Episode 96: Alex Boyd, Founder of Aware – Helping Investment Firms (and Introverts) Succeed on LinkedIn

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Most college students aren’t spending their free time building trading algorithms. But Alex Boyd isn’t most people.

From an early start on an investment desk to founding Aware—a tool that helps professionals build real influence on LinkedIn in a fraction of the time—Alex’s journey is anything but typical.

He’s also an introvert who understands what it’s like to want to show up online… without becoming a content machine or someone you’re not.

In this Episode, Alex sits down with Stacy to discuss: 

• Why LinkedIn is the “introvert’s conference” (and how even institutional decision-makers are watching)

• How Aware helps users be seen having smart conversations, without being online all day

• His winding path from trading algos to building SaaS (and what it taught him about audience, authority, and distribution)

• What fund managers can learn from Ben Franklin, Buffett, and backyard saunas (yes, really)

About Alex Boyd:

Alex Boyd is the founder of Aware, a platform that helps advisors, founders, and creators grow their presence and engagement on LinkedIn, in less time. He's scaled sales and marketing teams, built multiple brands from scratch, bought and sold companies, and helps professionals turn trust into pipeline. When he's not growing his business portfolio, Alex can be found either with his wife and cat (Chiefy), at the gym, or in the forests of Portland, Oregon.

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TRANSCRIPT

Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors. 

[00:00:00] Alex Boyd: I don't really like opening LinkedIn and seeing whatever LinkedIn thinks will keep me dwelling on the browser the most. I want to just see what I wanna do, spend 10 minutes doing it, and then I'm done for the day.

[00:00:10] Stacy Havener: Hey, my name is Stacy Havener I'm obsessed with startups, stories, and sales. Storytelling has fueled my success as a female founder in the Toughest Boys Club, wall Street. I've raised over 8 billion that has led to 30 billion in follow-on assets for investment boutiques, you could say, against the odds. Yeah, understatement.

[00:00:35] Stacy Havener: I share stories of the people behind the portfolios while teaching you how to use story to shape outcomes. It's real talk here. Money, authenticity, growth, setbacks, sales and marketing are all topics we discuss. Think of this as the capital raising class you wish you had in college, mixed with happy hour.

[00:00:57] Stacy Havener: Pull up a seat. Grab your notebook and get ready to [00:01:00] be inspired and challenged while you learn. This is the Billion Dollar Backstory podcast.

[00:01:09] Stacy Havener: College students aren't typically writing investment algorithms in their spare time. Today's guest is anything but typical. Meet Alex Boyd, who started his career on an investment desk and is now the founder of aware, a LinkedIn engagement and analytics tool. What exactly, and it all makes perfect sense.

[00:01:31] Stacy Havener: Aware helps creators build influence on the world's largest professional social media platform in 70% less time. Alex is an entrepreneur, an investor, and. An introvert, which means he's the perfect guide. For those of us in the investment world who know LinkedIn is something powerful and also think it might not be for us.

[00:01:54] Stacy Havener: Prepare to have your mind blown. My friends meet Alex. [00:02:00] I'm already laughing. I know this podcast is gonna be amazing. Alex, thank you so much for being in the studio with us today.

[00:02:07] Alex Boyd: Thank you. I feel the same. I had the same reaction when I joined, if this is gonna be a good one. Yeah. Not that they're, they're all not good, but like, you know, the especially good ones.

[00:02:14] Stacy Havener: Yes. Well, what I love is I get to bring my friends and people who inspire me, and then I learn from onto this podcast and expose my investment industry friends. To some people they may not come across on their own, which is. Kind of the setup for today's interview. Can we start with your backstory, just to give people context of how you came to sit in the chair that you're in today as a founder?

[00:02:45] Stacy Havener: Because the journey has twists and turns as they all do.

[00:02:49] Alex Boyd: Yeah. Well it, uh, as you said, twists and turns, it wound through going through college and, and building like. Buy side trading algos in [00:03:00] my spare time instead of partying. It's my first coding experience. And then be like, I'm totally gonna get out and, you know, work at a prop firm or hedge fund.

[00:03:10] Alex Boyd: And they were just like, yeah, this is cool, but uh, you're not a PhD in astrophysics so we don't know what to do with you. Uh, but good luck. And I was like, oh crap. Maybe that dream is not. Gonna happen. And so I ended up on the sales desk of a retail brokerage firm.

[00:03:28] Stacy Havener: Okay.

[00:03:29] Alex Boyd: And then opened brokerage accounts called demos and asked if you wanted to fund live accounts.

[00:03:35] Alex Boyd: Basically it was, was the job and I did well I was much more interested in like finding the random, you know, two out of 10,000 people who are actually making money. And that was great fun. Ended up being like, so there's this crazy backend platform I can pull the, uh, trading statements of a central bank of a country.

[00:03:55] Alex Boyd: That's cool. I wanna do more of that. Why am I, and my sales manager was like, get [00:04:00] back to work. But it was great. Other than the fact that they ended up getting kicked out of the US for well telling all of us and therefore all of the customers. The wrong thing about what they were really doing. Oh God.

[00:04:10] Alex Boyd: But that's public record, right? So I was like, whoa. This happened after I left, fortunately ended up in kind of tech, but really like accounting and tax sales.

[00:04:20] Stacy Havener: Oh, okay.

[00:04:22] Alex Boyd: From there. And so more of the kind of finance thread is sort of the finance layer in was like, okay, this is not the same thing, but you know, still like, uh, more closed in industry than something else.

[00:04:31] Alex Boyd: And then at, within about a year and change, I was like, oh, okay, this is starting to make more sense. I think I can do this more. And when the, uh, promotion opportunity came for me to move from San Francisco to Portland, that's when I did that. Built a sales team very quickly met our mutual friend Amy, sort of through that I'd be like, Hey, we're both doing the LinkedIn thing and blah, blah.

[00:04:53] Alex Boyd: And but as before, there was. I encountered more friction. I decided if I wanna build something, I gotta [00:05:00] do it myself.

