A (0:00)

Sam. Foreign, Welcome back to BNI and the Power of One. Thank you for joining me again today. A little bit different today. Not going on a suggested topic. Keep them coming in. Appreciate everybody who does. As always. If you have a question, go to bnipower of1.com happy to answer them. But it is that time of year where I have to kind of do my, my annual preaching, I guess for lack of a better term around networking in the holidays. Recording this December 16th should come out tonight. A little late for it, but you know, next week major holidays are here, Christmas is here, New Year's, the week after that, so forth and so on. And often a time where people will look to skip their networking, you know, under the guise of it's the holidays, maybe they're not working next week, maybe they're not working the week in between Christmas and New Year's. The kids vacations are coming up, all kinds of different things are going on. It's a busy time. Maybe business slows down for some people so they tend to slow down their other activities. All of that, all completely understandable, I get it. But I always make the annual push to really do your best to try and meet. Okay. And try not to just accept the easy convenient excuses one could have to not meet. That's both collectively and individually. Because while all the things I just mentioned before are true, what also is true is this is the most opportunistic time of the year for your fellow members to find you referrals and vice versa for you to find them for them. Because it's one of the very few times of the year where we know where everybody's going to be. We know the settings they're going to be in, we know who they're going to be in front of. We know they're probably going to company holiday parties. We know they're going to family members houses or maybe they're hosting a holiday party. We know what the environment's going to be where we can specifically train them on how to look, listen and see referral opportunities in those specific environments the rest of the year. There's a couple times a year this happens, but the rest of the time we don't really know, not collectively, where everybody's gonna be. And so we are being specific, but we're only hitting a small portion of the group week to week because not everybody's in the same environment like they are right now. And I just put this out every year to challenge yourself to do what you can to do a little bit extra maybe if if you're not meeting with a lot of clients, pick up a one to one. Don't skip your BNI meeting if you don't really have to. I understand. If you are traveling, you know, if you're going away the week between Christmas and New Year's, big travel season, family holidays, I'm, I'm going on one. That's different. That's different. You're not physically there. If you're on a zoom meeting, maybe you try to be, but if you're home and even if you're not meeting, even if you're on quote unquote vacation that week, I would challenge you to look at that hour and a half, B and I meeting as something you might want to do specifically. I mean, again, the high majority of BNI meetings are in the mornings. There are some afternoon meetings, of course, but the majority of them, and by majority, I mean probably over 90, 95% of them are in the mornings. And so to challenge yourself not to, to take that extra hour and a half, two hours that day, early in the morning, go to the meeting, have the rest of your day, not only to better your own business, but because you are a team member. This is what makes BNI unique compared to other networking organizations. People are reliant on you being in attendance to be able to help them. They're reliant on, hey, I need you in the room to hear my weekly presentation. I need you in the room to hear what I'm asking for referrals this time and to train you on what to look for at that holiday party. If you're not in the room, you don't just hurt your own results, you hurt potentially everybody else's results. You know, at a chamber of commerce, at a social networking event, that's not true. Right. But in bni, in this team environment that we've created, with this level of accountability, with the one person per profession, with all of that, we are extra reliant on each other and I need you to be there. Now, again, there's going to be, you're not going to have 100% attendance during these couple weeks. I guarantee that's probably going to be the case. But that doesn't mean the others shouldn't meet. You know, I remember chapters coming. Oh, 30% of our chapters aren't even going to be there. So we're taking it off. Why? You're going to let the other 70% not get that opportunity? No, meet, meet. You know, this is why we have an attendance policy the way we have an Attendance policy. If you know you're going to be gone and this is a week, you can send a sub. Or if you can't because it's the holidays and it's harder to find, use one of your absences again. You don't need to bank them, you know, or try to if you've abused the policy. Maybe you can't do that, but you know, you should have the room to do it. A couple examples of this again, we've had members who, you know, said they couldn't make a zoom