Cys Bronner: Good morning, and welcome to BNI Decoded I’m Cys Bronner and I’m the Executive Director for the BNI Greater Los Angeles regions. I am thrilled to bring other Executive Directors here, each and every month with key topics for our Members here and BNI. For this 45-minute session
Our guest today is Joy Olivier, BNI Gold Country Executive Director. We are going to hear from Joy and then we’re going to open up the room to some commentary, and your input.
Hopefully, this is more of a dialogue than a monologue over the next few minutes as we work together and get to know each other, but let me tell you a little bit about Joy,
who I have had the pleasure of really getting to know these past few months. She has been an Executive Director longer than I’ve known her, of course.
Joy attributes, most of our success to networking for when she started her business in 2006.
BN I was the first organization she joined. Joy believes that networking with the
intent of building relationships is what drives her to achieve her aggressive goals. She’s been awarded for her business successes of the regional state and national levels, her belief in the BNI core principle of Givers Gain.
The success of her own business allowed her the opportunity to become a BNI Director Consultant. In this capacity, she was able to reach more members and help them attain the same level of success, she enjoyed.
Finally, she reached your ultimate goal within BNI when she became an Executive Director of BNI Gold Country in 2018. She looks forward to growing and shaping
the region into one of the big international community highlights as an example of what BNI all about.
When not at BNI meeting you’ll likely find joy and her husband Anthony enjoying activities like camping boating traveling or anything adventurous.
Her key to success is to find your competition and make it her collaboration one will always be more successful when you have friends, so please welcome Executive Director, Joy Olivier, and my friend.
Joy Olivier: Thank you so much Cys and welcome fellow Executive Directors director consultants and BNI Members, I am so thankful to be part of this BNI Decoded.
Because if you haven’t experienced BNI, it can be a kind of a complicated organization to get involved, and so we have really learned that the more you get involved in the more you learn.
The more opportunity and more success that every Member will have in their BNI membership, so today’s topic is taking your membership from Grey to Green.
It’s one of those items that we talk about in BNI and hopefully your chapters are recognizing the leaders.
Joy Olivier: In the traffic light report, but sometimes members don’t really understand where they stand and how to get better. So, we’re looking to educate all of you,
give you guys some ideas on how you can get more involved and increase your traffic lights. BNI is centered around our core values and this core value really focuses on accountability.
What isn’t measured… We don’t know where your success is, and the Power of One report really shows where you’re being accountable in your daily weekly and monthly habits in BNI.
We’re going to go over the five areas that your membership is evaluated and how you get your scores on traffic lights.
So, the first thing that we want to cover is what are traffic lights and how do they get scored? Some of you might know whether from listening to a podcast or Director Consultant,
or even an Education Coordinator talking about the traffic lights scoring.
In the Power of One report, some of the items that we look at are Attendance, Referrals, Visitors that are brought, One to Ones and Chapter Education Units.
Each of those five areas give you the amount of 20 points each, that you can accumulate. Then over a six-month time period, those scores are evaluated and then that’s how we
develop the traffic lights. So, if you are a Green Member, that means of the past six months, you have accumulated 70 to 100 points
50 to 65 get you to yellow
30 to 45 are in red and
25 and under our Gray.
Now we’re going to be looking at Personal PALMS reports today and a lot of times, Members will say, but I do my One-to-One once, I do give referrals, but if we are entering them
into our BNIConnect Mobile App. We can’t see what activity are really doing so I always like to tell my members go back and try to input, what you have done so it updates what your activity has been.
So why do we enter it into the APP or BNI Connect is because we want to show our chapter and our fellow Members, the of level involvement, we have within our organization.
So how do we find our personal participation report now, I know that some regions will have a BNI connect that looks just a little bit different so I’m going to show you two was to find out.
In some BNI regions, when you go into BNI Connect it will be right there on the top of the screen labelled my personal participation report. So, I definitely encourage you to take the
time, shortly we’re going to look at some slides, so minimize your screen take a peek to see where you are or right after our presentation today, please take a look at it, so you can see where you are measuring up.
If by chance, it is not on the top of your BNI connect home page, here’s another way you can look at it, if you go on the left-hand side to Chapter Shortcuts.
