Summary: Synopsis BNI has just reached 150,000 members. The 150,000th member is Sumeet Pareek of  Bangalore Northwest's BNI Ultimate Chapter. If you look at the slide below, you'll see that BNI's rate of growth has increased dramatically since 1996. Neither the advent of the World Wide Web nor the recession has done anything to slow this growth. There are now BNI chapters in more than 50 countries around the world. 99% of meetings are conducted in the country's official language; occasionally there are meetings of English-speaking expats, as in the UAE. There are cultural as well as language differences between countries, so ask about local customs before visiting a chapter. The key to making the groups work in any country is following the system, having accountability, and having fun. Brought to you by Networking Now. Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 316 - 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. This week, I am in San Diego for a meeting of the Transformational Leadership Council. That is an organization I belong to. It was started by Jack Canfield. I always get some great material and ideas there at each of the meetings that I bring into BNI. So I am looking forward to getting lots of new stuff that members will see in my presentations. Priscilla: Oh great. I hope we get to hear about it. Ivan: Absolutely. Priscilla: So what is this title that you have come up with- 150,000 and Growing? Ivan: Well, we just hit, last month, the 150,000 member mark in the organization. It was pretty exciting and now that we have BNIConnect and most of the world is on BNIConnect, we are able to track that number and we're able to figure out who the 150,000th member was. It happens to be a member by the name of Sumeet Pareek in India. He is officially our 150,000th member, an online marketing expert. He is a member of the Bangalore Northwest BNI Ultimate chapter. I sent him a message last month thanking him and congratulating him for being our 150,000th member and for helping the BNI organization achieve this really significant milestone. Sameet responded really enthusiastically and was glad to know that we now have 150,000. He is real proud. They recently launched the BNI Ultimate chapter in India. I have had a chance to visit members in India and, wow, incredible there. They have the highest number of average members per chapter in the world. India has the number one spot for the average number of members per chapter. They average throughout the country about 41 members per chapter. Priscilla: That's great. Ivan: That's huge. It's exciting to see the organization grow to that size group. I have included a slide here in this podcast that members can look at. It is the BNI worldwide membership by year through 2012, where we hit about 145,000 members. So this is through last year. It is interesting. If you are listening to this podcast, pull up the slide. Take a look at the growth of the organization in the first 11 years, from 1985 â 1986. We opened up chapters with about 5000 members, a total of 5000 members. But in the next 11 years, from 1996 â 1997, we went from 5000 members to over 100,000 members. Priscilla: Wow, that is a huge jump. Ivan: A huge, huge jump. In less than six years now, we have grown to 150,000 members. I always think it is funny when I am doing the media- it's usually a newspaper reporter that doesn't have to go out and drum up business who says, âIs this networking thing a fad?â Well, no. It is not a fad. Clearly it is growing,
