls apart because first of all, there's often, you can't often blend everybody because there's two real estate agents or two mortgage brokers or two whatever. And yeah, now we got to decide. And then I got loyalties over here and da, da, da, da. That's one reason. The other reason is you're just putting two groups of people who are in a negative spiral of culture, accountability, focus, whatever might be going on in that group and just bringing in another group of people who are having issues doesn't solve that. So combining chapters never really works. So why I might have two chapters as them? Because like, I have two real estate agents, I got two mortgage brokers, I got two whatever. And yes, some blend could happen because, you know, maybe this one has got a painter and that one doesn't, but that one's got a plumber and that one doesn't. But we treat them separate and independent and our job is to help coach, support, train, and, you know, elevate those groups to go. We want to be 40 because we will all make more money from that and help grow them. This is how we start chapters and regions. You'd be shocked how many times like we will be starting a new chapter in a chapter that's been by themselves for a long time in an area or a town or whatever gets really upset like we're taking away from them. We're not. We only start the chapter because somebody came to us who can't join your chapter because they're the real estate agent, whatever, fill in the blank. They want their own group and we want to help them create that. We are not, as B and I going out and finding and inviting and getting all these people to join that group. They, they are. So if those people existed in your town or area and could have joined your chapter all along, you got to reflect on why didn't you ever invite them? They were, they've been there. We're not going out and like pulling people away that could join your chapter. We don't go, oh, well, yeah, you could join chapter A. But instead of doing that, we're going to start chapter B. We start chapter B because the person, the first few people who come to us can't join chapter A. And we are not in, you know, we're not going to say no, you can't get any kind of benefit or results. And no, we're not going to help you grow your business because we're helping X, Y, you know, these people over there do that. If, if some person came to us and said, hey, I would like to join BNI and there's an opening in your chapter, that's the first place we would put them, the first place we'd send them. It's not, oh, well, do you want to start your own chapter? Just so we have two chapters of 20 I have seen in the past, and this is the most heartbreaking thing I've ever seen because it doesn't work. And it killed both of them. This was in a region that I had once purchased and we found out after that that had happened because we were getting real pushback from this chapter about growing. They were like 18, 19 people like, oh, let's, you know, let's set a goal, let's try to get to 30, let's try to get to. And they just like, I mean, more than just the typical, yeah, you know, we know you want us to grow, but we're happy at 19. It was like, go pound. We're never getting bigger than 19. Really weird situation. And when we started digging and talking, like, why is that? They told us because the last time they hit 40, the executive director at that time came in and split them into two chapters of 20. That is outrageous and gross. And we, I was like dumbfounded that that even happened. Like, my jaw hit the floor. I was like, what are you talking about? And so that is a no go, not a good strategy for anybody. Should never happen ever in ever. It just should never, ever happen. And unfortunately for them, it did. And the other chapter, when they split into two chapters of 20, one is. Was gone entirely and one was 17, 18 members and refused to grow. So that is not like, that's why I said earlier, I'm like, I feel like I'm walking into a sticky situation. I hope that's not the case. I hope there's not some situation where the region wants two chapters of 20. The chapter wants to be a chapter of 40. And they're arguing with each other because if that's the case, I'm on the chapter side on that one. That's insane. Do not split chapters. So, yeah, so I think again, the, the answer is ultimately you want the chapter of 40. From a regional director's perspective, I'd want as many chapters of 40 members as I could because I'm helping as many people as I possibly can help. And BNI is a for profit business. Obviously, if there's more members, the, the organization is doing better, which means more resources, more investment, more everything for everybody. But most importantly, at the end of the day, why does somebody join a BNI chapter? They're not joining because they want more friends or because they have too much free time or they're not having enough fun in their lives. They're joining to grow their business. And through this proven system, through the camaraderie, through the, you know, the team aspect, through the accountability aspect, through all of the things that help us do that. But at the end of the day, they want to grow their business. They are more likely, significantly more likely to grow their business in a chapter of 40 than a chapter of 20. It's mind boggling how many times we got to get the members convinced that that's the case. But that is the case. They are significantly more likely to grow their business in a chapter of 40 than a chapter of 20. So that should be the goal, that should be the focus in this. I'd much rather one chapter of 40 as a regional director, as a member, whatever that. That would be the answer because that will lead to, as a regional director, that will lead to a lot more chapters, a lot more success. Anyways, great question. Thank you as always. Leave me a comment. Review however you're finding this. Continue to highlight the show for others to find it. Appreciate everybody who continues to submit questions. Submit yours bipower of1.com have a great day.