In Episode 51 of the Babies & Business Podcast, Rachel Gonzales shares her decision to leave Business Networking International (BNI) after six transformative years. The episode delves into why she departed, highlighting a pivotal moment when she realized she was dedicating more energy to BNI than her own business. Rachel discusses the clarity she gained about her personal goals, particularly her desire to spend more time with her children and focus on her family’s well-being. The episode also explores the changes in her role within their business, Digital Harvest, as she transitions to a more supportive and finance-focused position. Despite leaving BNI, Rachel reflects on its profound impact on her life and expresses gratitude for the relationships and growth it facilitated.

Mentions & Resources

BNI – Business Networking International

E50 – Building a Local Support Group with BNI

E49 – How Clifton StrengthsFinder Transformed Our Business and Marriage

Digital Harvest – Avram & Rachel’s Marketing Agency

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Episode Transcription

Below you will find a transcript of this entire podcast episode. Enjoy!

Avram Gonzales: Today, we’ve got a shocking announcement. I think the title of the podcast says it all. After six years of being a part of BNI, Business Networking International, Rachel has decided to leave. And I’m going to interview her today, asking her about why that is because in some ways it’s pretty straightforward, very clear and in other ways, there’s a lot to it. So a couple people have asked, where’s Rachel? Is she coming back?

Rachel Gonzales: Yep.

Avram Gonzales: The answer is no. That’s a big part of the reason we’re recording the podcast. But I think regardless of whether you’re a part of BNI or something else, any group, any mastermind, any events or things that you’re a part of, there’s a season in life for it, and there’s a season in life that doesn’t have it anymore.

And so, we’re going to explore that today because things change. So do your goals, so do your priorities, so does life. And it leads us to decisions that maybe perhaps we had never considered before.

Rachel Gonzales: For sure. I mean, this will probably come to a shock, or as a shock to many people, because if you know me and you know the way that I’ve felt about BNI, you know that I would never leave BNI. But my life has changed so much, and in a good way. All the things that I’ve ever wanted in my life are really mine, and so I’m really excited to get into it.

Avram Gonzales: Well in last episode, episode 50, you can check that out at babiesandbiz.com in the show notes for today’s episode. We talked about all the ways that you can build a local support network through BNI. It’s one of the things that we’ve appreciated most as well as what it’s done for our business. And so there’s a lot of reasons that it’s been a very difficult decision for you.

And so I want to start there and work our way through. I’m curious, you know, being somebody who’s been so hardcore about BNI for six years, you know, we met through BNI, we built the business through BNI, had all these incredible people that we’ve met through BNI. You mentioned in the last episode, was there a turning point for you or a moment that made you start considering no longer being a part?

Rachel Gonzales: Oh yeah, you know this last term in BNI, um, I served as mentor coordinator and I created this really cool system. It had a spreadsheet to go along with it, so there are people that go through and they meet with like 12 or 13 people. And I was keeping track of who was meeting with who, how far they’ve gotten in the system, and then I had specific like form letters that I would send out to introduce people to the process, and then I would have, I would follow up with them periodically, and I would have ways of tracking all of that.

So I knew at any given moment where people were in that system, so that I could get them through. Because that, there’s, there’s all sorts of reasons why, but it was important to track that.

Avram Gonzales: Previously, nobody had done anything like that. And in that position that you were in, that mentor coordinator position,

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah,

Avram Gonzales: people really struggled to put people through that passport program that you’re talking about.

Rachel Gonzales: Right. It was, yeah, it was more like, hey, here’s your passport. You hand them this book and they’re like, what is this? I have no idea what this is and then they open it up. There are places for names to be filled out, but often they weren’t. Or they were filled out and they were told, you need to reach out to these people.

So here you are, a brand new person in a networking group. You already feel pretty vulnerable. You don’t feel like you know the system. You really feel very brand new. And You’re not likely to reach out to those people. They’re seasoned members most often, and they could be very intimidating to you. So if that is your personality, you wouldn’t be likely to reach out.

