The Power of Networking: Who's in Your Life? with Ivan Misner
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We all have people in our story, people who've made a difference in our life. I could tell you stories about people that did one thing or many things that just made a massive difference in who I am as a human. But that's actually not the most important thing. It's not who's in your story.

It's whose story are you in that matters most? Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode.

Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 States. Just go to elevate and win.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right, ladies and gentlemen, this is a podcast I've been waiting for for several months.

Dr. Ivan Misner is an amazing guy, written amazing books. What he's done in his life is fantastic. Welcome to the Home Service Expert. Dr. Ivan is an expert in sales business networking. He's the founder of BNI, which I'm a huge fan of.

Chief Visionary Officer at BNI, the world's largest business networking organization. Founded in 1985, the organization has now over 11,000 chapters throughout every populated continent of the world. Each year, BNI generates millions of referrals resulting in billions of dollars worth of business for its members. Dr. Misner's

PhD is from the University of Southern California. He's a New York Times bestselling author and has written over 30 books, including one of his latest books, Who's in the Room, called The Father of Modern Networking by Forbes and CNN. Dr. Misner is considered to be one of the world's leading experts on business networking. He's been featured in LA Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, as well as numerous TV and radio shows, including CNN and BBC Network.

and the today show on NBC and the list goes on and on and on. It's a pleasure to have you here. Hey, thank you. Can I call you Tommy? You bet. That'd be great. Yeah. Tommy, please call me Ivan. Okay, will do. So let's start here. It's great to be on your podcast. I appreciate the invitation. I'm excited. It's amazing because, you know, I'm still we run 25,000 jobs a month.

We're in 22 states and we just launched Atlanta. And the first thing I said is you got to go meet the people. You got to shake the hands. You've got to network. People need to know who you are. And so B&I has done a lot for me, my family, this business. I'm just curious if you could just start out from the early days, what your goals were and what you're looking at today, just so the listeners can get to know you a little bit.

Yeah, well, look, I'd like to tell you, Tommy, that I had this vision of an international organization with chapters all over the world. I was 28 years old when I started BNI. And I was looking for referrals for my consulting practice. I was a management consultant. And so I started one networking group. I didn't like the groups that were out there. They were either too mercenary or too social. And I wanted something that was focused on business but wasn't totally social.

And so I formed a group in a format that I thought was effective business-wise, but also in terms of relationships. And someone came to me after a month or two and said, and as you know, we only take one person for professional classification. And she said, this is great, but I can't join. My profession's already represented. Would you help me open up another chapter? And I actually said, no, this isn't what I do.

I'm a business consultant. I don't run a network. But she kind of talked me into it. I did it. We opened another chapter. Two people came who couldn't join because of the professional conflict. And they said, "Hey, would you help us open a chapter?" And I said, "No, this isn't what I do." And they talked me into it and I did it. And what I learned at the end of the year was we ended up with 20 chapters of BNI. I started in January '85. By December of '85, we had 20 groups.

And I always take time off in between the holidays to reflect. And that year, I was like, what the heck just happened? This was not on my vision at all. And I realized that we don't teach this in colleges and universities anywhere in the world. We don't teach networking. And that's when I decided to create a plan to scale BNI. And as you mentioned, we now have over 11,000 chapters worldwide.

In the last 12 months, we've generated 25 billion, with a B, 25 billion US dollars in thank you for closed business for our members. That's the amount of business our members generate. Now, just to put this in perspective, there are actually 100 countries in the world, 100 countries.

in the world based on UN, United Nations estimates of GDP was a lower GDP than what BNI generated for its members in the last 12 months. That blows my mind. I never envisioned that when I started this organization 40 years ago. That's phenomenal. When you were in the early stages, let's just say 20 to 28, can you explain what prepped you

Obviously, it was time, consistency, dedication, being obsessed. But what type of business consulting were you doing at the time when you started your first group? Yeah, I did. My doctoral work is in organizational behavior and leadership out of USC. And I did a lot of work with hiring, training, evaluating employees, policy, procedure manuals, job descriptions, systems, processes, and people. And so that's what I was really involved in.

So it really gave me a great foundation for building, scaling a business. It didn't give me any foundation for networking because we don't teach this in college.

So I basically was method acting my way through the process of learning how to network. And the key is I wrote everything down, what worked, what didn't work. And that ended up becoming the genesis of multiple books that I've written on networking. So my 20s were really my learning years. I immersed myself into learning business and learning managing.

My first big job was actually for the US Census Bureau, where at 22 years old, I supervised 500 people, which was a pretty amazing situation to be in. - You know what's funny is I had to look up a name because I brain farted and I apologize for looking away because I learned a lot about you the first time in 2018 when Cody Bateman asked me to speak to send out cars. It was my first real event with 900 people.

