My Video Review of the Red Hot Referrals Chapter of Business Network International (BNI)

I attended Visitor Day today at the Red Hot Referrals chapter of Business Network International (BNI). This is my review of the experience.

What is "Red Hot Referrals"? It is the White Bear Lake, MN chapter of an international real-world network of business professionals, called BNI. Similar to a chamber of commerce, members give each other business referrals.

Pretty straightforward.

What sets BNI apart from a chamber of commerce is that each chapter allows a maximum of one member from each type of business. For example, there is only one lawn care specialist in the Red Hot Referrals chapter, based in White Bear Lake. This creates an atmosphere of "preferred referrals" within the chapter and "locks out" the competition. If you join BNI, you will never see a "rival" company in your chapter. This lets you breathe easy and just be yourself. And trade lucrative business referrals with other members.

Pretty smart, right?

It costs about $400 a year to be a member of BNI. You have to attend meetings about once a week. "It's not netsitting, it's not neteating, it's networking," as they say.

The benefits of the organization became obvious to me when I attended Visitor Day today. Many long-time members attested to the effectiveness of the organization. Some members said they get as much as 70% of their business from Red Hot Referrals alone.

Everyone seemed to me very real, very genuine. I detected little to no bullshit whatsoever.

Those at RHR who I spoke with, please feel free to get in touch with me via http://willconley.extendr.com. Also: Comment right here freely.

Those who are not in BNI: Consider joining. It's awesome. And comment here freely.

I hope you enjoy the review.

Move Somewhere Warm This Autumn

I'm spearheading a westward invasion this autumn and you’re coming with me. Enough is enough, the cold winters blow, and the road is the safest place on Earth.

Couple of suitcases, my laptop in my backpack, some clothes and a good pair of walking boots. Three months rent in advance on a furnished room in California.

With six months lead time that’s a doable goal.

Hopping a Greyhound to do it. It’ll be my own little Merry Pranksters bus only I don’t have to pay for gas.

You wanna come with? We’ll coordinate a schedule.

The rules:

1. You pay your own way.

2. You pack light and don’t be addicted to your material things.

3. You must have a sense of adventure.

4. You must be physically fit. The Greyhound ain’t for the faint of heart.

5. You must not be too picky about what happens at the end of the journey.

6. You must live somewhere on Earth. We will all meet up somewhere between Minnesota and
California, sometime.

7. You must have at least one or two “nice” outfits. We might all get jobs working in Silicon Valley on the way. Bring overalls too; we might end up working construction.

That is the vision. Sunshine, that California flakiness – all of it – here I come.

If you’re interested in a fearless hobo journey beginning Autumn 2009, get in touch with Will Conley. Let’s see if we can’t make this country more interesting.

I’m open to changing plans too. It all depends on who’s interested and who’s got big cojones. Get in touch with me on Twitter or Facebook.

The Two People I Have Met in Person Because of Twitter

Thus far I have met two people face-to-face because of Twitter. (Note: The following story was inspired by @ElliFordyce, @JosephRueter, and http://mytwitterstory.com.)


Elli Fordyce (@ellifordyce) :

72-year-old jazz singer based in Yonkers, New York. She’s hipper to social media than most people one-third her age.

We met this January at a little pizza joint situated underneath the train tracks in downtown Yonkers, where I lived until 2009. Elli and I talked life history, life coaching, social media, and music. The conversation was punctuated at regular intervals by the Metro North commuter line and Amtrak trains roaring overhead.

Elli hired me as her social media adviser to help promote her albums. I hope to stay in touch with her long after she has surpassed all need for my advice.

Joseph Rueter (@josephrueter) :

Entrepreneur and sharp-as-a-razor proprietor of extendr.com, the ingeniously simple web link headquarters for anyone and everyone. (Think of extendr as your virtual business card.)

Joseph and I met this month at the Caribou Coffee on Grand Avenue in Saint Paul, the city in which we both currently reside. He regaled me with some interesting insider information about how he goes about designing and implementing various social networking strategies.

Joseph urges all those who meet online to “Don’t just wave. Say hello.”

Twitter rocks. For me, no other social network I use has been single-handedly responsible for an in-person meeting. I hope to have many more “tweetups” in the coming months.

This autumn, 2009, I am spearheading a westward invasion from Minnesota to California, and some of you are coming with me. It’s going to be huge. Details at http://tinyurl.com/invadecalifornia.

Hello There, Minnesota!

Many of you found Man of Many Words today through a link associated with an article I wrote for Minnesota Artists Online about street artists in my current home base of New Haven, Connecticut. To my fellow Minnesotans I say Welcome and Long Time No See. I lived in the Twin Cities from age 1 to age 24 (with breaks for world travel and a drive out to see the very exciting twine ball in Darwin, Minnesota.) I have occasional nostalgia pangs after three years of absence. I will return one day.

To those of you who did not find Many of Many Words via that article, I invite you to go over there and check out mnartists.org. The weekly arts magazine is funded through the world-class Walker Art Center and the McKnight Foundation. Their editorial staff are deeply involved with the arts scene at all levels, from creation to organization to criticism and more. The magazine has become the epicenter of all things artistic in Minnesota. So get on over there and see what Minnesota artists, poets, musicians, spoken word artists, filmmakers, and arts movers and shakers are doing.

After that, come on back to Man of Many Words and get some more daily news embedded in personal narrative embedded in magic. While you're at it, please allow me to pimp the donation buttons located in the left sidebar. There they are. See them? Click, click. Your help is appreciated.