A note before you read
These articles are a record of what I'm learning through conversations, training sessions, mentorships, books, other people, and my own experiences while building and leading businesses.
Unless I specifically say otherwise, I do not claim authorship or ownership of the quotes, sayings, or concepts referenced here. I share them because they influenced my thinking, together with my own interpretation, experiences, and what I'm learning from them.
Where I know the original source, I'll do my best to give proper credit.
Small talk was the door.
A lesson about opening conversations became the starting point of this journal. What began with a simple idea — small talk is not the destination, it is the door — opened something I had been thinking about for a long time.
This is what came through it.
Latest session
Entry 001 · August 14, 2026
A BNI training session about small talk became the day this journal finally started. Small talk is not the destination — it's the door. Better questions, real listening, and the sentence that changed: I'm doing it.
LEADERSHIP · NETWORKING · COMMUNICATION · BNI
Most of the notes eventually disappears into notebooks.
I have been thinking about a place where I can document what I'm learning while actually building and leading businesses.
Today, something finally clicked.
During Friday BNI training session, our lunch director Allison Mountstevens shared the story about another member who started sharing what she was learning through Facebook. My immediate thought was I've been saying I'm going to do something like this.
I tend to do things intentionally, and I've been thinking about this journal because I want it to serve several purposes. But thinking about something and doing it are two different things. Then Allison continued with something that immediately got my attention.
..move from I am going to do it to I am doing it.
In my notes, I wrote: Derivatives and underneath it: trust for growth. My ideas were forming live from my finance background, I was thinking about the movement when Allsion was talking about “growth”. Going from one place or state to another.
“I'm going to do it” is intention.
“I'm doing it” is action.
There is a movement in between. And movement is where growth starts.
So, this is Entry 001. I am doing it.
Today's BNI training was about something that sounds almost too simple, and something that many of us admitted we're not particularly good at: small talk.
But the discussion wasn't really about the weather, or finding something clever to say.
The shift was from trying to be interesting to becoming interested in the other person,
their experiences,
their stories,
their emotions,
what's happening in their world.
The idea was to learn enough about someone so that eventually you maybe able to create value for them. And that was the journey
One sentence from the session, my note captures it.
“Small talk is not the destination. It's the door.”
And, it became a door for something else too. It became the starting point of this journal, a door.
When you ask someone “What do you do?” and they might answer “Plumbing.”
Now what?
You know their profession. But you do not necessarily know anything about them.
Instead, during the training we experimented with “What's keeping you busy these days?” A question that can go almost anywhere.
Maybe they are expanding their business, maybe they are struggling to hire, maybe they are busy with something completely out of business. Now, you are having a real conversation rather than exchanging job titles.
Some of the questions from my notes:
The session wasn't about being good at small talk.
It was about how relationships become business infrastructure.
A stranger doesn't normally go: meet - understand your company - trust you - refer you.
There are intermediate stages.
Visibility – Conversation – familiarity – understanding – trust – relationship – referral
Small talk is simply one of the mechanisms that starts that movement, a door.
“Forget what you say, remember what they said.” – attention is the gift
It is almost the opposite of how people approach networking. We prepare our introduction, our pitch, what to say next. But while I'm concentrating on myself through entire conversation, how much actually am I learning about the person in front of me.
Being memorable maybe start with making someone else feel remembered.
“Networking is farming, not hunting.” – patience is the strategy
When you plant a seed today, you don't get frustrated tomorrow because there is nothing to harvest.
You prepare the soil,
you plant,
you water,
you pay attention,
you keep showing up,
and eventually something grows.
Business relationships aren't different.
If every conversation starts with “What can this person give me?”
We are trying to harvest something we haven't planted.
“Let the other person shine.” – being interested in more powerful than being interesting
When we meet someone new, I don't need to prove how much I know the business.
I need to understand them,
what they are building
what they are good at?
what kind of client they are looking for?
what should I remember about them six months from now?
and eventually,
who do I know, that might benefit from knowing this person?
For some time, I've been thinking: “I'm going to create a journal. I'm going to document what I'm learning, I'm going to share some of the thinking behind building my businesses. Today I change the sentence.
I'm doing it.
There is a difference.
Building a relationship isn't the same as picking up the phone to call someone.
Publishing this journal isn't the same as designing perfect website for it.
At some point there has to be some movement.
Not then things. One: Ask better opening questions and remember the answers.
I want to thank Allison for leading this session that unexpectedly became the starting point of this journal.
It also reminded me that coaching, mentoring, teaching what can really mean. Sometimes, you share an experience, a story or an idea without knowing what those things can trigger in the person.
In my case, something connected with a thought already forming in my mind. It became catalyst. It created a movement. And sometimes that movement becomes growth.
Maybe this is the part of how experience passes from one person to another. Not by telling them exactly what to do, but by giving them something they can interpret, connect to their own experience and make their own journey with it.
Allison, your story was the catalyst for me.
And Entry 001 is the result.
This isn't a collection of polish business advice. I'm documenting what I'm learning while I'm leaning it. Some ideas will work, some will chance, some may turn out to be wrong. I will document those too. BNI is the one the places I am currently learning. Businesses are the places I'm applying it. This journal connects the two.
Sources and acknowledgements: This entry reflects a BNI training session led by Allison Mountstevens. The small-talk-as-a-doorway concept also appears in The Official BNI Podcast, Episode 972. “Networking is farming, not hunting” is attributed to BNI founder Dr. Ivan Misner, and BNI’s VCP process informed my interpretation of relationship-building stages. The personal story, examples, business applications and interpretations are my own.
Thoughts
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