254 – LinkedIn’s Hidden Gems: Nurturing Genuine Connections for Joint Ventures

Karen Yankovich 0:00
You’re listening to the good girls get rich podcast episode 254.

Intro 0:06
Welcome to the good girls get rich podcast with your host, Karen Yankovich. This is where we embrace how good you are girl, stop being the best kept secret in town, learn how to use simple LinkedIn and social media strategies and make the big bucks.

Karen Yankovich 0:23
Hello, and welcome to the good girls get rich podcast. I’m your host, Karen Yankovich. And today’s topic is really at the heart of absolutely everything that I teach in my programs I offer in my business and really at the heart of the success that the most successful people that I know and that I work with, are having, and that is, how do we build out the JV partners in our world? You know, we taught you I know that you guys are seeing a lot of nonsense on LinkedIn with everybody pitching, you get leads, get leads get leads, right? Oh, my gosh, what a mess, right? What a mess. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Right? It doesn’t have to be that way. I don’t want you to overlook the power of LinkedIn. Because of all that nonsense. Nobody wants that outreach. It says, Here’s what I do. Give me your credit card. What I want you to do and what I’m going to talk to you about on this episode, is have conversations that are here’s what I do, who do you know. So this is probably the most powerful strategy to quickly build revenue in your business, change your career, change your life, update your identity, like all the things, this is it, this is what it comes down to, you know, it can be simple for you as well. So you’ve probably heard me talk about on the show, if you’ve listened before that, I think there’s three types of contacts to build on LinkedIn. Obviously, we don’t want to overlook the power of people that truly may just want to buy what you do. Right. And that’s not always how i It’s almost never how I lead conversations. But you know, it is it is we want to be focusing on at least bringing some of those people into our world. The second one is the joint ventures. I’ll get back to that. And the third one is publicity that journalists who were the people that talk about write about, you know, what you do what you’re an expert in, right? And are you building relationships with them. But for this show, I want to talk specifically about how the importance of using LinkedIn to find and leverage joint venture partners. But let me tell talk a second about what a joint venture partner is. Okay. So a joint venture partner is when you have a collaboration with somebody, and there’s a lot of different ways to do this. Sometimes they’re called affiliates. Sometimes there’s cash going back and forth, right? Like, there’s usually some kind of, you know, I’ll go back to my Reiki days energy exchange, right, as long as the energy exchanges money, right, they introduce you to their audience, you pay them a commission, or a fee, every time somebody enrolls in your program. Sometimes it’s, you know, huge swap opportunities, right, you get introduced to their audience, you introduce them to your audience, they introduce you to their audience, and you’re just kind of swapping those opportunities. But a joint venture is some kind of energy exchange between people who have audiences that are similar, right. So like, there’s many, there’s many other ways that there’s many ways you can do this. Now, any one real way to do that, and I’m not really today going to be talking about the different types of joint ventures because frankly, I’m open to typically anybody’s ideas for joint venture with me, if you think that, you know, my audience would serve you or your audience would serve me, I’d love to talk and just have a conversation about what that looks like. And that is what we can use LinkedIn to do. But we’re gonna use LinkedIn to find these people, right. And LinkedIn is the exact right place to do this, because this is where the professionals are hanging out, right. This is where you can see into their networks, you can see the kind of content that they have, you can see the kinds of people engaging on their, their posts, and their videos. And you can see if there’s an alignment with the work that you do, and the work that they do, and the entire platform, just focus on business and professional development. So it’s exactly the exact right place to look for these joint venture partners. First and foremost, though, you’ve got to do the work on your profile, right, you’ve got to do the work on your profile. You know, if you have not yet done that, go to LinkedIn profile training.com, we’ve got a really easy to access program that we were just released a couple months ago, all updated brand new training on how to have a professional LinkedIn profile, you need to do this, like it’s done like that I created this training, because I’m tired of talking to people about this. You don’t know by now that you need to have a polished and professional LinkedIn profile with a great profile picture, a compelling headline that hooks, these joint venture partners, write a summary that showcases your expertise, but tells me more about why I care about that, right? So you want to you want to be doing this, you want to be creating a profile that’s attractive to joint venture partners. And frankly, you might even want to put in your profile, that you are open to joint venture opportunities. Right. So thinking about how think about how you would do this and think about and maybe even describe what a great joint venture partner look