[00:05:00] Yeah.

[00:05:01] Alex Boyd: Started a sales consultancy, which became a marketing agency and then an SEO agency through twists of twists and turns, and mostly the business partners I worked with who that was their specialty.

[00:05:11] Alex Boyd: I. And then when I, uh, sold most of my share in that, uh, aware was already in the wings, but went full time on it. And that's my current software company because I was noticing that LinkedIn was such a good avenue for building business and well, where it tells people to do love LinkedIn better. So let's, let's do that.

[00:05:28] Alex Boyd: So I've just been basically is solving my own past problem at every turn. Hey,

[00:05:32] Stacy Havener: yeah.

[00:05:33] Alex Boyd: And then that's been great. And we're, the next thing we're starting is the same thing. We're, we're taking one of our current vendors who's expensive and annoying, and we rebuilt a version of it in like, like two days. And we're gonna just, we're just gonna build our own version of this and then have that be our product.

[00:05:50] Alex Boyd: So we can't, I love it. That's the, uh, the winding journey from. Me sending an application to Jane Street and DRW them saying Thanks, but [00:06:00] no thanks and ending up here.

[00:06:01] Stacy Havener: It's so cool. Well, and I love that you have some finance and investing background because I think it's gonna really help our conversation today.

[00:06:12] Stacy Havener: I also love, that you, in your spare time, you were just like spinning up algos because that's what, that's what everybody does. Oh.

[00:06:19] Alex Boyd: Hundreds. I mean, I'm like, you know how the um, the Google storage thing? Yeah. Every once in a while is like, Hey, you're running outta storage, and it's like, review your files.

[00:06:28] Alex Boyd: And I'm like, oh, I gotta buy more storage. Lemme review my files. And it's these massive spreadsheets of just trading data and all the stuff I was just like. Anyway, it's so funny 'cause I still see that stuff and all the, you know the, yeah. And I just deleted them all. I'm like, I'm never gonna touch this.

[00:06:42] Alex Boyd: I'm not gonna come back

[00:06:42] Stacy Havener: to this.

[00:06:43] Alex Boyd: No. Not that part of the world.

[00:06:44] Stacy Havener: Yeah. So there's one more part of the story that I wanna pull kind of to the front a little bit. Because you're sitting here as a founder today, but you also kind of. You've been a founder or a co-founder in, in multiple iterations, but you're [00:07:00] also a buyer of businesses.

[00:07:01] Stacy Havener: Yes. And I think that adds something because the way you think about building as a founder is slightly nuanced versus the way you think about building if you're a buyer of a business at another founder is running. Yeah.

[00:07:16] Alex Boyd: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:17] Stacy Havener: So talk about that.

[00:07:18] Alex Boyd: Well, it's, uh. It's a very different conversation, uh, each of those ways.

[00:07:24] Yeah. Um,

[00:07:24] Alex Boyd: I mean, we're in a few conversations right now, and so we've done both minority share investments in other agencies and businesses in general. Those are the ones where it's like the founder needs a little bit of cash and some coaching and. It looks like a good deal for us, not because we're just gonna like wait for 10 years and hope they sell, but because it's a cash flowing business where we're gonna make distributions back along the way.

[00:07:49] Alex Boyd: Um, so we've, we've done that a few times and we're in conversation with another one. Uh, uh, after this call, we have another call where it's like kind of a similar thing where we're not so much buying in as like [00:08:00] developing an MVP for. Anyway, we'll see if that works. Yeah. But like stuff like that where it's not quite a full buy, it's not quite an investment, it's something in the middle.

[00:08:08] Alex Boyd: We've done a few outright acquisitions and my lens there is very much like oftentimes when somebody is selling a business, I. They're not doing so because it's the bee's knees. Mm. Something is wrong with it. Mm-hmm. It's just a question of finding the truth of what that is and wondering if it's the type of wrong that suits you, which is the same thing in a lot of different contexts.

[00:08:32] Alex Boyd: And so once you figure out what the type of wrong is. Decided what that means to you, then you can accurately price it. And that can lead you in a very different point from, you know, like the guideline valuation. So like, oh, well in the energy industry, companies are worth this multiple of ebitda and that's why their stock price should be blah.

[00:08:53] Alex Boyd: And that just sometimes sellers will lead with that. Like, Hey, we had this trailing blah, blah, blah ebitda, and you can see from the [00:09:00] benchmark that this is, should be our violation, so you should pay it. And it's just not. For, you know, because of the wrong thing, right? Yeah. It's like we found the wrong thing.

[00:09:09] Yeah.

[00:09:09] Alex Boyd: The wrong thing is you had this much trailing blah blah ebitda, but you lost your giant as client and the remaining business is fine, but not sustainable unless we cut out a third of what you're spending money on because it's. You are now spending money for a 2 million EBITDA business where you now have negative ebitda.

[00:09:35] Alex Boyd: Um, and so we can, we can salvage the remainder, but we're only gonna pay you. As we manage it profitably.

[00:09:44] Mm-hmm.

[00:09:45] Alex Boyd: So like, that's an example of how we were able to buy a business doing, you know, 50 KA month of revenue for $15,000 down because we, we were like, there's, there's no business unless we kind of, I.

[00:09:57] Alex Boyd: By just the assets that we need and [00:10:00] not the whole thing.

[00:10:01] Mm-hmm.

[00:10:01] Alex Boyd: And it made sense. And the seller was just like, well, I can either walk away, which is the other option, or I can get some money from it. And we've paid them a good amount because we've managed it for them. We've managed the client contracts for them.

[00:10:13] Alex Boyd: So there's tons of examples of just like, you gotta find what the wrong is and do like that wrong. I say the same thing with any business.

[00:10:20] Stacy Havener: I was just gonna say that.

[00:10:21] Alex Boyd: Yeah,

[00:10:22] Stacy Havener: same. I mean for us, like when we get called in, I. To help, you know, fund managers or lately it's been a lot of wealth managers that are expanding and going through acquisitions.

