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The Official BNI Podcast

The Official BNI Podcast

Written by: Dr. Ivan Misner
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Referral marketing tips from Dr. Ivan Misner, Founder and Chief Visionary Officer of BNI© 2007-2026 BNI Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales Self-Help Success
Episodes
  • Episode 980: Kind Leadership

    Episode 980: Kind Leadership
    Sep 30 2026
    Synopsis Daniela Antongiovanni says kind leadership begins with listening beyond people’s behavior to the human needs underneath. Leaders fear that if they’re kind, they will be less effective, less authoritative, but the opposite is true. It’s much easier to judge or withdraw or hide behind authority instead of remaining open and curious and wanting to connect. Model the behavior you want to see in your company, your team, or your BNI chapter. If you make people feel valued and understood, it’s easier to work with them to look at the impact of their behavior and find a better way forward. Links Listen to Episode 295: Lead from Among, Not from Above.Listen to Episode 396: Host Leadership.Listen to Episode 475: A Path to Business Leadership. The Official BNI Podcast is sponsored by Misner Audio Programs. Complete Transcript of Episode 980 Priscilla:Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Official BNI Podcast. 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 Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan, how are you and where are you? Ivan:I am in California today. I’m about to leave for the membership drive cruise, which we do almost every year, and I get to hang out with 100 of my closest friends, BNI members from all over the United States, so it’s always fun to do these. Priscilla:Oh, that sounds great! Ivan:Today I’ve got a guest, and she’s an interpreter, so she’s going to laugh at my interpretation of her… pronunciation of her last name. But I’ve known Daniella for a long time, Daniela Antongiovanni. Did I get it close? Daniela:Close enough, yeah. (laughing) Ivan:Close enough (chuckling). You can call me miss-ner if you want then, Daniela. I’ve known Daniela a long time. Let me introduce her, and then I’ll tell you a quick story. She’s an interpreter, a business coach, an expert in nonviolent communication in a BNI franchise. What do they all have in common? Well, that’s what she’s going to talk about. So we’re going to listen to that. She had visited a BNI meeting, I think the first one was in 2014, and was really shocked about the way people were doing business. And she recognized that this was going to make a difference in the world, and she joined BNI in 2015, became a Director Consultant in 2016 and Executive Director in 2020. I first met her when she was an interpreter for me, and I do this with all interpreters. I say, “Hey, if I go too fast, just you know, have somebody raise their hands, raise their arms, so that I can know we’re going too fast.” And Daniela was like, “No, that’s not going to be a problem. Don’t worry about that.” And as soon as she said that, I knew I had a great interpreter because when the interpreters say, “Oh yeah, yeah, I’ll have somebody slow you down,” then I know I have an interpreter and I have to slow down. But with Daniela, she is right on it. She’s a great interpreter and a great Executive Director. Welcome to the BNI podcast, Daniela. Daniela:Thank you, Ivan. That’s very nice. Ivan:I told you that story, didn’t I? Daniela:Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. (both laughing) If you want, I have a counter story to that. Ivan:Well, I don’t want to take too much time from the podcast. Daniela:No, no, no. We’ll do it in person. Okay. Ivan:Okay. So, what is kind leadership, and why is it better? Daniela:Yes, I’ll go into the definition. But before that, let me recall a moment when I saw it so clearly in action, and actually that was through you, because when we first met in 2016 at the BNI Italy National Conference in Milan, where I was for the first time honored to be your interpreter. Actually, I found something very surprising happening because after your keynote, I was supposing that you would retreat to the VIP room, as many other high-profile speakers I had translated were doing all the time. And instead you came up straight to the interpreting booth, and you said to me, “Come with me. I want to meet the members. I want to shake their hands. I want to do selfies. I want to answer their questions. I want to be there for them.” And you did. And there, I realized that you know I was working with a very special and kind leader, because you were not using status to create distance, you were creating connection. And that was a turning point in my professional evolution because that made me genuinely curious about BNI, and still today I’m learning from the way you lead. So… Ivan:That’s very sweet of you to say, Daniela, and I appreciate it. I think it’s important that I go out and meet as many members as possible, and I have members say to me, “Oh, thank you so much. You know, it must be really difficult to do this.” And I and I usually tell them, “Look, I could be digging ditches. This is way easier than digging ditches. I’m happy to take ...
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    14 mins
  • Episode 981: The Psychology of Why People Refer