like for you, but first, you have to understand a little bit about what that is. So there’s a couple of ways to identify potential partners. And this is where I like to kind of like, like LinkedIn is the hub of this. But there’s other ways to find these joint venture partners. For example, maybe there’s a Facebook group that has 5000, or 2000, or 25,000 people in it, that you feel really speaks to your ideal client, you can be like all the other 25,000 people in that Facebook group, just kind of like trying to bounce around trying to get some traction, or you can look to see who the administrators for that Facebook group, come on over to LinkedIn, find them on LinkedIn, use LinkedIn search functionality to find them. And remember, if you’re doing this from that great LinkedIn profile, right, it’s giving you credibility. So they’re gonna want to be like, Whoa, I need to know this person, right? And then reach out and connect with them. And say, I see that you run this group on Facebook, what a great group, kudos to you, blah, blah, blah, I’d love to be connected here on LinkedIn, because I think our audience is online, right? Just simple. That’s just simple, a simple connection requests like that. Other ways you can do this, maybe there’s somebody doing a book launch, and you think that they speak to your audience. Maybe somebody wrote a book, and it’s published on Amazon. And you can tell by the book topic, or the book description that you think that maybe their audience in yours is aligned again, now you go back over to LinkedIn, connect with that author and say, just read your book, love it love to would love to connect to you, I think that the work we do is aligned. Right? And this is like, these are the kinds of conversations that create wealth in your business. And I don’t say that lightly. You know, can you just imagine, like, if you got five connection requests, and one of them was, hey, just listen to your podcast, or just read your book. And I think that our audiences are so aligned, I’d love to get to know more about what you do. Maybe there’s an opportunity to collaborate, right? These conversations are so powerful. And as you are creating your marketing plan. I believe that joint venture partners should be a big part of that marketing, because this is, this is how that works. But you want to be intentional about this, right? You may want to say like, I want to have one of these joint venture opportunities every month, maybe even every week, right? This is, this is so so so powerful. Let me give you an example of that. I did a joint venture partnership just recently with one of my mentors. And it he brought me into his audience. And I did a workshop to his audience, but because he brought me in, right, so it wasn’t like I was just speaking to his audience cold. He was on that workshop with me going y’all need to be listening to this. Right, like pay attention. This is gold, you know, so that joint, so the difference between me doing it solo, and me doing it with a partner was massive 50% of the people that showed up live on that workshop, booked a call with me 50% swamped my calendar, like so I’m saying this because this is this is so powerful. Just interesting that this topic was actually I have these topics on my podcast scheduled in advance. It’s just interesting how that just happened right after this. Or maybe it’s not interesting, right? Maybe that’s how this works. Maybe that’s how the universe works. delivers me these beautiful stories to tell you guys, when I’ve got a podcast I want to talk about on this. But do you see how powerful this is? So you know that the next thing I did was like, Whoa, who’s my next joint venture partner? Right. And I by the way, I’m always looking for this. So I’ve got joint venture opportunities on my marketing calendar every single month, right? Because it’s really, it’s so powerful.

I want to take a second here to just talk a little bit about this work and how I do this work with my students. I am the founder of the shoes leadup accelerator program is a 12 week program that teaches women how to create market and sell their high ticket offers to create more impact, more influence and more income in their world. Our students are identity shifting, right? They’re stepping into these new places in their life and in their business, as the CEO of their world. And magic happens when you think this way, right? You know, thinking back to what I said earlier about these about your profile, and how you’re showing up to build relationships with these joint venture partners. That’s a big part of what we do in this program, we teach you how to show up, not just how to show up on LinkedIn, but how to how to show up with your energy, how to align your energy with that profile, and then how exactly what to say to the people that you want to build these relationships with so that you can get these calls on your calendar. And then you can get these these joint venture opportunities on your marketing calendar. Right. So this is a big part of the work we do and she’s linked up. I’d love to tell you more about it. If you want to hear about it. Just go to Karen yankovich.com/call. You can grab a spot on the calendar. And I’d love to tell you what it looks like to get some help with the work that I talked about on this podcast.

Right. So we talked a little bit about how to identify these partners. Now. What do you do? How do you make that first move, right? How do you make that first move? Well, you want to have a connection request that’s very, that’s very customized in the world we are living in right now. This This podcast is going out in October of 2018.

