Episode 9
with Simone Douglas
In this episode of Confident Networker, Simone sits down with Martin Roantree.
Martin is a member of BNI Elite.
Connect with Martin here:
https://www.facebook.com/floors2gosa
If you’d like to attend a Chapter meeting and meet Martin, you can book your spot here: https://bnian.com.au/chapter/bni-elite/
Simone Douglas 0:00
Okay.
Okay, so on today’s episode of the confident networker, I am joined by the very charming Martin Rowntree from Floors to go. So Martin, perhaps can we start, can you just give us a little bit of an overview about your businesses because you have a couple.
Martin Roantree 0:19
We’ve actually got three. So got floors to go, got blinds to go. And we have a non for profit called 1836 years.
Simone Douglas 0:29
So that sounds fairly hectic. keeps you busy.
Martin Roantree 0:34
Want a job doing give it to a busy man? Well,
Simone Douglas 0:36
that’s very true. So how long have you been in BNI Elite?
Martin Roantree 0:41
I joined in March 2020.
Simone Douglas 0:45
So yeah, that makes sense. Um, what has been the most surprising thing for you?
Martin Roantree 0:57
Believe it or not, the most surprising thing is meeting all the people from trades and professions that I wouldn’t ordinarily come across and becoming very good friends with quite a lot of them.
Simone Douglas 1:08
Yeah. Nice. Yeah, that’s cool. Why is networking important to business?
Martin Roantree 1:13
It helps us grow.
If you do it properly, it can be very rewarding. You know, the BNI mantra is givers gain. And that’s never been so apparent. And since I joined BNI, it’s been really good for us.
Simone Douglas 1:28
Yeah. Fantastic. So when you’re talking about growth, roughly what percentage of your business comes from BNI referrals?
Martin Roantree 1:39
It fluctuates a bit, but overall, probably about, I think it was 37% of our business. And we’ve got a massive turnover. That’s increasing year on year. It’s been fantastic for us.
Simone Douglas 1:54
What has been, who has been the person that has surprised you with the best referral?
Martin Roantree 2:02
Marco gara really surprised me the other week. Yeah. You give me a referral for a motel.
And was supplying 32 rooms of very expensive carpet, and 32 rooms of very expensive curtains. Oh, very nice. And the people that plays that the powders up from Wow, that was a total of about $110,000. I’ve never had a job like that. Yeah. I always have to work for him. As soon as I won the I knew that they wanted to buy Office because it gives us such a good rap. We looked after him. Yeah, absolutely.
Simone Douglas 2:41
I think that’s the beauty though, often of BNI referrals is that you’re not it’s not about price, necessarily. In the summer, you’re not pitching against three or four different
Martin Roantree 2:49
times you do. You know, don’t don’t get me wrong. We’re not we don’t go in there think you know, we’ve got this Yeah, we go in that offer the same service that we have offered to our customers who come to the shop, and most of our business is based on referral anyway, we’re trying to get to a point where we’re only open to appointment. And BNI is really helping us to push that forward. Fantastic.
What was the best support over the last 12 months, we’ve had COVID pandemics and things like this, you know, what is something that your BNI chapter members have done for you that has, you know, just knowing that you’ve got another network of 40 odd people that you can pick the phone up to the become friends, as well as referral partners and business colleagues. And you can say anything to him, or ask for advice. And that’s, that’s been pretty good for us. And quite a few of the BNI members have become good friends with people within our business as well. Like, I’ll give for instance, Maria Mineola, she comes into our shop. Everybody knows her. Everybody loves her. Yeah. You know, she’s like, she’s one of our work family. Yeah.
There’s a few people in our chapter. And in other chapters.
Simone Douglas 4:16
Yeah, absolutely. So being so Martin is a member of BNI elite, and they meet on Thursday mornings. But you raise the point about other chapters. So obviously BNI Adelaide North has seven chapters, and 185 members at the moment. So do you get work from other chapters as well?
Martin Roantree 4:36
Yeah, yeah. Heaps of work from other charters.
Simone Douglas 4:38
So how does that work?
