Adam Torres and Mike Adray discuss BNI.
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Show Notes:
BNI is helping business leaders succeed. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Mike Adray, Executive Director at BNI Founding Region, explore BNI and how it’s helping business leaders.
About Mike Adray
Mike joined BNI, as a member, in 2010 after being invited to a startup meeting by a stranger. He planned to use BNI to market and grow his construction business. After taking all the Advanced training courses offered in his region, Mike was able to stop all other forms of advertising, as BNI was accounting for most of his new business. In 2012, Mike joined the regional team as a director consultant, supporting four chapters. This is where Mike discovered a new passion, BNI!
Through 7 years of BNI membership, Mike generated over $1 million in referrals for other BNI members and was able to receive over $1 million in closed business from the referrals he received through BNI alone.
Today, Mike is living his passion as the Executive Director for BNI’s Founding Region and he supports over 375 members from Pasadena to Rancho Cucamonga.
About BNI
BNI is the world’s largest business networking and referral organization and its culture, which is built upon the philosophy of Givers Gain®, is unique. They have a culture of caring about giving business, professional development and building consistent, proactive and reciprocal business relationships.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today I have on the line Mike Adrae, and he’s Executive Director over at BNI Founding Region.
Mike, welcome to the show. Thank you very much, Adam. Wonderful to be here. All right, Mike. So, we got a lot to talk about here today. I definitely want to get into BNI , and learn more about what you’re doing and what you’re working on. I had Ivan Meisner on a long time ago.
I remember he was a great guy. Great conversation, great interview working with him. And I want , get into BNI and, you know, how you found it, everything else, . But first off, I know you were sent over to us by Megamix Expo. And we’ve been, covering the event and leading up to the event.
And is this your first time going or have you been before? Like talk to me a little bit about how you got introduced to the expo.
Yeah, so Tony Gutierrez uh, introduced me, but I’ve known Tony for number of years, actually, and him and his partner, Alexis, reached out to me several years ago and floated this idea of.
Putting together this large Expo mixer type event. And so we kind of collaborated on that over some time. Hold on, he pulled you in then. How’d Tony do it, man? That’s hard. He comes to How’d he do it? He got you. He did. Well, we had a great relationship before that. And he floated this idea and I said, look, I got some great ideas.
I think I can help you with it. Networking is my expertise, so let me offer you my expertise to, put into this thing and mix it in with what you guys are doing and, make it the best possible thing. And so, we’ve been at every one of their Make A Mix Expos. Wow. And so what was it? I mean, cause this year for everybody that’s new to this story that I’m covering a mega mix expo, it’s a huge event.
There’s going to be hundreds of vendors there booths. And it’s at the Santa Anita park over in Arcadia, California. So it’s a big horse racing track overlooks the mountains. It’s absolutely beautiful. And I went and I did a tour. and I saw all the space they’re occupying. I’m like, holy smoke, this is big, but I know it didn’t start out that way.
This is after a couple of years of like community members, like yourself coming together, supporting and bringing the community together. , what was it like, take me back in the day, Mike, way back, I think three years ago or four years ago. Yeah. So I think the very first one was that you know, one of the local hotels in San Gabriel Valley and, , they used up the ballroom and You know, it was quaint and there was a little bit of extra space that first year.
But the second year I looked at Tony, I said, dude, you’re going to need a bigger boat. You’re not going to fit this next year. And that’s because it was successful. I mean, , there’s gotta be demand. There’s gotta be. sounds to me like you and your team and Tony and everybody kind of stepped into that vacuum of what the business community was looking for.
Am I off on that? No, you are, you are spot on. So, you know, years past, there was an organization that did a similar thing and they went by the wayside and kind of disappeared off the map and then covet hit and. Then Tony hit me with this idea and I said, Tony, this is gonna be a hit. I guarantee you this is what the marketplace needs.
People are hungry for this. Go with it, man. Mm. I love it. I like to give people assignments too, and I’m always like, better you than me, but that’s me. I’m not putting that . I support you, man. But go do it. Go, go off and be prosperous. . Yes, exactly. That’s awesome. So now . Just say one of the originals to now see this, thing expand.
Like, what’s that feel like? I don’t know if you’ve checked it out yet this year or not. I did one quick tour, I don’t know if you’ve kind of seen the footprint yet. Oh yeah. You saw the footprint of course, cause you’re, , going to have a booth. So I’m sure you saw the map, but what do you think now to see this big, like huge venue?
It’s awesome. You know, we were there last year at the park and we were a little bit different part of the area there and it was phenomenal to see the space that you’re going to occupy and see it grow. We have a lot of our B and I members are small business owners in the community and many of them.
Are getting exhibitor space as well to be there at the expo. Wow. And I think that’s a good transition. Let’s get into BNI for those that maybe aren’t too familiar with it. Like, maybe just give a little bit of the history of the organization and what it does. Yeah, so BNI stands for Business Network International, and we are the world’s largest word of mouth referral organization.
And, And as you mentioned you had Dr. Meisner on your program before, and he is the founder of our organization and it’s very apropos that we’re talking today. I know this will probably air at a different date, but today is the 40th anniversary of the founding Of BNI as an organization, isn’t that insane?
How cool is that? and here’s what’s really cool This morning I visited the very first BNI chapter that he ever started back in 1985 It’s still in existence today in arcadia and there are 40 members strong and we celebrated the Be a nice 40th and their 40th birthday today. Wow. What a story.
What do you think makes being so successful and has given it such staying power? Well, it’s, the vision that Dr Meisner had, and that was to, change the way the world does business and. It’s all centered around some core values, but the main core value is giver’s gain. You know, it’s called different things around the world.
