Most business networking gets relationships backwards.
The conventional wisdom says more contact equals stronger connections. Weekly breakfast meetings. Daily social media engagement. Constant touchpoints to stay “top of mind.”
I’ve discovered the opposite works better.
Meeting once a month creates deeper business relationships than meeting every week. The reason challenges everything we think we know about professional networking.
The Vulnerability Factor
When business owners meet monthly instead of weekly, something fundamental shifts. We stop wasting time on superficialities.
Weekly networking feels like performance theater. Polished elevator pitches. Rehearsed success stories. Everyone projecting strength and competence.
Monthly meetings allow something different. We make each other vulnerable.
This mirrors what Russell Brunson discovered with his Offer Lab concept. While most people see it as just another marketing framework, I recognize it as a community-building model. It creates collaborative spaces where people build together rather than compete individually.
The psychology behind this approach has deep roots. The team concept gets ingrained in us through sports, school, and youth activities. We learn early that building together works better than building alone.
What Building Together Actually Looks Like
In my Network In Action groups, building together means business owners actively looking out for each other. They pass referrals, but that’s just the beginning.
They talk about each other’s businesses without being asked. They attend each other’s events. They become organic advocates rather than transactional referral sources.
This creates better referrals, stronger relationships, and more closed business. The research supports what I see in practice: close rates reach 40% for in-person networking relationships, dramatically higher than traditional marketing methods.
The difference lies in the depth of connection. Monthly meetings force us to learn what makes each other tick. We discover the person behind the business card.
The Science of Vulnerability in Business
Creating vulnerability in a room full of business owners requires intentional structure. Through specific activities, targeted questioning, and collaborative work, we break down the professional facades.
Harvard research confirms that vulnerability-based trust allows teams to “do the job together, without worrying or hesitating.” This explains why less frequent, deeper interactions outperform surface-level frequent contact.
When business owners feel safe enough to share their actual challenges rather than their polished success stories, real collaboration begins. They stop competing and start building together.
The measurable results speak for themselves. Collaborative teams are five times more likely to be high-performing, with teamwork directly increasing sales by 27%.
The Monthly Advantage
Monthly commitment creates scarcity that weekly meetings cannot match. When you only have twelve opportunities per year to connect, every interaction carries more weight.
Business owners prepare differently. They bring real challenges instead of rehearsed pitches. They listen more carefully because the next opportunity is four weeks away.
This scarcity forces quality over quantity. The relationships that develop have genuine depth because superficial connections cannot survive the monthly rhythm.
Brunson’s Offer Lab validates this same principle in the digital space. By creating collaborative frameworks where creators, affiliates, and marketers work together rather than compete, he’s applying the team-building concepts we learned in childhood to modern business.
The lesson applies beyond networking. Whether you’re building online communities or local business relationships, the principle remains constant.
Less frequent, deeper connections consistently outperform frequent, shallow interactions. Vulnerability beats polish. Building together beats building alone.
The question becomes whether you’re ready to abandon the performance theater of traditional networking for something that actually builds businesses.