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Nice to have friends
Aug. 27th, 2022 14:58I generally sucked at owning a business. There were aspects of it that I was really good at. The core of finance, taxation, all the bookkeeping, tracking P&L and keeping up with bills and payments. The stuff that will keep you alive in business. But sales and networking and people are just beyond me. So far out of my wheelhouse that they are hanging on the starboard side.
But I made myself do something called BNI. It is an international business networking group started by an introverted psychologist and it worked as well for me as all the other networking I wasted my time on. I was a star in the group. At one point one of the visitors thought I owned the group franchise. The style of networking was VERY process oriented. No time to freestyle. You had a job minute to minute through the meeting and a job afterward for homework. True salespeople hated it. Too constrained. I thrived in it.
At one point I could give you a solid person to do anything from selling a house to putting together your funeral to working on your IT system.
And the payoff for that other than the obvious acquisition of new customers from referrals (and really learning what was a referral in the first place) was a lifelong connection to people I'd have never known otherwise.
Case in point. My insurance went up this year by 25%. I just got the notice. At 69 I still don't know anything about home owner's insurance and, frankly don't want to know but I NEED it to be there. Enter my friend John from BNI. I sent him a note saying could we look at the insurance to see if the 25% rate adjustment was justified? This was Saturday morning. An hour later I had a new policy for $100 LESS than I paid last year for better coverage using a different company. Total was nearly a $400 swing.
Thank you BNI.
Other than that it is quiet here on the prairie. Not quiet a century temperature day but still pretty damn hot. I'm done with any outdoor today.
Starting to focus my mind on travelling. It takes longer than it used to.
But I made myself do something called BNI. It is an international business networking group started by an introverted psychologist and it worked as well for me as all the other networking I wasted my time on. I was a star in the group. At one point one of the visitors thought I owned the group franchise. The style of networking was VERY process oriented. No time to freestyle. You had a job minute to minute through the meeting and a job afterward for homework. True salespeople hated it. Too constrained. I thrived in it.
At one point I could give you a solid person to do anything from selling a house to putting together your funeral to working on your IT system.
And the payoff for that other than the obvious acquisition of new customers from referrals (and really learning what was a referral in the first place) was a lifelong connection to people I'd have never known otherwise.
Case in point. My insurance went up this year by 25%. I just got the notice. At 69 I still don't know anything about home owner's insurance and, frankly don't want to know but I NEED it to be there. Enter my friend John from BNI. I sent him a note saying could we look at the insurance to see if the 25% rate adjustment was justified? This was Saturday morning. An hour later I had a new policy for $100 LESS than I paid last year for better coverage using a different company. Total was nearly a $400 swing.
Thank you BNI.
Other than that it is quiet here on the prairie. Not quiet a century temperature day but still pretty damn hot. I'm done with any outdoor today.
Starting to focus my mind on travelling. It takes longer than it used to.