One LinkedIn Post That Changed My Business Forever w/ Avital Eusgeld
Chris Do and Avital Eusgeld reveal how one viral LinkedIn post, born from a bad experience, can generate massive business growth.
Chris Do
Founder, The Futur™ · October 29, 2024
The Price of a Bad Experience
You pay $250 for a 15-minute consultation with a personal branding expert. You clear your schedule, arrange for childcare, and prepare your questions. You expect insight. You expect value.
Instead, five minutes before the call, they cancel. When you reschedule for a few hours later, there is no apology. The expert spends ten minutes telling their own story before finally asking to see your website, information you had already submitted. They offer one piece of vague feedback, then a pop-up appears: Would you like to extend for another $150?
The call ends with a request for a positive recommendation.
This is not a hypothetical scenario. This was the exact experience of Avital Eusgeld, a London-born agency founder now based in Israel. She was left frustrated, confused, and $250 poorer. For most people, the story would end there, a frustrating anecdote shared with a friend and a quiet lesson learned.
But Eusgeld is not most people. Months later, she transformed that frustration into a single LinkedIn post. It had no image. It tagged no one. It was just a short, direct story of a poor customer experience.
That post reached 2.7 million people, earned over a thousand comments, and fundamentally changed the trajectory of her business.
This is not a story about going viral. It is a story about what you do when the world is finally watching. It is a playbook for turning life’s failures into professional gold, built on a foundation of integrity, audacity, and a relentless refusal to play small.
The Audacity to Ask
To understand why Eusgeld could seize this opportunity, you must first understand her background. It is a story defined by a singular trait: the courage to ask for what she wants.
At 19, while studying at the University of Birmingham, a UK school not as prestigious as the Oxfords or Cambridges her peers attended, Eusgeld secured an internship in Washington, D.C. She was passionate about American politics, an unusual interest for a Brit that immediately set her apart. She arrived a month late to the program, where 100 interns vied for the attention of 20 staff members.
“How am I going to make my mark?” she wondered.
The opportunity came in the form of a competition. The nonprofit was hosting a three-day event and needed to maximize attendance. The intern who registered the most attendees would win a one-on-one lunch with the CEO, a powerhouse who served as a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign. Eusgeld saw her opening.
She had arrived in D.C. with a contingent of 40 other students from the UK. While other interns were starting from scratch, she had a built-in network. She enrolled her entire group. She won the competition.
But when it came time to claim her prize, she pivoted. She recognized the immense value of the one-on-one meeting but saw an even greater opportunity. “What's really going to bring more value?” she asked herself. “I can have that one-on-one at any point... but this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
The bigger prize was attending the exclusive donor reception, an event off-limits to interns. So she made her ask. She approached the CEO and proposed a trade: forgo the lunch and grant her access to the donor party instead. The initial answer was no.
She asked again.
“I just was like, I've got nothing to lose,” Eusgeld explains. “Once you accept what failure really means and you're okay with what that means... you're able to persevere and say, I'm able to do that anyway and still I'm willing to ask. I feel like that's where the magic happens.”
Networking as an Outsider
The CEO relented. Eusgeld found herself in a room filled with Washington’s elite: senators, congressmen, and George W. Bush’s former Chief of Staff. For many, especially an introverted person, the scene would be paralyzing. For Eusgeld, it was a playground.
She had grown up in a household where her opinion was valued. Her parents, a doctor and an investment banker, hosted frequently, and she was always comfortable engaging with adults. “You had to make sure it was concise and to the point,” she recalls of her childhood dinner table conversations. “I knew if I wanted to get heard... I needed to make sure that I was making sense, and quickly.”
Armed with this confidence, she worked the room. She did not know what everyone looked like, which she now sees as an advantage. It removed any potential for intimidation. She navigated to the large White House-themed cake, a natural conversation starter, and began introducing herself.
Her pitch was simple but powerful:
- “Hi, I'm Avital.”
- “I'm from the UK.”
- “I'm here on this Ivy League program.”
- “I'm working for [the nonprofit] and hoping to enter American politics.”
As host Chris Do points out, this is a masterclass in positioning. She was not just another intern. She was an interesting outsider with a clear and compelling story. As Daniel Priestley teaches, different is better than better, and Eusgeld was decidedly different. Her story gave people a reason to be interested. It is a critical lesson in how to build a personal brand that gets you noticed.
She leveraged her status as a foreigner to her advantage. When a powerful figure would mention their role, she could feign a degree of ignorance that an American could not. “Could you just remind me in what capacity you were working for him?” she would ask smoothly, prompting them to elaborate on their status without her having to admit she did not know who they were.
