Business networking is how enterprises grow

In times of technological revolution, it looks like the entire go-to-market motion is led by technology:

• SEO

• Social media

• Paid ads/search

• Quora/reddit posting

• YouTube

• Short videos/reels

But when you zoom out and take a closer look at successful businesses, you see executives and founders:

• Speaking at strategic events

• Attending mastermind groups and retreats

• Engaging with other reputable leaders

• Getting invited and interviewed (podcasts, community tables, published interviews)

• Attracting a cohort of “fans” in comments

While low-cost e-commerce stores or really sticky product-led businesses can still grow organically, almost all businesses are about who you know.

How executives spend their time

Michael Porter, an HBR professor, gave an interview to CNBC labeled, “Time is the scarcest resource for CEOs.” Here’s the full one I recommend watching (it’s a little over 7 minutes long):

While Porter’s study explores the life of CEOs running companies making approximately $13 billion a year, the threshold of successful CEOs moving to a territory of “extremely busy” starts with wearing multiple hats in the first few hundred thousand dollars, to slowly building a leadership team in the millions, elevating with executive assistants and multiple layers in tens of millions, and often being primarily offline past $100M in ARR.

The truth is, even past $500K or $1M, executive efficiency becomes paramount. Many great executives remain in the weeds, operationally involved, but most day-to-day chores that a freelancer, solopreneur, or the average full-time employee deal with should be stripped away as much and as far as possible.

AI made this so much clear

While digital networking was still a plausible medium to build relationships, what has changed over the past decade (especially the last 3-4 years) is the volume of content online and the scale of outreach going on.

The signal-to-noise ratio.

In 2025, it’s extremely easy to:

• Create blog content at scale (including programmatic SEO blasting thousands of articles at a time)

• Cross-publish autogenerated AI content across all social networks

• AI UGC-style videos for YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and now other channels

• Video cuts and short-form based on existing long-form content

• Creative generation with AI through Canva, Napkin, and others

• Deep fake videos

• Cold emailing with Apollo, Instantly, Brevo, and a handful of other outreach tools

• Endless social DM’ing and auto reply/comment apps, bots, and pods

As a result, executives get blasted dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of times per week. Personally, I get ~3,000 emails per week and well over 100 pitches in DMs across LinkedIn, X, and other networks. Entertaining all of them would be impossible, resulting in NOT using social actively, offloading and delegating to VAs, and ignoring most inboxes.

Some sectors are completely offline

One of the reasons the current digital landscape - particularly organic social and paid ads - is so inefficient is the limited targeting.

There are hundreds of B2B categories, but the predominant cohort online are B2B SaaS, AI startups, and all the agencies trying to capture the market.

When we zoom out, we can see the semiconductor and logistics companies, government agencies, higher up education firms, niche insurance providers, biotech startups, defense and military companies, oil/petrol firms on one side and sustainabiliy/clean energy ones on the other - and thousands more.

The representation of said categories online is limited, because:

1. Most of them are not social-first - the categories have existed for decades or even centuries, and the business model revolves around other growth channels

2. There are go-to tradeshows and events where the entire industry gathers a few times a year and that’s how business is done

3. A limited number of high profile government agencies, funds, or enterprise companies to do business with (think about military/defense/higher up education)

4. Executives are busy and working in the trenches, not wasting time scrolling on social

5. Age is also a consideration for these over 50 who are digital-savvy enough, but not necessarily interested in scrolling the mediocre level of Gen Z-adapted social content online

Also, try to find woodworkers, hunters, rangers, active army veterans on social. Most of them are offline for the most part where text is the best medium possible (after meeting them in person).

And even when they browse social - to comment on their niece’s travel photo from Europe or like the anniversary of their sister-in-law - they are not in buying mode, skipping ads intensely, paying for premium profiles or ad blockers to keep their feeds sane.

Ultimately, human-to-human wins

All factors considered, unless you are selling to:

• digital agencies

• solopreneurs/freelancers

• B2B SaaS

• direct to consumer

• a small handful of other digital-savvy categories,

Offline events and face time will perform dramatically better than any of the public channels.

Back when SEO was working well - that is, before AI Overviews - this was still a reliable inbound channel to establish a brand and build relationships. Now, not as effective. It still works in certain categories, but getting busier than ever.

When digital works, it’s still human-to-human first, namely:

1. First-level connections executives have already established elsewhere (personal network or events)

2. Mutual contacts through referrals/recommendations

3. Partners or vendors closed elsewhere/through different means (through events or procurement or RFPs and already working together)

4. Recommendations from masterminds and peer groups, coaches, business events

5. Keynote speakers, political reps, other key opinion leaders familiar to the broad circle

6. Executive communities like EO, YPO, YEC with local branches for business networking

I see this firsthand with:

• the CEO Hangout Slack network with executives who want to limit the digital noise instead of doomscrolling feeds

• my Growth Shuttle Insider newsletter that hosts about a third of my clients (following along after we’ve started working together, or even a few months prior)

• business events we’ve attended a decade ago, but the memory remains and opportunities are shaping up faster given the initial context

• warm intros from existing clients, or former clients, or VC funds/private equity we work with (word of mouth)

The premise that social is the holy grail for selling is wrong. This was valid before 2020, and the early 2020-2021, and even 2022 on LinkedIn and Google before both networks went bust.

The algorithm shifts, combined with AI, deep fake, automated bots, have made social uninhabitable for most busy executives. And when they’re on, it’s for personal reasons (private photos/conversations) or DMing people they know already, vs. shaping new connections.

How to use these insights today

If all your business revolves around capturing desperate freelancers looking for tips and work online, or agencies seeking clients, great - that’s what most of the social ecosystem looks like today.

Otherwise, each B2B market follows a different playbook of how business is done, where on-site comes first (events/intros), with specific trade shows or business meetups, followed by industry journals or publications, and a very limited number of companies that are harder to penetrate and take years to build strong bonds with.

Your middle ground is private executive groups and expanding the word-of-mouth through investing events, keynote talks, strategic conferences, and powerful executive groups - along with building 1:1 relationships one at a time, not by automated, scaled, and organic efforts in feeds.