Step two will be looking for the item of personal palms reports, and then on your right, you put your name and the last six months to be looked at.
What you should get is a report that looks like this. and, as I said a lot of Members don’t realize where they stand, the last six months they might have had two amazing past months,
and they don’t understand why they’re not a yellow or green light Member. Please remember traffic lights are evaluated over the past six months.
So, our first one, our RGI and our RGO so that stands for referral given inside, that means when you give a referral inside your chapter. And when you do business and give a referral to a member inside your chapter from an outside party, that is an RGO and there can be a second, third tier, and so on referral.
If we evaluate on the very, very bottom this Member has been a Member for 10 weeks so hopefully a lot of you might have many more weeks evaluated that you aren’t a new Member, but you want to look at the total amount of meetings that are being evaluated, so the hope is that most of the numbers across are going to add up to get your full 20 in each item.
So, if we look at those two referrals given inside and given outside, they have past seven referrals to be on track for a full 20 points they need to give another three referrals for a total of 20.
The next V is stands for visitor, and what is being eyes hope is that we bring at least one visitor per month to our chapter meetings. Well this Member right here has kind of gone above and beyond, which is fantastic, so this is what disappear definitely there are 20 points so in it looks like they are.
A value for three months, they should have three they’re already to ahead so on their traffic lights for the visitor, they will receive the full 20 points.
One-to-One some of us know them as they are dance cards when we have been in BNI for so long, the new vocabulary words been around we do call it a one to one.
For being on the power of one we are hoping that every Member has at least one One-to-One per week.
And sometimes we need to go ahead and make that up maybe we’ve taken a week off for vacation or life got busy.
But the hope is that, over a period of four weeks we have four in a month or one per week, so if we evaluate those numbers to get the full 20 points this Member needs to make up five extra One-to-One throughout the month.
CEU does not Stanford continuing education units, it is chapter education units.
And if you want to talk about Members who have a great experience in BNI they really contributed so much.
of good networking skill to the podcast books and other options to make sure that they have the skill set and the knowledge to be able to promote themselves and others within their chapter.
We asked for one hour a week so as you can see, if we look at this PALMS report the number should be tend to get the full 20 this is showing the eight more hours are needed.
So, this is why you need to keep your eyes on and to evaluate what and how much you need to make up in your PALMS report.
Now let’s be realistic, you can’t make it up in a week if you’re pretty far behind but setting goals and expectations of maybe going the extra step every couple of days, maybe listening to more reading a book we’re going to talk about that will help increase your score and then over the next couple of months, you can increase your traffic lights score.
So, this can be a blue one, believe it or not, for some Members, why should I be attending my BNI chapter meetings, we all know that life can get busy, and why is that evaluated, we know that being members that have good attendance, and that they participate in our chapter meetings tend to have better success, and these are some of the big five takeaways, we know that weekly meetings are a form of space repetition.
We built space reputation built the habit of learning and engagement that leads to success so when we see each other every single week.
We get to be able to talk about ourselves, and people get to know who we are, the avoidance of benign neglect and we all can understand that life gets busy.
Life gets complicated and when we are not in front of each other, our relationship starts to deteriorate, we don’t mean for it to happen, but if we are not connected we allow time space in life to fill a void and we become a little bit distance in our everyday life.
BNI chapter meetings give you a practice, practice, practice, believe it or not, 11 years ago this month when I joined BNI, I was one of those nervous speakers I shaped about my business, I could not believe that I was going to have to talk a whole 30 seconds every single week but being is given me the ability to practice.
My weekly presentation to talk about my business and now, not only do I do it in my be and I meetings I can take it to other avenues to talk about what I do.
BNI has given me the confidence to go ahead and share what is needed in my professional and personal life.
The more you attend your meetings, the more you practice your weekly presentation, the stronger and more confidence you show.
VCP which stands for visibility credibility and profitability it’s all about the process of building relationships that lead to ongoing referrals meeting weekly is a force multiplier to moving through these stages.
I hope we’re all coming to BNI to gain referrals we stay for their friendships, but we need to be participating every single week, so we can help our fellow Members, as well as advocating for ourselves and the biggest one being top of mind.