She left the event with a stack of business cards. A roommate urged her to follow up with every single one, so she did, asking for a one-on-one coffee. Many said yes. She became the only intern from her program to be offered a full-time job.
This pattern of intentional networking and audacious asking repeated itself. After deciding against a career in politics, she moved to Israel with no contacts, aiming to work in value creation for a venture capital fund. She set a goal and executed. “I was having 80 meetings,” she says, ending each with the same question: “Who else would you suggest I speak to next?”
Those 80 coffees landed her a job at the Israeli fund of LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman’s Greylock Partners. It was there, at age 24, that she saw a new opening. People kept asking her for recommendations on branding and websites. With no formal agency experience, she decided to start her own.
She launched her agency, HiPitched, with a $100,000 client. Her journey was not a straight line, but a series of calculated risks fueled by an unwavering belief in her own agency.
The Post That Ignited a Fire
Years later, with a successful agency and two young children, Eusgeld found herself wanting to refine her own brand. While she was known for building personal brands for others, her definition was more expansive than the market's. For her, a personal brand wasn't just ghostwritten LinkedIn posts. It was strategy, tone of voice, and brand identity, the foundational work that comes before any marketing. This is the difference between having an audience and building an authentic personal brand.
This disconnect is what led her to book the fateful $250 consultation. The experience was more than just a waste of money; it was a professional disappointment. A few months passed. The frustration lingered. Then, in July, she decided to write about it.
The post was short, direct, and followed a classic storytelling structure:
- The Hook: “I paid $250 for a 15-minute consult.”
- The Conflict: A detailed, factual account of the unprofessional experience.
- The Resolution: “Actually, I did learn something,” she concluded. “Exactly how not to lead my own consultations.”
The post exploded. As Eusgeld describes it, the adrenaline was “almost like having another child.” It struck a chord with two distinct audiences. First, there were the countless professionals who had endured similar underwhelming experiences. The comments section filled with stories of overpriced courses and disappointing interactions with so-called experts. “Sadly, this has happened to me,” became a common refrain.
The second audience was consultants and service providers who saw the post as an opportunity to differentiate themselves. They commented on how their process was different, reinforcing their own commitment to client value. This distinction is the core of effective positioning, something essential for anyone trying to attract high-value clients.
But the most surprising response came from about 40 established LinkedIn thought leaders. They reached out directly in the comments. “Really sorry to hear about the experience that you had,” they wrote. “Please DM me to set up a time to speak, and I'd be happy to discuss your question free of charge.”
A lesser creator might have ignored the momentum, chalking it up to a fluke. But Eusgeld knew this was a critical moment. Attention is a perishable asset. She had a choice: sit back and watch the numbers climb, or actively stoke the fire.
From Viral Moment to Sustainable Growth
Many creators make a critical mistake: they post and ghost. They drop their content into the void and hope for engagement, but they fail to participate in the conversation they started. This is the fastest way to kill momentum. Eusgeld did the opposite.
She implemented a deliberate strategy for converting attention into connection. It was not passive. It was a rigorous, hands-on process.
First, she engaged relentlessly. “I responded to every single comment,” she states. This was not a task for a virtual assistant. She personally reviewed each one, looked up the person's profile to understand who they were, and crafted a genuine reply.
Second, she moved the conversation off the public feed. For anyone who left a particularly insightful comment or seemed like a promising connection, she followed up in their direct messages. “Thanks so much for liking and commenting,” she would write. “Would love to take this further and set up a time to speak.”
Third, she took people up on their offers. Those 40 thought leaders who offered a free chat? She booked calls with them. All of them. In the two weeks following the post, she conducted 40 back-to-back meetings. “It was mind-blowing,” she says of the conversations and ideas that emerged.
This is where LinkedIn’s magic truly lies. It is not a broadcast platform. It is a networking tool. Eusgeld understood that the goal of the post was not impressions; it was relationships. As Do emphasizes, this is a lesson for every creator. When people engage, you must engage back. Set aside time after you post to answer questions and acknowledge comments. It shows you are a real person who values their community.
Some observers were skeptical. Ghostwriters DMed her, claiming it was a one-hit wonder. “You can't monetize this,” they insisted. “Nothing's going to happen from this.”
They were wrong. The post directly led to:
- Three podcast invitations, including this one.
- Three new clients for her one-on-one power hour consultations.
- A branding project with a Y Combinator graduate who reached out after seeing her story.
