Former BNI Leading Edge President John Mullen presenting the BNI Leading Edge Presidents' Plaque to current President Saverio Di Mondo. Saverio's 2018/2019 inscription echoes his role as first President of BNI Leading Edge 22 years ago.

The reason for Saverio sticking with BNI: it works! It's the best way to obtain referrals to help grow anyone's business.

May you be with the chapter another 22 years Saverio!

April 1 is the start of the BNI year, which means a new Executive Leadership Team has taken over the duties of managing the chapter and charting a course for business growth. The emphasis will be on increasing the membership, and strenghtening the relationships between team members so that we can all benefit from referrals.

Left to right we have:

Wendy Beatty, Vice-President

Saverio Di Mondo, President

Patricia Ramoutar-Ramsawak, Secretary-Treasurer

The new Executive Leadership can count on all of our support in the coming year.

BNI Leading Edge outgoing Vice-President Mitch Paquette and her husband Jilles met with Dr. Ivan Misner - founder of BNI - at a Send Out Cards event recently. The conversation focused how on to gorw their business through referrals in general, and how busineses can help each other grow their respective businesses by building trust.

As this was the last meeting of the BNI year (April 1 - March 31), we want to thank the outgoing Executive Leadership for their hard work and dedication to the chapter's success over the past 12 months. Under their leadership, both the number of referrals and the volume of business have increased substantially.

In the picture from left to right, we have:

Balbir Pabila, Secretary-Treasurer

John Mullen, President

Mitch Paquette, Vice-President

As we are looking to build our businesses through referrals, networking plays a vital role in establishing and maintaining relationships.

Dr. Ivan Misner explains the three phases of networking in his blog - Visibility, Credibility, Profitability - and how we all must go through those phases to build successful relationships to generate referrals.

Visibility is the first phase, and entails you becoming more visible to and present in the minds of your referral partners, and vice versa.

Credibility is the phase where others see you as trustworthy, reliable and they feel they can refer you to others.

Profitability is the last phase where the relationships with your referral partners has matured and becomes mutually profitable.

To find out more details, please read Dr. Misner's blog The Three Phases of Networking.