And that was my experience when I joined BNI. I was just handed a book and said, or actually a list, I think, and given the book. And then they said, hey, reach out to these people. And I just really felt awkward about that, because for one, I didn’t really know what that looked like. So anyway, Long story short, I created the system that helped people to get through it, and I helped probably twenty Twenty five people through it, throughout the course of the year.

And, it was really great. I got testimonials about, from those people that went through it. They just felt like they were really prepared for BNI, all these different things. And then I got someone else to say that, you know, they said, I’d done a better job than anybody else, and they wanted to borrow my system.

And, it was at that moment.

Avram Gonzales: around for like 15 plus years. Wow

Rachel Gonzales: In the organization.

Avram Gonzales: the organization. I’d never seen anybody execute on this role like you did. Can I borrow what you’ve shown and start teaching it to other people? Can you teach it to other people

Rachel Gonzales: Exactly. Could you talk to my person in this other chapter, the mentor coordinator here, or the mentor coordinator here? And so I was getting pulled in different places like my energy was, they were, they were appreciative of the system that I had created and it was in those moments over that course of time that it occurred to me and started to actually kind of grate on me a little bit, not in a bad way,
but it just occurred to me that I have built this really killer system for BNI for a networking group to help people through and I hadn’t done anything like that for my business not like that I hadn’t taken my expertise And really broken it down for processes in our business and it was I think that that was the door that opened for me.

Avram Gonzales: That makes sense, realizing that you’re doing something here that you’re not even doing for yourself. so, what did you start to notice after that moment that really led you to the full consideration of leaving?

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, you know, I think it was just a number of things. It was kind of a cascade. It’s kind of like, you know, the snowball that goes down the mountain. It picks everything up on the way. You know, I, I felt like our membership in BNI would be really well served with just one person being a part of that. You being part of BNI, not me.

It just felt like we were splitting our time. We did a quick thing looking at, like, what it takes for us to convert someone that we have a conversation with to money. How do we convert someone to a paying client? And that is that we talk to them. and you don’t, you’re the one that needs to be talking to them in BNI. But I found myself irritated with everything.

So many things that didn’t annoy me before just really annoyed me. There are a ton of things that came up.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah, and the details of that really aren’t that important. I heard them all. I won’t share them with you guys. It was a lot, and I’m looking at her every time that she would complain about something, and like, first of all, she doesn’t complain. And then secondly, I’m like, this is not something that she would normally be annoyed with?

Rachel Gonzales: Right, right. It was so much more. It was there was something going on other than and Yeah, there was just a lot So when I brought the news to you and I told you that I was thinking about leaving BNI, do you remember what you said?

Avram Gonzales: Well, it came up a couple months ago and we sort of dismissed it. And we’re like, yeah, you know, BNI has always worked for us and we just got to stick through it. It’s a tough time that we’re going through as a family with our time being squeezed. And so we just kind of put our head back down and went and went through it.

But then when you came back again and you’re like, no, I’m really thinking about it. And

Rachel Gonzales: the thing that changed, yeah, the thing that changed I went to a meeting and I was like, oh, yeah, this doesn’t really work for me.

Avram Gonzales: Came back from maternity and was like, this is not, you know, what I, what I remember, what I, like, really what I signed up for, and, you know, we had just recorded this Clifton StrengthsFinder episode, which is a couple episodes ago, put it in the show notes, and it’s about Rachel’s strengths versus my strengths, and, and, uh, and showing the hilarity between the differences, um, but it’s also a great tool for you as a business visionary, and it was like, well, I’m clearly the one that’s geared towards doing this type of business development. And you’re clearly geared towards forming the relationships part of BNI, but you’re not like the builder type that I am. Your skills are better served like internally with the team. And it was this examination of our strengths.

Rachel Gonzales: Yes, absolutely,

Avram Gonzales: it’s like, well, are you really the right person for the seat?

Rachel Gonzales: right and that was honestly the first time we have ever ever asked that question.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. Are you the right person for that seat?

