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Sam, Welcome back to BNI in the Power of One. Welcome to 2026. Yes, I know it's January 12th by the time our first episode's coming out, but here we are, we're back. Hope everybody had amazing holidays, amazing new year. Some of you may have gotten stuck on your travels like I did due to the Venezuela situation, but we're back and this is gonna be a great year. Super busy on our end. As we've shared those updates, our team is growing rapidly. We're hiring like crazy. We just took over four additional franchises this year, so we now are operating seven BNI franchises, 186 chapters, a little over 4300 members. Super humbled about that opportunity. Super excited to capture. Is going to keep us very, very busy. So hopes and plans are to stay consistent with the podcast throughout. This is our year to try and cross over a thousand. That's our goal this year. This episode right now will be 873. So that puts us 127 away. I think we can do that. The theme for this year as we go through each podcast is going to be around being strategic. That's going to be the common message you're going to hear. I think it's highly important to, in order to capture the opportunity that BNI presents to us in our membership, that we have very clear strategies in everything that we're doing, that we take some time to really think through and plan and be strategic with every little activity we're doing. Been spending a lot of time talking about member retention lately with people, and people go, why? Well, why do people leave? And, you know, the quick answer is, well, they didn't get results. And. But that's not the. The real reason or the real question. The real question is, why didn't they get results? And it's often because there was no strategy in place. We just kind of go through the motions. We're showing up, but we're not spending any time thinking about how to make ourselves as. As effective as possible in every little thing that we do. So we're going to try to tie that theme throughout the year. BNI's theme for the year is accelerate. I think that's an appropriate theme too. Right. The idea is to accelerate our results, accelerate our growth, accelerate our businesses. And in order to do that, you have to have a very clear strategy to accomplish it. As always, looking for shows, submissions, topics, questions from you, that's what we're going to hit today and probably most episodes that we do. Part of being strategic is making sure that we're improving our skill sets. That's what our weekly presentation reviews are about. Part of being strategic in your B and I membership is being strategic through your entire business. That's what our Business Matters episodes are about. So, as always, if you have a BNI question, if you've got a business topic you want to hear us discuss with Michael and I, if you've got your weekly presentation you want reviewed, all can be submitted@bnipowerofone.com part of being strategic in BNI is to make sure your fellow members are as effective, engaged and strategic as they can be. So if you find that you're getting some value out of this, share the podcast recommend it get some more people in your chapter to hopefully engage with it. Ideally, it will help them become more effective and strategic, which will mean they're more productive for you as well. So having said that, let's dive into today's topic submitted at bni. Power of One comes from Zach in Florida says, hey Tim, I recently joined BNI for the first time in the six weeks since I've joined, membership has dropped from 15 to six active members. I'm determined to get the most out of my membership and rebuilding our chapter. My question revolves around recruiting new members. How do we suggest we bring in recruits who might feel like our chapter size would not be worth their time? It's a great question and first and foremost I would tell you your major concern is in your own head. You're worried that the recruits will think it's not worth their time. Thus it's slowing people from inviting. Here's the truth. The people you're inviting to your chapter, even with only six active members, do not have six active people looking to help them every single week like your chapter would. So the first thing you have to do in order to be successful in growth, no matter your size, whatever, is be very confident in what you already have. Be very aware of what you already have. Okay? In that chapter, that, that, that kind of drop is, you know, shocking and it can be jarring and for most people will cause them to quit. So kudos to you to already be asking the question and looking at how do I maximize this? The real question now is what do I have? Do I believe in what I have? Because if the answer to that is yes, inviting is easy. It's exactly the same as you would if your chapter was a hundred people. Okay? It's about realizing I've got a team around me that want to help me become more successful. I want to help them Become more successful. We're willing to meet with each other every single week to figure out how to do that. That the people you're inviting don't have that. And six seems small. It is. But remember, when we start chapters, we start with less than that. And when we start chapters, they go from 6 to 20. We don't even do a regular B9 meeting. So it's absolutely possible. It's done every single week. It's just about being confident in your invite and showing value at the meeting. Yes, obviously if a visitor was to walk into your chapter and then the next day walk into a chapter of 30 people, they're going to say, oh, there's a lot more value in the 30 person chapter. But you're assuming that that would happen. And that's not usually going to happen. The only time that happens, when I hear people go, oh, we, we had a visitor, but they went and joined a larger chapter. 99 out of 100 times that visitor found the chapter, not the other way around. What I mean by that is that person knew there were other B and I chapters, they were looking for B and I chapters, and they went and visited that chapter. They weren't invited. If you're inviting people to your chapter, most times they're not going to know there are other options. Unless again, they've been on the website looking or you tell them there are other options. I've seen some crazy stuff where chapters like invite and go, oh, well, by the way, you can go visit other chapters too and check them out. It's like, why would you say that? So keep that in mind. Most of them, if you're doing the inviting, don't know other groups exist. Comes down to how do you invite? I'm not going to spend a ton of time on that. We've done podcasts on that. I would tell you to check out our growth series on that. Okay, you can do. I think it's episode 566. Is the inviting episode. Like one of the few episodes I remember the number on, on how to invite because it's exactly the same. All right, now to tie this in, it's not just about growing, it's how do we strategically grow. If your