74 | MENTORS MAGAZINE | EDITION 2
One is I think... one of the biggest short cuts
to the learning curve would be the technolo-
gy. It took me too long, to integrate all of our
online technologies in to one platform in
BNI. And it was very painful by the time we
did it, we did it about five years ago. And it
was just really painful getting every country
on to the same platform, because what hap-
pened was many countries had their own
platforms, so we had to pull them away and
get away and come to one single platform.
So, I do not know how much that would help
other entrepreneurs, but I think as soon as
you realise that there is a tech-
nology out there that
you all need to be on,
you need to get eve-
rybody on it sooner
rather than later. Be-
cause it does not
make it easier a year
from now to try it.
Neil: How much does gut feeling influence
your decisions in your business?
Ivan Misner: I think it influences it a great
deal. I think gut feeling really is the sum total
of your personal experiences at light speed.
You know so you have a lot of personal expe-
riences and gut feeling is really your ability
to process all of those experiences, and get
an immediate reaction. So, it influences my
decisions a lot, however I almost always
double check before I just go with that gut
feeling. That is here is my gut feeling butlet’s verify that. Let’s confirm with some
facts how we should respond to it.
And by the way, I think sometimes my gut
feeling has gotton me in trouble, and not be-
cause I was wrong, but because I communi-
cated too quickly to someone what I was go-
ing to do. In other words, someone would
come up with an idea, and my gut feeling on
something was, 'that’s a really, really bad
idea.' Even if I say it tactfully, it deflates
them. And so, I have found that sometimes
it is just better to hang on to your gut feel-
ing, for a little while rather than tell some-
body 'no that is not a
good idea, here is
why.' Its sometimes
better to say, 'let me
give some thought to
that. Let me think
about it and let’s talk
again.' And then you
come back with a
more rational response rather than that’s a
bad idea. So, does that make sense?
Neil: Yeh absolutely. Ivan, can you just, net-
working is what BNI is about, isn't it? But can
you just talk a little bit more about network-
ing? And how it should be done?
Ivan Misner: Well I did a presentation in Lon-
don a few years back and there were about a
1000 people in the audience, and I asked the
entire audience, I said, 'how many of you are
here today?' hoping to you know, just maybe
possibly sell something? Raise your hands.This is what I call the
networking disconnect,people show up at networking
events, everybody wants to sell,but nobody is there to buy.