[00:10:35] Stacy Havener: There's something wrong or we wouldn't be getting the phone call. Right? Yeah. I mean if everything was bee's, knees, to use your phrase, there's no need to call. There's no need to ask for help 'cause it's all just rainbows and unicorns. Yeah. So I think, I love that phrase is the wrong right for you, basically.

[00:10:53] Stacy Havener: Um, and I think you've done an amazing job of identifying what the wrong is. And my guess is [00:11:00] when we're in the founder's seat, it's more difficult for us to find that wrong because when you're in it, you're too close to it, plus it's your thing and you're all wrapped up in it. And I, and I also. That resonates for me.

[00:11:13] Stacy Havener: When I think about our clients and founders of boutiques, they're now running a fund. They don't maybe think about the marketing engine or the distribution piece because they're like, look, I'm a really good fund manager. That's what I'm good at, and I'm just here doing that thing, and why isn't it working?

[00:11:32] Stacy Havener: Why aren't, why aren't people just like throwing checks?

[00:11:34] Alex Boyd: Yes.

[00:11:35] Stacy Havener: You know, my way, and I wanna really unpack that because to me it's often, I don't wanna, it's not that it's, I guess it's the wrong

[00:11:45] mm-hmm.

[00:11:46] Stacy Havener: But sometimes it's just missing.

[00:11:48] Alex Boyd: Yeah.

[00:11:48] Stacy Havener: Right. It's not even there.

[00:11:51] Alex Boyd: True. Uh, I have a funny story that I hope my former coworker is listening, but I was at that brokerage firm.

[00:11:57] Yeah.

[00:11:58] Alex Boyd: And I had the, so I, we [00:12:00] haven't mentioned this yet on the cast, but I did have a CTA briefly, and I was in the process of spinning one up and it was like, good strategy. I've been doing it myself. Like the, main profitable accounts at the brokerage firm were mostly following this strategy.

[00:12:14] Alex Boyd: Ironically, it was sort of centered around like I. Taking generally the opposite side of what the balance of retail was doing in a particular currency pair. Worked like a dream in any, any environment that was, um, not just totally range bound. And I was like, oh, this is great. It was all built on, you know, retail off the shelf tech.

[00:12:32] Alex Boyd: So I got this thing spun up. I got all my docs, my materials, and I was talking excitedly with my friend. I think I was in like probably 24, 25 years old. My buddy worked on the sales desk with me and he was maybe four years older, so, you know. We're both young, but he had a little bit more years and I kept being like, yeah, we'll just raise money from small investors at first.

[00:12:50] Alex Boyd: And you know, I like, I see a clear path to, and I, he was like, you Sovereign wealth. And he just goes, are you seriously [00:13:00] thinking that you're gonna go to Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund with your track record and your. Non a UM and no connections and they will give you any money. And I was just like, it was, it was just dawning on my young self like.

[00:13:15] Alex Boyd: Wait a minute, you know? Yeah.

[00:13:16] Stacy Havener: Wait. Um, there's a flaw in this system here. Yes. Yeah.

[00:13:20] Alex Boyd: Uh, having shut down that CTA, uh, $30,000 of compliance fees and very few clients in the door later I learned, I was just like, okay. Like the, the, the main thing is the product has to be great, but people do have to know about it.

[00:13:35] Yes.

[00:13:36] Alex Boyd: Um, yes. And if it's not that, then you are a technician tinkering away in the corner. You are, uh, not Edison, but, but original Tesla. And I don't mean the company, but the man. Yeah. And that's not the best position to be in.

[00:13:50] Stacy Havener: Yeah,

[00:13:51] Alex Boyd: it's, I mean, Edison was also a very smart, but he was a good marketer too. Uh, Benjamin Franklin reading his autobiography now, really good marketer, Ben Franklin, [00:14:00] is actually a really good example of somebody who used media to their advantage.

[00:14:04] Alex Boyd: He bought. And run ran printing houses and used those strategically. And he accepted a postmaster general position?

[00:14:11] No,

[00:14:12] Alex Boyd: because yes, because he wanted better distribution access and it enabled him to really like, kind of, uh, there was some lazy, really low performing printing houses in the area and he just crushed them.

[00:14:24] Alex Boyd: 'cause he was industrious and he owned the brick and distribution.

[00:14:27] Yeah.

[00:14:28] Alex Boyd: So if he can figure it out on 1754. Uh, you best believe it is still true now. So we don't have printing houses. I mean, I guess we do, but the idea is what is your printing house?

[00:14:39] Stacy Havener: Yes. And,

[00:14:40] Alex Boyd: uh, how are you gonna reach Sovereign Wealth Fund with Anyway fun.

[00:14:43] Alex Boyd: That was a funny story, but, um,

[00:14:44] Stacy Havener: yeah. I love that you shared that because there are a lot of fun managers who have that same thought process.

[00:14:50] Yeah.

[00:14:51] Stacy Havener: Or they do the math. And then we'll stop pouring arsenic in everyone's coffee. But they'll do the math where it's like, yeah, but the Sovereign wealth has a cajillion dollars and if they just [00:15:00] give me a really small percentage of that totally, it'll be so meaningful to me.

[00:15:04] Stacy Havener: And it's like, yeah, but that's just never gonna happen. Yeah. That's not how they operate. It's not worth it to them for many, many reasons. It's not worth the risk. So with this in mind, and we're, I wanna come back to Aware, 'cause you're now sitting in this really unique spot. For the reason you just said, which is like, what is your printing house?

[00:15:22] Stacy Havener: What is your platform by which you are going to build an audience? You have authority, you have the expertise. Maybe you don't have as much authenticity as you need, but we'll just put that to the side for a second.

[00:15:35] Okay.

[00:15:35] Stacy Havener: The amount of fund houses that are really thinking about building an audience is. So di minimis, I'm not even sure anyone has that top of mind because they, they are in this,

[00:15:49] yeah.

