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Sam Foreign welcome back to BNI in the Power of One podcast. Thank you for joining me again today. Happy Monday. We are back with your show. Submissions Topics Questions submitted@bnipowerofone.com as always, if you have one go there leave it. It can be left anonymous. It it may not be whatever you want. Trust me, if you have the question somebody else does, you will be not only helping yourself today and sometimes, depending on the question, I will leave it anonymous just because I don't want to. Docking's not the right word, but you get it somebody else. So today I'm going to do that. It is from the state of Massachusetts. I'll leave you at that. There's a lot of franchises in the state of Massachusetts and it says a chapter wants to do a hybrid meeting in which they utilize an OWL camera and members can attend in person or zoom. They have ideas for limiting the number of times you can zoom in each month and they feel this will make it easier on members so they can occasionally visit the meeting from home, office or elsewhere. Have you seen this work recommendations, I might add this chapter is smaller, 15 members and has limited members that invite visitors regularly, etc. Okay, I'm pausing for not effect, but to get my words right. Absolutely not. Don't do it. Talked about this back in the day with the COVID situation and when we, when we had the hybrid model come out and there was the online model that you can absolutely in no way do blended meetings. That's what this is. This isn't a hybrid meeting. It's a blended meeting, some online, some live. And I think in the question you're kind of getting to the reason why. Right. That they feel like it'll be easier on members. Okay. What it's going to do is increase disengagement. It will be the ultimate death nail in this chapter. And if the chapter's at a point where they're 15 members and they're not really active and they're not inviting and they're looking to make it even easier to be a member. It's already down that path. It's already down that path because once you go blended and you got some people in the room, some not like I, I'm in a couple boards and there are board meetings that do this. They allow zoom in. And I promise you, most of the people who are online are not as engaged in the meeting as the people who are not most partly because they're doing other things. There's definitely that because now you get into is your camera on. Is your camera not on? What are you doing? And like, I just woke up today, I feel like I want to do the meeting from my house. This is not what we are, okay? Online networking Zoom requires significantly more discipline than live networking. So to say, oh, we're going to make it easier by introducing this tool is not even accurate if you're going to be effective. What they really are doing is just letting people kind of start to disengage and step out of the group. Because again, I had a board meeting for a nonprofit that got super heated a couple weeks ago. It was an emergency meeting. It was a big deal and there were, you know, out of 20 something people, maybe there were three or four online, you know, who we didn't hear from the entire meeting, who didn't speak up, didn't give a point, really, the people online. Now, part of that's not because is some people were doing other things. I know a couple people were traveling so that it wasn't that they, they purposely were trying to avoid the live meeting. I'm not saying anything like that. It was an emergency meeting, was scheduled last minute. Some people just couldn't do it otherwise. I get it. But because they were online and some of them cameras off, I can't tell you how engaged they were in the meeting or whether they were just listening in. And because they were online, they weren't able to engage at the same level as the people in the room who were dominating the conversation because we were all looking at each other. It was almost like they were forgotten about until a vote needed to happen or until something like that. So I know that's a more extreme example than a BNI meeting because everybody gets to do a weekly presentation and so forth. But if this. I just can't go back any more than say, absolutely not. This will kill the chapter. The chapter might be already going down that path of death, but this will absolutely speed up that process. It's not going to make it better. It will absolutely not make it better. So if the chapter is like, we're small, we want to become better, making it easier is not. Ever has never been the solution. Ever, ever, ever been the solution. And then you're adding in a nightmare of problems on top of this. When they're like, oh, well, they're going to track it and they're going to limit the number of times and what is that limit? And it's a limit each month. And then what happens if somebody goes over? What. What rule is there? But yeah, but they went over this Time. It's like attendance, right? Everybody always has an amazing reason for their fourth absence, and this is just adding to that. Let's say you say you can zoom in once a month. Well, I'm going to zoom in the second time a month because I have an amazing reason that requires me to be able to zoom in. And now you got to make exceptions and do you make the exception? And now you're picking favorites. And I'm telling you, disaster, absolute disaster waiting to happen. So my recommendation, don't ever do it. Do not do blended meetings. They're. They're just not the answer. If you need to be zooming in to make it easier for people, go to the hybrid model. Maybe that's the solution. Hey, listen, we're smaller. We don't want to pay the rent. We want to be able to expand our opportunities, pull from a bigger geographical area. We want to make it. We want to take advantage of the efficiencies of online networking with zoom and stuff. Let's go to a hybrid meeting where we meet live once a month and online the rest of the time. Blended is not the solution. It just isn't. If the chapter is fully live and you've got a couple of members who, like, I don't want to do fully live, maybe the chapter is not the right fit. Maybe part of the weeding out and, you know, cultivating, they got to do is letting go of the ones who want it to be easier. Nothing worth it tends to be when we, when we're looking at things we really want to accomplish in life. Success, results, sales, whatever, victories in sports, everything else. I would find it extremely uncommon that the path to that success is the easier path. Networking is, is the same. Bni, by definition of everything we do is not the easiest form of networking, but it's the most effective. So I just think it's bad advice and a bad idea. Probably coming from a good place, but bad idea to seek the. The easiest path when the chapter is already struggling. So I'd leave it at that, but I'd say that for every chapter and I said it. You can go back. I don't know the podcast numbers. I'm not as good as Ivan is at referencing. Hey, in this episode, the only one I know off the top of my head is the one that I did on inviting because I share it so often, which is episode 566, by the way, if you want to learn how to invite. But I know we talked about blended. In fact, I'll look it up while we're talking. I know you're sitting there driving, going like, I just wish he would shut up. Now he's answered the question. But let's just see if there's a blended episode. All right? There isn't one titled with it, so. But I know I've talked about it. I have a firm stance. No blended. No blended chapter meetings. You're either all online or all live. That's it. And so that would be my recommendation. And my challenge to you is don't let them do it. So good question, though. Good question. Hopefully it was helpful for everybody. Once again, appreciate you listening. Look, if you haven't left a review, do so. I appreciate every single one of them. I read them and which I probably shouldn't, but I do. But more importantly, help another member find this. More people we can help on a weekly basis, the more meaningful it is for me. So if you're finding value, tell your members, get them to subscribe and listen. And I hope you have an amazing week. Sam.