Byron Goodrick from The Running Company is the deserving 2024 recipient for the effort he has poured into turning around BNI Go Givers. Ironically, Byron was mentored by Glen, who was a member at the time and was largely responsible for guiding him in the group’s renaissance before his passing last year.

Byron’s BNI journey started after he had owned his business The Running Company in Christies Beach for about a year and a half. He was invited to visit BNI Advantage and saw the value as a way to build his business. However, it was a significant investment.

“I didn’t really have a spare three grand when joining, but my uncle (who was a member) was pretty confident that it would be very worth it.”

While he was making good connections and money from referrals from the room, the tyranny of distance proved too much, and he sought a group closer to home. Another challenge was getting members to drive 30-40 minutes to his store. So, when an opportunity presented itself to join Go Givers, Byron leapt at the chance.

“I joined Go Givers when it was 11 members, but I could see the belief and the confidence that long-term people like Glen, Rachel Smith and Peter McCray had in the room, and that’s probably why I still joined, even though it looked dicey at the time. But I was happy to move from a 60+ member group to 11.”

From the very outset, Byron challenged things. In his short nine months at Advantage, he matured and adopted the group’s sense of professionalism. After only a few months at Go Givers, Sonya and Glen selected him to be the next president.

Those next few months were a blur of events, visitors, applications and, eventually, a raft of new members. There were even a couple of old members who returned.

“When I took over, we had two or three leave, and I was pretty stressed because it was going the opposite way of what we wanted. But once we had that core group of seven or eight, we were all focused. We knew we would grow this room back to what it can be.”

Growth came fairly rapidly soon after, with every member stepping up to fill multiple roles, refining the visitor experience and reshaping the group’s culture.

Byron quickly learned that growing and reshaping his group could only be achieved by a collaborative effort and by letting people own the roles for which they were selected. He puts down strong communication with his team and ensuring the group connected socially outside of the weekly events.

One of Glen Davie’s favourite mantras was to ‘catch someone doing good’ and to reward or acknowledge them. We feel he would be pleased that the Spirit Award in his name has gone to Byron, who mirrors many of his qualities and he would also be incredibly proud of how Byron helped shape BNI Go Givers into the dynamic group it is today.