meeting. A zoom meeting because their kids were home from school that day. Leaving out the part that their kids are like sophomores and juniors in high school. And the meetings at 8am on Zoom, right. It's easy to accept the excuse. It's easy to say, oh, I can't because you know, the kids are home or because I'm, I'm not working or because things are so down because it's the holidays. There's is always a reason not to go to your BNI meeting. I challenge you to push through that this time of year because it's not any other normal BNI meeting. Now Christmas is on a Thursday, New Year's Eve is on a Thursday. This year really messes up a lot of chapter meetings. Understandably. You're not going to meet on Christmas morning. That would be insane. But maybe the chapter moves their meeting that week or if your chapter's not again, pick up a one to one this week, pick up another one. Do to really be thinking about what opportunity sits in front of you that's unlike the rest of the year and that when effective could really kick start your 2026. Wouldn't it be amazing to go in the first week of January with referrals from your efforts during this time, ready to go, ready to be ahead of your game on your New Year's goals and everything else. I also remind you this comes from a place where you know a lot of people will go, oh well Tim, of course you want, you're the BNI guy and da da da, da, we don't get paid or make money as a BNI organization per meeting, right? There's, there's no incentive for me to push people to network during the week of Christmas or New Year's or what have you. Financially, the incentive is I know the opportunity that's in front of you and if you capture, you're going to get more referrals, you're going to make more money, you're going to want to stay even longer that's the goal is to how do you make more money? There's no skin off my back whether you meet or not. But I think one of our roles is to challenge you to think bigger than a lot of us naturally will on this, to think differently, and to encourage you to remain committed. Even again, even if you do nothing else the rest of the day but wrap gifts and bake cookies and everything else, that two hours might be really worth it. I can't guarantee that if you go to your BNI meeting next week, you're gonna get a referral, but I can definitely guarantee if you don't, you won't. And that's the way you gotta look at it. It's not like any other time of year. It's not just a BNI meeting this time because of the fact that you know where everybody's going to be, you know, who they're going to be in front of, you know, the environment they're going to be in, you know, the types of conversations they're going to be hearing and listening and having. You can specifically train people more effectively this time of year than probably any other time during the year. And, and it's not just a one week thing, like, hey, over the fourth of July holiday, it's multiple holidays, it's multiple weeks of opportunities, right? It's almost the entire month of December for this time because there's again, holiday parties for work and there's holiday parties for kids sports teams, and then there's family holiday parties and then there's the actual holiday itself. And then after that's all wrapped up, we've got New Year's and there's New Year's parties and there's this and that and everything else. It's such a busy time for everybody, which is why again, we naturally would be like, I'll just take something off my plate, let's just not do bni. But think about what you're skipping on that. Think about it. So anyways, I'm gonna get off my soapbox. I do it every single year. So if you're new to it, appreciate you listening for the first time. Get used to it because next December we're gonna be having the same conversation because it is just that important to your success. Be different. Don't be like everybody else who's going, I'm not going to go to my network, I'm not going to do this. Be different. When you're different in your efforts, you'll get different results. And that's the key. Take advantage of this time. Even if it's only that two hours that week that you do, you never know how much value that can produce versus skipping it when you don't have to. Again, if you have to, you're traveling, whatever, enjoy, be safe, all that. But if you don't have to, I would really encourage you not to skip that. With that, I wish all of you the happiest of holidays. I hope it's a wonderful, fun, relaxing time if it can possibly be that. It's always a great time of year and I'm super excited as we get into the new year in 2026. More things for us to share there we've been talking about, we're super excited about for you are for me and for our regions but and recommitting to this podcast and helping as many people as we can. So if you are finding value, share it. You know the drill. Subscribe so you don't miss anything. Tell your members about it. If we can help make even more of your team members more successful to only benefit you as well. Leave a review all those things and we continue our March. I think 2026 is the year we hit 1,000 episodes. That's our goal. So thank you once again for listening. Have a great day.