…Good morning, afternoon, or evening, everyone. How is everybody today? I am so glad that everybody is here. We are going to get started with our, wonderful, webinar today. And before we do get started with all of that, do want to remind everybody that we are recording this webinar. so if you do not wanna be involved in the recording, if you don't wanna be on the the the chat list and all of the other stuff that gets shared afterwards, please, opt out now and join back in and watch the recording later if you're still interested in the content. So with that said, we got a bunch of people here with us today. They're all saying hi. We have, Andrea from Costa Rica. We've got, let's see, Emma, Pernil from, Quebec, Ottawa. Karen says hello. Lisa Karen says hi from Martinique. Wow. Gorgeous down there. I'm sure a little bit,
warmer than it is here. Craig says hello. Mark Hackbarth says hello from Wisconsin. Diane says hello from Cincinnati. so good, day to all of you. Hi from Amarillo, Texas. let's see. Hi from Vancouver, from Romania, from Saskatoon, from the UK, from Scotland, from, Nikki, India, from Pune, India. let's see. We've got, Eric from Central Texas, and things are going too fast now. let's see. Hello from Arizona. Liz from, the UK, but currently residing in the US. Arizona, Hamilton, Ohio, more from UK. Thank you guys so much for being here for all over the b and I world. It is so awesome to have so many people here today. And we are gonna get started today with our, continuation of our b and I tech talks, weekly deep dives into…
b and i's technology platforms. What are those technology platforms? Well, here they are. They all center around BNI Connect. but we, log in to all of those things now via b and I, my b and I dot com, the single sign on gateway, and all these other programs flow off of that. BNI plus, BNI insights, BNI academy, Ask Ivan, leadership team hub, the marketing hub, and, of course, we have the BNI connect mobile app as well. with that, for those of you that don't know me, my name is Jeremy Walsh. I've been around BNI for quite a while, about twenty four years so far and still going. I am a member. I'm still a member. I've been a member since two thousand two. my twenty fourth year of membership in the same chapter, by the way. so I've been everything vice president, president, education coordinator, which is one of my favorite positions, by the way, and,
all the way up to, area director. Now I work with headquarters to help to, promote…and explain and support all of our b and I products, our b and I technology online products around the world. And I have an amazing team, that helps to support all of these platforms as well. Again, myself, I hail from the great state of Rhode Island, which is the smallest official state in the United States. we also have, Riaz. Riaz Mehendi from Malaysia, also been involved in BNI for almost thirty years. We've got Monique who is in Connecticut. We've got Samantha in Germany, Jessica in Massachusetts, and Lilith in Chicago. So this is, my amazing support team that helps with all of this stuff…
they are superstars, supporting over three hundred and fifty five thousand members, eleven thousand chapters, seventy eight countries, twenty five languages, twenty four hours a day, six days a week, and, you know, we're coming close to to to six hundred and fifty thousand tickets answered, all in about fourteen minutes…oh, I'm showing all the slides. I'm showing the wrong screen. How about that…Nope. Don't wanna do that. Hold on. Man, they threw me for a loop today
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Oh, jeez. Hold on a second. Now things are all messed up…I stopped presenting. Hold on a minute. Things are all messed up here. I'm coming back. I just had it. Now it's gone again. Hold on a second. Man, what. What's going on? I've done. I've literally done over a thousand webinars. why today? Why today is it, doing its thing with me? It's messing with me. give me one second here. I'm almost back. One minute…
And we need to share screen one. I have four screens, by the way. so it was it was actually sharing screen two, and then I have two more screens that are up on top. but I think we're back to normal now. Although, now we're back to the very first slide. So let me, jump back through this here. Thank you guys for bearing with me. I guess I guess you guys know I'm not a robot at this point. no. I am not a. An AI bot doing this presentation. so…need to to prove that every once in a while that I am an actual human being. I do make mistakes. So, here we go. There's our bird chapter. And here is, stuff we've, no. Wait. We're not there yet. Core values. We gotta start with our core values. What's your favorite core value? do me a favor,
and drop your core value into the chat window. I love to see what everybody's core value is. Sandeep says it's givers gain, says Jonathan. Carl says building relationships. let's see. We have, lots of people that say positive attitude recognition. And, of course, my two favorites are traditions and innovation. That is what we do here, as well as keeping a positive attitude about all of that stuff…
Alright. for those of you that are here for the first time, we have one registration link. We do this just about every week, about thirty minutes of talking, and then we, do some q and a, and you can catch up later, with the recordings. And, please, if you wanna get my attention, drop it into the questions and answers, as opposed to the chat window. The chat window moves way too fast for me to actually catch everything that is said there. Here's stuff we've talked about before. We, have done. I think we're on week twenty eight or twenty nine or something like that. So, these are the topics we've discovered. Grab that QR code in the upper right hand corner if you wanna go catch a recording. But this is all the stuff that we have talked about so far. Week sixteen through twenty there…
Now we've got, through September fourth, and then we had, this past week. And today, we have a new topic, that we are going to talk about, but this is, we are on week twenty nine of these sessions, and I have plenty more to talk about. By the way, you may wanna take a screenshot. Here's what's coming up next over the next couple of weeks. we are gonna have a little bit of of a break because, I have some travel coming up with BNI. so next week, we're gonna talk about the LT Hub. That's a relatively new thing around the world that is now in my BNI. We're gonna talk about the LT Hub, what it does, how it does, all of that stuff. We're gonna come back the next week. We're gonna talk about the marketing hub, and talk about, what that's all about and what you can get access to through there. We're gonna take a break. October thirtieth, I'm gonna be in Monaco for the international convention. If you wanna come join us there,