[00:15:50] Stacy Havener: Status quo of performance is the thing. If we challenge that and say, yes, it needs to be great to your point, but you also need to [00:16:00] think about how you're gonna distribute it. Now we got a whole new sort of ball of wax that we gotta think through and LinkedIn to me. It's just this untapped goldmine for the investment industry that they're not even touching in any way, shape, or form.

[00:16:20] Stacy Havener: Where you see other industries, and this is where I want you to kind of help us think through really leaning in. So I guess my first basic question is, is there a reason why marketing strategies and building an audience on LinkedIn would not work for the investment industry?

[00:16:39] Alex Boyd: I don't, uh, the, as you said, the main barrier is they don't choose it.

[00:16:43] Stacy Havener: Yeah,

[00:16:43] Alex Boyd: I haven't thought of them. I mean, you can, plenty of regulated industries do.

[00:16:47] Right. You know,

[00:16:48] Alex Boyd: there's, there's no difference between having your customary disclaimers on a post or your account profile. I mean, there's, I. Any, any issue you come up with is like a pretty easy workaround. [00:17:00] And even just thinking in your head, like, you know, that wouldn't work because, you know, even a, just a quick chat GBT search of like, Hey, would this work in law on LinkedIn?

[00:17:09] Alex Boyd: It's gonna be like, yeah, here's why. You know, I mean it,

[00:17:11] yeah. You

[00:17:12] Alex Boyd: know, now the, the, the, ways to overcome those mental blocks are really at your fingertips. But I think it's a,

[00:17:18] Stacy Havener: a mindset.

[00:17:19] Alex Boyd: There's also just good of a fear. Yeah, yeah. Like a mindset because, well, who else is doing it?

[00:17:23] Stacy Havener: That's part of it.

[00:17:24] Alex Boyd: If you are, then it takes some trailblazers to go in and do it, but then the first ones do it and do really well, and you're like, oh man, I should have done that.

[00:17:34] Alex Boyd: And like, why don't you just be the that one instead of, you know, being the one who's looking after and wringing your hands saying, why didn't I do that?

[00:17:42] Stacy Havener: How, uh, so I agree with you. 'cause compliance, so there's some places people go, which is, compliance is an easy one. Oh, I can't, you know, my compliance officer won't let me.

[00:17:52] Stacy Havener: Or what, whatever. Like, I think those are solvable problems, right? Disclosures. We all wanna live in a culture of comp. I don't know if we [00:18:00] want to, but we live in a culture of compliance and we all, we all understand that that's the way the game is played. Mm-hmm. So solve that. The other, the other thing that comes up a lot is, oh yeah, but my target market is not on there.

[00:18:13] Stacy Havener: And it will be like thing. Okay. No one can see. Alex just did such a big eye roll. My target market is not on there because my target market is sovereign wealth funds or you know, X, Y, Z big institutional firm. And there's no way those people are on LinkedIn, which really makes me nuts to hear them say that.

[00:18:32] Stacy Havener: Yeah. So I'm not gonna say what I think. I wanna hear what you think when someone says, oh no, my target market is not on LinkedIn. Institutional investors aren't there? Sorry.

[00:18:40] Alex Boyd: I met a guy who manages a portfolio that was big enough to have an account with Renaissance Capital that they closed in the sauna in Vancouver, Washington, in someone's backyard, that they found a zoning exception and were allowed to turn it into a business.

[00:18:58] Stacy Havener: Oh my God.

[00:18:58] Alex Boyd: Institutional [00:19:00] investors don't go to places like that. Well, this fricking guy did, and we just chatted with him for half an hour. Uh, and I di it was the type of thing where you were just like, yeah, no, you know, normal conversation. No, he is in investing. Cool. And then I made sort of like a half, uh, half-hearted crack about how, you know, the Renaissance founder's kind of going off the rails with some of stuff he's saying, and he's like, yeah, that's why we closed our account with them.

[00:19:21] Alex Boyd: And I was like, oh, you're serious. Like. That's not a small minimum. Like okay. Uh, and I just kind of quietly went like, Hmm, but he uses LinkedIn. I'm talking about it, and just that guy uses LinkedIn. Why would that guy not use LinkedIn? It's like people say, you know, businesses don't use TikTok. Well, who do you think works at businesses?

[00:19:40] Alex Boyd: You know, corporate tired, corporate senior managers and directors, you better believe that they're exhausted from their day and they're chilling on TikTok in the evening. I know plenty of those people and yeah, and they're using TikTok, so like why would somebody not use, uh, Google or not used to? I mean, just, it's so, it's [00:20:00] ridiculous.

[00:20:00] Alex Boyd: There is no other professional network than LinkedIn. And even if they're not posting the life stories in short form videos, they're still looking. Heard the same thing from a, a rep at, Bloomberg Industry Group when I was doing a speaking engagement there, um, some people in the audience were like, yeah, but uh, we sell to the am law 200 into big tax.

[00:20:20] Alex Boyd: They don't use LinkedIn. And I was like, they don't. Post as much, but they use it. And then one of the vets afterward came to me, the guy who was like, called out as like one of the, one of the, the best sales reps. He's been there for a long time and he was like, you know what Alex, I really appreciate what you said because I get that a lot too.

[00:20:36] Alex Boyd: And these tax professionals, they definitely come to LinkedIn and I get business from it. They do it. They just don't go to build their brand. They go to learn. And that I, when I post, they get to learn from me. And that's why when I go to all these conferences around the world, yeah, they meet me and they say, I recognize you, even though they've never liked my posts.

[00:20:54] Alex Boyd: That's it. I say, you know what, I'm gonna use that quote in every podcast I'm on until the cows come home. 'cause it's true. Yes,

[00:20:59] Stacy Havener: it's [00:21:00] so true. And the same thing

[00:21:01] Alex Boyd: goes for investment houses.