How many times, as I, we say before that we get busy if you are at your meetings weekly your Members in your chapter remember who you are.
What you’re looking for you get to be specific, which is terrific So then, when they are out in their community, the next seven days they think about you.
Members who miss their meetings tend to not have as much success in BNI because their members forget.
So that is why we evaluate attendance it’s important to you and your membership but it’s also important to your Members in your chapter that you are there so that you can learn about their business.
Our next power of one.
Why wonder once I come to the 90-minute meeting, why do I have to meet these individuals outside my meeting.
I love it when that I have heard from Dr Misner himself, he says, if you don’t want to make money and BNI then don’t have one to ones.
One to ones are the lifeblood fellow revenue that comes into our business it helps us be visible incredible which leads to profitability, the fact is that we cannot learn enough from a Member and a 90-minute meeting when we get to speak 30 to 45 seconds.
Networking is really about farming and not hunting, we need to cultivate the relationships, we need to like you and understand you.
Know what your goals are and how to learn about you, giving the opportunity to not have the distractions of outside life being able to sit down for 30 to 60 minutes and to understand each other, will help promote both of you.
We take every opportunity to get to know who our fellow Members are and their businesses for better.
The more referrals that you both will find when you spend time together, but how do you make up one to ones, and where do you find it.
Find some time to have these one to ones, make it part of your weekly habit, if you have a morning meeting or an afternoon meeting make it part of your calendar for 60 minutes, right after your meeting, if you can just schedule a one to one.
And what a great opportunity to come early to your meetings those at least 15 minutes to find the next Member you would like to schedule a One-to-One with when you make it part of your calendar.
Also planned, I have a part of your week to have another one to one. For me, I tried to shoot for Friday. Friday tends to be a little bit less busy, but I have one on the day of my meeting and Friday is my makeup.
Whether it’s on phone or zoom I am trying to incorporate that One-to-One outside my meeting time and day, so I make sure that being it stays top of my priority.
Add another BNI Member to develop the power team that’s what being I is all about so some of us that might need to make up a one to one.
Add it to a three spend time with two other Members accounts has to wonder once now if you’re meeting with your power team with.
Seven to 10 or 15 people I don’t really consider that a One-to-One because we don’t have the time to really share what we’re looking for, we want to encourage power teams and it’s great you’re getting together.
But if you need to make up one to ones, when you have to looking at your power of one report add another person in at the same time to one to ones you’ve just now build a stronger bond, and hopefully the three of you can work together.
We always feel that one to ones always have to be in person well the and I has given us the opportunity to learn what zoom is I don’t know about you, but I had no clue what zoom was before the band of it. But it has become part of my business culture now.
and on phone I wouldn’t suggest this for a first or second One-to-One but, as some of us senior Members that have been around and being a long time.
If you get the chance get on the phone with somebody once a week and review what are your goals, how can I help you let’s review on what your business is doing so I can advocate but make it part of your schedule.
Also, joining a fellow Member on an appointment, this is, for me, which was really big in my own membership I didn’t understand.
How some people did business so when it wasn’t confidential, so I never went to the dentist’s office and say, let me show you show me how you clean people’s teeth.
But if you have a financial advisor who’s doing a presentation or a life insurance agent that’s doing group benefits.
Ask for support saying you want to come and pass out the materials watching other individuals, how they do their business is a great opportunity for a one on one it builds the story on how they handle referrals.
One on one so, as I said, builds the relationship that builds trust we like to pass referrals to people we like know and trust we can’t do that if we don’t know you.
If you asked for one to once it’s all about the other person if they asked it’s all about you set the expectation don’t talk the whole time, high level Givers Gain better than half or this time we talked about your business or back.
Use the GAINS profile being I have so many tools, if you don’t know how to talk about your business, please work with your chapter leadership or your director consultant on how to get these tools to share and agree when the one.
I like to say, talk about a planner come up with an action plan after your one on one, what are you going to do, promote them on social media follow up with the client send an email introduction. Come up with something you can do after a one to one, and you will see results in other areas of repair one.
Repeat one to ones with all Members to build deeper relationships, one on ones are not a one and done one on ones, has the opportunity to pick apart.