hopefully, I'll see some of you there. We'll. I'll have two, roundtable sessions if you're there and you wanna come up and say hi. we will return the following week, November sixth. I don't know what we're gonna talk about yet, but we'll be back. But then we're gonna take three weeks off. Alright? You guys all get to take a break for three weeks. You don't have to listen to me for three weeks, because we have a. I'm gonna be going to the tech summit where all of the people that design and build all of this software that we're using, we all get together once a year in India. There's about a hundred and fifty of us, and just go over what we've been working on and network and do team building and just get to to spend some time with each other since we all pretty much work remotely. So it's a. An amazing time, that we get to do that. And, of course, the following week, when I get back from that, it's Thanksgiving. So,
here in the United States, we get that Thursday and Friday off. And then we'll be back for a couple of weeks in December fourth, the eleventh, and eighteenth. however, then the twenty fifth is Christmas, and the week after that is New Year's, so I won't see it for a couple of weeks then. So that takes us through the rest of the year. If you guys need to do some planning and drop in that stuff in your calendar, I'll update the, the the tech talks, you know, calendar invite as well. So if you see some cancellations coming through, don't panic. This is the reason for it. Alright. Final reminder for anybody to join late. We are recording this. If you do not wanna be on the recording, then opt out now. It's your last chance in five, four, three, two…
Alright. Here we go. again, we're gonna we're gonna go and continue our series on, BNI plus. We actually have a bonus session this week. Alright? Because something new happened in BNI plus just this Monday. So I was gonna switch topics today and go on to, the leadership team, hub and stuff like that, but I said, you know what? I think they need to know about this brand new feature that just came into BNI plus on Monday. Alright. So…what is that new feature? We got some breaking news. The speakers in BNI Connect are now synced over to BNI plus. So one more thing of, dual entry has been crossed off the list. Alright? We still have some things remaining that are are not quite synced yet from BNI connect over to plus, but now the vast majority of stuff is synced over from b and I connect over to b and I plus. Now remember, it is a one way street. Alright? So right now, it. Only stuff goes over to BNI plus. Nothing at all comes back. Alright? So anything that's done in BNI plus lives only in BNI plus, but stuff from BNI connect will get sent over there. So,
before we get into today's topic, now…had it right. What are we gonna do? What's up right now? I think you guys know what's coming up. That's right. Now we got it. We got the pop quiz happening…
Alright. Now we've just gone through, what, eight weeks or so of, b and I plus. So for those of you that have been here for a, while, hopefully, you guys, maybe will know the answers to a couple of these right away, but, give me one second here. We have another weird technology challenge. It's about to show…two questions at once. Let me see if I can fix that before it actually happens…
Alright. Whatever. It's gonna show two questions at once. Here we go. First two questions, let's see if you get them right…are gonna pop up here. First things first, how many weeks of upcoming speakers appear on the chapter website when scheduled in b and I connect? How many weeks of upcoming speakers show on the chapter website…
We're getting only two answers. One of those answers is correct…Alright. The answer is four. It'll show the next four weeks. Now don't get confused because we do…recommend when we talk and we train, secretary, treasurers in BNI, we do train them to put six weeks of speakers into the system. However, only four of those speakers will show up on, the BNI Connect website or eight if you have two speakers a week. But four weeks' worth of speakers show up on your chapter website, but we do train people to put six weeks in. And we really don't train people to put more than six weeks in to BNI Connect because, it's kind of a pain in the neck in BNI Connect to…
actually move speakers around and stuff. That's one thing that I wish they would actually take from BNI Plus and put it in to BNI Connect because their management of speakers is much better. But, anyway, I digress. The second question, which is already on the screen, I don't know how it messed that up, but it did. Does a speaker's bio sync from BNI Connect to BNI Plus? Does a speaker's bio sync from BNI connect to BNI plus…
And the answer to that is…yes. It does. It does. As of this past, Monday, Monday, October fifth, it started synchronizing speakers. And since we're sending the speakers over, we send their bio over as well so it can be part of the, introduction. Alright. Excellent job so far. And the third and final question…
can members upload their own PowerPoints b nine plus, or does a leadership team person have to do it for them…And the answer to that is…a member can upload their own presentation. It doesn't have to be a PowerPoint, by the way. It could be a single picture. It could be a PDF file. But members can. They get an email from, BNI Plus that says, hey. It's time to upload your presentation. They upload their presentation. After they've done that, they will get the link, that they can, then control the presentation, when it's time for them to do so. Great job, everyone…
Well done…so here's today's topics. Here's today's topics. What we're gonna talk about, we have seven topics that. Or sections to the topic to talk about today. So, we're gonna talk about what's things from BNI Connect because we have an updated list now, scheduling speakers in BNI Connect. We're gonna review how to do that in the BNI Connect system. then we are going to, talk about reminders in the website bill. Visibility. Also, that is, from BNI Connect. gonna show you how you can go and review past speakers in case you're the one scheduling them. there is a little trick. You have to make sure that you confirm your speakers in BNI Plus, at least for now. we'll talk about the bios, uploads, presentations, and getting ready for presentation day. so with that…
what now syncs for b and I connect? And my answer to that one is just about everything. So there are still a couple of things that are not synced, but, all of the country details are synced. The name, the property, the currency, the languages, all of the region information is synced. So the name, the address, the properties, things like that. All of the chapter details. So if you change from an in person meeting to an online meeting, for example, or you change your location to a new place, all of that information is now. Is also synced. All of the members or the contact, the business details, language, the photo, the logo, the bio now as well. We also have the POMS data, that has been synced over, to, BNI plus from BNI Connect. So it populates all the stats for the vice president's report. And, yes, Leandro, of course, I missed you.
