This is a rebroadcast of Episode 164.

Synopsis

This week’s topic is the Classification Cowboy, illustrated by BNI member Dan Fletcher. View and download the slideshow in the next post.

A Classification Cowboy is someone who tries to take more than one profession within a chapter. If you try to take more than one classification in a chapter, you’re blocking the connections and referrals that can be brought to the chapter.

The best way to handle this is to address the problem before the person joins the chapter, rather than after accepting a person with multiple businesses as a member. A chapter with multiple attorneys with different specialties is much stronger than a chapter with someone who doubles as attorney and paralegal.

You can download the slides in the next post to show to your chapter.

Brought to you by Ask Ivan Misner.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 164 –

Priscilla:

Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by AskIvanMisner.com, a Web site where you can ask Ivan any question you have about networking.

I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California, and I’m joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Hello, Ivan. How are you and where are you today?

Ivan:

Well, this week, I am at the South African BNI conference. As you know, last week I did a little safari, which was amazing; done it before; this was my second visit to South Africa. It’s such a beautiful country, and this week I am at the BNI conference for the organization in South Africa. Amazing group of people.

And again, whenever I visit your region, please come up and introduce yourself to me and let me know that you’re listening to these podcasts. I’d love to meet you.

Priscilla:

That sounds wonderful!

So what do you have to share with us?

Ivan:

I have a fun topic this week. It’s Classification Cowboy. Now, there is a PowerPoint presentation or JPEGs that will be up this presentation, so I recommend that if you’re at the Web site, open it up; if not, download the PowerPoint. And if you’re listening to this from a mobile device, print out the PowerPoint presentation so that you can see the slides that I’m talking about.

The first one is a great slide drawn of a Classification Cowboy. And I’ve got to tell you that this was all done by a gentleman by the name of Dan Fletcher, Dan Fletcher, F-L-E-T-C-H-E-R, Dan Fletcher. Dan is a BNI member, of course, in the United Kingdom, and his Web site is CartoonBox.co.uk, CartoonBox.co.uk.

Dan put this all together on his own, and so I really wanted to thank him publicly, because he had seen problems with this whole concept of the Classification Cowboy, and he wanted to draw something that would identify it and describe it.

Now, for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, a Classification Cowboy is somebody that tries to take more than one profession.

In the past, in the past, we’ve used the term “Classification Hog.” Don’t do that. As you might suspect, Priscilla, makes people mad when they’re called a Classification Hog. So it’s not a term that we’d recommend that you use, but we like this concept of Classification Cowboy, and the artist on this, Dan, has done a great job of drawing his description what it is. And in his second slide, he talks about while most people accept one person per profession, that’s the spirit and the rule of BNI, the Classification Cowboy doesn’t. The Classification Cowboy insists on two profes...