I encourage every one of you to take your chapter roster and go through to have a One-to-One and when you’re done set it on repeat people’s lives change people’s businesses change.
Any questions hey.
Why give referrals right, this is what our organization is about, we want to make sure that every Member is living by our philosophy of givers gain.
Givers Gain is about the law of reciprocity and that if you help me I’ll help you and, of course, it just makes sense that if you aren’t looking for opportunities for others, why would they be on the lookout for you.
When you give a good referral, as a member it enhances your reputation referral show that you are listening and helping your Members and your chapter.
I joined a chapter way out of my area, and I was a little nervous how am I going to do it like really immerse myself in the BNI education and we came up with some great ideas I’m going to highlight spring is one of our biggest referral givers in our chapter.
And although she lives quite out of area for her chapter, this is one great way that she can start giving referrals.
One of our health people has a product for dogs and I think spring will say I think this Member got five referrals offer a simple post.
She also we had a caterer who gave a presentation, what a great engagement and you can see her advocating for the members of her chapter is getting a reaction that springs knows somebody.
For somebody like me I finally got confident after I meet with a client, I always ask them what else is on your to do list and I’m not talking about laundry and your dishwasher emptying your dishwasher.
What in your life needs to be worked on, are you looking for a new roof your House being painted, if you like, doing business with me, I know people, just like me that would love to help you, with your to do list it’s amazing what your clientele your fan friends and family will say so.
Look for opportunities to promote.
Our next evaluation is visitors, sometimes we hear “I feel like I’m always recruiting for my chapter Why am I, being asked for visitors?”.
First of all, when we invite our network and new people from our community into our BNI it’s not just about us right.
You have to remember that your visitor might just be the person that one of your Members has been trying to get to see for months.
I heard a great presentation to say who has had great experiences and BNI and everybody in the room raised their hand they said if you’ve had such great experiences, why are you.
Introducing it to other be nine members, do you not want them to have great experiences, and it was just a mind shift going Why am I not sharing.
We also know attrition happens and we’ve really seen that over the last two years, people retire people change jobs.
I don’t know about you, but here in California, Northern California, moved out of state and it affected our chapters.
So, if we just say that we are okay, we don’t need to grow our chapter is going to get smaller over time.
So, if we all make the commandment of bringing in visitors, we make sure that we have healthy numbers as memberships.
We also know, new blood equals new energy when you interview somebody new to your chapter mix.
It when we usually bring great energy people are excited to know somebody new, a new industry, and a new contacts sphere, you’re doing your Chapter a service by introducing somebody new to your weekly meetings you can help someone get off the fence.
Right, you have that person that just won’t say yes to maybe your products and services, maybe it’s a business to business, let them come in to BNI.
Enter some at the “I have portion” of the meeting we give testimonials when they hear from other people what a great professional you are maybe it will get them off the fence and to do business.
And one of my other favorites when we have visitors. Visitors come a lot of times, they find somebody in that chapter that they need, they want to do business with.
Visitors help our Members bring in revenue, even if they can’t join have them come and learn about the community of business owners you never know when one of those could be a referral.
How do we get visitors?
Again, we advertise and it’s great these are two great examples that chapters were filled because of social media posts advertise what you’re looking for and that there is a great opportunity.
Take a screenshot if you want, but this is how our region builds chapters we promote it on social media, because our friends know people who could benefit from BNI.
It’s easy it doesn’t take a lot of time, and when you put it out there enough people will know that you belong to this amazing organization.
Falling into the end, why is chapter education units so important, I don’t know about you, but as a college graduate and then business owner, nobody told me how to network and develop relationships in business.
They just taught me my business BNI gives you a huge opportunity to learn about language body language topics industry.
And one of our biggest core values is lifelong learning.
We’re very committed to that and this organization provides such a variety.
I want to encourage every single one of you to go into business builder some of you might know. Know it as business university, but on your regions website is business builder.
Incorporate BNI podcast into your daily life I’ll tell you my first 15 months at BNI, my second time around my didn’t pay mine, much to my chapter education units.
But as soon as I was, I wasn’t having the success that I really needed, I have now incorporated that into my daily living and it’s made all the difference.
When do you listen to be an iPod cast we’re all busy I encourage you, if you drive anywhere make that be the first thing that you turn on your car before you listen to music.
For me, I takes a long time to get this hair done in the morning, so I knew that, as I was getting ready, I played it on my speaker and, as I was getting ready I incorporate it one podcasts a day, five days a week.
If you drive long for your those of you in the LA area you guys are always in traffic, you know how many podcasts you can get in.
But this is one of the easiest things that you can do to make up your traffic lights and it’s probably the one area that most BNI members don’t take advantage.
I’m telling you if you look at the most successful being Members across all industries and you look at their chapter education units.
You will see that they really immerse themselves and learning how to network better be and I give them a huge variety of books.
You can get them on Amazon, please reach out to your chapter directors or executive directors, if you want recommendations, but our founder has Co-authored with a variety of authors, I think we have an author here. Cys and Norm are both authors of books, they tell you how to be better at what you do.
Start a book club, it’s great way to get your Members involved it’s another commitment that you can share ideas, how it applies to your industry.
But the more you are educated about how to network trust me the better you’re going to be in your BNI membership.
These are some of the things that are easy to incorporate you can go and listen to the podcast they make it easy go to Google and say, be an iPod cast it will give you.
Almost 800 podcasts to listen to George has recommended that I do the podcast APP that makes it super easy to get into the car and hit next.
We make it easy to continue your education and thanks to the California Executive Director team, we are doing Advanced education like you’re attending today we’re doing it every month for most of the year, all of you who are attending get one our chapter education unit so go into your APP and put it in.
Get connected learn how to use BNI, if your region does advanced training, please get involved if you’re on a leadership team, please do your education.
You can take Member Success Program as often as you want, we all have different journeys and being is just because we took it five years ago doesn’t mean you won’t get something new, five years later.
What our members in our chapters really make a commitment to the power of one that’s how chapters tend to be green when you have happy Members because their attendance is good, they’re getting referrals they’re seeing revenue.
Chapters are evaluated on retention your Members will renew when you everybody’s committed to bring visitors and you’ve got a healthy conversion rate of people wanting to be part of your chapter Those are some of the items that are evaluated on how your chapter becomes green and so overall.
When your Members are green and your chapter turns green, these are the big key takeaways, you will see that your Members arrive early because they’re looking forward to connecting.
All Members are committed to have at least 1 One-to-One a week, nobody left behind.
Members are proud to bring visitors, there are visitors at every meeting, which means new opportunity for every single one of you, Members arranged and attend outside chapter events they will hold chapter mixers dinners they will attend regional events together.
Chapters, want to have business Open Days or visitor days, because they’re excited to share the message of BNI.
Members have a supportive and friendly culture it’s a great place to be on a weekly basis.
Members have high energy and a positive attitude what I love about BNI it’s a great place to be once a week we enforce the accountability.
But we still have fun and Members are making money and have a givers gain mindset, so I encourage all of you to look at your power of one see how you can approve reach out the support is there and just like that you will be coming from Grey to Green.
Any questions?
Cys Bronner: wow that was amazing! I have never typed notes so fast in my life right, thank you, I love that you’re opening this up to questions – for those of you who are not comfortable using the emoticons for raising your hand go ahead and just type into the chat and joy and i’ll work together in terms of getting this going we’ve got about 15 minutes left.
Cys Bronner: So, Dani wants that green background
Joy Olivier: don’t know if it’s an approved background, but…
Cys Bronner: it’s not one of our colors but you know what are traditions and innovation 😉
Cys Bronner: All right.
Cys Bronner: George did you want to say that out loud? George recommends attending MSP at least once every six months and I’d love to hear from you about why you’re encouraging the Advanced MSP training to the deeper dive.
George Papacalos: Who Thank you Cys, um yeah so I mean there was a reference that you take the MSP one time and done know it’s always good to repeat that and I’m thinking every six months because there’s a lot of things that you can learn on that there’s things that you even you might pick up that second or third time of taking it.
The advanced versions it’s a deeper dive so they’ll focus on One-to-One or they’ll focus on other things it just an expanse what MSP is all about, so you know if you want to be a superb BNI member, you need to really understand and we’re always learning and just because we listened to it or heard it one time there’s no way we’d be able to retain 100% of that effect we’re probably lucky to retain 10% after the next day, so it just makes sense that we continue to go through the program over and over again, it just makes us better members and bring in more guests and referrals etc.
Cys Bronner: Mike did you want to add on to that?
Mike Adray – BNI Founding Region – Executive Director: Yeah so, I just throw it in the chat to you know the advanced courses really are designed to help you refine each specific skill set.
You know, I always like to compare bi to a gym membership, and I know that’s not everyone’s favorite reference, but you know you can go to a gym and you can use all the equipment and you can get a good workout you can break a sweat.
But are you getting the maximum effect that you want from each workout? Probably not. And so to do that typically you would engage a personal trainer that would then take you to each piece of equipment and show you how to properly use it, show you the right form the right posture the right stamps the right weight all of that now gives you a much more intensified exercise and better results up their memberships the same way, you have your weekly presentations your feet your presentations your One-to-One meetings for power teams.
Each of those is a specific skill set and the advanced trains will help you refine each one of those to become proficient at each skill set and then maximize your ROI from your membership.
Cys Bronner: Thank you Mike. Joy, if you have one thing that you hear from this presentation over and over again when you’re talking to Members, what is the most common takeaway that is kind of that BFO, that blinding flash of the obvious?
And for the rest of you remember, if you have something you want to remark alone or your takeaway, please raise your hand or pop it into the chat.
Joy Olivier: Well, when I talk to Members about their Power of One.
They didn’t realize that reporting their activity was so important, although we talk about it consistently, they didn’t realize how it was being measured.
They also didn’t realize how to incorporate a lot of this in their daily and weekly schedule, whether it’s a podcast or an advanced training or a One-to-One so breaking it down, it’s very simple if you slow down and just make it part of your life you don’t have to do a big stock and where’s the time to make it all but reporting is so incredibly special to your results.
Cys Bronner: So much Marty, I see your hand is that, please go ahead.
Marty Milina: Sure, it was fantastic I would I’d like to know if this presentation is available to or would want to make it available to our Members as a chapter situation, either on zoom or live.
Joy Olivier: I will share this with our Director Consultants to share with the chapters.
Cys Bronner: Definitely. When we remember – and I say that with a smile – these sessions are recorded. We post them on to our YouTube channel. we kind of strip the audio out of the video out as well and then use it to create podcast.
Cys Bronner: We post it on our social media and, of course, whoever the guest is and all the Executive Directors here in our California group are going to get links to that so you’re going to be able to find this content as well, but nothing is as cool as being here for the live session, is it?
This is where you all say yes 😉
Yes.
Cys Bronner: I’m going to grab the guest information for next month, but that doesn’t mean we’re done, we still have time.
Oh, Mark I’m sorry I missed your hand up or is that a thumbs up you know I’m always glad to see your appreciation in this.
Joy, I find that one of the reasons that people don’t put things into the into the APP is maybe they’re not as comfortable using an APP as they are with the desktop version – our members and myself included get so involved and we’ll just use the APP. “It’s easy, it’s this, it’s that” you know and so we lose a lot of reporting in our region.
For people who will say, “well, I don’t do Apps” and how have you, is it been an issue in your area and how do you overcome that and teach them how to use other tools?
Joy Olivier: I am so incredibly fortunate so those of you who know George Beach, he does a new member orientation that helps get them onto the APP when they join BNI but that actually is incorporated in part of our zoom Member Success Program done by Marty and Ilana, so we are heavily encourage them to actually do it in the training and then be able to work at right there and then so that’s active when they attend our meeting.
Cys Bronner: Great Thank you George Papacalos (I only do that because I’m so proud to finally be able to say it.)
George Papacalos: Thank you for the presentation. It reminded me some certain things I would like to share with the group. I see BNI as more of a mindset it can’t be just showing up to the meeting 90 Minutes that it needs to be something that you embrace and it’s something that you’re doing throughout the week.
I like the fact that you know when you’re talking to your clients, you know how you build customer loyalty of asking your clients.
What their pain points are, what their challenges are you’d be amazed.
Back not have anything to do with the product or service that you provide but being able to refer them to a professional that you know from BNI, could be a tremendous help for them and they’re going to thank you afterwards and you’re going to build more customer loyalty, because you did that for them, so it’s the mindset is that I’m actually helping my clients to be more successful if they’re more successful.
