What a referral group gives you
BNI is the best-known structured referral group in Australia. Members meet every week, introduce their businesses and pass each other referrals. Its rules shape what you get: meetings run for 90 minutes, members arrive on time and stay for the whole meeting, only one person from each business specialty is accepted into a chapter, and attendance is treated as critical (you can send a substitute if you can't make it).
The one-per-specialty rule is the heart of it. If you're the only painter in the room, every member who hears of a painting job thinks of you. Over months, people who see you every week come to trust you, and a referral from someone the customer already trusts is about as warm as new work gets.
BNI isn't the only kind of group. Local chambers of commerce and industry associations offer a looser version: events, a member directory and introductions, usually without the weekly attendance or the expectation that you bring referrals each time. Their fees are set locally, so check your own.
What it costs, in money and mornings (October 2026)
BNI doesn't publish one national price. Fees are set by region, and the national page says the details are given when you visit a chapter. BNI Brisbane Southside, which does publish its fees, listed an $847 onboarding and training fee, a $1,452 annual membership fee and a venue fee that varies by chapter. That makes the first year $2,299 plus venue fees, and $1,452 plus venue fees after that. The page doesn't say whether GST is included, so ask.
The bigger cost is time. Ninety minutes a week, plus travel, the talk before and after, and the one-to-one catch-ups members make between meetings, comes to two to three hours a week on a fixed morning. BNI Brisbane West's own page says referrals typically take three to six months of consistent attendance to arrive at a steady pace. Visitors can attend up to two meetings free, which is the best way to judge a chapter before you pay. For these costs side by side with a BDM, an agency and doing it yourself, see what introductions cost.
When a networking group is the better choice
- Your seat is free. Check the chapters near you. If your category is open, you start with no direct competitor in the room.
- You share customers with the members. Trades, cleaners, bookkeepers and photographers often serve the same households and businesses as the people around the table, so referrals can flow both ways.
- You win work on trust. BNI Brisbane West describes its best fit as owners who win work through trust and reputation rather than price, and who are willing to refer others before expecting referrals back.
- You can protect the morning. If you can be there every week, the attendance rules work for you rather than against you.
- You value the room itself. Plenty of owners stay for the advice, the suppliers and the people they can call when a job goes sideways. No email service gives you that.
When Curlew is the better choice
A group reaches the people in the room and the people they know. Curlew reaches businesses directly, whether or not anyone there knows you. It finds local businesses that could buy from you or refer customers to you, such as property managers, builders or strata managers, reads each one's website, writes to them by email in your business name, answers the replies and passes anyone interested to you with the thread.
It costs $99 a month including GST, with no setup fee and no contract. It asks little of your week: you approve the first email before anything is sent, then pick up the conversations passed to you. Sending starts at about 10 businesses a day and builds over four to five weeks to up to 50 a day, Monday to Friday. Research and drafting are done by our proprietary system, and our team in Brisbane checks the work. Each client gets a sending domain registered close to their business name, so their own email is never put at risk, and the domain is theirs to keep.
It tends to fit better when:
- Your category is already taken in the chapters near you.
- You can't promise the same morning every week, because you're on site by 6 am.
- The businesses you most want to reach, such as property managers, builders or venues, aren't the kind that sit in your local chapter.
- You want reach that doesn't depend on months of attendance first.
What it can't do is build the personal trust that comes from seeing someone every week. It reaches out by email, never by cold call. It writes only to businesses, at the address each has published on its own website, stops writing to any business that asks, and doesn't promise replies, leads or work. It isn't for health or law practices, franchises or chains.
Using both
Many owners will get the most from both. Keep the group for the relationships and the referrals that come from trust, and have Curlew write to the businesses who will never be in the room. The two overlap less than you might think: a chapter holds one of each specialty and meets one morning a week, while outreach can reach the property managers, builders and venues across your area a few at a time, every weekday.
If you're mainly after businesses that send you customers rather than buy from you, the get referred page shows how Curlew approaches them. Thinking of hiring someone to do all of this instead? See an alternative to hiring a BDM.