[00:21:01] Stacy Havener: Yes. I think you're right. I love what you said there, and I want everybody to, to hear this, so I'm doubling down.

[00:21:08] Stacy Havener: There's a difference between being on LinkedIn and posting. On LinkedIn, those are not exclusionary. Just because someone's not posting doesn't mean they're not there. Mm-hmm. And to your point, and I'm sure you've seen this as well, I know I have like the shadow fans, as I like to call them, the people who are just watching, they're not engaging with your content.

[00:21:32] Stacy Havener: They're not posting, but they're there in the shadows. They're the ones who just seem to pop up out of nowhere. And they're like, I need to talk with you. I need to, I need to hire you. I need to do this. And you're like, where did this person come from? Little did you know they've been watching you on LinkedIn for a year or you know, or 18 months or whatever it is.

[00:21:52] Stacy Havener: So it's such a good point. People are human and we. Have our phones with us all the [00:22:00] time, and we're tired and we scroll. It's just what we do.

[00:22:04] Alex Boyd: I have you, um, do you do like speaking stuff? Have you like given a conference? Yeah. Yeah. So you've given a conference talk. This is a, I think, a revealing point. I.

[00:22:13] Alex Boyd: Who comes up to you after the conference to ask you a billion questions? What type of people do that?

[00:22:18] Stacy Havener: Oh, the quiet ones. The quiet ones who weren't raising, they didn't raise their hand in the session, but they'll come up afterwards with some thoughtful thing. Mm-hmm. Because they've been following you or they recognize you and they want to now sort of step out of the shadows.

[00:22:33] Alex Boyd: Yeah, the quiet ones and uh, and also the ones who are like super fans. And so the, those two groups are important because on LinkedIn the ones who engage with you are like the LinkedIn active super fans. So you, you shouldn't expect the post on LinkedIn and have capital allocators like your posts. You should expect other people who are kind of in and around it to like your posts and for capital allocates to see your post yes and [00:23:00] quietly contact you.

[00:23:01] Alex Boyd: On your website or something, or dm, they're the, it's the same with corporate decision makers. They're not so dumbest to broadcast their intentions like that. Yes. I don't expect them to, but they will see it. So the, what a great point. And this disease is a common objection, which is like, well, I've been posting for two months and none of my ideal clients have engaged with me.

[00:23:20] Alex Boyd: Well, of course, they're not gonna gonna do that. Because have you met these people? Like if they did that, they're gonna have tons of people breathing down their necks. Yeah. But what are you doing on LinkedIn about Everyone else is gonna see it and prospect them for it. And they know that. And to be educated in the way of LinkedIn is to see. And to realize,

[00:23:39] yeah,

[00:23:40] Alex Boyd: how much politics is going on in their organization and behind the scenes and externally such that they're just like, I'm not gonna publicly hit the like button.

[00:23:48] Alex Boyd: No way. Yeah. But they'll definitely go and, you know, contact you, uh, connect request and dm, maybe InMail, maybe website, or you'll get like an inexplicable contact from, uh, their, scout [00:24:00] representative or research person or someone on the organization. And, uh, it won't be until you get on the call.

[00:24:06] Alex Boyd: But they're like, oh yeah, my boss asked me to, to reach out to you. And you probe. And they're like, uh, well, honestly, I follow you on LinkedIn too.

[00:24:13] Stacy Havener: Yeah.

[00:24:13] Alex Boyd: and then it isn't that wild out. Yeah.

[00:24:15] Stacy Havener: and it's, it's because we can't see it that we think it doesn't exist.

[00:24:19] Yeah.

[00:24:21] Stacy Havener: And this is a great lesson and I wanna talk about how AWARE can solve some of these problems. Um, And how we can just approach this in a more thoughtful way if we agree that LinkedIn has power, if you're in investments or in wealth. If we agree that the power isn't always gonna be. The tip of the iceberg that everybody sees.

[00:24:44] Stacy Havener: A lot of it's gonna be under the surface. Yeah. How can we make it work? Then how do we harness that in such a way that we can point to it and say No, see, it works like so much of it is unstructured data, if you will. [00:25:00] And I wanna talk about just how to make that easier. 'cause there's complexity.

[00:25:04] Alex Boyd: That's true.

[00:25:05] Alex Boyd: Yeah. And so, like you alluded to, like, what, what does Aware do? Um, I mean in, in really brief, it helps you do some of the things that you should be doing on LinkedIn, like scheduling, drafting, posting content, engaging with the right people. It makes all that much faster. It's kind of a workflow tool to do all that stuff.

[00:25:20] Alex Boyd: , more easily. But, um, some people wonder why they should be doing those things. And so I'm gonna introduce a skill that most people don't think they need, but you do. And it's to be seen having conversations, which is very weird to think about and different, and you don't normally think about going to conference and, and being seen, having conversations because it's, that's awkward to think about.

[00:25:43] Alex Boyd: But if you're on LinkedIn, a lot of the engagement that you're doing, the commenting that you're doing is not with the person who wrote the post or the person who wrote the comment you're replying to. It's everyone else who is seeing that conversation. I mean, this goes, I. [00:26:00] Quadruple for, uh, regulated industries and for anything, anything enterprise, anything where the buyer, like I mentioned is, is politicized and is not broadcasting their attentions publicly.

[00:26:10] Alex Boyd: So if you're in wealth and you're raising from individual investors, it, this is not quite the case because, you know, you can often be engaging with people who are active and they have, you know, uh, eight, nine figure net worth, but they're still doing stuff on LinkedIn. But if it's like institutional, they're usually not.

[00:26:26] Alex Boyd: Public, so, if it's them that you're focused on, you're mostly being seen having conversations about the industry.

[00:26:33] Mm-hmm. You're

[00:26:33] Alex Boyd: not conversing directly or at the people, which is a bit odd, but it doesn't it align with how they buy. They don't, again, they don't show up and are, they're not loud.