we got roles. the. All of the chapter roles, the president, vice president, education coordinator, or visit. Visitor hosts. all of that stuff gets synced from BNI Connect visitor registrations as of, that one was our last most recent update was visitor res. Registrations…along with substitutes and guests. And now as of Monday, we have the speaker rotation, that has been synced over from BNI Connect over to BNI Plus. And as always…bonus pop quiz question. How often does everything sync…
from BNI Connect over to BNI Plus…Wow. Five people answered and five different answers. it is hourly. So every hour or so, it syncs over. All the updates should be there within two hours depending on how long it takes it to sync. Alright. And just a quick note, the speakers arrive as planned, which is a BNI plus concept. you do need to confirm them in order for them to, actually work a hundred percent in BNI plus with all those features…
Alright. So let's go and let's take a look at how do we schedule speakers in BNI Connect because, you know, my opinion…my opinion, you should put all your speakers in BNI Connect first. Right? Then let them sync over to BNI Plus, and then you could do the last couple of parts of that in BNI Plus. And there's a couple of really important reasons for this. one of the reasons is is that we do have actual exportable reporting that happens in BNI Connect. So if you wanna, you know, basically export the printer, you know, history and stuff like the printer history, the speaker history, you can do that, from BNI Connect. Also, there is website…visibility, and that will only happen if you put your speakers into b and I connect. And it's super easy to put them into b and I connect. you know, it's the way we've been doing it for many, many years before b and I plus came around, so I do,
recommend that you do put them into BNI Connect and use that as your…first stop for putting speakers in. Alright? So with that said, let's let's go take a look at how we do that, and let's get over to, my b and I dot com. Let me log in. I'm gonna log in as my good friend, Alf, Alfred e Newman. Maybe…right here…
And Alf is now logged in. So first stop, let's go over to BNI Connect and take a look at BNI Connect
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Get logged in here…Oh, hold on a second. I…Wrong one
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There we go. I tried to click one of my, my shortcuts up here, which are all, using my account. Of course, that's not going to work. but…if we want to schedule our speakers, the place to do data entry in BNI Connect is under the operations menu. So let's go to operations…operations, and then we're gonna go to chapter. So operations chapter…
and we go to meeting management. So operations chapter meeting management, and there are a couple of different things here that we can do. We can manage the POMS reports and things like that. by the way, if you're an online meeting, make sure that you do put in your Zoom link here so that people get the connection right away, and they get it in the reminders as well. But what we're gonna do today is we're gonna view and edit the speakers. So now you can jump right into assigning a speaker if you want to. but I usually try to view them first to make sure that we know what we're…
what we're, assigned out until, what we're scheduled for. you can go back in time here, by the way. I can go back, you know, ten years if I want to and go and view every speaker since two thousand seventeen. that is not very helpful, though. So let me, get this back to twenty twenty six and look at October here. And I can see now that I have two speakers every week scheduled out, until. It looks like, really, until the end of, November here. So if I wanna schedule somebody, let's say, for the first week in December, I can go and click on assign speaker. Now in b and I connect, it is very, very simple. All we do is enter the date. So December second. Who's the speaker gonna be? It's gonna be…
Riaz. Riaz is gonna speak for us, and he is gonna talk about…the awesomeness…of b and I…support…Alright. And we click submit…That's really all there is to it. now we have Riaz scheduled, for December. Let's go to that that page. We have Riaz, scheduled here, and he's gonna talk about the awesomeness of b and I support. Now a couple of things might happen when you're doing this. Now let's say I…try to schedule a third person for, the seventh. I. I'm gonna go and choose the, or the fourteenth because the seventh has already passed. by the way, you cannot schedule past speakers. That's just a limitation of this system. But let's say I try to put somebody in for the fourteenth…
Uh-oh. Error assigning because all of the slots are full. Now if you are in a chapter that normally has two speakers and you try to assign a second one and it won't let you, don't talk to your regional office because they can make your chapter properties that you have two speakers. unfortunately…we. That. That's it. We can only allow up to two speakers. Sorry about that. now one of the great things that happens, when you assign your speakers into BNI Connect is two things. You have a report. So we can go into the chapter level reports, and there is a speaker report available under the speakers. So if we come here, we go to the speaker report. You can actually look at the speakers in any of the chapters in your region, by the way. but let's say I wanna know who's speaking, going from, October second all the way through the end of November. Click go, and I can, of course, print or export this report if I want to.
