66 | MENTORS MAGAZINE | EDITION 2
have systems in place, you can achieve a lev-
el of success and do the things you love and
that’s kind of where I am at in the world
right now.
Neil: What is it that drives you?
Ivan Misner: You know I think that drive is an
internal mechanism for me, it's just who I
am. You know there are certainly things that
have happened to people that motivate
them or drive them. For me it’s always been
an internal drive to
make a difference. I
have always felt that
you may not be able to
make a world of differ-
ence, but you can make a difference in the
world. And so, my goal with BNI was to really
make a difference and make a difference for
a person, for a few people, for a chapter of
BNI, a group of BNI, and that just grew and
grew and grew and grew. And now I feel like
I am making a difference for a fair number of
people globally.
Neil: How do relax when you are not work-
ing in your business?
Ivan Misner: Yeh so you know, I think this is a
great question, and it gives me an oppor-
tunity to talk about something I don't talk
about a lot and that’s the whole idea of bal-
ance. So, would you like to know Neil, what I
think the secret to balance is?
Neil: I would absolutely love to know, yes
please.Ivan Misner: Forget about balance, you will
never achieve it. Whenever I say that to an
audience, I always get the kind of response
that you just gave me there. Or I will see
some people up front that they will physical-
ly kind of slump and they will go 'oh gosh' I
thought he was going to give me something
really meaningful. So alright, it gets better. It
does get better. I think we look at balance,
especially as entrepreneurs, as business peo-
ple, we look at balance as sort of lady justice
with the scales of jus-
tice and everything has
got to be in balance,
and we kind of look at
balance as my life, my personal life has to be
in balance with my business life and that has
to be in balance with my spiritual life and my
health.
If you are an entrepreneur, your life is like
way out of balance. That’s what being an en-
trepreneur is like, but there is good news. I
truly believe that you may not live a life of
balance but you can live a life of harmony.
And this is more than semantics, it’s really
more than semantics. It’s about creating a
harmony in your life, even look at the logo
for harmony, the ying and the yang. You
know, the circle, it’s out of balance. Its lop-
sided. And that’s really what I think harmony
is all about, it’s that your life is going to be
out of balance sometimes. I travel a crazy
amount. But yet when I am home, I am
home.Forget about balance,
you will never achieve it