[00:26:43] Alex Boyd: They're watching quietly. Yeah. Thoughtfully behind the scenes. So again, individual, great. Like you can actually have conversations with your prospective clients. I think that's. Great. And you can do that with Aware. You can add them all to a list and engage with them proactively. It's wonderful if, if it's institutional, you're adding influencers [00:27:00] to a list, engaging with them, because then you want to engage with the people your institutional clients are watching.

[00:27:06] Alex Boyd: I. Rather with them, with them directly. So it's like you, I love

[00:27:10] Stacy Havener: this

[00:27:11] Alex Boyd: picture. The conference, right? There's this wall of people sitting down in the corner and they're your clients and there's a like a middle part of the conference floor where some well-known people are all loudly talking. You don't really go up and sit with the people in the chairs against the wall 'cause they're just gonna nod and hi and not speak with you much.

[00:27:33] Alex Boyd: It's much better if you go to the middle and join that conversation. This is, I find putting it in conference terms makes it click.

[00:27:40] Stacy Havener: Yes.

[00:27:40] Alex Boyd: It's not weird internet land, it's just. Like social behavior, you know? And I think we lose that when we get to LinkedIn and we think it's weird internet land and it's not.

[00:27:49] Alex Boyd: So picture is a conference and it makes it big clearer.

[00:27:52] Stacy Havener: I love this and I have never heard someone talk about this concept this way. It's [00:28:00] really thoughtful, which of course it is 'cause it's from you. I also think to stay with that conference idea for, for a fund manager who's maybe. Quiet, as we've been saying, introverted, maybe even socially awkward.

[00:28:16] Stacy Havener: The idea of going to the center of the circle is terrifying. It's like, it's like it's a dance circle and we're asking them to go in the middle and start doing the running man or something, and they're never gonna do that, right? They want to stay at the wall with the people who don't talk. So to kind of.

[00:28:34] Stacy Havener: Beat this analogy to death, but I want to because it's important that that center circle where the loud people are, you can be right on the outside of it.

[00:28:45] Alex Boyd: Yeah.

[00:28:46] Stacy Havener: You don't have to be at the wall. You don't have to go into the center of the circle and start dancing.

[00:28:51] Alex Boyd: Yep.

[00:28:52] Stacy Havener: But you can be there, you can have sidebar conversations with other people who are on the exterior of that inner [00:29:00] circle.

[00:29:00] Yeah,

[00:29:00] Stacy Havener: and I love what you said about just be seen, having conversations. It, it establishes your authority and expertise in a big way. It also builds an audience in sort of a sneaky way, doesn't it?

[00:29:12] Alex Boyd: It does. Being on the kind of outside of the circle is a great way to think about it. And, and this is also where I almost say, well, okay, now here's where the weird internet part is a benefit to you because you don't actually need to be, you know, in this big room with a bunch of people.

[00:29:28] Alex Boyd: You actually are behind your computer. So you can, ah, and this means a few things. You, you can do it when you want. Mm-hmm. Uh, you don't have to like. Be on full suit and tie and, you know, bright eyes and everything. You can, you can kind of, you know, do it when, when you please, even in a lower energy manner, it's lower energy output.

[00:29:45] Alex Boyd: So it's good for introverts. So there's, there's like the, it's like the introverts conference basically. Yes. The, the elements that make it so exhausting to do in person. Are the specific ones that make it easier on LinkedIn. And then the, I'll share one [00:30:00] unlock too, that helped me sort of, I would say classic introvert become more, more comfortable with this.

[00:30:05] Alex Boyd: And that is, it's not about the schmoozing, but it can be about the ideas. And so when you're not talking about. You're not like, kind of going back and forth with people about random, small talk, which tends to annoy people who are quiet and thoughtful, but you're finding the conversations that, uh, have something to say and you're contributing that.

[00:30:22] Alex Boyd: So a bit more like talking about the ideas rather than the people and events.

[00:30:26] Mm-hmm.

[00:30:27] Alex Boyd: And so if you, you can, you can do this on LinkedIn very easily. As you know in a conference, you might keep walking until you hear, oh, actually that's the one I wanna join on LinkedIn. It's quite easy. You can like literally build a list of just the right posts that have certain keywords.

[00:30:40] Alex Boyd: You can build a list of the thoughtful people who post about the right things and only engage with them so you can kind of pick and choose this behavior. And, and no one can corner you and talk about stupid stuff like they can in person. So there's again, a lot of benefits, uh, to like the introvert's conference of LinkedIn that you, uh, can't get in person.

[00:30:59] Alex Boyd: So [00:31:00] it's, it's even better. So pick and choose. Uh, as an introvert, you'd like conversation, but you only like the conversation that you like, not the ones you don't like. Pick and choose. And fortunately LinkedIn, you can do that. Isn't that so great? So clearly I've thought this through because you're, I'm laughing naturally.

[00:31:17] Stacy Havener: It's so true. I'm laughing because I feel so seen. And I love that you said LinkedIn is the Introvert's conference because. I identify as an introvert, and I think LinkedIn is great, but I think the perception is inverted. The perception is, I like LinkedIn because I'm an extrovert and that's not true.

[00:31:40] Stacy Havener: Mm-hmm. LinkedIn, you can be authentic and have authority and build an audience and even create alignment. All things I talk about. As an introvert on LinkedIn because it is arm's length.

[00:31:53] Yeah,

[00:31:54] Stacy Havener: it's one step removed. You're not actually face to face, and that, at least for [00:32:00] me as an introvert, like. That's a comfort zone for me.

[00:32:03] Stacy Havener: Slightly uncomfortable, but it's way more comfortable than putting me in a room of Of for networking. Yeah. Because you wanna know where I'm gonna be. I have the wall making one friend that I'm gonna talk to the entire night.

[00:32:15] Alex Boyd: Yeah. You get it.

[00:32:17] Stacy Havener: Brilliant. That is so good. So if people want to try this, for all our introvert investment friends who are listening.