that is a pretty cool thing, though, especially if you're a director or if you like visiting chapters. I can look at all my chapters and just say, alright. Let's see who's speaking next week…So November. I'm sorry. October eleventh to the seventeenth. And I can see all of the speakers, and maybe there's somebody that, yep, I'd like to go and support or that is in. You know, somebody I wanna network with. great way to go have a reason to visit other chapters…
Alright. So that is, scheduling those now. Remember, with b and I connect, there's a couple of advantages. Once you get them in, the speaker will get two reminders…from b and I connect. They will get a reminder six days before the meeting. They'll get another reminder two days before the meeting. Now those are in addition to the reminders they're going to get from b and I plus as well, to upload their presentation and things like that. So…
I don't think that there can ever be any excuse that somebody says, I forgot I was speaking this week. They're gonna get, like, five reminders. I. Well, actually, four reminders, I think. So…make sure that you get them into BNI Connect so that they get those additional reminders. By the way, the secretary treasurer also gets a reminder from BNI Connect two days before. The other reason is that you get visibility on the public website. Now that is public. It means it is out there in the world. Anybody can see this website. It gives you another little hit on Google as well. So what do I mean by that? So if I go and click on regional website, this is my BNI Antarctic referrals public website. I'm gonna go to my chapter site here. So gonna go click on my map, go visit our chapter…
Now if I go to my chapter website, right, every chapter has their own website…it lists the next four weeks of upcoming speakers. Right? So I can see all those speakers. So all these people have another little, you know…Google presence out there on the Internet. and if your chapter is actively using their chapter website, then…people that are using that website will, constantly get an updated list. So that is a BNI Connect exclusive, you…know, benefit by making sure that you put your speakers in there. Now, of course, the important thing is…
they are then synced over to BNI plus. So now let's go take a look at BNI plus…Alright. So gonna get back over here. Let me get logged into BNI plus
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Alright. Single sign on did its job, and let me go log in to the BNI BRRRR chapter. Alright. Now…as I mentioned, we we have all those speakers over in BNI Connect, and they sync over to BNI Plus. But you'll see right here on the home screen, right, it says…featured speakers, no featured speakers assigned…I just told you that everything comes over from BNI Connect. How come nothing's there? Well, I also told you there is an extra step. So…they are there. Let's go take a look. So if I go to meetings…
speakers…Right? Now the list view, the list shows only confirmed speakers. And speakers that come over from BNI Connect, at least for now, we've asked for it to be changed. But speakers that come over from BNI Connect are coming over as planned speakers. So I need to go and look at the plan, the planner view. And now we can see all of our speakers. So I can see that for the fourteenth, Alfred Newman and Albert Camus. Now you'll notice they're in purple. They came over from b and I connect, so they're in purple. The ones that were manually entered into b and I plus are the ones in green. If you're not sure, just highlight over that, what do these icons mean? Purple from connect. Thumbs up is confirmed. A pin is planned. A question means we've requested confirmation and declined is if they say, no. I don't wanna speak that day. So what we need to do is we need to. If we want these people to be speaking on the fourteenth, we need to confirm them. So I'm gonna go…
mark them as confirmed. Save. Albert also marked as confirmed. Save. I actually wanna get rid of this one that was put in manually because I want the ones from connect to be those. The speakers. And we can see that planned, confirmed. Okay. I'm gonna get rid of this one that was put in before, and we are gonna confirm this person and this person. Right? So you may have to do a little bit of cleanup now that they are syncing over to get rid of the duplicates that may may that may be in here from, the old system. And anybody on the leadership team can do this. Right? So the president, the vice president, the secretary treasurer, typically, it's the secretary treasurer's responsibility, but, you know, if they. If it's the president that happens to be in here and the secretary treasurer doesn't go in very much, fine. It it. As long as it gets done, that's the important part. Alright. Now that I've confirmed all these people, let's go back over to the list view. Now we see all of our people in here. Right? So we have,
Alfred Newman and Albert Camus that will be speaking this week. So I can take a look, and here's their bio. Alright. We got the topic that came over from BNI Connect, the mad, mad world of comics, and we have all of their bio information. By the way, the bio can be done both in BNI Connect and into the. In the mobile app. The place to update your bio, go to options, my account…
And right here under my bio, click on edit. A lot of people. Right? I actually got, like, five support tickets on this last week. They go and they say, okay. Let me go look at my bio. They get to their bio. I'm like, ah, I can't edit it. Right? That's because there's no edit button here. You actually have to go back one screen and click the edit button here under my bio. That allows you to go in and make the changes to your bio. Okay? So that's where you edit it. And again, if I make a change here and I share years in business forty four…
Make sure I click update…That is not going to show up immediately in BNI Plus. It will show up, over in BNI, in BNI plus in about an hour or two. Okay…Now you will notice, and I just saw this come up in the question window. you will notice that…in b and I plus…they do allow you to have more than two speakers. So b and I connect only allows two speakers, and that's all we can have in b and I connect. But if there are speakers that come over and they're different than the ones that are. That are. That were already originally planned in plus, it will allow three, four, five speakers in here. And I can actually…
you know, bring over three or five or seven or eight speakers. I can even confirm…three or five or six or twenty two speakers…and it will show up in b and I plus. B and I plus never had a a limit on the number of speakers you could assign for a single re. Week here in the system. So, just to answer that question that I saw pop up there, again, BNI Connect has a two speaker limit. BNI Plus actually does not have a limit to the number of speakers…
now…I know that there there are several. There's. In the United States, I think there's about…seven or eight chapters above a hundred members, and there's something like thirty or forty chapters over about sixty members where you might have a third speaker or even a fourth speaker. So this is a workaround to the limitation that is in BNI Connect…So, Richard said he's doing a happy dance for that one. Good to hear it. Alright. So…
with that, one other little thing that I wanna make sure I show you, I showed you the report already where you can do a report and look back as far as you want to in BNI Connect. That helps you to do some planning. make sure that if you're the person doing the speaker rotations, usually the secretary treasurer, you can look back and be fair about who is going to be speaking next, but you can do the same thing in BNI plus. So you can look at past speakers in BNI plus, but it. It's going to have a shorter memory because BNI plus has only been around for a couple of years. Whereas in BNI Connect, we've been, putting our speakers in since two thousand eleven. so with that, if you go to the list view, there is a, option here, show previous speakers. And if I click that, it will go back as far as you have, data. And, actually, you know what? Looks like it has some people. It might have synced. It looks like it synced it all from BNI Connect, so that's nice…
or at least a bunch of it from BNI Connect…That's not true. The only ones that came from Connect. There we go. Alright. So there is not an export feature here, that's available in BNI Plus, but here's a little trick for you. can, you know, highlight these. Right? So I can highlight them. Right click and choose copy, and you can always drag and drop anything you see in a table on the Internet like that. You can drag and drop it and put it into its cell…
and have a spreadsheet even though there's no, you know, report or export function available in the system as it is. So just a little, power tip for any of you. And just a reminder, as I showed you guys in the system, you do have to confirm your speakers in b and I plus so that it enables their presentation…Alright. Couple of, reminders about speakers. Make sure that you, may. If they haven't. Don't have the bio in there, make sure that you put a bio in there. You can copy and paste pieces of that bio into the b and I plus bio so it looks a little bit nicer on the screen, for that slide. remind people to upload their presentation, and make sure that you preview it. as long as they. Try to get them in the habit of uploading it at least a couple of days before your meeting because you really wanna go in as the person running the meeting, the president usually, go in and run a test meeting and make sure that the slides show up. Don't leave that to the last minute.
do that as a test before the meeting. Right? And if you need to, also practice it and have the speaker take control of that meeting. You can run a meeting anytime you want to, and that person can jump in and request the control…Alright. When it comes to showtime, again, you're, you're you're gonna introduce the speaker, start the slideshow, and, if they want to, the speaker can use the link directly from the email that they get once they've successfully uploaded that presentation
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Alright. So just a couple of things to, review today. Make sure that you remember this. here's the the key takeaways. Make sure you're scheduling your speakers in connect. Right? In connect. Then they get pushed over. Unless you have a third and fourth and a fifth speaker, then you can put those in plus directly. They won't go back to connect, though. confirm, you gotta make sure you go into b and I plus and confirm your speakers. You can confirm them as far out as you want. As I mentioned, we, we have put in a request to have them come over as automatically confirmed. But if that does happen, it won't happen until a future release. So at least not until December, maybe even January if it's gonna happen at all. Make sure you're prepared. Make sure that the bio is there. If the. If it's not there, have. Remind them to update their profile. make sure they upload their presentation early, and make sure you preview it so that you are making sure that the slides work. And…
when it comes to presentation time, either you or the member can…have control…Hey. Here's a little bonus for you. I realize there's a lot of people on this call where, are not going to be planning the speakers. Right? That's usually the secretary treasurer. You directors might jump in and help out, but I have a lot of members on this call as well. So here's a little bonus, information for you, coming both from myself as a long time member and my, good friend doctor Ivan Meiser. A lot of this comes from podcast number three sixty seven. If you go to b and I podcast dot com, podcast number three sixty seven is doing your featured presentation. This is an oldie but goldie. it is from two thousand and fourteen, but this advice rings true. When it's ready for your feature presentation, here's some tips for you. Five tips. Prepare it and rehearse it. Don't wing it. One of the things. I I wrote an email to my chapter this week because we were having some stuff going on in my chapter, and,
and I reminded them that everything that you do in your chapter…what time you show up how good your your weekly presentation is, how prepared you are for your feature, presentation as a speaker, all of that stuff. Everything you do will either be a credibility booster, it'll help to increase your credibility, or it's going to decrease your credibility. Some things increase your credibility a lot. Some things might only decrease your credibility a tiny little bit. But in everybody's mind, they have this referability scale for you. Right? And then it it. We talk about the confidence curve, right, in the member success program, but there's, like, this scale and everything is, you know, either, yes, I wanna refer them or no, I don't wanna refer them. and everything that you do, and one of those things is making sure you're prepared for your feature presentation. and…you put on a professional show because they're gonna be. They're gonna say to themselves, you know, how you act and how you present to us, maybe how you present to a client that I refer you to. So…
practice it, outline it, and make sure that you can get it all in in the six or eight or ten or twelve minutes, however long your chapter has to give their presentation…It's a good idea to be specific. if you can give people one thing to remember, from that presentation, one thing to remember, one big takeaway, whether it's a story or whether it is, an explanation, one of the worst things you can do is just stand up and tell other people how to do your job. Right? I can't stand up and. You know, we have eight minutes in my chapter. I can't stand up in eight minutes and tell you guys how to be a a a great computer guy and how to do managed services. And nobody cares about the list of things that I do, when I go to a managed service visit, but they do care how I make my clients feel and maybe a, an amazing recovery story that we did or,
an amazing prevention story that that kept a system from crashing and fifty people, you know, not losing a day's work. So all that stuff is really, really important. But remember, you have a short period of time, so get specific and give one example. visuals. Visuals work, images, props, slides, support your message. don't make it overly complicated. one one common mistake, that people do make is they…have stuff and they they they pass it around the room…
That can get very troublesome, especially because, yeah, in a chapter, we have forty people in our chapter. Most of the stuff doesn't make it all the way around the room. So if our first speaker does that, stuff is still being passed around the room by the time the second speaker gets up to speak, and that's not fair to the second speaker. so be careful with your props. Alright? Own your expertise. Speak about what you know best. And, again, you don't need to teach people how to do what you do, but you wanna give them stories and, you know…
be very specific about, where you shown as an expert…and…engage your people. so demonstrations. Yep. What I do to engage, right, I I quiz you guys. Right? That's that's an engagement piece as part of this presentation. So, doctor Meisner had a great quote from that podcast. He says, don't make your PowerPoint a crutch. Right? Don't make your PowerPoint a crutch…
One one common mistake that people make is they just put a ton of words. They put everything they're going to say up on the PowerPoint. The PowerPoint should be something like this. It's bullet point reminders of the things you're gonna talk about. Right? People like to have something to look at on the screen, but you don't want them spending their whole time reading. You want them spending their time paying attention to you. Right? So, you know, have some bullet points. Have have some some things up there mostly as a reminder because, remember, the first step is practice, practice, practice. So, hopefully, you already have these stories in your mind and things like that, and this is just a reminder for you of what to talk about…
especially if you tend to get nervous in front of people. So it's great to have these bullet points, but. And especially don't just stand there and read off your phone. that that that is the worst. just when people stand up and they just. Even if they have something up on the screen, they stand there and they're reading word for word, off of their phone or their tablet or something like that. So, practice it, rehearse it, and get up there and do an amazing job as I know you all will…
Alright, my friends. That's it. That's all I have. I know we went, like, twelve minutes over today. I had a lot of ground to cover. And, you know, in my mind, I thought this was gonna be a super quick one. but…alas, here we are. So we're at questions and answers. I'm going to jump in and, grab those questions in a second. just a reminder though, for those of you that have been here for a while that might be coming back, here is our schedule for the next several weeks. we do have a a bunch of weeks off, that we will be having. We. There's no session on October thirtieth, and there are no sessions, for really most of November. so November thirteenth, twentieth, and twenty seventh, there won't be any sessions. but we'll be back for December. So, again, we're we're. Next two weeks, we're here. We're gonna talk about leadership team hub. We're gonna talk about marketing hub. No session for a break for conference, and then we'll be back the week after that. Alright. So going back, let's talk about some questions and answers. I do see a number of questions in our question panel, so let me jump on and get to those. Our first question today comes from Carl Byrd. Carl says, is there any plan to sync the fillable specialty field in b and I connect to b and I plus? It's important for members whose specialty is not included. Yes. There is. I don't know when it's coming, but, yes,
they're. they do want to put that specialty field into the, presentation as well. Again, I don't know when it's coming. I do know it's on the list…York says, can you schedule a presentation on apply and pay and another on automatic renewal? So, yes, those are on my list. so maybe I'll do. I. What I'd like to do, just so you know, I would like to do a, online applications and then online renewals as back to back weeks. So maybe we'll plan that for the first couple of weeks in December. We'll talk about, application and renewal processes, both from a front end as well as the back end perspective because, of approvals and flow and all of that stuff. So, let's shoot for December for those. Those are great great suggestions for topics…
Alright. And as far as credit certificates goes, that's that's a whole different topic because that's gonna happen over the course of the next, like, eighteen months, depending on where you are in the world. So, that's more of a back end thing, so I might not touch on that as much. But, we'll see. We'll see on that one…York also says, I'll be in Monaco, for the France and global conventions. I look forward to chatting with you. please, if any of you are in Monaco, please…come up and introduce yourself to me. I apologize if I don't recognize your face or remember your name, but, please, I would love to even have a a one minute high five one to one in the hallway, or come join one of the, the round tables. So love to see any and all of you there…
And, Kristen, yes, I look forward to a giant hug from my good friend, Kristen Geer, from Arizona, who, by the way…her biceps are bigger than mine. She has…gigantic biceps. anyway, let's see. Jenny, Janice says, what are the variables for substitutes substitutes and guests? so the variables. So the way to look up the variables, just so you have it, I don't know them offhand. but if you wanna if you wanna see the variables, maybe it'll be great to make a list of them all someday, but I just don't have that right now. But if we go to the agenda, one way to do this is just go into. I'm gonna…go here, and I'm gonna create a new slide. I don't really want a new slide, but let's go in and do it. And I'm gonna just put a text box here, double click on it, and, basically, all of these are all of the variables. Right? So if I just drop a couple of these in here…
I mean, you really don't need to memorize them all because they're here in, in in this list. But any of these, I mean, you can use these…as your variables. here's a little note, to all of you regional people like my, giant biceps friend, Kristen Gear, at the region level. Right? So if I go back to the region level here…and I'm gonna log in into the region…and my Shiver region, there's a thing under the region called key values. And here we have, you know, these are all key values that were set up by the region. These are the default ones that you put in, and they can sync over to the slides…
You can create your own key values. In other words, this also creates a variable. So I can put in a new key value of a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, I, j, k…I can allow the chapters to set it, or it can just be a value here
…
Right? So that is now saved. But what that means is that in the agenda…I should now have…a key value, and please don't prove me wrong here…I have a key value of a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, I, j, k, l…Right? Which means that now when I preview that slide, that puts in…the value that I put in at the regional setting. So…you can make your own key values on the fly, if you want to. That turns into a variable, and all those other variables are listed as well. Alright? Hopefully, that helps
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Let's see. Mark says, are there any instructions available regarding the leadership team hub app in my b and I? not yet. Alright. There was some stuff emailed out to all executive directors. I am in the process of building that onto my help site. if you would like a copy of. I'll tell you what. Let me do this…
Where is it…nope. That's not it…Leadership team hub guide
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For those of you that want a jump start on the leadership team hub, I just dropped that into the chat window, this, this presentation. I'm gonna be turning that into help articles and things like that in the upcoming weeks. I am so far behind on creating help articles, but that is on my list of things to do…Can you find Jimmy Hoffa in the downloads? Good good one, Leandro. he's buried a little bit deeper than my downloads, but my downloads are pretty deep. So
thank you for the laugh. Alright. Sean says, can a chapter put three or four speakers just into b and I plus for the same day? And I think we covered that already, and the answer there is yes…Let's see. Paul says, how do I add a slide promoting a promoting a networking event? Sean says, add it as a chapter event or create and upload a slide in the agenda. So, you saw how I just created a slide, but, again, there there should be a slide already…in, in the system…
right, for chapter events. Right? So if I go back to the home screen here, I'm gonna get into my, my BNI BRRRR chapter…You know, there is the chapter events that are. That you can put in here. So I have events here. Right? And you can put your chapter events here. You can put as many chapter events as you want, and there's already a slide built for that in the agenda. So if I go to the meeting agenda…
Right? Man, let me go and look at…the…special announcements section. Right? Here's the chapter events. Right? And if I look at them, there's there's my events. They're showing up from the home screen. So this is already built. Right? You don't have to build another one. If you want it to be fancier than this, then just create a blank slide and design it like you would a PowerPoint slide or grab an image and drop that image in there. So, yep, same thing…
now I just saw a question pop up in the chat window. How do you do a slide for the referral reality? Well, you would do the same thing. So let's say, yep, I don't know if we have one in here already
…
That would be right here. So, yeah, there is a referral reality check slide already built. So if. The thing is is that, so, I I just saw Richard say it's already in there, and it is already in there in the BRRRR region as well. But there are some regions that have disabled or deleted a lot of these slides because they don't feel that they use them in their regions. So if it doesn't exist in your region, you you you may need to recreate a new one…
By the way, if you do recreate a new one, you know, you could add in, like, select a member from the, you know, from the controller also, things like that. Anyway, let's see. What else do we have here…Michael says, if a BNI member is not tech savvy, can I have to upload the slides for them? Yes. Absolutely. So if a member's struggling and let's say, oh, I can't do this, they give it to you on a…
