Interview with Dr Ivan Misner of BNI
Dr Misner says he’s “famous lite”, but the hundreds of thousands of small global business owners he might say he’s an icon.
Today he’s known as the founder and Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, and the father of modern networking.
Here’s some of the key quotes.
- “People feel like they’re getting to know you as an individual when you mix in personal experiences with your business posts.”
- “The philosophy of the one-minute manager is to be effective through being specific.”
- “A great testimonial is laser specific, reasonably detailed, and succinct.”
- “A detailed testimonial about your experience can inspire others to take action.”
- “We’re moving into a society that is much more focused on co-creation, like crowdsourcing.”
- “Life is about the people that you surround yourself with.”
- “Your room is your life in effect – the people who you’ve allowed into your room will impact your life for the rest of your life.”
- “It’s about creating a doorman, which is your conscious and subconscious mind, to deal with people trying to get into your life.”
- “It’s important to create a life of harmony.”
- “How to say no without being rude or worse is an essential skill.”
- “It’s not what you know or who you know that counts in life, it’s how well you know each other.”
- “What counts is if I call one of my contacts, would they take my call and if I asked for a favor, would they do it.”
- “It’s not just who you know, it’s how well you know each other that makes a difference when it comes to networking.”
- “I think where it’s likely to go is that you’re going to see authors who may use AI to flesh out ideas, but I don’t see it replacing authors anytime soon.”
- “AI is extremely unlikely to be able any time in the near future to tell a great story.”
- “To tell a great story is a very human art.”
- “A great story is a fact wrapped in an emotion that compels people to take action.”
- “If you’re going to tell a story, no matter what the story is, find a good one to fit the context of the situation.”
- “Networking is a marathon not a sprint, you’re not going to get business overnight as a rule, it takes time to build relationships.”
- “You have to have a pipeline of contacts and connections because it’s a long term before you get a client.”
- “If you’re an entrepreneur, forget about balance, life is more of a juggling act than a balancing act.”
- “Wherever you are, be present to that moment.”
- “Create margins in your life, have space where you can do the things that you really love to do.”
- “Don’t be at work thinking about the fact that you should have spent time with the family last night and don’t be it with the family thinking about the project that’s got to be done at work.”
- “Try to have a day a week that you call your mental health day, just do things that recharge your batteries.”
- “Paul Edwards was talking about working from home…I’ve kind of come full circle from working in a corporate office, then at home, then back to a corporate office, and now I work full time from my home again.”
- “The one thing that you got to do no matter what is be authentic…you have to be authentic.”
- “You want to look the part…you want to look professional…if you’re trying to make a sale or build a relationship with someone, you want to show up professionally.”
- “I think you kind of want to dress to your audience for the most part.”
- “Richard Branson has done a couple of biographies… I like those very much.”
- “He [Richard Branson] treats his employees the same way he treats the millionaires on his island; he’s respectful, he’s polite, he’s friendly.”
- “Technology, as I was saying earlier, has made unbelievable advancements and I think that it’s going to continue to make more.”
- “I wrote an article back in 1998, five years ago, it said the future of face-to-face is online.”
- “When COVID hit, we had almost 10,000 BNI groups worldwide… we went to 100% online.”
- “Imagine if that [pandemic] had happened in 1990 instead of 2020. So many more businesses would have gone out of business because there was no way to connect or network with one another as a group over a telephone.”
- “The future of networking is going to be more and more online… I foresee a day where it’s like the Jedi Knights in Star Wars.”
- “You could be in the United Kingdom and go visit a chapter in India… it was easy to visit because it was all online.”
- “There were collaborations that were created… there were also a lot of suggestions and ideas that took place during COVID that saved businesses.”
- “Your network is a beacon of hope in a sea of fear.”
- “Today more than ever, you need your network. You need a network of people who are there to help you through difficult times.”
- “In 2022, BNI passed over 13 million referrals worldwide… they generated over 20 billion US dollars worth of business for each other.”
- “The first time I read about [knowledge networking] was in 1980 with John Nesbitt’s book.”
- “You can’t get a group of business people together without them starting to share ideas… that is always going to happen.”