And it seems like you guys. Cody's an amazing man. Absolutely. And so I apologize looking away, but, uh, and prompting and he, I've got to know him very well, but it's, it's just interesting because there's this expression, your network is your net worth. And I don't just think that about money. I think that about the way you, you, you feel about yourself. I think it's the way you treat your family, the way you're involved with, uh,

I'm involved with the church, so whatever church you may belong to, it's like all these aspects of life. Networking is like a superpower. It's probably the most important thing. There's this idea of you become the average of the five closest people around you. What is your take on that? Well, you know, Jack Canfield, amongst others, said that many times.

Jack's a close friend of mine. I just saw him last week and his very last mastermind, I don't know if you know this, but he's retiring from his training and I was helping to facilitate his last mastermind. I agree with it completely. I think you really, you need to surround yourself with people that raise your skillset. I wrote a book called "Who's in Your Room?" And in there, I talk about the people around you are either engines or anchors.

They're either engines that are driving you or helping you or supporting you to be the best version of yourself, or they're anchors. They're just pulling you down. And if you're listening to this or watching this podcast, you got to think about the people in your life. Are they an engine or an anchor? Now, there's a third version, which is even worse. It's an anchor with an engine attached, and they're bringing you down fast.

And you want to cut those people off. You want to get them out of your life and surround yourself with people who make you a better version of yourself. That's so important. And people, they pay lip service to it. They don't really, I don't think most people really understand how important that is. You know, I talk a lot to, I got a team of 900 people here that are my coworkers and

i talk a lot about those people that talk behind your they talk great to you in your face

And I say, look, you're going to go back home and you're going to accomplish. We're going to write down your goals, reverse engineer your goals. You're going to accomplish so much. You're going to figure out. Reverse engineer. Love that. I've been teaching that for years. Not many people are teaching that. That's brilliant. And writing down your goals. Harvard did a study that 3% of people, only 3% of people write down their goals and confess it. Robert Ciaudini was in this room not so long ago, a great friend of mine.

And this idea of commitment. But what I told them is there's people in your life that you didn't get to choose as your friends. You grew up with them, family, friends. Family, yeah. You know, there's people going to say, what about the 12-pack of beer that we drink every night? Misery loves misery. They're going to bring you down, but they don't realize they're doing it. They don't realize they're these toxic people. And sometimes it's family. Sometimes it's a parent.

Yeah, sometimes. So what do you do to kind of self-examine that? What do you do?

Is it just a reflection? Do you whiteboard it? I mean, how do you know if somebody is an engine or an anchor? I think it's a mindset. I think you really need to think about it in terms of the mindset that I'm going to describe to you. And this is really the premise of the book, Who's in Your Room? Imagine you live your life in one room. That one room has only one door. And that one door is an enter-only door so that when people come into your room or into your life,

They're there forever. You can never get them out. Now, luckily, one would say that's a metaphor, but I would argue it's not. Because when you let people into your room or into your life, now, you made a point, sometimes family, they're just in your room. But when you let people into your room, they're going to have an impact on your life. And so, you know, I have people who say, well, I can get them out of my life.

Okay, so what I'd like you to do, Tommy, is think about somebody who's toxic in your life. And if you're watching this, I want everyone to think about somebody who's absolutely toxic in their life and they got them out of their life. I want you to think about what it was they did. Now, Tommy, do you have somebody in your mind? Yeah, I do. Okay, I'm not going to make you name the person just between us, so we're good. Keep them in your mind.

i want you to think about the last thing they did that just ticked you off so much you're like that's it they're out of my life do you have that yep okay so here's the deal if they're still in your head they're still in your room and they will be for the rest of your life it's more than a metaphor i spoke to dr daniel amen interviewed dr daniel amen the neuroscientist psychologist psychiatrist who um

has done a lot of brain science. And he said, when you have a relationship with someone, business or professional, their fingerprints are all over your brain. And so you really have to be careful about the people that you let into your room or into your life. And by the way, even though this isn't a networking concept, this is a networking concept because who are you gonna bring into your network? You wanna bring people into your network that are engines, not anchors, people that rise the tide and don't bring you down.

And so in the book, we talk about what do you do with people that are in your life that you may have gotten them out of your life, but they're still in your head. And how do you deal with those people like family members? You want a good example of what I'm talking about? I'd love one. All right. So we have two editions of the book. The first edition came out and someone who read the book sent me an email that was great.

gold. It was publishing gold. She said, thank you so much for this book. It's really helped me think about, first of all, what are my values? Because you got to know your values to determine who you let in your room or who you don't let in your room. And by the way, the room, I pointed at a door, but the room starts here and ends here. It's your mind. It's your brain. It's people you let into your head.

for a relationship and so she said we had a family member who would always come to family events we had big big family events and she would throw in this verbal hand grenade that would just rile people up and people would start arguing and fighting and they'd be crying and people would leave upset and we had conversations with her and said you can't you can't do that you just got to stop that but she wouldn't she'd keep doing it so she said

I read the book and we figured out what to do. And one of the concepts that we have in there is benign neglect. You just like ignore. And so she said, I got my whole family together. And we agreed that the next time she throws in a verbal hand grenade, anybody who could hear her would turn to her and say, oh, okay. And then turn back to whatever conversation you're having and completely ignore the hand grenade.

