How Founder Alex Boyd's LinkedIn Musing Turned Into $4.5M

Alex Boyd sits down at his computer and opens a fresh LinkedIn post. He takes a moment to gaze out the window, sips coffee, puts on some headphones.

Then, he writes.

Using a method he’s developed over the years — part art, part science — Alex crafts a story. His posts aren’t your usual, run-of-the-mill LinkedIn garbage. Alex’s stuff is different, in ways we’ll get to shortly.

The result?

Every time he hits that little blue “Post” button, Alex Boyd makes $13,000.

Welcome to Alex’s social selling kingdom, where posting a few times a week generates over 30% of the revenue for his marketing agency —  which totals over 4.5 million dollars.

I’m Karli Stone, and this week’s issue of Meet the World’s Best Sellers is the story of a philosophizing, social selling guru who’s now the CEO of SaaS company Aware and growth agency RevenueZen. Here’s the tale of his rise to the top.

Philosophy Major Turned Account Executive

Alex is a self-proclaimed “weirdo poet who belongs in the forest”.

In college, he envisioned himself becoming a philosophy professor, hedge fund manager, or symphony musician. 

But a salesman? Never.

Freshly graduated, he unknowingly conducted his first cold-calling campaign, when he used the alumni database to search for people with ‘finance’ in their title. He compiled them into an Excel spreadsheet and picked up the phone in search of a job.

It landed him a single interview that catapulted him into sales. 

In his first role at FXCM, he discovered a cornerstone of his social selling method — using his knowledge to establish credibility with buyers.

“I didn’t really sell, I just talked about the subject matter,” Alex says, “And people reasoned that the product must be pretty good because I knew what I was talking about and I was a representative of the product.”

He engaged them in real discussions about what was going on in financial markets, sharing his views and expert opinion.

“I’d spend 5 to 10 minutes doing what I realize now is establishing credibility. I thought, if I’m going to ask people for money, I should at least engage them in a substantive discussion. And I still do it to this day.”

He was building the foundations for what would become his multi-million dollar social selling playbook — and doing it almost by accident.

Alex notched Rep of the Month for six of the first 12 months he was at FXCM and eventually moved to inDinero, where his success snowballed.

He focused on the principles of selling, listening intently to customer problems and utilizing subject matter experts to get the specific information he needed.

“I learned it’s important to know where the knowledge comes from and continually bug the people who do know what they’re talking about.”

He was selling a huge volume of mid-sized deals — $12k average contract value, and over 13 closed every month. A year and some change in, Alex had single-handedly closed an astonishing 183 deals.

He was honing in on a method for achieving repeated success, and he was hungry to share it.

Building Something New with Social Selling

Alex left inDinero and started his B2B organic growth agency, RevenueZen, and suddenly became a sales leader, hiring manager, trainer, onboarder, and client manager.

“How does the science and art of communication lead to people making more enjoyable and larger purchasing decisions? That’s how I got started with this,” he says.

It was early on, but he was already creating buzz.

One of his bosses and mentors told him, “I love what you’ve been doing — they’re talking about it in some of the boardrooms around Portland.”

“Really? Me?,” he thought.

“And there was this kernel of like, maybe I do know something worth sharing,” he told Josh.

So, he started posting regularly in LinkedIn and Modern Sales Pros, one of the world’s largest communities for go-to-market insights.

He didn’t call it social selling at the time — but he quickly realized that if shared his knowledge in his customer’s communities, he would generate awareness.

One day he got an email: “I saw your post on LinkedIn. We should talk.”

Something clicked in him.

Posting could make real money.

So he kept posting, and it kept working. RevenueZen grew and grew some more.

Over the last few years, Alex built a social selling empire that consistently brings in 34% of his business’ revenue, totaling over $4.5M and $13,000 per post.

Using his core principles of selling, he’s distilled his success into a social selling method that anyone can deploy to build pipeline. 

And, according to Alex, you don’t need viral posts, hundreds of thousands of followers, or a big fancy brand.

Here are the social selling principles Alex uses to make $13,000 a post.

Principle #1: Demonstrate Credibility

Demonstrating credibility is more than a pompous show of knowledge.

Alex uses his LinkedIn as a sort of journal, documenting what he’s learned from his company, his prospects, his mentors, his failures and triumphs. He uses Sarah Brazier, a Gong AE and social-selling expert, as an example of someone who’s a seasoned pro at publicly documenting her process.

He adds, “And someone in your company is going to have the knowledge you want. It’s your job to verbally beat it out of them until they can produce it for you — then grab those and run with them for dear life.”

Principle #2: Highlight Customer Results

Social selling works when you’re able to help people publicly, showing readers who you are and what you offer.

This sounds easier than it is.

Taking a generic case study, posting it to your LinkedIn account without any context, and expecting people to think anything better of you for it won’t get you far.

“You need to learn to write a real story,” Alex says.

The first way to do this is by providing specific, crispy numbers.

Increased SQLs by 25%. Slashed costs by 70%. Skyrocketed ARR by 65%. These are attention-grabbing numbers that actively prove your value.

Even better, try to include them with an image. 

Every business has a way to show a customer result chart going up and to the right. Alex says, “Find it and publish it.”

His second secret to highlight customer results? Leave something out. 

Give them a blurry part of the photograph, a cliffhanger, a gap. Make readers have a burning question that they need answered from you.

“It creates this beautiful emotional reaction in them. Make them ask you for more details, then you get more conversations.”

Here’s an example of a recent post from Alex that peaked people’s curiosity and generated over 51 comments and questions.

Principle #3: Slow Down Interactions

Social selling is not the equivalent of an email blast.

Rushing into the DMs of everyone who comments on your post and pitching to them without having any context doesn’t create opportunities. Instead, it breaks their sense of psychological safety.

“It creates a moat around you as a seller that nobody wants to cross.”

Instead, Alex social sells in no rush. He notices opportunities, carefully reads into interactions, and finds common interests.

He tells Josh, “I just sort of waft the food in front of them. I don’t try to spear them.”

If someone leaves a comment on a LinkedIn post, he’ll leave a good impression with a simple response (he adds engagement is very undervalued in social selling). If someone likes three of his posts, he might go to their site, make notes about their SEO, and engage them with information that’s relevant to them.

“Listen to your gut and when you get to that balance, you just sort of feel it.”

Alex’s patience, his utter commitment to the long game, brings new opportunities right to his door. Check out this interaction he had with a prospect who responded to a message from over 3 years ago:

If this all sounds good to you, but you’d like more information on how to put these principles in action, Alex has thought of that — in The Social Selling Course, he dives into these principles in depth. 

So maybe tomorrow morning you’ll sit down, put some headphones on, pour a steaming cup of tea, and hit that little blue “Post” button yourself.