Some people call it karma. Some people call it what goes around, comes around. But basically, if I help you, You’re going to want to help me and together we’re all going to do better and B& I takes that philosophy, adds a whole bunch of education to it, a whole bunch of structure and processes and the members build strategic relationships that are reciprocal in nature, based in business.
And for the purpose of helping each other grow their business through referrals. Hmm. And talk maybe a little bit about the format and otherwise. Because sometimes when people hear like of a networking or referral organization, they may been to one or another, but I think what BNI does, this is just my opinion, but it’s the structure.
It’s like who it attracts especially, you know, post COVID. And in my opinion, a lot of people are looking for different ways to connect in different ways to reach new audiences and to connect with other business leaders, because a lot of contacts were lost during that people move away or depending where you live, right.
People move away or they move into a new business , so there’s a big shakeup and I just feel like there’s a lot of opportunity for those that haven’t been a part of BNI or something like that , to learn more. So give us maybe one layer deeper. Sure. So, you know, everyone knows that the best way to do business is by referral and you have to have relationships in order to.
You know, good deep relationships before you can refer to somebody, you have to know, like and trust them and know that when you give them your client, your neighbor, your family member as a referral, that they’re, they’re not going to make you look bad. That’s going to make you look good. And unfortunately, most people try and do that just by winging it.
And sometimes it works, but what we do in BNI is we teach you how to build those strategic relationships to the point. That it’s no like and trust and I want to refer people to you because I know you’re going to make me look good and they get results. That’s, bottom line. This all gets results.
I just got the numbers in for 2024 and the year ending December 31st, 2024 BNI members globally. Past 16. 8 million referrals. Wow. That resulted in. Million. Oh wait, yeah, but wait, that resulted in 25. 3 billion with a B, billion dollars in revenue for the members. Whoa, that’s insane. Yeah, and 40th year, right?
We just celebrated the 40th anniversary today. Yeah. We are also going to be celebrating, and I don’t know how many organizations say this, but this is our 40th year of consecutive growth. Wow, so B& I , grew even during COVID and all of that? Like, it just grew. Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s amazing. And what do you think, was it leadership, like, how does that even happen when other networking groups or other referral groups, not picking anybody, you know, but you know, how does that happen?
Well, you know, it’s, the basic principle in the structure of BNI. And then of course, When COVID hit, everybody was caught off guard, except for the CEO, and it wasn’t Dr. Meisner, , he’d already replaced himself as CEO in the organization. The CEO that he had placed into the organization back in 2015, I don’t want to say that he saw COVID coming, but he knew that networking was going to change, and he had already been beta testing.
Online networking meetings, taking the BNI weekly meeting and moving it into an online format. And so when COVID hit, we lost 2 weeks worth of meeting before we were back up and running 100 percent globally with over 10, 000 chapters meeting weekly still. Wow, so that infrastructure and everything else had to have been built because that’s large number, man.
Right? I mean, 300, over 300, 000 members. Yeah, that’s a large, large number, man. Oh, wow. That’s a wow. Talk about like having some foresight there and being able to still serve your members and your base. So when others were scrambling, you were kind of already set up. That’s wonderful.
Correct me if I’m off. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the industry, and I was in finance. It’s like, I don’t know, a decade ago, and it was all in person before. Now it sounds like it’s a hybrid or there’s online and in person, or maybe give us a flavor for that.
Yeah. So up until COVID BNI chapters globally around the world met weekly, every week same dot same day same time of day ran a 90 minute agenda. And they’re the same agenda. Ran in every single chapter around the world. You could go watch a chapter meeting in Sweden, not speak the language, but if you know the agenda, you know exactly where they’re at in the agenda because it’s the same agenda everywhere.
When COVID hit, we pivoted, went to, Everybody online. And so as we were coming out of COVID, you know, it became obvious that this online format was a viable format for us. So many chapters went back to their in person meeting. chapters stayed online during COVID. We launched new chapters and of course they were online.
They never experienced in person, so they were happy with being online. And then we said, Hey, What if we mix the two, and that’s when we came up with a third format, which is the hybrid, and those chapters meet in person the first week of the month, and then they’re online the rest of the weeks of the month.
And so we have three distinctly different meeting formats. That’s great. I love it. , I love the pivot. I like the evolution and I like being able to an organization like this to be able to serve more people. It’s a great story. One that I’m happy to bring to my audience. That being said, Mike, if somebody is listening to this or watching this and they want to learn more about pivot, BNI or to connect.
Obviously, I want everybody to come to Megamix Expo. It’s going to be on March 12th and 13th megamixexpo. com. You can grab tickets there. It’s going to be in Arcadia, California, Santa Anita Park, which is the horse race track out there. But other than that, and coming to see us, which I hope they do what’s the best way for people to connect and learn more?
So I would go to our website, B N I C A, like BNICalifornia. com, and from there you’ll be able to see, you know, what we offer, you’ll be able to see where our chapters are, you can see our chapter members, so if you’re looking for a professional you’re looking for services, you can search our member rosters, you can sign up to go visit one of our chapters, you know visitors are allowed to visit a chapter up to two times, there’s no commitment, there’s no anything, just come and visit, meet the people, and make some connections, and we love to have visitors.
Come and visit our choppers and you can do it all through that website, BNICA. com. Fantastic. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put the link in the show notes so you can just click on it and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button.
This is a daily show. Each and every day, we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully, you’ll New inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and Mike, man, looking forward to seeing you and meeting you mega mix expo and thanks again for coming on the show.
All right. Thank you. Have a great day.