Martin Roantree 4:42
if I get invited along or go or or sub for somebody, and if I like the feeling of the room, I’ll go back. You know, advantage, like meets on Friday morning. Soon, so that’s my BNI holiday home. I always I always like I’d go in there, just and I like to take things away that I can give to our church or that they’re doing differently.
Simone Douglas 5:06
Yeah, well, you raise a really good point. So for that, you know, BNI members out there they there’s nothing better than going and seeing how different chapters implement the BNI system. Because there’s always like said, there’s those one percenters and little tweaks that are different in every room because it has different people. So I know that you were a reluctant member, in terms of the fact that you were you visited a lot.
Martin Roantree 5:29
extremely reluctant. Yeah.
Simone Douglas 5:32
extremely reluctant. So can you just tell us a little bit about the story of visiting BNI
Martin Roantree 5:40
when when I moved to Australia in 2009, the guy that I worked for Pete, okay, he was a BNI member. And he went, he went away for three months and asked me to sub for him while he was away. And also a bit like a rabbit in headlights thinking, what am I doing here? This isn’t me.
And then I used to suffering occasionally. And then I was a serial visitor for about five years thereafter. And during mussten, the electrician and Mark O’Gara parents are in our chapter kept asking me to come along, and I’m like, it’s not for me. Interested, I’ve been there. And I’ve had a look at what is what’s going on. I really don’t want to engage in that. I haven’t got time. Yeah, the word excuses. They were my reasons for not giving up. Anyway, he finally wore me down at the beginning of last year, so said, right, I’ll come for a visit. And when I got there actually enjoyed it. Because it felt different to all the other BNI means there was a different feel in the room. So said, well come back next week. So when by the week after. And then I said to myself, right, I’m going to join for a year. My aim is to get my $1,600 membership fee back and then I’m done. So I did everything joined. I didn’t really engage with it for the first couple of months. And then I sat down and I thought to myself, What What’s it gonna look like if I put some effort in? Yeah. That was about April, May last year, some started making the effort. And the rewards started coming. Yeah. Not just not just monetary rewards, but personal relationship rewards with other people. Yeah. And it just grows and grows and grows every week. Now, I can’t wait to get out of bed on a Thursday morning. Yeah, you get some an eat in and I was really sucked off the other week when we went on Zoom, because it’s just not the same. Yeah,
Simone Douglas 7:42
absolutely. Well, and I think too, you know, thankfully, we can go and see if we have to, we’re gonna lock down. But I enjoy face to face. I’m very much a face to face person. But you know, another little known fact that I really do have to mention is that you finally made it to number one in the country as a member. So BNI, Australia has over six and a half 1000 members. Martin, basically, is the top referral for BNI. Member doing one to ones getting to know people. Is that easy to get to number one, how many? How many months? Were you at number two before you got to number one?
Martin Roantree 8:20
Right? Yeah. And we had a few conversations where I was really annoyed. Yeah. Well, do I have to do to get to number one? It’s not difficult. Yeah. No, the thing we may and my businesses worth, fair enough. We’ve got to earn a living, but we’re not the for the money, our self interest. We like to help people. Yeah, absolutely. And it gives us the opportunity to expand that. Yeah. And why wouldn’t you if you can? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It wasn’t difficult. When people ask me all the time, I was given so many visitors to come to the meeting tomorrow at 11. Just ask people. Yeah,
Simone Douglas 9:04
yeah. But one of my other guests previously has talked about, you know, it’s not about them joining it’s about them coming to meet somebody else. So coming to coming to a networking event.
Martin Roantree 9:16
I’m sorry, I set myself a little targets. And my big target is to get 10 people into you know, 10 people on my on about seven or eight. Yeah. But my next one, by the time I’ve been in two years, or one have had 100 visitors well, and tomorrow we’ll have a number of over 83
Simone Douglas 9:40
There you go. See not got far to go really based on 10 in a week.
Martin Roantree 9:44
But you know, the the thing is, if you go to the chapters, you can pick up other people in like, I’ll give you for instance. I went to BNI advantage a few months ago, and I wanted to Charlotte flowage, who was a visitor to a Vantage, and I got talking to her. So come on over look at us, which counsel was she said? I like what to say her and she joined. Yeah. So there’s there’s always little ways of getting people to come not necessarily to join one say.