And so the next time she came to an event, to a family event, sure enough, she threw a verbal hand grenade. Like four or five people looked at her and they all did it. They all went, oh, okay. And turned back and had their conversation. So she riled nobody up. Guess what happened?

she stopped coming to a lot of the family events. And the ones that she did, she didn't throw in verbal hand grenades anymore. And so there are techniques that you can use for people that are in your life, but you don't want them in your room, but they're there. You know, I'm going to show you something that I've learned and I taught myself this. This is obviously a cell phone and it rings quite often.

And when I look at it, the first thing I think about is my feeling. Am I excited to take this call? Is this going to be good news? Is this something that's going to lift me up? Is this somebody that's going to bring me up? Is it somebody that's going to be genuinely caring? They're going to tell me the truth, good or bad. But the fact is, a lot of times, if I roll my eyes and I go, take a deep breath and go, here we go, then I know it's my subconscious telling me, if I really reflect,

And there's days that like, it could be anybody calling and it could not be good news. I mean, God forbid, it's a doctor calling about one of my parents or something. You know, it's not, it doesn't work every time, but there's certain people in your life. And, but there's also people that you're like, when I'm around this person, I feel the best about me. They lift me up. They fill up. They fill me up. Yes. And I just feel like. And then there are others that do nothing or bring you down.

Well, I, you know, and I think it's a defense mechanism. I think it's kind of the nature versus nurture. I think they were nurtured into a way that nobody loved them. And I do believe, you know, what I've always said is it's not their fault. I don't blame them. I don't have this resentment, but I don't give them any space in my mind. And I know that's the subconscious does its work. And I realize that. But when I'm at a meeting. I think people can pull themselves out of those situations.

bad experiences, but it's difficult. And honestly, most people can't. But I have met people who have said, I am not going to let my horrible life experiences define who I am as an individual. And I admire those people so much. It's very difficult to be one of those people.

Well, you look at Joe, you know, Joe Polish is a mutual friend and I think he's had to, he's ironically, I just spoke to him today by email. Oh really? That's great. I mean, he's the biggest connector I've ever met as far as one single human being. I don't know how he does it. I think he lives on his Apple and just messages people, but, and I don't think he knows how to delegate that, but it's hard to delegate a relationship and he's just an ultimate connector. But yeah,

He's gone through a lot in his life, and I think that's why he's kind of paying it forward. But he doesn't blame anything. Everything happens to us for a reason, and I do believe what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. It's just me and you can live the same situation. My mom and dad got a divorce, and my mom worked three jobs. I could tell you a nightmare, but I could also tell you a miracle story. Same exact life. You could have lived it right next to me. You could have twin brothers, twin sisters, live the exact same life with a whole different perspective.

Whole different perspective. Yeah, I totally get it. I think, you know, you look at situations like that, challenges in your life or failures that you make yourself, which, by the way, I've made a lot. I think failures, I choose to define myself by my successes. My failures are my tuition for success.

I paid a lot of tuition over the years in order to be successful. People think, "Oh, you're successful as a big organization. You had it handed to you." No, I didn't have anything handed to me. I put myself through college.

I worked midnight till seven in the morning through graduate school at a grocery store to get myself through college. And along the way, I had a lot of problems and challenges. But those things, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger is I agree completely. You know, everybody tells you how hard you work and you don't make time for people or the same people that tell you how lucky you got.

You know what I'm saying? Isn't that funny? - I do. I had a young man who was standing in front of my house, this must have been 20 years ago, and he was looking at my house and he said, "Wow, you're really lucky." And I'll tell you what I said to him. I said, "You can be just as lucky as I am. You don't have to do the exact same things, but these are the things I did to get lucky." He said, "Why?" I said, "Well, I went to school for 10 years

I got a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, and a doctoral degree in management, organizational management. Then I worked at that point, you know, I was working 20, 25 years. I said, I worked for 20, 25 years, 60 hours a week. I took multiple loans on my house. I almost went bankrupt once or twice. I've written, at that point, I think I had written like 10 books. I've written 10 books.

And I probably had a couple of other things that I added to it. And I said, if you do all of those kinds of things, you too can be as lucky as I am. And do you know, Tommy, he didn't get it. He was like, yeah, okay, fine. Got it. He didn't get it. The harder you work, the luckier you get. With one addition, you also have to make

Good choices. I know people who work hard, make bad choices and have a horrible life. You got to work hard and you got to make good choices. I tell people all the time, I'm like, there's divine intervention. I must be the luckiest guy alive. I've always worked hard, but everything seems to always go in my favor. I mean, I don't know why I'm in the right rooms. You know, Joe will introduce me. It's because you're in the right rooms.

