Summary: Synopsis Just a reminder that the new intro to the podcast was produced by Tony Wolfe. Stewart Emery shared a story with Dr. Misner recently about a billionaire CEO who used the same company cafeteria as the rest of the employees. Prospective buyers of the company wanted that to change if they bought the company. The CEO halted the negotiations that day. Chapters have a choice about whether to be inclusive or exclusive. The more successful you are, the easier it is to be standoffish. A good power team might be tempted to be exclusive, but a GREAT power team will be inclusive and share its success. Leaders within BNI should be approachable. When the members understand that the people on the leadership team care about their success, it creates a healthy culture. Leading from among makes us better leaders in our own businesses as well as in our chapters. Brought to you by Networking Now. Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 295 - Priscilla: Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you, and where are you? Ivan: Hi Priscilla. I am doing great, and I am away this week at a retreat with my executive management team and the executive council of BNI. The executive management team who work for the company and the executive council are the top 7 countries for BNI. They re the countries that have the most chapters in them. We get together several times a year to talk about where the organization is going and improve it as much as possible. I like to share that on the podcast so that you know the organization does a lot of planning and analysis. The key players of the organization do that regularly to keep BNI the largest and most successful networking organization in the world. So that is what I am doing this week. Priscilla: That sounds great. So what do you have to share with us? Ivan: Before I go into today's topic, I want to mention again that we have a new opening to BNIpodcast.com. It was done by a good friend and BNI member, Tony Wolfe. For people who would like to see Tony and what he does, you can go to tonywolfe.com. Tony did the voice recording. Tony is the man of a thousand voices, and to get more information, please go to tonywolfe.com. Tony, thank you so much. Your voiceover work is great, and I am proud to have you do our opening. Today, I'll talk about leading from among, not from above. I got this idea- today's podcast is going to be a little more seminal, a little more strategic. I try give a lot of hands on very technique oriented things as much as possible. Today is more conceptual, but I think it is really important. I have a good friend by the name of Stewart Emery. Stewart has written many books like Do You Matter?, which is a book about branding. There is another book called Success Meant to Last. I think Stewart is one of the brilliant minds of our time. He was responsible for the âpricelessâ series of commercials with MasterCard. He was over at my house a few months ago. At breakfast, he told me about an interview. He was talking to my wife, his wife and me. It was one that he did with a really well-known billionaire in the computer industry. The billionaire shared an intriguing story with Stewart about an experience he had when the senior executives of the company, interested in purchasing the billionaire's company, visited his office to discuss a possible purchase. At lunch, the billionaire- I am not naming him by name, but it would be a name that most people would recognize, told the senior executives that he was negotiating with that he was going to take them to the executive dining room for lunch. They followed him to this dining room.
