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Episode 926, Diamond Chapter Culture.
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You're listening to the official BNI podcast with BI founder and chief visionary officer Dr. Ivan Meisner.
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Stay tuned for networking and referral marketing.
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Tips from the man who's been called the father of modern networking, along with.
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Suggestions and insights into getting the most from your membership in the world's largest networking organization, bni.
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Hello everybody and welcome back to the official B and I podcast. I'm Priscilla Rice and I'm coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. And I'm joined on the phone today by the founder and the chief visionary officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Meisner. Hello, Ivan, how are you and where are you?
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Hi Priscilla. I'm at home in Austin, but I'm here actually with a film crew. Today they're filming me for a movie called Inspired and it's about, you know, inspiring the world with whatever vision that you bring to the world. And so I'm really excited to be doing that today. And the movie should be out sometime next year.
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Oh, that sounds great.
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And I have a guest today. He's been on the BNI podcast once before. His name is Jason Avery. Jason was on episode number 655. I have, I will, I need. Jason is a member of BNI Referral Masters, which is the largest chapter in Florida with 132 members. Not in my wildest dreams did I ever think we'd have chapters of over 100 members. It's the second largest in the whole United States. He's served as president in 2012 and 2018. He's had various leadership team roles during his B and I tenure. He owns Avery Construction, which is a state certified general contractor remodeling kitchens and bathrooms around the greater Tampa Bay area. He's built a team within his company of 45 employees, completing over 5 million in renovations where. Where 70% came from new referrals. I love that number. And he's positioned himself to work on his business instead of in his business, Michael Gerber 101. He's a professional speaker and the author of the number one best selling book Constructing Success Blueprints for Referral based Business. And Jason, you're here today to talk about Diamond Chapter culture. First of all, define a Diamond Chapter for everyone who doesn't know.
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Sure. So when you grow a chapter and you reach certain levels of membership at 75, you're considered titanium. That has to been maintained for three months. When you get to over 100 members, you're now a Diamond chapter. Once that's been sustained for three consecutive months.
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Yeah. Again, I never, not in my wildest dreams that I think we would have chapters of over 100 members. So congratulations to you and your chapter and the many other chapters around the world that are over 100 members. There are three things that you talk about that or that you want to talk about to build to a diamond chapter culture. The first is accountability. You want to talk about that?
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Sure. So, and a quick update for you. It's actually 138 members now. There's been six new inductions since I filled out form for this podcast for you. But When I started 14 years ago, there was actually 30 people, holiday and express and a little conference room. And what I found was, is that out of 30 people in the group, there was maybe four or five who really were engaged in producing all of the results for the chapter. So a short time later, I'm nominated to be the president in 2012. And I really didn't know the system yet. The guy that invited me actually gave me bad advice and told me I didn't need the education that was offered. He told me I was already good at networking and because I'm type A and I can talk to people, I believed him. And. But as a president, you got to know what goes on behind the scenes. How does the system really work? So I started going to trainings, started learning and realizing that power of our core value and accountability. So I just simply followed the instructions, followed the guidelines. I had goals for the chapter and you were either hitting the goals or you weren't. We measured five different drivers. Are you doing one to ones and are you doing CEUs? Because that's pure engagement. I can do it or not. Put in the time. If you're doing your one to ones and getting educated on how to do them correctly, you should be translating those to referrals. If all that goes correctly, it should translate to thank you for closed business. And of course, because of attrition in a chapter, we have to invite to offset attrition and ideally to grow. So in those five drivers, if you were under the bar on three out of the five drivers, it was just an automatic thing that we would institute probation. And it was a wake up call to the member to say, hey, you know, look, this isn't, you know, going the way that it was strategically designed. So let us help you, let us show you how to get this up to speed. But we're telling you now that if we can't get up to speed by renewal, I can't Guarantee the renewal. And so just by simply holding our members, our friends, you know, we say the best worst part of being I is the friends. And we don't hold them accountable, but by just having a clear cut system, everybody's held to the same standard. You know, you don't have to be mean to your friends. You just hold them accountable to the system we all signed up for.
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So we have two more topics and I want to jump into them, but let me just say I agree completely on the accountability. The thing is with accountability, you want to apply the rules more like Mandela than Attila. You know, apply it with tough love, but you gotta apply it, otherwise it becomes a social group. And why join a social group? And why reinvent the wheel?
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Some people didn't like that and they did leave the chapter. Some people stepped up their game. But that season we, everybody that came in new had a fresh energy, clear expectation, and they started driving us towards the stars. So trust me, you don't want butts in seats. We're building a chapter by design and we're going to make sure that, you know, if we've set clear expectations, that we are holding people true to those expectations it's got for us, including grow coaching.
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You can't be successful without that accountability. All right, your second item is inviting. Talk about inviting.