Simone Douglas 10:18
What’s the best piece of business advice you’ve been given by a member of your chapter?
Martin Roantree 10:24
Protect your margin.
Simone Douglas 10:26
That is a good piece of business advice. My marginal Michael Berkey. Pretty much in anything,
Martin Roantree 10:31
I think I’m having difficulty with a member of stuff. Who doesn’t understand why margin is so important. Yeah. So the member who gave me that piece of advice is coming to speak to all favour.
Simone Douglas 10:46
Yeah, well, that raises another really good point, which is, you know, the beauty. I think the beauty of being a member of a chapter is having all of those diverse professions. But people will happily help you out. Like, I’ve always been amazed that, you know, if you just ask, you know, that they’re happy to come and do things for you.
Martin Roantree 11:09
I’ve never been afraid to ask people. Because the worst they can say is no, absolutely. Well, if you dress it up the right way, you’ll always get a yes. Well, and I think,
Simone Douglas 11:21
you know, I’m a big believer in chasing 10 loads a day. So ask for exactly what you want, or that exactly what you need. And then from there, you know, sometimes people say no, but like you said, more often than not, they say yes. And then business gets easier. Life gets easier. Who has gone out of their way for you? In an in a way that you’ve really appreciated, but surprised you?
Martin Roantree 11:50
Two people without question Loretta Cavaleiro. Yeah. And Tim Scott. Yeah. I can’t speak highly enough for them two people. Yeah, absolutely. Fantastic. And I feel very, and yourself as well. I feel very honoured and privileged to have them people in my life.
Simone Douglas 12:08
Yeah, they are good. Yeah. So for our listeners, Tim Scott, is a strata digital. So he does all sorts of interesting things. Loretta owns unify property, amongst other things. So we’ve got investment property person digital, and then we have Martin with his not for profit, and
Martin Roantree 12:26
well, when when we was when we decided to do the not for profit. We got some advice, some legal advice as to what writing the Constitution consisted of. And it was a probably $30,000 exercise. And with Tim, the loader call Shana Davidson is a good friend of mine. They wrote the Constitution for free. That’s awesome. And we got the DGR status two weeks ago.
Simone Douglas 12:59
Congratulations. That’s exciting.
Martin Roantree 13:03
that’s my next time thief.
Simone Douglas 13:05
Yes, well
Martin Roantree 13:05
get in the money. And for that, what we’re gonna do with the 1836 is is do you want to know the reasons behind it? So we did a project for the women’s and children’s hospitals School, where we refurbish the school in January last year, on the back of that a family from Michonne approach me to children with muscular dystrophy. And they wanted to reshape the house, but they didn’t know how to go about organising people to help them. So we got that project over the line. That was a $50,000 project, then we we got, we raised some money to put hydrotherapy pool in. But we kept going back asking the same favours of the same people. So So I sat down with Turner to chat and he said, Why don’t we start our own non for profit than we can raise the money for these projects where people are applying for funding through NDIS of variety? And because of the application process, and the amount of information that they need, is taking too long. Yeah. So our constitution says that our application process is going to take four weeks. Not yet. We’re not actually going to hand checks out to people, but we’re going to manage projects on their behalf. Yeah, if it’s an imminent need by the hydrotherapy pool was a no brainer. Because then kids we’re only getting half an hour a week. Yeah, no, we get two hours a day. Yeah, fantastic. Increase the quality of life tremendously.
Simone Douglas 14:38
So on the 18th I suppose if there was one person you could have coffee with and something we’re to wrap it up one person you could have coffee with that would help you take that upper level or take it to the next level. Who do you need to have coffee with?
Martin Roantree 14:55
Sat next to you
Simone Douglas 14:57
sat next to me? Well, that was easy. Then Easy peasy, Martin. Thanks very much for joining us today and for our listeners if you want to come and visit Martin or if you want to come and visit BNI elite you’ll find them on the BNI Adelaide North website they meet on Thursday mornings I’m sure Martin will be happy to host you as a visitor on perfu breakfast. Oh there you go that that could get quite a hectic came out and thanks again. Okay.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai