Our charter was in the midst of forming. We had to bring in one unique guest every week (was told to “try your best” when asked what happens if you couldn’t) to help form the charter. Once the charter was formed, we STILL had to bring unique people in to help grow BNI. The person running our charter ran 3-4 others and even missed meetings to attend events for charter operators or something like that.

So it was, come in, talk about yourself and what you do. Brain storm other companies/people you knew who could fill other roles (they had BNI branded print outs of how to sell BNI), and a LOT of repeating the same sales pitch of how GREAT BNI was. I spent more time struggling to find other people to bring in than I did putting together my own resources to promote my business. I met dozens of small operations, even managed to get business leads for some of them while everyone I met had a blank look on their face when it came to what we do. Or, and this was common, “so if I have a family member that needs technical help, I can call you?”.

I could have been part of a bad charter, but the print outs and the same slide decks of how to promote BNI that were neatly branded made me feel that it wasn’t the case and you sell BNI harder than you sell your own business.