Only three, in October of 2023. Marketing must be intimate. I cannot tell you the stronger and if you if you take no other no other notes from this podcast, but but this write this down marketing must be intimate. We are so tired of being bombarded with these crazy, I can help you I can just by my insurance by my program, you need a coach you need leads blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I’m so tired of it right? You need to be creating a marketing plan that helps your clients know like and trust you. And then you need to have only warm outreach on LinkedIn. And even if and you’re saying, Karen, you just told me I should be finding these people like on Facebook groups and reading their book? Well, that’s a little bit. It’s kind of warm ish, right? Because you’re not saying hey, we both live in New Jersey, right? You’re saying, you know, Mary, I just read your book, I love this, this and this. I know you don’t know me very well, but I love it at all. But I’d love to connect with you. Because I think blah, blah, blah. So even though it’s kind of cold, it’s cold, I need to come up with a great term for this, if you guys can come up with a good term for this a cold outreach to somebody with a really warm connection message, let me know because I need to come up with it, I need to coin a word for this. But the even if you don’t know the person, or they don’t know, you, you’re you’re approaching them as I’m a longtime podcast listener, I love your book, you’re doing an amazing job in your Facebook group, right? Or maybe even, you know, I saw your posts on LinkedIn, because we have this, you know, person in common. And you were engaging in a conversation on LinkedIn and one of her posts and I loved the way you talked about this, this and this, I’d love to connect with you. So when you’re making that first move, make sure that it’s coming from you’ve done your profile work already. It’s coming from a place where you’re clear, you’re concise, it’s engaging, you’re establishing some rapport, right, you’re not just cold messaging these people. Okay, so think about what that might look like for you as you’re doing this outreach. And you don’t need to be doing 100 of these. Remember, if you want one of these a month, maybe you need to reach out to five people a month on this, right? If you want one a week, maybe you need to reach out to five people a week, this does not take a lot of your time. Okay, but it’s so powerful. When you’re creating your marketing calendar, as you’re moving into the next quarter, or the next chapter of your business. Add this joint venture opportunity line to your marketing calendar, whatever interval makes sense for you, right? Once a month, once a year, two, once a quarter, once a week, right? The more that once you do a couple of them, you’re gonna know what to do more of these right? And then do this, do some outreach, make that first move to a few people every week, so that you’re putting these calls on your calendar, and then you have to engage with them, right? You want to engage with those potential partners content. You want to participate in group LinkedIn groups and discussions around the kinds of things you’re doing. Right? You want to create a process to keep this conversation going and deepen the relationship. And here’s the thing, I am not a fan of like a B S messaging. Like we’re all LinkedIn, we’re grownups, we are marketers. We’re all on LinkedIn, to build our careers and to build our businesses and to build our brands. Right? So I don’t think we need to do fake I found this article that you might like, now, if you find an article that you might like, of course, you want to share that. Right. But I don’t think we want to do this fake rapport building, I think we want to do actual rapport building, right? Actual engaging and relationship building, because we’re not doing this times a million, we’re doing this times a couple, right and your success rate will skyrocket. The member, the more intimate your marketing is right? That your success rate will skyrocket, the more intimate your marketing is. So use LinkedIn messaging feature effectively, I am not a fan of using Sales Navigator messaging for this. Because Sales Navigator messaging is very clearly identified differently. Like if it’s an InMail, for example, if you use an InMail, it’s very clearly like we’re not connected, you don’t know me, blah, blah, blah, just connect with these people. Just send them a connection request, tell them why you want to connect, tell them why you think they’re amazing. And tell them why you think that there’s that you would be a value in their network, right in that connection request. And then follow up that acceptance if they accept follow up that acceptance with engaging relationship focused conversation, right? Hey, I see you live in North Jersey. I live in North Jersey, you know, crazy how we don’t know each other yet. Or, you know, I just saw on your feed that you were recently spoke at this conference. You know, I’ve never been to that conference before. But it looks pretty cool. How was it? Like, just engage with people? Do not ask them questions like, how’s your business going? How is 2023? Over 2022? Tell me about your revenue. What how many sales do you need? I don’t know you yet. I’m not answering any of those questions for you. Don’t make me work to build this relationship. Okay, I am not answering. I don’t care how much you can help me with this stuff. Do not ask me questions that are gonna make me work. You’re not interviewing me. You’re building a relationship with me. Okay. And you’re just having a conversation here right now. And do it you know, connect with the actual connect

thing, use the messaging when you connect, and then use LinkedIn messaging regular within the regular LinkedIn platform to start to build relationships. And I think very early on in this conversation you want to transform this conversation from just yet well, it is still kind of networking, but to proposing getting a call on the calendar and saying, Are you open to a short 15 minute call just to chat, I really do think that we might be able, there might be some opportunities for collaboration here. I’m a huge fan of 15 Minute Calls for this. Because, first of all, you don’t really know these people, and they don’t really know you. And you’re gonna know in the first couple minutes, just by their energy, just by the conversation, if that’s a good fit, so do not lock yourself into a half hour an hour call with one of these people that you don’t know yet. If they if you chat and you’re like, wow, you know, I do think like maybe I can have you as a guest on my podcast, I’d love to be a guest on your podcast, let’s see how that goes. And then maybe we could do a webinar, I can make you an affiliate, like if the conversation is going in that direction, then maybe say, You know what, I have a heart like always, I always, always, always, whether you do or not, I have a hard stop at the 15 minute mark, I have a hard stop at two o’clock. But let’s before we get to for before what what when when you’re only 10 minutes into that call. And you know, it’s a good fit, say, Let’s get something on the calendar for later this week or next week to dive into this, like hold that call to 15 minutes. Because you’re you’re going to be much more successful getting a 15 minute call on somebody’s calendar than anything longer, because you’re not asking them for too much. Remember, you’re tiptoeing into this, you are valuing their time, right? You’re not asking them questions that you have no business knowing yet, you’re not asking them for an hour of their time, you’re saying let’s just chat for 15 minutes, see if there’s an opportunity here, right. And then you know, maybe maybe do a little homework before that call, maybe do a little homework with for that call. And between the time you propose that and the call, you know, you want to be engaging on their network, sharing their stuff, maybe tagging them in a post, you know, hey, at Mary, we just, we were just talking about this and, you know, look at this article I just found right, engage, engage, engage, engage, engage, okay, this is either gonna be a fit, or it’s not, okay, this is not something this is not a sale, there’s no objection handling, or negotiating, or anything like that. This is just, let’s see if there’s an opportunity to collaborate. Okay, so let me recap this a little bit. All right. So you want to first and foremost, make sure you have a profile that really positioned you, as somebody this person is going to want to partner with, okay, that is on you, if you haven’t done that, your success rate is going to plummet. Right? So first and foremost, create your profile. Secondly, start to identify some potential partners, you might even want to make a list of 25 of them, and then just reach out to a couple of weeks, don’t reach out to all 25. Because you’re gonna blow your list and you’ll be you’ll, you’ll drop balls, right? Just reach out to a couple of weeks, you want to put one a month on your calendar, right? Because you’ve made that decision. And then make that first move, reach out, connect to them, send the connection requests, make it personalized, make it you know, make sure that they know, make it like be a fan girl on this right? Like, let’s make sure they know how much you you value what they’re doing, and then engage and build a relationship with these people. And very quickly get to are you open to a quick call? Because I think there’s some there’s some things we might be able to do together. Okay. So this is really, really powerful stuff. This is world class networking. Okay, timeless marketing. This is what is working right now. This is what is working right now. So if you want to be doing this, and again, we’re looking, I’m sitting here talking about when we’re when we’re using LinkedIn to build these relationships, we’re really looking to show up as an influencer. So this is how this is how this happens. All right. So I can’t wait to see you do this. If you think that there’s an opportunity for us to collaborate, I would love to talk to you. There’s a in our show notes, there’s a link to SpeakPipe leave me an audio message there. I love audio messages. Or maybe you just want to tell me what you think of the show. Or maybe you’ve got a topic you’d like me to talk about, or a guest that you’d like me to interview, leave that message out for me on SpeakPipe or you can connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message there. Right, I am here for you. I have founded the shoes linked up program because I want there to be more wealthy woman of influence in the world. And I as a result, I get to hang out with the most incredible women that people in our choosing program are absolutely incredible. I wake up every single morning, so grateful for them. If you want to hang out with us, grab a spot on my calendar, Karen yankovich.com/call gets you there. And on that call, we’re just gonna chat for a couple minutes and see if it’s a fit. You know, and if it’s if I think it’s something I can help you with, I will tell you what that looks like. So just go to Karen yankovich.com/ 254. You’ll see all the things we talked about here on the show. Today, you’ll see the link for SpeakPipe a link to grab a spot on the calendar and also that a Facebook group that you can join if you just want to be a part of the community and hang out with us for a while. That’s you know, I’d love for you to do that as well. And if you thought this was valuable, I’d love for you to take a quick screenshot right now pause it quick screenshot and then you can listen to the rest of it and then pop it on yours.

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