A (0:00)

Sam Foreign welcome back to BNI and the Power of One. Thank you for joining me again today. Back with your Questions submitted@bnipowerofone.com today is coming from David. He says hello. I heard on a super old podcast of yours that you could set up a mentorship program between a mentor and mentee and it's been suggested you put your entire chapter through that. And of course the level doesn't really matter. It's all about the members getting the content and being encouraged to do one to one with their mentor. I can't find this in Connect or Business Builder. Found a video on it, but it's from 10 years ago. Is it, Is this still a thing? Is there an alternative? I did make a ticket and reach out to my chapter Success team, but I wonder if you knew since you brought it up. Thank you. Also thank you for featuring the question last week. Oh awesome. So David, multiple submitter of questions and thank you for listening. Yeah, so the mentoring program is still very much a thing and the passport to success still very much a thing. So a couple things, let's start with Business Build. First of all, for those who didn't see the wire and stuff that came out like a week ago, if you're listening to this new update that makes things a lot easier called my bni.com my bni.com this is a single sign in website for you. So once you sign in and you don't have to do anything to create, it's your username and password for BNI Connect and everything else, you go to my bni.com sign in and you are logged in and have access to any of the BNI things that you would have access to. So B and I Connect, B and I Business Builder. If you're a director or higher level, B and I insights, all that kind of stuff. So very, very cool. Check it out, use it, save it. So you log into mybni.com you go to BNI business builder. There are two types of training that are on there right now. If you're only a member you can go and search mentor and there's a mentoring training, training online for new members. It literally walks them through different trainings, weekly presentations, intentional one to ones, etc. So it's kind of like an online version of mentoring. However in the leadership training, so you have to be assigned this training as a general member. You won't have access to it, but you should if you want to and you are intrigued by it or want to introduce it to your chapter or Implement it in your chapter, speak to your director, managing director, executive director, whomever, your chapter success coach, whatever the title is, and see if you can get assigned it as a potential mentor coordinator. There is a mentor coordinating coordinator training that does go through the passport program and what that looks like. And I believe that's probably what I was talking. I don't know. The episode and mentoring has changed a lot over the years, many times since we started this podcast for the better in a lot of cases. So what we like to use is the Passport to success. The passport to success does walk your new members through intentional one to ones with different people in the chapter. So different leadership team members and everything else. The passport in the United States comes in the new member kit. We also, I know in my region we, we have some on hand that chapters can order from us if they want it because again, only new members are getting the new new member kit. So if the chapter wants to put the whole chapter through it together, whatever, perfectly fine, they can order some passports from us. But that, that's an easier program to follow just because it has something tangible. And so they fill it out as they go through the program, who they met with, different topics, those kind of things. It's a small little passport, size of a regular passport. And we've had success with that just because again with the tangible, with who I need to meet with. It gets you moving throughout the chapter, gets you meeting with the leaders. It starts that relationship building process that along with training we do, obviously our member success program training is a big piece of our training. And so through that, through meeting with the different members, learning about what their roles are, learning more about the chapter. Also just generally doing one to ones with members kind of proactively, like they have to go ask to do these one to ones instead of just sitting back in the corner of the room waiting for that people to ask them to do one to ones. It starts to build up the habits, it starts to build up the skill sets, it starts to build up the relationships that ideally will start turning profitable. And the whole idea of mentoring and member success program and all these things is twofold. One is skill set stuff. That's why every member should go through member success program every single year. It's just a good refresher on basic skills that you need to be effective in your chapter. But from a new member perspective, it's all about that on ramp and getting them up to speed as quickly and as safely as possible to make them engaged and effective as a member for everybody, including Themselves. You know, just like on a highway, there's a usually a long on ramp for you to get up to speed with the other cars so that you can merge into traffic safely. If you just turned and you were in the middle of the highway and other cars are going 70 miles an hour while you're trying to accelerate up, very dangerous for everybody. And it's really no different in your BNI chapter. If we just bring in a new member, we congratulate them, you know, we induct them and then we just kind of leave them to figure it out. It's dangerous for everybody, it's unlikely to work out well. And so the new member gets frustrated, the new member becomes disengaged, a new member may leave, or they're just not getting results and thus nobody else is getting results from them. And you spent all this time trying to find them and getting them there to visit and they join and then you just like kind of leave them to it. It's just when you think about it logically, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Why does it happen? Well, because nobody's really paying attention to it. We're all super busy. Everybody's got a million things going on. It's why we have the mentor coordinator role in the leadership team, so that somebody can be kind of tracking it and making sure that it's happening. Because if we just all assume somebody will do it, well, nobody ends up doing it. And I think this is why, you know, just about every region but every chapter doesn't have an overall retention issue. Most of the times they have a first year member retention issue. And it's because, you know, you get a lot of seasoned members who have the habits. You know, remember when you bring in a new person, they're not, they don't have the habits of even having the meeting every weekend, never mind doing one to ones and doing all that kind of stuff. So to not kind of hold their hand for a little bit and show them the way and just expect that they're going to be doing what you're doing. You know, as a member who's been a member for 2, 3, 5, 10, 20 years is kind of crazy when we think about it that way. But a ton of chapters do that. So to your question, mentoring program still exists. Mentoring program, pretty critical to do it well to the long term success of the group and those new members. There are resources. You got to speak though, each region is going to be slightly different on what they're using and how they're using it and what they're training etc, so you're going to want to speak with, you know, whoever's in charge and managing your chapter at your region level. And if you're looking and say we don't have this in my chapter, well, step up and become the Mentor Coordinator and ask your director, chapter success coach, whomever to help you become that role and set you up for the training and BNI Business Builder so you can learn more about the Passport program. Again, if your region's using the new member kits and they should be in the United States, it comes with it. So. And I bet a lot of times right now they're looking at it and it's like, I don't know what this is and they put it to the side because nobody talks to them about what it is. So step up, volunteer, become the Mentor coordinator. It's not a hard role, it's not a huge time consuming role, but it can be a very important role for your chapter. Remember you guys, when you make this investment in a new member all the time, the energy and everything else, you want it to pay off, you want to return on that investment. This is what's going to help you get that. Otherwise you're just crossing your fingers and hoping and a lot of times that doesn't work out very well. So as always, thank you for listening. Leave a Review Share the Podcast Go to B. Power Blonde Leave a Question Talk to you all soon. Sam.