Rachel Gonzales: And before, when, when I joined BNI for Digital Harvest, we didn’t have children. It was in 2020, the end of 2020. We didn’t have our first kid until mid 2022. So it was wild. So we didn’t actually think about our time in the same way or our energy, how much time we had to put into the business. There were so many things that have been changed, constrained and

Avram Gonzales: It was like, let’s divide and conquer, but now we’re dividing such a small amount of time that we have left. It’s not effective anymore.

Rachel Gonzales: And I’m just such a good support role, support person. I love the support role. That’s why I excelled at the mentor coordinator. I wasn’t keeping people in line with rules or anything like that. I wasn’t holding people accountable. I was simply standing as a support. So that worked really well for me.

Avram Gonzales: What was like the hardest part for you though? Once, once we looked at that and we were like, okay, so what does life look like with you not being part of it?

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. You know, it’s, you know, you start things for a certain reason and then you end them for other reasons, but, you know, Like we talked about in that last podcast, surprisingly you make friends. You, you just, you learn to love the people that you’re around. So knowing that I won’t be seeing those people as regularly is, it was kind of a thing for me.

Avram Gonzales: I mean, that was probably the hard part, right? I, I switched chapters a little over a year ago and that was really hard for me because I felt like I was leaving the relationships that were in that room. Abandoning, like that I’m bailing on people, or letting somebody down, like, there are a lot of emotions, and I watched you go through those.

Rachel Gonzales: for sure. Oh yeah. I mean, I, I also feel that very same way. So

Avram Gonzales: But, you know, even with hard deliberation, there were certain things that made it really easy for you, so, You said something to me the other day, you said something like, um, Something about clarity with your goals, or like, now you know what they are. What was that that you said?

Rachel Gonzales: yeah, you know, I just have, I have so much clarity around what it is that I want and I don’t wanna feel guilty being around my boys. I was 35 when I had my first child. I’ve always wanted kids. And now that I have my kids, I wanna spend more time with them. And like I said, not feel guilty about that.

You know, having August really brought things full circle for me, because Lincoln and my journey with breastfeeding was really rocky, really emotional, and ended right about this time actually, two years ago. And so it ended quickly, it was about three and a half months, and it was painful the entire time.

And so my goal with August is, number one goal is, I want to breastfeed him. I want him to be healthy, I want me to be, uh, emotionally and physically well. And, you know, I’m able to feed August and I get a second chance at kind of how I felt like I failed Lincoln. So, that’s my number one thing.

That’s, those are the things that make it easy for me to leave because I’m really seeing my goals and just admitting that that’s what they are. Getting some clarity on that. Because they’ve not really changed.

Avram Gonzales: No, and we’ve talked about this in other episodes. Your strength really is around the Like you said support, but then also the the finances and so when we started looking at life after I know we discussed Like what is what is the desired lifestyle for you? And it’s like when it comes down to it You love to contribute, so that’s not going to change, but how you contribute to the business is going to be different, how you contribute to the household is going to be different, and really what we’re looking at is, okay, how can we bring down your scope of work and what you do to two, maybe three hours a day or less, because you like feeling useful, you’re really good at it, then there’s a lot you can do with the finances of a business that don’t require you to be checked in at a certain time of the day
to be there

Rachel Gonzales: Correct. Correct. I do a lot of the, uh, what you maybe would call busy work as far as like, there’s a lot of phone calls to make. There’s a lot of things to keep up with paying bills, all the different things that keep us where we need to be as a business. And I just love that stuff. I absolutely thrive there.

And that’s exactly what I want. I don’t want to be out of the house. Being out of the house, going to BNI meant that I had to get a babysitter every week A babysitter for two hours, two, three hours, whatever that looks like, um, once a week is really difficult to find, especially when school is in, there’s not high school kids that want to do that, you know, I, I want to pay somebody, but there’s really no one that’s interested in that.

They’re looking for more full time than that, and that’s not something I can offer. So the, that just wasn’t feasible for us. But in addition, it just was super stressful. and I. Want to be home with my boys and not feel guilty.