[00:32:26] Stacy Havener: I wanna speak to them because I think if you're doing LinkedIn at all, LinkedIn at all already, something like aware, some sort of tool or tech to help you do it with more efficiency. You're already thinking about that. You're already trying to solve sort of the complexity of, of creating and commenting and doing all of those things.

[00:32:46] Stacy Havener: But if you're just watching, you're in the shadows, you're a shadow fan of LinkedIn, but you haven't stepped to it yet, how. Help bridge, how can it like open the door to the Introverts conference? [00:33:00]

[00:33:00] Alex Boyd: Uh, the, the defining feature that most people who are of that type come to us for is the custom engagement feed.

[00:33:08] Alex Boyd: So the ability to either take their current list of people they think are thoughtful

[00:33:13] mm-hmm. And then maybe

[00:33:14] Alex Boyd: add some more. From maybe our influencer discovery feature or somewhere in the platform where they're finding more thoughtful people and they're building a list of at usually at least 40, if not 60, 70 people or more, that, uh, are just on their feed.

[00:33:28] Alex Boyd: And then the difference between LinkedIn and Awares Feed is LinkedIn's feed is optimized to keep you scrolling and clicking and, you know, looking at whatever they show you. And a big complaint is that I can't just see a list of posts by the people I show. I I chose

[00:33:43] Mm. And

[00:33:44] Alex Boyd: aware. Custom engagement feed is only that.

[00:33:47] Alex Boyd: There's no ads, there's no nothing. Um, and you can put a list of. A hundred people on a custom feed and get a feed of just their posts, and it's literally only what you [00:34:00] asked for. It's, it's nothing but what you asked for. So it can feel a lot more consistent than the frustrating experience of going on LinkedIn and thinking, I.

[00:34:08] Alex Boyd: Just, I don't know what I'm gonna see today. It's a variable reward machine. It's, it's a little bit of a, you know, um, that's a gambling term. Um, uh, you know, the box where you press a button, you don't know what's gonna come out. Yeah. And that's what makes it kind of exciting, right? Yeah. That's what causes social media brain.

[00:34:23] Alex Boyd: That's why the design apps and feeds like they do, and awares is built for the opposite. It's, you know exactly what you're gonna get. So we don't, we have some discovery features where you can find new things, but it's, it's labeled that we're not gonna. Um, make you deal with new things when you're expecting what you designated and so it's built for people like me, honestly, uh, who want just what they set out to get when they open the platform.

[00:34:48] Alex Boyd: Uh, I don't really like opening LinkedIn and seeing whatever LinkedIn thinks will keep me dwelling on the browser the most. I want to just see what I wanna do, spend 10 minutes doing it, and then I'm done for the day. I don't do more [00:35:00] than 10 minutes of engagement for day, but with aware I can do. 30 comments a day, plus 20 responses.

[00:35:06] Alex Boyd: I can do a lot in a very short time because it's built for that kind of focused, speedy, uh, you know, non-addictive behavior. That social media platforms are designed for addictive behavior, and this is the opposite. So it's more of like a focused. Seller or founder's approach to LinkedIn and you can see the platform represents and, uh, what I've been talking about because, well, I, I was the one who, uh, outlined why it should be built in, how

[00:35:35] Stacy Havener: you are like the investment industry.

[00:35:38] Stacy Havener: Introverted fund manager's, best LinkedIn friend right now. I should hope so. Can I tell you that you really are, and like I, I mean I've known you, I've used Aware, I'm a, I'm a user. We've had you in our collective talking with our members and helping them, and I've never thought of it this way. Like this has been so insightful.[00:36:00]

[00:36:00] Stacy Havener: And if people want to connect with you, if they're like, okay, Alex gets me, I feel seen. Obviously LinkedIn, duh. Yeah. Is the place to go, right? Yeah. Okay, good. Can we end with a couple questions just to, this is gonna be so interesting. I have no idea where this is gonna go. I kind of feel like I'm talking to a fund manager now.

[00:36:21] Stacy Havener: I feel like you're cut from the same cloth. I wanna ask you some questions inspired, um, from pro questionnaire just to help us get a little bit more. Sure into the convo. I'm gonna start with an easy one, which is not that easy if you like to read, so I apologize in advance. And the first question is this, what book inspires you?

[00:36:43] Alex Boyd: Uh, I've, well, a few months ago I read all of Buffett's shareholder letters back to front in a Kindle book, uh, 1965 to 2023. And I felt very inspired, uh, after that. It was so good. And most people were just like, oh yeah, buffet this, [00:37:00] buffet that. And I was like, I've read everything. He's written in order and you can get it on a Kindle.

[00:37:04] Alex Boyd: It's so nice. It's just formatted for you. Um, like I said earlier, I, I've been reading Ben Franklin's autobiography. I just finished it last night. I started Poor Richard Almanac and it's so, oh, this was like, it's like, you know, three minute read. 'cause you, it's, it's, it's designed to be a pamphlet. So, and then I was like, I.

[00:37:23] Alex Boyd: So both of those are just really good. I like, uh, you know, I mean, Buffet's not a founding father, but kind of, right, yeah. Kind of. So like anything founding father esque, you know, in this,

[00:37:33] Stacy Havener: this, in this, I would say this. Yeah.

[00:37:35] Alex Boyd: Yeah.

[00:37:36] Stacy Havener: So without a doubt. Okay. Those are fantastic. Also, you just fur further solidified yourself as the investment introvert's best friend.

[00:37:44] Stacy Havener: Um, okay. Going from books to places. What place inspires you? What's your happy place?

[00:37:51] Alex Boyd: I tend to enjoy, I'm going there very soon, this little lake and lodge in central Oregon called The [00:38:00] Subtle Lake and Subtle Lodge, S-U-T-T-L-E. And there's just something magical and wonderful about it. You get there, the energy just feels like nothing else matters.

