Why I Quit Networking (and Why I Came Back)

Early in my entrepreneurial journey, I joined BNI. A while later, I was the chapter president. Then I joined a whole bunch of other networking groups.

Then I quit almost all of them.

And now I'm back.

If you've ever asked yourself "should I stop networking once I have leads?", this is my honest answer. Not the textbook one. The one I learned by paying the dues, running the meetings, walking away and walking back in.

The short version

• Networking built my business. My best guess is BNI alone brought in my first 30 to 50 clients.
• It cost more time than money. About $1,540 a year in cash, and about 6 hours a week in one-to-ones.
• I quit because it wasn't a system. I couldn't scale it, count on it or plan my family's future around it.
• Ads didn't save me. They were hard, I couldn't figure them out, and relationships were what actually closed deals.
• So I came back. The lesson isn't "network" or "don't." It's: don't make it either/or.
• Don't quit networking once you have leads. Put it in its place, and build something next to it that doesn't depend on your calendar.

How networking built my business

When I started, I had nothing to show anybody. No reviews. No case studies. No rankings. Nobody searching Google had a reason to pick me.

But people in a room could look me in the eye and decide I was worth a shot. That's what BNI gave me.

I went every week. I did one-to-ones, sitting down with members to really learn their businesses. I passed referrals. I ended up running the chapter.

And it worked. Since August 2022, we've served 105 businesses across JDS1 Marketing and Dental SEO Pros. My honest guess is that about half of them came from networking in one form or another. I think BNI brought in a big chunk of the early ones, something like the first 30 to 50.

I'd love to give you exact numbers. I can't, because I didn't track where every lead came from back then. (Lesson number one. More on that below.)

That 89% is why networking works. When someone you trust vouches for a business, you don't have to decide whether to believe the business. You already believe your friend.¹

What it actually cost me

Here's the real bill:

What	Cost
BNI membership	$1,300 a year
In-person lunches	$20 a month ($240 a year)
One-to-ones	About 6 hours a week
Cash total	$1,540 a year
Time total	About 312 hours a year

The check was the easy part. The hours were the real price. 312 hours is almost eight full work weeks a year.

I don't regret a minute of it. But that number is a big part of why I quit.

Why I quit networking

It wasn't that networking didn't work. It did.

It was that it wasn't a client acquisition system. It wasn't scalable, at least in my mind. Some months the referrals poured in. Some months it was quiet. And there was no dial I could turn up when I needed more.

I couldn't count on it. I couldn't rely on it. I couldn't build a business, take care of my family and plan a future around something that depended on who happened to mention my name at lunch that week.

So I did what a lot of growing business owners do. I stepped away from the rooms and went all in on ads and scaling.

Why I came back

Honestly? I hated ads.

Paid ads were hard, and I couldn't figure them out. We even hired a consultant. Looking back, maybe we gave up too early. Ads can work. But we couldn't spend the time it would take to make them work yet. We needed clients.

And here's what I realized. We sell something higher-ticket, and SEO is a decision built on trust. People want to know who they're handing their business to. That relationship wasn't going to come from a Facebook ad.

The right way, and the immediate way, to get the clients we needed was to build relationships. So I came back to networking.

And I'll be radically transparent: that story may change again. I do see us scaling, and needing ads, especially as we chase our goal of 1,000 websites. (How we'd get there is mostly partnerships, referrals and white label. That's a whole other post.)

So, should you stop networking once you have leads?

No. But you should stop doing it the way I did at the start.

My mistake wasn't networking. And it wasn't ads. It was treating them like an either/or. All in, then all out.

Here's what I'd tell my younger self:

Keep the relationships that send you good business. You don't need five groups. You need the right one, and a handful of referral partners who serve the same customers you do.

Drop the meetings that don't. Be honest about which rooms are paying you back and which are just filling your calendar.

Track every lead's source from day one. Write down who referred whom. It's the only way to know what networking is really worth to you. I wish I had.

Build something next to it that doesn't depend on your calendar. That's what being kind to your future business looks like. Networking grows as far as your hours do. A website and SEO keep working while you're in the meeting, at your kid's game or asleep. (Is SEO right for your business? is a good place to start.)

And make sure your referrals can find you. When someone gets referred to you, they almost always look you up first. BrightLocal found 54% of consumers check a business's website after reading positive reviews.² If they find a slow, dated site that doesn't explain what you do, the referral dies quietly and you never even know it happened. That's the whole idea behind how to get found online.

If you're just starting out

Go network. Seriously.

When you have no reviews and no rankings, a room full of business owners is the fastest way to earn trust. It's also the best free education in business. Every one-to-one teaches you how other owners think, what keeps them up at night and how they buy.

Just go in with your eyes open. Know what one customer is worth to you. Count your hours, not just the dues. And give it a real runway. I'd judge a group on a full year, not the first 90 days.

What to do this week

1. Add up what networking costs you now. Dues, lunches and your hours.
2. Count the closed business it brought in this year. Not referrals. Signed customers.
3. Pick your top three referral partners and book a one-to-one with each.
4. Google yourself like a referral would. Does what they find back up the person who vouched for you?

I wrote a full, practical guide with the ROI math, which businesses do best in networking groups, and how networking stacks up against SEO and paid ads over at JDS1 Marketing: what's the best referral networking group? If you want help making sure your referrals find a website that closes the deal, book a call with me.

Relationships got me here. A system will get me further.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Nielsen, 2021 Trust in Advertising Study, U.S. highlights, 2021. ↩

2. BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, February 11, 2026. ↩