They’re going to you know buy more product and services for me refer be more business. I’ll be more of their trusted advisor and not just a vendor selling them a product.
Comment about the APP; I see the values that mentally putting your statistics down makes a lot of sense but um, I have to confess I’m one of those people that really don’t do Apps but I’m willing to learn so Cys if you can teach me how to do the Apps, I will start inputting information.
Cys Bronner: I can teach you how to do the APP and I can teach you how to do the desktop version. I have these eyes that don’t work as well and I need my enormous screen, and so we need to be able to use that as well.
George Beach: it’s funny it’s as much as I push the APP for our region, I’m in front of my computer 10 hours a day, so most of my inputs are on the computer.
Cys Bronner: yeah you know, BNI Connect was first created and I don’t mind the shameless self-promotion right now telling you that I worked on it for three years. Thanks to referral from Norm Dominguez, by the way, and was part of that initial set is the APP was not part of the original design because that’s how long ago it was.
And when it came in, we had to teach people that the APP could never be as robust as the desktop version because APP stands for small application, right? And, and, over time, it has evolved to be so integral into everything we do – but I don’t want you to overlook, particularly if you’re in leadership – how powerful BNI Connect can be for your own membership and your chapter and, of course, for us at a regional level.
Right so it’s been an amazing thing and I’m just going to take you back in time there was a time when everything was done on triplicate carbonated forms way back and I had a Member who took his forms, these little, little slips and he had a brand new convertible mustang that we could see through the windows of the meeting area right, and he was so proud and he’s he put those slips on the dashboard top down and drove off, and of course we saw the paper go everywhere.
You will no longer lose data by learning how to use BNIConnect effectively.
I could tell that story over if you want to laugh out loud but you’re right, we have two- or three-minutes left, so I think we can sneak in a couple more people for Joy.
Tonya, you so right I love these tracking tools and I’m going to tell you, because the Norm is in the room and nonhuman waving to everybody, just because we want that we have that.
Norm Dominguez: Gap is great. Now, so I use your whole time.
Cys Bronner: BNI Connect came about because we’re evolved into what it is now because Norm Dominguez wanted to be able to see BNI on a world level or at least a national level instead of 1000 different reports being done by different mechanisms.
But even at the time when Dr Ivan Misner envisioned it and Norm Dominguez it has always had its three prongs to it that you might not be aware of, there is the back-end use that we’re talking about for the tracking, there is the groups that are actually within it that are not used as much as Facebook, but they’re there for you, and there is the use that the chapters get on the front end, which is to the public, you have Member pages, you have chapter pages, you have regional pages and you have national pages that are all consistent and they’re there for you and they’re auto generated by the use that you put in and I’m sure that Joy would say.
She’s nodding, so I’m just going to say I’m sure that Joy would say that if you’re not utilizing the strength of your Member page by inputting that information, you are leaving money on the table and that’s just one more thing to take you personally from grey to green.
George Beach: Well, because the Member pages are indexed by the search engines, so you can be that you’re BNI pages discoverable by non-BNI members.
Cys Bronner: Absolutely I can’t tell you how often I will just type in a name of a member, because I don’t remember I don’t want to go into BNI Connect and Google their name and BNI and get all their information and then I will take that URL and share it in an email to somebody who’s looking for something. Right and facilitate the introduction I took your spot today where we’ve got one minute left why don’t you wrap this up?
Joy Olivier: Well, thank you all for taking the time investing in yourself and investing in your b BNI membership. It is time well spent make all of us, and your chapters look good please go on your desktop or your APP enter in one Chapter Education Unit, and please share with your Members on your upcoming meeting we have another one coming up first week of a right first week of April – first week of May hello, this is April and encourage your other Members to attend this forum it’s a great way to get connected through members all over California.
But we are definitely better together, and so Cys, me all my fellow E.D.s Thank you once again for allowing me to be part of this wonderful opportunity.
Cys Bronner: Thank you so much Joy and thank you for mentioning next month, Red H Mann from San Fernando Valley BNI and she’ll be handling Mindset Matters.
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