I mean, I had a guy say to me years ago, you know, I got this. He was in B&I. He was like, I'm not sure these referrals that I'm getting are, you know, working. And I'm like, you're making a lot of money in B&I. I knew how much he was generating. And he said, yeah, but they're all by chance. I said, tell me how they're by chance.

He said, well, I mean, this member, this BNI member was at this location and he just happened to bump into somebody who happened to need the service that I offer. And he referred me. And then and so he gave me two or three examples and they were all sort of by chance. And I said, well, how many meetings, how many years have you been a member of BNI? So I've been a member five years. OK, so you've been a member five years.

and there's roughly 50 meeting, 50, five zero, 50 meetings a year. So you've been to what, 250 networking meetings over the last five years and you've built the relationships with these people? Yeah. I said, man, there's no luck in that. That didn't happen by chance. You built those relationships. You were in the room.

Building the relationships with people who went out of the room and they met somebody and came back because they trusted you, they referred you. Very little luck in that. It's hard work. Yeah, no, I agree with you. And that's one of the things that I try to do, Ivan, is...

I ask for help all the time. I'm not afraid to ask for referrals. I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid of rejection. I literally walk into a room. I got my head tall. I don't stutter. I don't say I'm like, and you know a lot. I literally tell people why they should do business, and I'm going to back that up. The one thing I don't do, and I really want to talk to you because you've seen so much of this networking, is I meet those people that I go into a room, and a lot of it, a million times at B&I, and they're the people I want to stay away from.

is they run up to you and they'll pass out their card. Because if you're visiting, I visit to a lot of them because we're in literally 40 markets. And they're running up and they're like, I do this. And every event they go to, they got a stack of cards and they're going, basically, call me, call me, call me. It's generally, I go into a couple of rooms and there's a few people I've already identified that I want to meet and build a relationship with.

And I, you know, I know that if you're doing massages and you're a florist, you probably want to meet everybody. You're a trainer. But certain people, if you're a legal consultant on real estate, you're probably not wanting to meet everybody in the room. So what do you find is the success pattern? Who's the most successful at these groups? And how do they do it? Over the years that you've seen the most successful, it's consistency, I'm sure. But what would you say?

Well, first of all, I would say that the people you're talking about I called card dealers. They're just passing out cards. And that doesn't work. I mean, people, that doesn't really doesn't work. I mean, it's okay to pass out your card. That's fine. But expecting to get business by passing out your card is not effective. So one of the books I wrote, Networking Like a Pro with Brian Hilliard, he tells this great story about that. And then I'll get to your question on what you should do.

He tells this great story about cards. He has a dog named Brandy. It's a Labrador, beautiful, friendly, friendly dog. And he said, if the card thing would work, what I would do is I would put a little cloth saddle on Brandy.

And on one side, I'd have a little sign that says, take one of my cards here. Take a card here. And on the other side, I would say, put your card here. And then I would just send Brandy into the room. And Brandy would run around and people would pet her. And then they, you know, they would take a card out. They would put a card in. Brandy would come back out. I'd have a whole bunch of cards. So what? What?

That's not even the beginning of a relationship. And the card dealers don't get that. So this is what they need to get. And it's the foundation of everything I teach with them. It's called the VCP process. And Tommy, if you've followed my material, you know this, but your followers may not. Visibility, credibility, profit, profitability. You have to first be visible. You got to show up. People have to know who you are. They have to know what you do.

And then once you create visibility in the community, you move to credibility. And that's the one that takes a lot of time. Getting to credibility takes time. It's where people know who you are. They know what you do. And then they know you're good at it because you have a reputation in the community for being good at what you do. Then and only then can you get to profitability where people know who you are, what you do.

and they know you're good at it, and they're willing to give you referrals based on the relationship that you've developed. So what you need to understand when you're going to a networking meeting, you meet somebody, is where am I with this person in VCP? There's a fourth stage, which I haven't mentioned, which is called invisibility. So oftentimes you're at invisibility. They don't know who you are. So at the very least, you want to create visibility.

And then the next time you see him, work over time to credibility to where you can get to profitability. So you go to networking meetings to work your way through the VCP process. That's what makes networking effectively work. And I certainly didn't know that when I was young. Man, I used networking as a face-to-face cold calling opportunity.

And look, even a blind squirrel can find a nut. You'll stumble over business, but that's not networking. That's just direct selling. Hey guys, quick update for you before we continue the episode.

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All right, back to the episode. There's a book that you remind me. It just came into my head. I don't know why, but it's called Raving Fans. And when you ever been to like a restaurant or an experience and you might not be a review giver. It seems like people that have a bad experience will always leave a review. But when they feel compelled. But what about when you feel compelled? You're like, this was the most amazing service ever.