thumb drive and you take it back to your computer and you put it in. you can go into the featured speakers. And I can see here that, Alf Newman…he does not have a presentation uploaded yet. So if you have access to this interface, yes. Absolutely. You can upload it for them. they just have to get get the presentation to you…
Let's see. Eric says, where in BNI Academy can I find the backlog of these? So right now, these are not in Academy. you can get them on the support site. Hey. You wanna you wanna know something cool? I just learned a new feature yesterday, in my support site. So what I did. Let me get over to my support site quick. Support dot b and I connect dot com. So here's the tech talks. Right? So I have all of the tech talks here. I am caught up through last week. Right? So they're all here, but I did something else. If we go, there's also a BNI plus section that has tons and tons of, training up here. I also added this mini series into the BNI plus section. So now it's in two places, that you can go and find it here. So if you're just looking for the BNI plus mini series, here is just the training for BNI plus. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Eight will be up there,
hopefully later today, but that's where you can find those. Two places. I thought that was a pretty cool feature…Alright. Anne says, in an online team, does BNI plus link to Zoom, or do you need to do this separately? So BNI plus is just. It's kinda like PowerPoint. Right? It's an online PowerPoint. You still need to start Zoom, share your screen, and then start the presentation, like, again, like you would a PowerPoint. It's not PowerPoint, but like you would a PowerPoint, you're gonna show the presentation screen, share that screen. You still gotta start Zoom separately. which podcast was just recommended? again, let me go back to that slide for you. Down in the bottom right hand corner, it's episode three six seven, doing your feature presentation. And, again, that is an oldie but goodie way back from two thousand and fourteen. So, feel free to go grab those
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And I'm hoping I get this uploaded today. Sometimes I get backed up. so…depends how my afternoon goes, to be honest with you. Alright. Paul says, how do you create or upload a slide? thank you, Richard. Paul, please go grab that, recording from last week. Again, the recording that you're looking for is going to be managing the agenda. So it was the second session, one zero two, the agenda and scripts. So that goes into a deep dive into how to modify the agenda, make your own slides, all that fun stuff. And then, Paul, just because I love you, as a…
as a special scout master, salute to you, you're always welcome to book a one to one with me. We can jump on a Zoom call, and I can show you how to do this, personally. If the, if the recording doesn't give you everything you need or you just have additional questions or you just wanna wanna say hi. It's been a while since I've, talked with you. Alright. Karen says, is it true that when using BNI plus for in person meetings…we need to avoid animations between and on slides? So here's the deal. You wanna avoid them because…they don't work. So…if you're doing. If you're uploading a presentation into BNI plus, the slides get flattened. They do not show up as part of…the as part of the b and I plus presentations. Alright? So, there are ways to get videos and other things and animations in there, but it's not gonna be from the PowerPoint that you upload. So,
if you want animations and stuff, stick to a regular, PowerPoint…Couple last questions. We're running out of time here. how can we access? The tech talks already answered. Where can I find the info? Past b and I plus already answered. what is leadership team hub? You're gonna find out about that, next week. So it's, right now. So the leadership team hub, so you know, is…is going to be a place. A gathering place for leadership teams to do a lot of leadership team functions. Right now, it's a place to have your your leadership team meeting and record that meeting and have an agenda for it. So, but that's just the first feature that's been added to it. How do we access BNI plus? Go to my b and I dot com and enter your BNI Connect username and password…
Marie, about mentors, why don't you send that into tickets at b and I connect dot com? Ticket at b and I connect dot com, and we can answer that
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Again, I'm not gonna send this out, but you can just go to the support site. I'll drop it into the chat window as well. Here is the link to the tech talk recordings in the chat window…Karen says, how do we see member applicants? You can't see member applicants on BNI…plus. I just dropped the link into the chat window…I don't get any reminders. Alejandro, please…send that in as a support ticket, and we can take a look at your email address and see if it's blocked or something like that. Keith says, where can you find the membership fee? You can't see that directly on the portal…
Becca said when I add my photos, are there size or other limitations? Really, the only limitation is it has to be under five megabytes. The rest you can do through cropping…Yep. Next week, we'll talk about the chapter success forms…Any, out of time here. Any other pressing questions…sorry. I didn't get to all your questions. I do have to close out this webinar now. Thank you guys so much for being here. I apologize. I do need to close out today's meeting. I do have another, meeting happening in about forty two seconds that I have to get to. Here's a reminder of our upcoming schedule. And, of course, thank you guys for being here in case you couldn't scan the other code. Here's one more. You know what? Let me just try this. I'm gonna get my phone out. That QR code works. I just tested it. That QR code works. if you have your phone, go for it. If not, I look forward to seeing you guys all,
maybe next week if you're gonna be here for the leadership team hub. In the meantime, have a great, awesome, wonderful, fantastic weekend, and happy connecting. Goodbye, everyone…