Synopsis

Dr. Misner won the Maxwell Leadership award for 2016. While at the conference, he learned a terrific lesson in networking.

Back in the 1970s, John Maxwell offered a quarter of his annual income for the opportunity to interview the top ten pastors in his field. Only two of them took him up on it. At the end of each of the two interviews, he asked whether they could introduce him to any of the remaining eight. Because of the quality of the time they had spent together, both of them happily did, and he was ultimately able to interview all ten.

Here are four lessons that Dr. Misner took from this story.

* Don’t expect something for nothing. Asking for favors from people you don’t know just doesn’t work.

* Be prepared. Don’t waste people’s time.

* Take notes and follow advice when you’re meeting with people who are more successful than you are.

* Ask people who meet with you whether they thought the meeting was worth their time. Only ask for referrals if they think it was.

This story is not just a lesson in leadership: it’s a lesson in networking.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcrpt of Episode 474 –

Priscilla:

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Official BNI Podcast, brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello, Ivan. How are you and where are you?

Ivan:

Hi. I am actually at home this week in Austin, Texas in the library on the second floor overlooking Austin Lake, Lake Austin.

Priscilla:

That sounds nice.

Ivan:

It’s very nice. It’s a great place to do a podcast.

Priscilla:

Tell me a little bit about this lesson that is in the title here.

Ivan:

You know, some people know that I was given a fantastic opportunity

to spend a few days with John Maxwell at his leadership conference in Orlando in August. I was very honored and humbled to win his Maxwell Leadership Award 2016. It was really an amazing event. I genuinely appreciate the honor that John gave me in recognizing the work that we have done in BNI.

While I was there, John shared a story that I just thought was an incredible networking lesson. It was something that I wanted to share on my podcast. He began his story, sharing it with me, that he was a very young man. He was a pastor in the 1970’s. He wanted to learn. He wanted to grow in his field. He decided that he would try to interview 10 of the most successful pastors from across the U.S. Being a thoughtful young man, John realized that their time was valuable. He wanted to pay for it, but at the time – this was in the early 70’s- he only made $4200 a year. A year. In salary.

But he knew that he was going to be taking up valuable time and he wanted to pay them for their time, compensate them for their time, and they could do whatever they wanted with the money for their time. Donate it to their church or whatever.

John reached out to the 10 pastors that he wanted to seek advice from and he offered them $100 each for less than an hour of their time. Now, you do the math. 10 pastors, $100 each. $1000. That was one fourth of his annual income that he offered. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but in the ’70s, $100 was a lot of money. When you take a look at what his salary was, that was a huge percentage of his income. So even though it doesn’t sound like a lot, multiplied by 10, like I said, it was almost a quarter of his annual income.