And no one has to ask you to leave a review. You're like, I just want to go and tell the world about this. If we really focused on this world-class experience, how we answer the phones, how we show up to the client, how the experience is from the EQ side of it, like their perspective, treating them like gold, caring. Yeah. It's just, I don't feel like it's so transactional now. And, you know, just answering your phone. It doesn't happen.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm just saying in life, it just with all these things coming at us. And I'm saying that as a general statement from what it was before, you know, the, the, you know, the phone came out and we distracted by scrolling. There's so like the relationships I could be in a room with 10 people sitting right next to you and we're all on our phones. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, that's, yeah, that's a problem. But I listen, it was transactional back in my days in the 20s.

when I was in my twenties, but it wasn't the phone. It was, you know, it was being bombarded with direct mail and bulletin boards and advertising and all of that was,

distracting now technology's made it a little more distracting but it's still all about relationships it really is networking is all about relationships networking is more about farming than it is about hunting it's about cultivating relationships with people that get to know like and trust you and so you're right we don't often give reviews for

businesses that have done a good job for us, which is interesting. I first wrote about this in 1994 in a book I wrote called Who's in Your Room? I mean, called The World's Best No Marketing Secret. I said, people are more likely to talk about you if they're mad at you than if they're happy with you. The only exceptions were restaurants, movies and television shows.

Restaurants, movies, television shows, people would talk about automatically around the water cooler. But your plumber or your gardener, you don't usually talk about that person. And so that's where the relationships come in. If you build a really meaningful relationship with somebody, you're going to do a positive. Not only that, you're going to look for opportunities to refer that person. This is where relationships mean everything.

And you can develop the relationship in many ways. I have this one exercise called the gains exchange where I have people share their goals, accomplishments, interests, networks, and skills. And I had these two guys that had never done business with each other. They'd been in a BNI group for eight, nine months together. They both found out they were soccer coaches for their son's soccer team. Forget about everything else. They never finished the exercise. All they did was talk about soccer.

Now, in the nine months they'd been in the same group, they'd never given each other a referral. But within two or three months later, they had both given each other referrals. Why? Because they both built a relationship and they knew each other. There was this great connection. They were looking out for each other and they referred each other. It's all about relationships. Yeah. You know, relationships, I speak on a lot of stages. I've written a few books.

and i realized there's not a day that goes by that 40 people don't reach out on linkedin facebook cell phone and they want to create a relationship and i also i'm engaged i've never been married but we want to have a family uh there's a lot going on and i try to be fair people paid it forward for me i mean

You know, if you think about it, it wasn't that long ago that Michael Gerber was in here and people take the time. Love Michael. Love Michael Gerber. You know, I use the E-Myth to help create the strategy to build B&I.

And people, so I kind of feel like people take, you're taking the time from me today and we're getting the word out. And I'm always in the impression of what's in it for them. What can I do for you? And I just, I'm trying to figure out a way and I hate the word balance, but I kind of feel like what I've kind of learned how to do is I do shop tours now. I'm like, if you want to come meet me, come to a shop tour. It's free.

But everybody wants my time. And I'm just wondering, and I'm not mad about that because I want other people's time as well. I'm just trying to figure out from your perspective, because you've been down the road further than me, and I'm sure you're a very wanted man and wanted to get in rooms and speak and podcast. So how do you kind of balance that? Well, a couple of things. I get requests every single day to do one-to-ones. We have 340,000 BNI members worldwide, so you might suspect that.

you know, people would love to talk to me. So when I get the requests, I respond to virtually every one of them. I don't have my assistant respond. I respond to virtually every one of them. But I have a similar phrase that I use. I say, you know, thank you very much for the request. A good referral for me would be a cloning clinic.

If you could find a cloning clinic that could make clones of me so that I can handle all of these really valuable and important requests, I'd appreciate it. In the meantime, let me suggest that you connect with me via my Facebook page, my public Facebook page, and then I give two or three ways that they can connect with me.

To a person, Tommy, I've been doing this for, I've been doing that shtick for about 20 years now. To a person, they respond back and say, thank you for replying personally. I'm really impressed. And yes, I will connect with you on wherever it was that I suggested they connect. For example, every year I do, I do what's called Founders Day for BNI. And it's a day, an entire day of one-to-ones.

So it's an entire day of 30 minute one-to-ones via Zoom. And people connect with me for 30 minutes and ask whatever questions they want. And I usually get three, 400 people who request. And I take everyone who didn't get a one-to-one with me and I do it as a group Zoom. So you can get on the group Zoom and you can ask whatever questions with another 100 people or so.

So, you look for ways to give back. Look, these are the people I'd like to think I made a difference in their life, but they've also made a difference in my life. And so, I don't want to ignore those people. I want to, as much as possible, be there for them, which reminds me of a concept I'm going to throw in and then I'll stop.