[00:38:11] Alex Boyd: It has big lake energy. All the soaps and lotions are just like of the, you know, the finest quality. All the cushions are just so, the food is really good, and yet it's so secluded and nothing else, nothing else that nice anywhere for miles. I'm going there and. Two weeks. So weeks, I'm thinking about it already.

[00:38:31] Stacy Havener: Oh, that sounds amazing.

[00:38:34] Alex Boyd: Yeah.

[00:38:34] Stacy Havener: And also I kind of like the, even though it's not intentional, I'm sure, but the subtle S-U-B-T-L-E. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how you spelled it, like that's, there's something there for me. Okay. Next it's talking about conferences. Okay. Um, this is not gonna be an introvert conference, or maybe it is, maybe it's a gathering of all the introverts and all the land and all the LinkedIn land.

[00:38:56] Stacy Havener: You're gonna take the stage. What's your [00:39:00] walkout anthem?

[00:39:00] Alex Boyd: Oh, um, good question. I've never been asked that before. Um,

[00:39:05] Stacy Havener: because it's gotta be hype.

[00:39:07] Alex Boyd: Yes. I think, um, it's like your

[00:39:08] Stacy Havener: hype, it's like your hype song.

[00:39:10] Alex Boyd: Yeah. Um, this is gonna be a really niche choice and you'll have to look it up because this's not a pop song.

[00:39:16] Alex Boyd: Um, I'm gonna go with, um. A song called Millhouse by, uh, uh, Highland Scottish Quartet called Tallus. And my gosh, my gosh,

[00:39:28] Stacy Havener: okay, this is

[00:39:29] Alex Boyd: one I've just like given up on completely on having people think I fit in. Um, because it's just like, oh no, this top 40. Like, no, this is like. Accordion and strings and fricking, I guess they do bagpipes sometimes, but like that type of thing.

[00:39:47] Alex Boyd: So good. Uh, yeah. And we're just, we're there. And by then the beard is even longer. The hair's even longer. I'm just like going full, full post capitalist at this

[00:39:56] Stacy Havener: point. Well, well, some people will get, there'll be some video clips, but Alex [00:40:00] does have long hair. It's currently in, in a very profess man bun. but.

[00:40:04] Stacy Havener: You know, if you, if you follow him on LinkedIn, you'll get some glimpses. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Speaking of profession, what profession, other than your own, would you like to attempt? I've attempted a good amount. Yeah. Uh, I mean, I have these weird times when I think, oh, I go back to fund management. having learned all these things, um, for various reasons I've, I've held off.

[00:40:26] Alex Boyd: But then. People keep asking me if our holding company for SaaS companies is accepting LPs. And I'm like, well, it might not be, you know, and we, we took some steps to set it up such that it would accommodate LPs later. And, and it's like, not for now, but we've done some, some groundwork to. You know, kind of do it in our own way where that is an option.

[00:40:47] Alex Boyd: Love it. I like optionality, so you know, we'll see. And it's very much like I'm gonna demure for years and years and then something will happen. Or there's a big opportunity and it makes sense to, and yeah. You know, maybe at that point it will. But, um,

[00:40:59] Stacy Havener: [00:41:00] necessity.

[00:41:00] Alex Boyd: I love in investing, and now I know enough about operating and starting and building and acquiring that.

[00:41:05] Alex Boyd: Like, well, you can combine those two. You know, we have Constellation software and other, , companies like that and I mean, they're very, buffetesque, right? And so, so good. I think that's interesting. Oh, I'm kind

[00:41:16] Stacy Havener: of cheering for you on that one. Quietly, me too Okay. Flip side, what profession would you not like to do?

[00:41:23] Alex Boyd: Corporate, uh, director or above of any function? Any, any publicly traded company where the title is? Director of anything, or VP of anything? I don't want to do it. , I talked to a good friend of mine last night who is a senior manager of, a big tech company and I just don't want to do any of that stuff.

[00:41:43] Alex Boyd: I mean, I can do the diplomacy game, but like the amount of people who are just constantly trying to like. Rip your department apart and take it for budget. You know, like, oh, I just don't feel like it. Yeah. You know, entrepreneurship is such a pure game, you know, like, because it's [00:42:00] so meritocratic and it's just like you gotta make the money to survive and grow like it.

[00:42:06] Alex Boyd: There's no room for all those things. Nobody on the team can be. Can be like that can be Machiavellian, and we're just quickly rooted out if there is. But in a big company like that, Ooh, you've got managers and managers vying for each other's territory and, oh God, no thanks.

[00:42:20] Stacy Havener: Big no drama. No drama. No drama.

[00:42:22] Stacy Havener: No drama. Okay, last question. What do you want people to say about you after you've retired or left the industry?

[00:42:33] Alex Boyd: Oh yeah, I knew that guy. He helped me out a bunch.

[00:42:35] Stacy Havener: I mean, yeah. Also people say that now, just so you know. I'd love

[00:42:39] Alex Boyd: for them to just keep saying now. I mean, yeah, just keep

[00:42:41] Stacy Havener: saying it. I mean, people who listen to this podcast are gonna be saying it.

[00:42:44] Stacy Havener: You are such a gift. Thank you for being here. We may have to do another, you know, sort of reunion with you at some point. 'cause we've only scratched the surface of how people can use LinkedIn in this business and. Appreciate you being the guide for us today. [00:43:00]

[00:43:00] Alex Boyd: Of course, I have more funny stories to tell.

[00:43:01] Alex Boyd: I've reserved some in case we do that. Okay, good. We'll, um, the business card story is a fun one. Um, there's a lot more funny stories where that came from. So, uh, thank you for having me on, and this is great fun.

[00:43:11] Stacy Havener: Thanks, Alex. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.

[00:43:18] Stacy Havener: The information is not an offer, solicitation, or recommendation of any of the funds, services, or products, or to adopt any investment strategy. Investment values may fluctuate and past performance is not a guide to future performance. All opinions expressed by guests on the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm.

[00:43:37] Stacy Havener: Manager's appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacey Haner or Haven or Capital Partners.

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