Episode number 774, the four CS.
You're listening to the official BNI podcast with BNI, founder,
and chief visionary officer Dr.
Ivan Meisner stay tuned for networking and referral marketing tips from the man
who's been called the father of modern networking along with suggestions and
insights into getting the most from your membership in the world's largest
networking organization, BNI.
Hello everybody. And welcome back to the official BNI podcast.
I'm Priscilla rice,
and I'm coming to you from live Oak recording studio in Berkeley, California.
And I'm joined on the phone today by the founder and the chief visionary officer
of BNI, Dr. Ivan Meisner. Hello, Ivan.
How are you and where are you?
I have been as in the past traveling a lot, um, by zoom all around the world.
I've been to Vietnam, uh, India, uh, I've been to Thailand,
but right now I am live and in person in France at the BNI
French, uh, conference this week. And, uh, what an amazing group of people.
I love BNI France.
Yeah, that must be terrific. Well, tell us what we're gonna be learning today.
Well, I've got, uh, a special guest today. Uh,
he's a friend and a co-author of a book that I've talked about a couple of times
on previous podcasts. Uh, he is Dr. ODI Abu chakra.
Gotta get that right. Uh, and, uh, ODI is, um,
the co-author of the book, uh, work year network with the four CS.
He's a 23 year practicing chiropractor by Dan coach speaker
and author by night. He's the founder of inspired results, performance coaching,
and training, a focus on attitude, breathing, correct posture, diet, exercise,
and sleep for the purpose of impacting not only health, but human performance.
It's no surprise that he's considered to be a chiropractor with a and on
top of that. Uh, Dr. Otis, the former executive director of BNI Abu Dhabi,
and he is, as I said, the co-author of work network with the four CS,
which recently hit number five on Amazon's best seller
list for marketing, uh, to, to, uh, small business,
uh, Dr. ODI, welcome to BNI podcast.
Thank you so much. Awesome to be here. I've been listening to the podcast for,
oh my God decades.
Well, it's fantastic to have you here. How,
how did you start your networking journey,
cuz that is important not only for the book, for,
for the message that we wanna get across today.
Absolutely. Um, it started back in Toronto. I was 27 years old,
just opened my clinic. My father walked in and he said, son,
I really like what you've done with the place, but it's missing one thing.
And I thought I had everything covered Ivan and then dad looked around and then
looked me dead in the eyes and said, patience. There's nobody here.
This place is empty. And I was like, dad,
you gotta give people time to find out about me. You gotta give, you know,
patience an opportunity to know I'm, I'm the new guy on the block.
And he's like, son, that is your first mistake.
You don't wait for patients to find you. You go out there and you network.
And I gotta tell you, networking was a, the word networking was intimidating.
And I don't even think I really know what it meant.
I just knew it meant getting outta my office, um,
the comforts of my walls and going out there and meeting,
meeting people and strangers and having to talk about what I do.
So that's when I got introduced to be I by somebody and yeah,
the rest is history.
Uh, it was good advice from dad. Dad sometimes give really good advice. Mine,
mine certainly has in, in his.
So just for the record,
everyone knows the whole concept of the four CS was, uh, Dr. O's, uh,
concept. And he came to me with, um, this idea that I really, really liked,
and we did this book together, but, uh, this is something that, uh,
you put together, uh, the concept and I love it.
Maybe you can share with everyone the four season and nutshell,
because for BNI members,
this is critical to understand in order to generate a referral business.
So what are the four CS?
Sure. Ivan, well, thanks. I just wanna also mention that you did make a very,
very important distinction in the book, which, uh, which it's so powerful,
which, which I'll get to in a second,
but the four CS are basically the foundation for which relationships are built.
And it not just in the business context,
which of course that is the most important and most relevant part of it.
But if you go back to, you know, before there was even language,
if you were sitting with your family in your cave and somebody knocked on your
imaginary, uh, cave door,
you obviously would be asking a set of questions like who is this person? Um,
and several things.
But the idea is the first question that would come to mind would most likely
have nothing to do with the person's confidence.
Even if the person looked like someone who'd be able to help you around the
house, help you with your hunting and gathering and all that kind of stuff.
The first question you'd probably be asking,
and I know it's hard to predict what people would be thinking,
but it's probably safe to, to assume,
and to say that you would be questioning whether you can trust the person.
Can you, you know,
is it safe for your kids and your family to be around this person?
And so the first C is credibility. Even if he,
even if he or she turned around,
climbed a coconut tree and offered you a coconut,
you wouldn't be mesmerized and be thinking, oh wow,
it'd be great to have this person around to, you know,
for food and hunting purposes, you'd be thinking, can I trust a person?
So really competence is irrelevant unless credibility has been established.
And that is the first C credibility. The second C is competence.
Once you've ticked that credibility box in your mind, you then wanna be asking,
you know, what's this person's skillset, what's this person good at? You know,
how are they gonna help around the, the, you know,
the house or helping with your life and what you value most.