We all have people in our story, people who've made a difference in our life. I could tell you stories about people that did one thing or many things that just made a massive difference in who I am as a human. But that's actually not the most important thing. It's not who's in your story that matters most. It's whose story are you in that matters most.

Whose life have you changed in some small way where years later they say, you know, I reached out to Ivan, he responded, you know, whatever, whatever they're going to say, you've made a difference. I met with Ivan, I did a one-to-one, I did a group Zoom, whatever it is they're going to say. I mean, it's something as simple as I remember a director saying,

sticking their head in my office after a training and I was really busy and they said, oh, we just wanted to see your office. We didn't, by the way, this is my office in Austin, Texas. This is not a background. This is my real office. They stuck their head in my office and they said, oh, we don't want to bother you. We don't want to bother you. And I, I just, I don't know why I said it. I've never said it before. I said, no, no, no. Come on in you guys. Come on in. This work I'm doing on, working on right now, we'll be here tomorrow. You won't be. So come on in.

And they came in. Ten years later, one of them reminded me that I said that. Ten years later, they reminded me that I said that. It's about whose story are you in, not who's in your story.

I got goosebumps when you said that. That's amazing. You know, I've had people reach out on the brink of bad stuff. Suicide, divorce, losing their children, just bad habits. And they said, if it weren't for finding you, and that's what kind of keeps me

like remembering how many doors were open for me. And I'm just, you know, you could have anything you want in life if you're helping people get what they want. Yes. Yes. You know that I, I love it. It was, it was Zig. I got that quote. I actually got a pad of paper. I look at that quote every day. And I was honored to be on a radio interview with him before he passed away.

And he and I did a radio interview together on marketing. I was honored to be on the same airwaves with him. Yeah, he's, listen, this, I got so, there's, you just know so many people, you've had so much knowledge, so much experience, so much failure as well. I'm curious, you've written a lot of books.

When you think about impact, you know, I don't need a lot of friends. I will say that relationships are different. I just want the right people. I want, you know, if I had to give you a list, I don't need a list of a hundred. I need a list of 10, not even, you know, people, I'm just curious when you build a relationship, then it becomes more than a deeper, you know, do you go after deep, deep, deep relationships? How do you look at relationships?

Well, I think relationships are commonality of interest, a connection. You don't have to have the exact same values, but the values need to be congruent. They can't be incongruent, so they can't be dissonant with your values. So you find people where you have overlapping areas of interest. You build long-term relationships with them. I mean, one of my closest friends I've known for 50 plus years, we stay in touch multiple times a year.

I have one of my past CEOs for BNI I've known for 37 years and we stay in touch. It's about touch points with those people. Benign neglect can work both on purpose and by accident. You don't want to let it happen by accident. You want to make sure and reach out to people and do your best to stay connected with those people. Does that answer your question? Yeah, no, you did great.

What about what I've always found, too, and I just had a guest in here earlier, Russell Brunson, who works a lot with Tony Robbins. We talked a lot about storytelling, but story stick and the best storytellers of all time. You get one minute if it's a busy chapter.

to make an impact, have people remember who you are. Can you talk to me about storytelling and how that's worked for you and how you apply that in everything you do? Most stories are sticky. I can't, most of my stories, I can't do in a minute. They usually take longer. I think what makes a great story is a fact, information. You're giving somebody a nugget of information, which anyone can do anytime.

but you're giving them a fact, but you wrap it in an emotion. That's number two, fact wrapped in an emotion. And the emotion could be pulling on the heartstrings. It could be making them laugh. I like to tell stuff that makes people laugh. So you give them a fact that's wrapped in an emotion that compels them to take action. When they hear the story, they go, "I gotta do this. Why am I not doing it? I need to do this." And then when they take action,

transforms them in some way. That's a great story. Fact wrapped in an emotion that compels people to take action, transforms them in some way. And when you tell stories like that, you're making a difference in people's lives.

Yeah, you know, he was talking about Tony Robbins and he's like, what people don't understand is you need to change the way they think. You need to change the way they perceive themselves. Because I've always been like, originally on stage, I'd say, look, I'm going to teach you guys all the tactics of what I do, whether it's habits, these things that I do to market, these things I do to make clients leave five-star reviews, whatever.

And then I realized the psychology, they need to kind of change the way they think of like the stories about this pivotal moment on your life when you decided you were going to take control or whatever it was. And you need both. You need tactical and you need this more systematic approach. And I think people, when you do put on an event and you're doing both of those and you're literally getting people to change the way they think.

And storytelling helps replace a negative story in your mind. Whether it's network marketing. You know, my grandpa used to sell Amway.

And what do you do with Amway? You go talk to friends and family. That's how you built these MLM type programs. And there's this bad energy out there, but if you do it the right way, it's the best thing in the world. It's freedom. It's a great thing. You get people underneath you and you help them become successful and you train them.

