Dr. Ivan Misner the Founder & Chief Visionary Officer for BNI, the world's largest business networking organization. He has been called the “Father of Modern Networking” by CNN and one of the “Top Networking Experts to Watch” by Forbes. He is a New York Times Bestselling author who has written 22 books. Among his many awards, he has been named “Humanitarian of the Year” by the Red Cross and was recently the recipient of the John C. Maxwell Leadership Award. Dr. Misner's experience with prostate cancer resulted in the publishing of a book with his wife, Elisabeth called, Healing Begins In The Kitchen. Dr. Misner's ‘Givers Gain' attitude has allowed him to share openly about his path and choices regarding comprehensive health care to move into wellness.

Contact Info

• Company: BNI – Business Network International
• Website: www.BNI.com
• Website: MisnerPlan.com
• Podcast: BNI Podcast

Most Influential Person

• My wife, Elisabeth Misner. She's the one that really got me back into meditation. She's a Tai Chi instructor and meditation instructor at the Austin Spa resort.

Effect on Emotions

• I think mindfulness has centered me more because that whole concept of ‘be here now'.
• One of my strengths is I'm a dog with a bone. I'm very persistent.
• One of my weaknesses is that I'm a dog with a bone, you know, I'm very persistent and that persistence can play out in a lack of mindfulness.
• That is, you become so singularly focused on something that you're not paying attention to things around you. And so the whole concept of be here now, is in a book I've written that's going to be coming out later this year called ‘Who's In Your Room'. I talk about creating harmony versus balance.

Thoughts on Breathing

• Well, again, you know, my wife has helped me with that and in meditation and deep breathing oxygen is really important for helping with cancer. And I did not know this. This was something that really surprised me.
• When lab technicians and scientists want to halt the growth of cancer cells in a petri dish, they oxygenate the dish which slows down substantially the growth of cancer cells in a dish. And I had no idea about that.
• And so if that doesn't tell you that oxygen is important, nothing does.
• One of the therapies I did holistically was an oxygen tank that I went into. It's called a hyperbaric chamber. It was like a big submarine. I did that almost daily for quite some time. I did that daily for three weeks. And I felt fantastic.
• And that's when my PSA dropped from 13 to zero point three. So I did that. I did IVs, and I did things that you can't get in the United States, laetrile and other other things that just aren't offered in the US and so I did them out of the country. I went to Mexico.

Suggested Resources

• Book: Healing Begins In The Kitchen by Ivan and Elisabeth Misner
• Book: Healing Is Easy: How I Healed Metastatic Breast Cancer Using The BodyMind (Look for this book coming out soon)
• Book: Who's In My Room: The Quality of Your Life Depends On The People In Your Life By Dr. Ivan Misner, Stewart Emery, Rick Sapio
• App: N/A

Bullying Story

• I think every kid's been bullied to some extent or other. I tended to stand up for myself reasonably well as a kid, but everybody got bullied. I got bullied. I got harassed as a kid.
• I don't know if you'd consider this bullying or not, but it's my story of my why. I try to teach people that everybody's got a why, why they do the things they do in life. Particularly why they go into a particular profession or want to go into a particular profession. And it's almost always that something happens when you're a child. It's just a trigger. You may not even be in touch with it.
• And I wasn't, I had to go back, this was an exercise that I did in a company and I had to go back and it took me back to 13 years old and it's sort of a kind of bullying situation.
• I was 13 and when I was 11 and 12 I had run for student council and I got decimated. I mean not just decimated. I was last and I was sort of the laughing stock. I was a big joke with all of the junior high kids. So they were just harassing the heck out of me. And I felt pretty bad.
• So now I'm 13 years old. I'm a freshman in high school. They usually elect the next year, but because we were in junior high, they elected it from the freshman class and it was freshman history.
• And so Mr. Ramero, I'll never forget, I've written about him. I tell this story in a book I wrote called, Avoiding the Networking Disconnect. He asked the entire class, he said, we have to pick the student council representative of this class. I'll take nominations. Anybody want to nominate someone? Nobody, nobody nominated anybody.
• Now I'm sitting there thinking, I'd love to do this, but I don't need to get beat up again by my friends. By my peers anyway. And so he said, well, if you don't pick, if you don't nominate anyone, then I get to pick.
• And they're like, yeah, pick, we don't care. I remember this young girl, Cindy, she was a cheerleader. She stood up and she said, Oh, Mr Ramero, you know, I would run, but I'm so busy with cheerleading. I just don't have the time to do it. Mr. Ramero is like, Cindy, thank you very much for not volunteering. I appreciate that. Have a seat.
• And I'm thinking, I'd love to do this, but there's no way I was going to do it. And so I didn't say anything. Mr Ramero looks around the room and he looks at me and he says, Ivan, I bet you'd like to do this, wouldn't you?
• I was like, Huh, yeah, Mr Ramero, I, I kinda would like to do this. He said, okay. Ivan is the student council representative now, Bruce, I swear to you, I swear to you, the entire class in unison says, oh no, not Ivan.
• Cindy stands up. And she said, Oh, Mr Ramero, if you're going to pick Ivan, then I'll run. She said that. So I'm sitting there thinking, really, you guys, seriously, you know, you see me sitting here, right? I didn't say anything, but it was a very raw moment.
• Thirteen year old boy. I didn't have a crystal ball. I didn't know that I was going start a global business and write 20 books and be a keynote speaker. I didn't know any of that.
• I was a 13 year old kid that felt like a total loser because my peers basically told me I was a total loser and Mr. Ramero, God bless him, said, nope, you had your chance. I made my choice. I remember at that moment thinking, I am going to make something out of this opportunity.
• Mr Ramero saw something in me that my peers did not. I was going to make him proud and I was going to do everything I could to just do the best job in this role possible. And I think I did. And what's really interesting is that that same class elected me to be the sophomore student council representative, the same class that said, oh no, not Ivan.
• And I went on to do four years in student council and was ASB president my senior year. And it happened because somebody saw something in me.
• My why to this is I realized that almost every business that I've done since then was to help people be their best, to help people succeed. I can't make you successful in BNI. What I can give you is an environment where you can help yourself be successful. And that ended up really being my why and it was in a way because of bullying.

Free Gift

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