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So when it comes to inviting, go back to the goal plan. You know, if the goal is for everybody to have one visitor a month and they only try to do that once a month, they're going to ethically fail. The numbers have taught us you have to invite 10 people to get five people to say yes, to get two people to show up. And one of those is probably a qualified applicant to our chapter. So you have to invite every single week if you want to actually be successful at bringing a visitor in the room once a month. And then as a president, it came down to cheerleading and having a different strategy for every week. We'll do a stack day day. We'll do tag team inviting. Maybe we'll set up a, a spiff program, a reward program. We would have contests what would appeal to somebody and motivate them to do it. It might not work for the other. So constantly just having a strategy behind inviting, I've done it. Are you going to do it too? Who are you bringing and communicating that message on a regular basis?
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But let me just add one thing to that real quick. You know, sometimes people say, I'm doing all of this for BNI. You have a 1:38 member chapter. My guess is you're passing millions of dollars in thank you for closed business a year, is that correct?
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20, 22 million annually to be exact.
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22 million. So no, you're not just doing this for BNI. You're doing this to build a chapter to pass $22 million in business. A chapter of 132 members is going to generate a whole lot more business than a chapter of 30 members. And you've seen both and I think you would agree with that.
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Yes, sir.
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All right, Anything else on inviting? We have one more topic and a couple minutes left.
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Well, I, I'll wrap that into my final point on the inviting.
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All right. Showing up for each other was the last thing you wanted to talk about. So at.
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As my chapter was growing in the 2018 season, we went from 75 to 99 members with three acts pending on the final day. And my wife's chapter, hers was kind of sinking down. They were spiraling a little bit and suffering. And she said, you know what the key difference is, is that you guys show up for each other. When we have social events, we turn out in the masses, we get behind each other's charities, we get in the boat and we row for each other. There's, you know, ordinary out there and then there's extraordinary out there. And what we're creating is an extraordinary chapter. And if you want to be part of that extraordinary chapter, we're looking for those like mind minded thoroughbreds. I've heard it referred to before. Somebody's amazing in their business with the heart of giving. Those are the people that we want to surround ourselves with. You've spoken about it with who's in your room. And so we're always inviting up, we're always trying to bring in the right people. We're making sure that we're setting the clear message coming in in that application process. And if you want to be part of this chapter, we expect not just one referral a week, but two. Two one to ones and two CEUs. And it's going to take 10 to 12 hours of your week. Are you ready to give that to the system? And if somebody's not just ultimately begging for the opportunity to join us, that's probably not going to be the right fit for our chapter. We want the people who are convinced I want to be part of this, whatever it takes.
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See you and your chapter totally get this. I have said for years, why accept mediocrity when excellence is an option? And when chapters have an expectation of excellence, they're going to get it and that's how you're passing over $20 million. Thank you for closed business a year. That just blows my mind. I am so proud of your group. Let me ask you one last question. What's your best advice for a brand new B and I member or for a B and I member who really wants to turn things around in their chapter?
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It's not about what you see on the surface. It's not about sales. And the sales will come naturally and organically in time as these people hear the testimonials about what you do and what you need to focus on is 100% the reciprocal relationship. Every person in that room knows 500 people that you don't know. And as you spend time in the one to ones, you're going to ultimately try and seek out that reciprocal relationship via introduction. If you ask somebody to sell your product, they're not going to do it. If you ask them to please introduce me to that other person you know in a certain profession because I can give them referrals. You're doing them a favor by introducing to me. And when you send the message out, the reverse psychology is you don't have to chase the person down, they come looking for you. You don't have to sell up your credibility. They're at a job interview trying to win those referrals and all this. If you want people to do this for you, it comes back to motivation. Everything in our conversation today is all about motivation. Am doing it for others in the giver's game spirit to motivate them to do it for me. Let's motivate that inviting concept of the chapter. One last time Ivan, before we hang up. If you, if, if, if I said we're growing this chapter, I need everybody in here to bring me two visitors next week. How many people are going to raise their hand around the room and you're going to see maybe a couple do it or committed a couple with a half half hearted raise of the hand. If I said I'm going to give a fifteen hundred dollar check for every visitor that shows how many visitors can you bring me next week? Well, how many think I'd get Ivan? I'd probably get 10, 15, 20 per member stacking up 1500 dollars checks. Well why do I have to write those checks? Because if you actually bring these people to the chapter, you and all of the people in the room will make more than $1,500 a piece. The expansion of the group and the exponential increase that it creates with every.
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New body and our data on B and I Connect absolutely proves that. Listen, Jason, thank you so much for being on BNI podcast again. I appreciate it. Anyone that would like to get information on Jason and his company, go to construct success.com. that's construct success.com. jason, thank you for being on BNI podcast. I appreciate you.
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Thank you, Adam.
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Over to you, Priscilla.
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Okay, well, that was just amazing. Thank you, Jason. That was some really, really inspiring information. This podcast is sponsored by MeisnerAudioPrograms.com these audio programs will provide you with the tools and the inspiration to powerfully enhance your BNI experience. So check out the great material that's available to you@meisneraudioprograms.com and then use the promo code IVAN5O for 50% off of everything. All of the proceeds go to the B and I Foundation. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we look forward to having you join us again next week for another exciting episode of the official BI podcast.