There's bad connotations about everything. A lot of people swear by BNI. A lot of people may not have had a great experience their first time, never went back. - Yeah, you know, BNI, every chapter is different. It's all the people in there. And some people don't like structure and they don't like system and they don't like processes. And I don't care. I have found that, you know, hockey without rules would be boxing on ice.

You got to have systems, right? You got to have processes. And if you're one of those people who are like, no, I don't want a system. I don't want it to be more social. Then BNI is not for you. And God bless you. Good luck. I hope you do well. But I like systems. I like processes. And regarding what you were saying about, you were kind of saying something that really resonates with me because when I do my signature talk on networking, I talk about mindset and skillset, both.

Because if you just launch into skillset and they don't have the right mindset, which begins with VCP, if you don't understand VCP and other things, mindset, skillset doesn't matter. Whatever skills you're trying to apply aren't going to stick. They're not going to work because you don't have the right mindset. So you start with the right mindset, then you do the skillset. It's a one-two punch and you're going to help generate $25 billion in business for people

your fellow members. I love that. I started singing this song before I walked into the B&I meeting from Cheers. I want to go where the people go, where everybody knows my name. And I was making a video. I go, nobody knows our name out here. Nobody's ever heard of our company. The best place to start in my video, I walked in the B&I. It was a big, big chapter in Atlanta. And the lady, I forget her name. I think it was Mary. And she says, listen,

She said, Tommy, this is odd, but our garage door, I could use you to come out. The lady that runs all of Atlanta, like maybe all of Georgia. And she said, your guy came out, did a great job. We ended up spending a lot of money with you. By the way, I fed your guys. And I walked in and I said, you know, it's funny. Just shaking people's hands and just getting to know them and trying out their services. And I just believe that this marketing is just, it's,

It's not a lost cause, but it's the only thing I know that no algorithm is going to change. It's like Google changes, Yelp changes, Facebook changes, mailers change in price. And so people ask me, what is your number one marketing tip? I said, go out and meet the people. You got to go meet the people.

Yeah, networking is a contact sport. You got to get belly to belly with people and meet them. And I mean, Zoom is okay. We have chapters that meet on Zoom. But just don't-- even our chapters that meet on Zoom do socials where they meet in person. Yeah, COVID must have been a little bit rough. Oh, we transitioned almost 10,000 chapters overnight to online. We pivoted unbelievably quickly.

And it was an amazing story, amazing experience. And BNI has 40 years of consecutive growth. There are very few companies in the world that can say that year on year on year, they have 40 years of consecutive growth. But BNI has done that even during COVID because people were desperate for connecting. Many people joined during COVID.

What do you think? So you've experienced a lot of leadership, whether it's a chapter, whether it's all the way up. I mean, there's so many different levels. What makes a great leader when you think about the best leaders you've ever worked with? Well, leadership is not about managing and complying. It's about mobilizing and inspiring. Now, management and compliance are important. So I don't want to minimize that. But that's not leadership. That's management. And there's a place for management and a need for management.

Leadership is about mobilizing and inspiring. It's about getting people really excited about the opportunities. I mean, you mentioned COVID. One of the things that I really led with during COVID was this concept, and I did it over and over again with members, is that your network, in this case, BNI, is a beacon of hope.

in a sea of fear. We live in a crazy world. Take a deep breath. Go to your fellow members. Find ways to do business during this difficult time. And so your network is just a way of building relationships. And leadership is about mobilizing people, inspiring people to go out and be the best version of themselves.

And I think a lot of leaders practice management more than they do leadership. That is by far. I got a big group meeting up in Milwaukee here next week. And I'm going to take this piece out because, you know, this idea of inspiring and talking with passion and smiling and just telling people,

Like, how good we live. I always remember, you know, I've been to a lot of third world countries. And I got to tell you, I was out. I mean, I was out at a lady's house last week. And they were out of town. They were flying back in. And the grandmother was there. They were out at Ronald McDonald in New York. And this young daughter, five years of cancer. And it was, I was crying. I was literally crying talking to the grandma.

And it just kind of brought me to this spot where no matter what goes wrong in my life, it's so good. It's such a great life. Tomorrow's not promised, but when I'm talking to people, I just got done talking to 40 technicians that are graduating.

And I said, you're here for a reason. You deserve so much. Everybody around you that's been patient, your families that have been waiting for you. I'm like, you know how proud I am of you. Today is the day that your life changes. It's welcome to the first day of your last job.

And I get so excited. And then I know what you mean. There's those managers in your life that you're like, yeah, they make sure you're on time. They make sure you're going through your checklist. But they like a guy just called me and said, dude, I'm going through burnout. Can you give me a call out of Milwaukee actually? And I said, man, I have no idea what you're going through. He goes, I wake up every half an hour. My three-year-old can't sleep. He's like, I don't know what to do. I'm not making enough money.