    Episode 981: The Psychology of Why People Refer
    Oct 7 2026
    Synopsis Dean Jackson explains to guest host Spencer Reynolds how you can use the psychology behind referrals to your benefit in BNI and in business. Referrals are driven by self-preservation. People make referrals to add value to their own social groups.People are highly protective of their close connections and want to share good experiences and warn against bad ones.Recommending useful resources raises a person’s standing within their group, creating a natural sense of mutual value exchange.Instead of asking your referral partners to tell people about you, train them to identify opportunities and report them back to you.Make the referrer the hero. Create valuable, easy-to-share materials your referral partners can pass along. Links Visit Dean’s website: https://deanjackson.com.Listen to the I Love Marketing Podcast.Visit the BNI Tampa Bay website. The Official BNI Podcast is sponsored by Misner Audio Programs. Complete Transcript of Episode 981 Priscilla:Hello, everybody, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast. 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 Spencer Reynolds, who is standing in today as a guest host for Dr. Misner, and he will be joining us from time to time. Hello, Spencer. Welcome to the podcast. Spencer:Thank you, Priscilla. I appreciate it. Excited to be with you. Priscilla:It’s great to have you. And who are you presenting us with today? Spencer:Today’s guest is someone that has spent decades, honestly, with business owners and teaching them a really powerful truth about marketing, and that it’s the world happens through relationships and trust and referrals. He’s a legendary marketer. He’s a co-host of an iconic podcast called I Love Marketing, and he’s a brilliant thinker on philosophy. And this is a good friend of mine. His name is Dean Jackson. Dean, welcome to the show. Dean:Thank you. Welcome. Glad to be here. Spencer:Yeah, you know, Dean, it’s hard to believe that we’ve known each other for 24 years now. Dean:Is that how long it’s been? That’s crazy. Spencer:And I’m only 22 in my head, so that math. Dean:Yeah, exactly. Me too. That’s so funny. We actually had Dr. Misner on our I Love Marketing podcast years ago. Spencer:Fantastic. Well, Dean, today I really want to talk about some of the wisdom that you’ve learned over years inside of marketing, and referrals in particular. But let’s talk about why. You know, Simon Sinek says start with why. So let’s start with why do people refer? Dean:I think that’s the biggest misconception that people have is that often one of the first blocks we have to overcome to really optimize the number of referrals that you can get, is to understand that people are not referring as a favor to you or a gift to you. When you have this mindset that you have to earn referrals or that you are somehow asking for referrals, you’re going down a path that is kind of counter to what we, as species, have evolved to do. As long as we have been playing the cooperation game and escape the food chain, basically we’ve become the most successful species ever. That we have learned the importance of looking out for each other and maintaining what I call our status in the herd. That if we look at it, that that’s the primary reason that we do anything, and the reason that we avoid anything is if we feel like something might damage our status in the herd. And it’s a very, very… you know, it goes all the way back to when we were gathering as you know tribes of 150 people or groups, that we always had to kind of look out for each other, and we realized that we were going to be better off if we were constantly looking out for and adding value collectively. And so you see the remnants of these things happen, you know, evolve into even, our society things. The way we are today, we’re not kind of out on the savanna with our just 150 people. We’re in big cities, but we’re still among our group of 150 people. There’s been a lot of research on this, and you may have heard of Robin Dunbar. Spencer:Yeah. Dean:His research on what’s become known as Dunbar’s Number, and that number is 150, and it’s the number of relationships that we can maintain. Now we may know and recognize 1000 or more people, but we truly have relationship with 150, and we’re very guarded in those relationships. It’s our role to add value to our herd and to protect our herd from getting damaged. That’s why we’re… If you look at everything we do, we want to recommend things to people. Spencer:Yeah, we do. Dean:You see it all the time. If you see a movie, or if we’re talking about movies, we already know, “You got to see this one.” or “Oh, don’t see that one.” We’re even guarding people’s experiences. We don’t want them to waste their time reading a book that wasn’t worth it or making sure that they do read a book ...
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    15 mins
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