Eusgeld had turned a $250 loss into an order of magnitude more in business opportunities and social capital. As Do notes, “The difference between successful people and struggling people is successful people take life's bumps and they turn them into gold.”
The Power of Integrity
A viral moment is a test. It reveals what you truly stand for. With thousands of new followers watching, Eusgeld’s next moves were crucial. Instead of trying to replicate the outrage of her viral post, a common mistake explored in a discussion on why you should stop chasing virality, she chose to reinforce her values.
Her next major post was not about her own success. It was about using her network to help someone else. A friend, a single mother of five going through a divorce, needed a senior marketing job. Eusgeld put out a call to her network and secured three job offers for her friend. She even coached her to negotiate a higher salary.
The post she wrote about it was a powerful statement of purpose. “We tell ourselves that magic is making such this, you know, difference online,” she wrote. “But actually, true magic happens when you make a difference offline to real people.” This move demonstrated that her brand was not about hype; it was about impact. It showed her newfound audience that her morals were aligned with her message.
Then, she published another post, this time a meta-analysis of her own success. She argued that the viral post itself was not the secret. The secret was the years of consistent work that built the brand behind the post. “When you're looking at that person behind the post, what's there? Is their call to action on their LinkedIn banner clear? Is their about section making sense with the post that you've read?”
This is a critical lesson. Virality without a strong foundation is useless. If new visitors arrive at your profile and find it confusing, incomplete, or inconsistent with the post that brought them there, they will leave. Your personal brand is the system that captures and converts attention.
Even in her handling of the original negative experience, Eusgeld displayed a level of grace that builds trust. When followers demanded she name the consultant who had provided the poor service, she refused. “That's not what it's about,” she insists. “I still think about this consultant... it was a bad day. I don't think they were frauds. I don't think they're a bad person.”
This commitment to integrity, even for those who have wronged you, is the ultimate mark of a true professional. It is the understanding that reputation is everything. “Being able to look at yourself in the mirror and be like, I like the person I am, I like how I handle this business interaction, what could be more important than that?” she asks.
Enough Is Not a Dirty Word
Eusgeld’s story offers a compelling counter-narrative to the relentless “hustle culture” that dominates entrepreneurship. As a mother of two young children, she has designed her business and her life around a different metric: enough.
Her agency model is intentionally boutique. “I take on eight clients a year who pay quite a premium price,” she explains. “I take on two clients a quarter.”
The feedback she often gets, primarily from men, is predictable: “Well, how do you scale? How do you make money while you sleep?”
Her answer is a radical act of self-awareness. “I think that we don't hear the word enough that it is enough,” she says. “I am happy with making this sort of money at this stage of my life... Maybe my 30s won't be that, but there will be time afterwards, and I'm okay with that.”
This philosophy allows her to set and hold firm boundaries. Her non-negotiables are sacred. She does not take work calls between 3:30 and 7:00 PM, a time she reserves for her children. This boundary is not a suggestion; it is a rule. She finds that women, in particular, are terrified to set such limits, fearing they will lose opportunities. Eusgeld's experience proves the opposite.
Her strength in setting boundaries comes back to her core principle: the courage to ask. When she was invited to fly to America for a conference while her baby was just two months old, she did not say no. She said yes, on her terms.
Her conditions were:
- A high standard of travel.
- She was bringing her baby.
- The conference needed to help her find a babysitter to cover her while she was working.
The organizers agreed. “Who would have thought to ask that?” she muses. Most people would have simply declined the opportunity, assuming it was impossible. But by being willing to ask, she made it possible.
This practice of unplugging is built into her life. As an Orthodox Jew, she observes Shabbat, a 25-hour period from Friday to Saturday with no phones and no technology. It is a forced reset, a weekly reminder that it is okay to disconnect. The world does not fall apart.
The lesson is clear. Success is not just about what you do; it is about what you refuse to do. It is about defining your yeses, your nos, and your non-negotiables, and having the courage to enforce them. Your business should serve your life, not the other way around. Defining what is “enough” is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of ultimate control.
The viral post was not an accident. It was the inevitable result of a mindset forged over years of audacious asks, intentional networking, and an unwavering commitment to integrity.
The lesson is not to chase virality. The lesson is to build a brand, a business, and a life so aligned with your values that when opportunity strikes, you are ready to capture it.
Turn your setbacks into stories. Engage with your audience like they are human. And never, ever be afraid to ask for what you deserve. Because if you don't ask, the answer is always no.
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“If you don't ask, the answer is always no.”
— Chris Do
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