And I said, man, I'm always here for you. I said, I don't know what it's like to have a three-year-old waking up every half an hour. One thing I've learned is instead of setting my alarm clock, I set an earlier bedtime. I've learned to drink more water and get some steps in and reflect and doing these breathing techniques. And I just, I'm trying to be the most inspirational person possible. I would love any...

Any insight to that? Because everybody listening to this right now, I love the fact that you said management's completely different than leadership. And that is so profound. Yeah. And both of them are important. I don't want to minimize the management aspect, but it's not leadership. Leadership is different. You could be a manager who is a leader, but what happens is managers tend to be very transactional and be focused on the management rather than focused on leadership. Yeah.

you know, the higher up you are in an organization, the more the mobilizing and inspiring is important. Well, yeah. I just, I want to know, look with private equity, all these companies, there's so much, there's such a need for leadership and I don't think you could just find them. I think you need to build them. And I'm just curious your thought, like, like I go outside of the home service, home improvement industry and I,

What is your take? Like everybody's begging for leadership training. And if you were to talk about world-renowned leadership training, I guess the question is, how do you identify leaders? How do you build them? What character traits do we look for? What's going to make an impact? Hands down, I recommend John Maxwell's training, without a doubt. I know John, met him several times.

I was honored to be recognized as one of his transformational leaders of the year a few years back. Hands down, I'd recommend his training. I'd also recommend his book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. I taught for several years at Concordia University in the MBA program on leadership. And that was the book I used to teach with was The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.

Now, I studied under Warren Bennis, who was in his day, the world's leading expert on leadership at USC. And so I got a little bit of a hands up with Warren, but John's material is second to none. No, it's fantastic. I always ask myself the question that, you know, everything bad and good falls on me. It's complete ownership.

Like, yeah, if we get in a car accident, I can't point the fingers. I got to point these fingers. I don't have a safety program. We're not doing the right stuff. Like every single thing. I think a lot of people, they want they want it both ways. They want their cake and eat it, too, or whatever that expression is. And I always tell people, listen, everybody wants the views, but no one wants to take the hike. You know, the hard work, the discipline, the consistency, the showing up when you don't want to show up.

And if I'm upset, Ivan, if I walk in with a frown or I'm hunched over or my desk is a mess or everyone goes, what's wrong? Like I show up, I'm smiling. I zip it up no matter how my day's going. I walk with an inspiration. I walk in with a big smile. I try to ask people how their day's going and I genuinely mean it. I've got a lot of work to do. I'm a work in progress. I'm nowhere to where I want to be. I'll never reach that pinnacle. It's always a moving target.

But I want people, I'll never tell people to believe in Jesus. I'll invite them to church though. I'll never tell people to do anything, but hopefully they see me working out, take care of myself. And they ask me, you know, can you tell me a little bit about this? Because my job is just to inspire them to ask me. Well, I think that's a good approach. Absolutely. I know we need to wrap up. Can I leave you with one last thought? Yeah, absolutely. No, I really appreciate your time.

Yeah. Listen, my, my, truly my pleasure. I'm happy to come back anytime. I'm working on a book right now called garage to global. How do you take your business from your garage to a global enterprise? So that's good. That's great. I'd love to do a podcast when you're, when you're releasing that, you know, I'll buy a hundred copies. I'll help you with any way. I definitely want to do a podcast with you. Let me leave you with one last thing of all the years I've been in business.

And, you know, it's been 40 years now for B&I. By the way, I had somebody recently say to me, 40 years is such an honor to be part of an organization that's 40 years old and the founder is still alive. I'm like, thank you. I appreciate that. But my experience in dealing with businesses over the last four years is if you want to be successful, you got to do six things a thousand times, not a thousand things six times.

and it doesn't have to be six it could be five it could be seven but you got to do a handful of things and you got to do it over and over and over again what things well you listen to shows like this you you read books you listen to podcasts of people that are virtual mentors and you figure out what the right things are to do for your business and then you do them a thousand times not just don't do a thousand things six times do six things a thousand times that's the way

scale of business. Best advice ever. Simon, if somebody wanted to reach out, is LinkedIn the best way to do that? LinkedIn is great. Facebook, I'm on all the social media platforms, but LinkedIn is a good way. Facebook is a great way. I probably post more on Facebook than any place else. And of course, I have a blog, IvanMeisner.com, all the content. I have 17 years of content up there for free. And of course, BNI.com for anyone interested.

Thank you so much for your time today, Ivan. When you, when's that book coming out? Oh, I hope sometime next year I'm working. I literally just hung up the phone to do this interview. So I'm talking, I'm working with my authors actively. They're coming out to visit me here in Austin next week. All right. Well, listen, I'll let you go, brother. And I can't thank you enough. I hope you have a great day and a great weekend. Great doing the interview with you, Tommy. Thank you so much.

Bye-bye. Hey there, thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service.

So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.