Avram Gonzales: I remembered what you said, you said, it’s that my goals haven’t changed. I just realized what they were. Yeah. Realizing what they were. So one of the things that also came out of this, and I think we’ll bring it up in the podcast and later episodes is with bringing Rachel’s involvement in the business.

In terms of hours dedicated down to two or three a day on average, um, that also means that her role as client happiness officer, the one who’s meeting with our clients is going to change as well. Right? So we’re going to be hiring for that position over the course of the next six months to a year.

What’s required for us to do that. Maybe we’ll talk more about in some of the upcoming podcasts. Um, but there’s some things we’ll put in place in order to make that transition. And that’s an exciting place for us to be for me, it’s a little bit. Uh, nerve wracking because it’s been nice having so much of Rachel’s support, and then I will technically have a little bit less of it, but in a very different, more effective way.

Rachel Gonzales: Right. Well, and then we were talking last night about how what would that look like for me to be more involved in our home? And being able to take care of the things at home and not feel guilty because there are times when it’s like I look around And I think oh my gosh I’d love to clean or organize something but my time needs to be spent working in the business whatever that is that I’m doing And so I can see just like when we joined forces at Digital Harvest, when I closed my alterations business down in 2020 and joined you at the end of 2020, we saw such hug leaps in our business.

We grew, the finances. I was able to take our finances down by 15 percent in no time at all, expenses, yep, um, in no time at all. And I just see that happening again, kind of like a renaissance in our house again. We have a nanny and it allows me time to have some work in the morning when she’s here and then to do some stuff around the house and do things that really make me feel like I’m contributing because everybody wants to contribute, I think that, I mean, maybe they don’t, but I do. So I still want to feel like I contribute. You know, BNI, it’s a sad thing that I’m leaving, you know, never thought I’d leave. But BNI has truly changed my life and if you listened to the podcast prior to this, you know that it works.

It’s not because I’m leaving because it doesn’t work, it does work and it has truly changed who I am. It’s changed how I look at things, I was able to see some of the strengths as I took one role or another. I was able to see where my weaknesses are when I took one role or another. I was able to see things about people and there’s so many things that, have changed for me because of BNI.

Avram Gonzales: A beautiful story. it’s just, just one ending. you know, one, one chapter closes, another one opens. I’m excited to see what happens, uh, for you, excited to see what happens for us, and just appreciate our BNI family and everybody that we’ve met through Champions, specifically, it’s the chapter you’ve been a part of, and are now exiting, and um, we’ll see everybody, see you around, I can come sub for you now, right?

If you’re in champions and you need a substitute, give me a call, because now Rachel’s not there, I can go. Before it was like, people would call me and be like, can you sub for me? I’m like, nah dude, she’s at the meeting, who do you think’s with the babies? Me. Right? So that becomes possible again. Hey, we got a big question for you, uh, you can reach out to us on social media.

This is the community question for the week. Look, I want to know how has mom guilt impacted your personal and work life. I say mom guilt because it’s typically moms that experience the tug of war between the two worlds of working the business and being there for your family. So moms, chime in on this episode announcement you’ll see the question there. How has mom guilt impacted your personal and work life? We’d love to hear about it. Maybe it will inspire a future episode. So, we appreciate you for listening. Please reach out. Wish Rachel your congratulations and well wishes on the next chapter of her life, business, and professional.

We appreciate you for tuning in. Make sure if you haven’t already, rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, wherever it is that you’re listening. And share this with a friend if you found it inspiring or a little bit juicy and you just want them to know all the details. Anything else you’d like to add before we go?

Rachel Gonzales: I just invite everybody that’s listening, you know, If you’ve got something that maybe you’re not sure about changing up in your life and if it works for you or it doesn’t, just ask that question. What are my goals? Are they still the same? If they’re not, look at them and make some changes. I invite you to make changes even though they’re hard, you know.

You’re gonna have some hard things that come along with it and then some easy things that just make it that much, that much easier to make that decision, but, change is the only constant thing in life. I love that quote.

Avram Gonzales: There you go. We appreciate you for tuning in.

Rachel Gonzales: Bye for now.