But once you've credibility, competence comes in,
we wanna know we wanna trust a person and we wanna trust that they're good at,
let's just say their job, but it's, that's not just fit either. Um,
in the social, like I said, non-business context. And even the business context,
we also wanna know that this person, you know,
wanna know what this person needs in terms of help, like, um,
do they communicate well? And the third sees clarity,
which basically has to do with how clear you communicate.
It's very difficult to help someone if their communication is off point,
it's very difficult for people to help you if you're not communicating clearly
and with clarity. So that's the third C and the last C,
which I think is probably an underappreciated sea. And that is connectivity,
which is a,
a recent term that has to do with the quality and the quantity of
your connections. So even if we go back, like I said, the, the, the non,
you know, the times when, even before words, uh, before language,
we would be asking, you know,
how well connected is this person who does this person know?
Because like it or not,
people are judging how connected you are and people wanna rub shoulders with
people who are well connected,
because those who are well connected are gonna help you make the connections you
need, because we know that, you know, uh,
behind every successful man stands a woman and every behind every successful
woman perhaps stands a man, um,
or behind every successful person stands a person,
but also every door that leads to an opportunity.
There's a person standing in front of you in front of that door.
And so it's important to be able to, to connect to those people who open,
who open doors for you. So those are the four season a nutshell.
The only caveat,
the only little twist in the business context is that competence comes
first because we are not gonna refer someone if we don't think, um,
they're good at their job. And so that's pretty much it,
the only thing in the business context we gotta think about is it starts with
competence. Then we go to credibility, clarity, and connectivity,
as opposed to starting with credibility in the, in the non, um, business,
social context and interactions with people at large. So.
How did you struggle with the four CS in your early career?
You know, that's the thing when I first got involved in BNI, I,
I really didn't understand why some people get referrals and some people don't.
And after 20 years of being an in BNI, I was able to, you know,
distill it down to these four CS. And I can tell you for me,
the biggest challenge for me was clarity of communication.
So I was a, I'm a us and Canadian board certified chiropractor.
So I think from a competence point of view,
I take that box and credibility wise, I was okay.
But when it came to communication, I really struggled. I haven't, I mean,
it was really,
really difficult to be concise and precise and really get a message across in,
in a networking context within, you know, under 60 seconds in our, uh,
in our weekly presentation. So that was probably my toughest. See,
and it cost me big time. How.
How did it cost you and time I'm guessing it took, took a while for people to,
to really, uh, understand how to refer you.
It did. I think it cost definitely time. It costs if,
if I wanna stick to the CS concept. So it, it costs time, it costs cash.
It costs confidence because every time you speak in effectively,
you then start to second guess yourself,
and then you lose confidence for the next presentation. Um, it's,
it's a huge, huge, I, again,
I think most people underappreciate all these CS. Yeah.
But specifically with communication,
most people think that they're effective communicators,
but if you ask their peers many times,
they'll say I don't really get what they do. I don't really understand them.
Right. Well, we're almost at a time. Um, what was the,
what's the most powerful way to develop this, the, the CS.
And could you speak briefly about the,
the four C's peer tope assessment that we have in the book?
Absolutely.
So definitely it's important to work on each one of those and maybe ask your,
uh, you know,
those that maybe in your power teams or people that you're very close to for
real honest feedback,
but the problem is most people will not necessarily tell you what they really
think. Cause it's, it's tough. It's hard to give critical feedback,
and it's also not necessarily assumed that you're gonna receive it well.
So the peer tope assessment is an anonymous, um,
survey that goes out to your members. For example, in the chapter,
you can also do this outside of BNI in, in organizations,
but just imagine every member of your chapter rated you anonymously
on these four CS. And imagine you got a scorecard that basically said,
you're nine outta 10 with credibility nine outta 10 with competence.
Maybe you score three outta 10 with clarity and nine outta 10 of connectivity.
Guess what, you know, not only what you need to work on,
but what you don't need to work on so much or what you can just maintain.
Yeah. The peer tope assessment is a great concept.
It's one of the things that you,
one of the many things that you brought to the book, and I really like it.
I urge people to pick up a copy of the book and do some of the foresee peer tope
assessments. Dr. Ody. Thank you so much for, uh, being on BNI podcast. Uh,
any last comment before I wrap?
No, I just wanna thank you so much for having me.
And I really think it's important for people not to just walk around assuming
that they know how their members are perceiving them, but really to,
to number one, um, ask those that are close to you, but also consider doing a,
a four's assessment,
maybe at the transition of leadership teams or at some point be an eye because
it'll just really help you understand how you, you know,
where you sit in the eyes of your, of your fellow members.
Yeah. Well, thank you so much again,
the name of the book is work your network with the four CS. We'll have a link,
uh, to it here on the podcast. And for more information about Dr. ODI, go to,
uh, Dr. odi.com that's, uh,
D R O U do com thank you so much.
I appreciate you, uh, being here.
And of course I appreciate co-authoring the book with you.
Thank you. Ivan's it's been a pleasure.
Over to you Priscilla.
Okay. Perfect. Thanks for the great information.
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Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla rice,
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