The Secret to Balance, According to Ivan Misner

The Secret to Balance, According to Ivan Misner The Secret to Balance and other Advice for Startups: Ivan Misner Image Source: Ivan Misner on FacebookDr Ivan Misner, founder of Business Network International, has authored  and co-authored a huge catalogue of books and papers on business networking, has written extensively for business publications, his opinions are frequently sought on television and other media outlets, and he is ever busy with BNI, traveling the world to spread the organisation’s message. Image Source: Amazon Check Price “I have the secret to balance. I have it. Do you want to  hear it?”How has Ivan Misner  managed to find a balance between this industriousness and his private life. Misner is married to Beth and the couple have three, now grown, children: Ashley, Cassie, and Trey. And as we’ve already seen, throughout Parts 1, 2 and 3 of our special feature, his family is important to him.“You have to create margins in your life, and I have a kind of interesting perspective on balance too. People will often say to me, ‘You’ve written 21 books, you’ve created a global organisation, how do you have balance in life?’ And I loved when I’m asked this in a big audience, because, I lean in, and I say, ‘I have the secret to balance. I have it. Do you wanna hear it?’ And they’re on the edge of their seats, and they’re like, Yes! What is the secret?! And I lean in again, and say, ‘Forget about balance. You will never have it.’ And you can literally see people in the audience, you know, their shoulders hunch, and they get a bit depressed…  but it’s not all bad news.“What we tend to do, particularly professionals and entrepreneurs, we view balance like Lady Justice, the statue holding the scales, and that we have to spend this amount of time on family, and this amount of time on spirituality, and this amount of time on health, and this amount of time on work… and its gotta be all in balance.“Life is more a juggling act than it is Lady Justice and the scales. So, your life may not be in balance. It can be, but this is more t han semantics: it can be in harmony. You can have a life of harmony that’s not very balanced. I travel a crazy amount of time, Im on the road a lot, but when Im home I spend good quality time at home. There are six or seven things to create a life of balance, one of which is a concept called ‘Be Here Now’. Wherever you are, be present. If youre at the office dont beat yourself up for not spending time with the kids last night. When youre at home, dont be thinking about the project thats on the desk in your office. Wherever you are, be fully present.“And the technique of margins is all about creating the space to do the things in life that are important to you, the personal or family-oriented things. I believe in taking time off, and creating as much of a life of harmony as possible.” (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Advice for startups“…the one secret to success is that there is no one secret. It’s more of a formula than one single thing…”Ivan  Misner is reluctant to  pass on any single piece of advice that young entrepreneurs getting into business for the first time might find useful. But the good news is, this is Ivan Misner. And Ivan Misner  has not just one thing, but several that that he thinks are vital and worth sharing.“Yeah, I think questions like these are difficult, because it’s like asking someone for the secret to balance or the secret to success. I think the one secret to success is that there is no one secret. It’s more of a formula than one single thing. There’s a number of things that I think are important.“Top of the list is, Do six things a thousand times, not a thousand things six times. I see people fail, because theyre constantly chasing bright, shiny objects, instead of sticking to a tried and true system. How do you do that? You should advisers or mentors or people helping you, or an approach to doing business that you’ve read about, a model that you work from, and then you do that a th ousand times. You have to be like a dog with a bone, instead of flitting from one idea to another idea without developing a real skills set to enable you to apply it effectively.“Next I would say: Work on your flame, not on your wax. As businesses grow, some people try to maintain too much control. You must delegate effectively to work on your flame. When an entrepreneur is working on their flame, theyre on fire, theyre excited about what they do, theyre passionate, you can hear it in their voice. When theyre working on their wax, its something that they hate doing. And you can hear that in their voice. Make sure you understand whats your flame and whats your wax, and bring people in to handle your wax, because oftentimes what is your wax will be another person’s flame. So bring them in to do that kind of stuff.“One more thing I would tell a young person, particularly when theyre trying to build a team: ignorance on fire is better than knowledge on ice. I constantly look for p eople who are excited about opportunities and what were doing. I can teach someone how to do things. What I cant do is teach them how to have a great attitude. I just dont have the time to send them back to Mom to get retrained!”Holding an audienceTypically, one of the audiences that Ivan Misner has most enjoyed during his lifetime in business is his three children. Famously, he was an amateur magician, and was a member of the Academy of Magical Arts in Los Angeles for more than 15 years.“Well, I used magic for fun. What happened was, when my three kids were very young, I bought them a little magic set one day, and did the tricks for them, and they just turned somersaults, and so I went out and bought about 10 more, and they were like, Wow! This is so cool!! So I just bought out the whole store practically, and it was a lot of fun. I did it for years, and really enjoyed it. But now my kids are all grown up. We’re empty-nesters now…” he tails off, somewhat wistfully.This is unthinkable… the renowned Dr Ivan Misner, losing an audience? “Yeah… I have… but,” he adds excitedly, “Maybe one of these days, I will get some grandkids!”And at that point, to the delight of his family and the hordes of followers who benefit from the sheer volume of experience that Misner shares from his life, he really will be “the grand-father of modern networking”.Image Source: Ivan Misner on Facebook