six people are actually committed to making this chapter better and growing it so that you, you can get true value out of it. And that's a. I say that knowing that's a key element you need to be committed to doing. It's not going to just happen and you don't want it to happen over time. You need it to happen relatively quickly. Right. We need to go from 6 to 1824 fast, because we need, if we're looking for Results this year, 2026, I need as many people helping me as, as long as I can in 2026. Right? So we're already in mid January. If I wait until mid June to get to the 24, I'm only going to get the benefit of that for less than half the year. If I wait until August, September, I'm going to get the benefit of that in 2027. If I want the benefit of 24 people in my group in 2026, I better be shooting to get that done by March 1st to get the most time I can. And that's absolutely possible if the six are committed. And here's how you do it. Use that growth series that, that 566 episodes, part of a series where we talk about doubling your chapter. Your chapter should be 24. Let's just call it 1818 by March 1st. The first thing you do is each six of you, each one of you six, you're going to pick the profession you individually need more than anybody else. Okay? So all six of you meet and say, okay, we're all going to pick one profession to hyper focus on right now. Not. Not the six of us focused on one profession, each individual focus on an individual profession. Okay, I hate stack days. I cannot stand them because they. They're not really strategically well done. You know, chapters of 20. We're going to do a stack day. We're going to find, you know, whatever, a painter, and all 20 of us are going to focus on painters. Well, no, most of you, two or three of you will focus on a painter, and the rest will just watch it happen. And adding one painter to the group. Well, yeah, sure. Valuable is not as valuable as everybody focused on their own. So the six of you are going to pick each profession for each of you. You're going to use that growth series. You're going to use the inviting podcast. Okay. You're going to invite, let's say you each pick a profession. You should each invite at least 15 to 20 people from that profession each for a planned strategic visitor day. Okay, so one of the ways you're going to show more value as a smaller group is have more visitors at the meeting at the same meeting so there's more people in the room. If you try to do this one at a time, it's going to be really. It's going to be far more difficult. It's not impossible. It's not that it can't be done. It just becomes more difficult. But if each of you focus on one profession, you invite 20 people, you're probably going to get like eight yeses. You're probably going to get about four or five of them to show up. But six of you getting four visitors each is 24 visitors in the room, plus you. There's 30 people in the room, plus there's competition in the room. You should get six applicants, if not more. I would bet you'd probably get more like 12. Two from each profession. You pick the one you want. Your sixth group is now 12. Now, in theory, if all 12 of you do that again, you'd be 24. But let's just take the original six. You original six, now you have six new members. Let them start getting going. While they're getting going, you do it again. Pick a new profession. Each one of you invite for a specific day. Again. This is why visitor days are so important. Visitor days are about the cumulative results of activity, right? It's. Let's. If we're all going to invite, let's invite for the same day to maximize the result of that. It's more energy, there's more visitors. Our conversion is going to be a lot higher. Let's not just do them randomly throughout the year. Let's really focus in on that day to really convert more. Which makes our all the effort we're putting into it that much more worth it. The original six do it again. Boom. Your chapter is 18. Now you're humming because now you got 12 new members. They're excited, they start inviting. Your chapter's got some momentum, some serious momentum. And next thing you know, you're going to be in the mid-20s and growing. You might even finish the year over 30. But you got to create the momentum first, okay? And it's not going to happen by just one of you inviting at a time. It's only going to happen if all six of you come together. Say, we're going to do this, and we're going to do it right now. We're going to. We need, strategically, we need the time of the year to get the results. Because each person we bring in is a new relationship. It's a new thing that takes time. We can't wait. We can't just dilly dally and figure it out over time. Because what's going to end up happening is, is you're not going to do it consistently. Then six becomes five, five becomes four. The four quit. That's what you're a danger of. So first things first. Six of you need to meet and you need to have a serious discussion. We're going to do this or not. And this is what it's going to take to do it. And if you're not willing to do it, quit now, go start a new group, go join another chapter because you're just going to waste your time. But if the 6 is serious, it's at it's not only possible, it's highly feasible that you can do that again. Our startups group do that and they don't even run a BNI meeting. They don't even pass referrals during the meeting. So if they can do it, you absolutely can do it. But the strategy is have this strategic conversation together. Get the commitment. Everybody focus on one profession each. Everybody invite 15 to 20 people from their selected profession. Get eight yeses again using the podcast I mentioned before. Get four or five of them to show up, get two or three of them to apply each. Double your chapter. Do it again and by March you're a group of 18 to 20. Now you're in member extravaganza. It's the biggest growth time of the year. You've got momentum, you've got excitement, you've got everything on your side. But you're going to have to kickstart it right now and you're going to need to do it with, you know, a bit of urgency because of time and because of where you're at. If you focus on the loss of the nine people, whatever that left 10, 11, whatever it is, I mean, it's just going to bring you down further. So, Zach, I hope that answers your question. I hope it's helpful and I hope your chapter does decide to commit to each other. Commit to your results. You want the results this year from this opportunity that's in front of you. You still have a massive opportunity in front of you. I don't care that there's only six members. Still a massive opportunity. Go capture it. Make 2026. The everybody talks about your chapter as being incredible and award winning and all these things because that's what's in front of you if you capture it. All right, as always, thank you and leave a review. Leave comments, what have you. Leave your questions. Bnipowerofone.com Happy New Year. Good to be back. Sat.