We’re experiencing an unprecedented time as the Coronavirus (COVID-19) stops the world in its tracks. It’s important that you know how to pivot your business during this season.
This week’s episode of Good Girls Get Rich is brought to you by Uplevel Media CEO and LinkedIn expert, Karen Yankovich. In this episode, Karen discusses how you can pivot your business amid the pandemic.
#GoodGirlsGetRich
We want to hear your thoughts on this episode! Leave us a message on Speakpipe or email us at info@karenyankovich.com.
About the Episode:
We’re living in an unprecedented time in our modern world as the Coronavirus stops the world in its tracks. During this season of life, it’s important you pivot your business, even if it’s not forever. What are some of the changes you should make? Glad you asked!
Your Responsibility
As your visibility grows, your responsibility grows. The more people that work with you, follow your program, listen to your podcast, read your blog, or follow you on social media, the greater responsibility you have to guide them through this time. You might not know it, but a lot of people who work with you or follow you look up to you… you might not even know them!
Instead of being flippant about the events around us, model what should be done for the greater good. Wash your hands, stay home as much as possible, and stay safe. Even if you’re not in the high-risk category if you catch the COVID-19 virus, there are others who are. You don’t want to be responsible for spreading the virus to them.
Check Your LinkedIn Profile
During this time as more people are working from home, you gain more networking opportunities. Instead of walking around the office during a break, people instead might be networking online.
Is your LinkedIn profile an accurate representation of who you are? Does it express to others how you’re here to support them? As you shift your focus on how your business can be there for others amid mass quarantine, so should your LinkedIn profile.
Remember, your profile doesn’t have to stay changed forever. Once the world returns to normal, so can your profile.
Focus on Supporting Your Current Tribe
Growing your network and client base is important and invaluable, but it’s easy to forget about the network and clients you already have. Instead of putting most of your focus on making new connections, find new ways to support your current network connections and clients. Often, they can be our biggest assets.
Learning to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic can be difficult, but we’ll make it through this unprecedented time together.
Episode Spotlights:
- Where to find everything for this week’s episode: karenyankovich.com/112
- A recap of Podfest (2:33)
- Introducing this episode’s topic (6:59)
- Things need to shift amid COVID-19 (9:54)
- Your responsibility during the pandemic (10:28)
- Why you should check your LinkedIn profile (13:15)
- Focus on how to support your current tribe (15:06)
- Recap of the episode (18:42)
Resources Mentioned in the Episode:
- Visit Nicky Wilkes’s website
- Sign up for the She’s LinkedUp program
- Book a mastermind session with Karen and receive a free consultation plan at karenyankovich.com/apply
- Join my free Facebook Group to share how you use LinkedIn and get support tips
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Read the Transcript
Karen Yankovich 0:00
You’re listening to the Good Girls Get Rich Podcast episode 112.
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 0:24
Hi there. I’m your host Karen Yankovich. And this is Episode 112 of the Good Girls Get Rich Podcast, and this podcast is brought to you by Uplevel Media where we teach simple relationship and heart based LinkedIn marketing that gets you on the phone consistently with your perfect people, people who you can’t wait to have opportunity to chat with so what we basically teach here is digital marketing with the human touch. And that actually is in that we’re gonna explore on this episode. So that’s actually kind of cool. So just so you know if you’ve listened before or if you love what you hear today. I love to hear from So make sure that you subscribe to The Good Girls Get Rich Podcast on whatever podcatcher you listen to podcasts on. And we love when you give us some feedback. So you can either leave us a review on Apple podcasts, because that helps us apps with our visibility, but it also helps us understand what’s landing with you what you love, and what so we know what to do more of right. And there’s also a link in the show notes to speakpipe, where you can leave us an audio review. And honestly, you could give us an audio message, you leave us a message on whatever you think you want us to know about. Maybe you’ve got a great topic or a great guest for us for the show. Leaving us a message on speakpipe is a great way to get that information to us. And then we can hear your voice, we can respond. It’s kind of a fun way to communicate. Also take a quick screen share of this episode on your phone and let your followers know that you’re listening to this episode. And what we’ll what I’ll do then if you tagged me, I’m @karenyankovich across all social media, if you tagged me then I can share it with you my followers, and that gets us all more visibility right? I appreciate you sharing letting the world know that you’re listening to the show. That gets me more visibility I in turn, would love to help you get more visibility as well by sharing the post that you shared. So when when right we love that, so just go to karenyankovich.com/112. You can see the blog for this page. You can see the link to speak pipe. You can see all the notes on this. We’ve actually started adding transcripts so that if you want to read the entire show, you can do that. So yeah, we’ve kind of gone all in on this. You know, to kind of start to dive into the topic of this week. I actually spent last week at Podfest Multimedia Expo, which is a which was a gigantic conference in Orlando, Florida. And it was such an amazing show and every time I go to a podcast conference, if you guys are interested in doing a podcast definitely check out the upcoming podcast conferences in your area. There’s some there’s conferences like Podfest, which are people come from all over the world to that but there’s lots of local conferences as well. So check those out. I definitely always go to the one in New Jersey, which is Indy pod con, which is coming up in September 2020. So I’m looking forward to that. But anytime I go to these podcast conferences, I really get all kinds of great new ideas for my show. So hopefully you guys will see some new things coming up in the show, as I process all of that. But I wanted to talk a little bit about my experience at Podfest, not the conference itself, because the conference itself was amazing. So there’s lots of ways you can hear all about the great things at the conference. But you know, what I teach is how to leverage relationships. So what I did for this conference, and by the way, I’m you’re going to be seeing a lot more of this for me because I loved, loved love doing this. What I did was I built a little mastermind around the conference. I brought people together Friday, the conference didn’t start till Friday night. I brought people together Friday, I might even bring them together earlier, moving forward. Just a small group of people that I then worked with personally through the conference to help them build relationships with the people. That they came to the conference to meet either whether they were the speakers, and it doesn’t have to be a podcast conference, right? It can be any conference, but really thinking about who are the people that are also at this event, that could be the people that can be the catalyst for change in your life and in your business. Right? Often we go to these conferences, and there’s such a whirlwind. We don’t even really make the time to make build relationships with the people. And I have to tell you, I, I because I built this little mastermind around it, I was so focused on my people and making sure that they had success, that I actually kind of didn’t build the relationships in some cases that I wanted to build around the conference, but you know, listen, live and learn, right? So I really loved the way doing that. Were taking a small group of people through the conference, and helping them understand who might be great guests for their shows, who shows they may want to be on as guests, right, because being a guest on other people’s shows, I could also build a lot of value into your business, who are the speakers that they want to meet? Who are the collaboration who can build great collaborations together, right? So really taking the concept that I teach in my digital courses in one on one and putting it into practice immediately at the conference, it was so much fun. It was so great. You’re totally going to see more of that, for me, actually had a suite at the conference. So I could bring my people up to the suite. We did masterminds on each morning, before the day started so that we could see how it was going, you know, and really dive in a little deeper. So really, really fun. But here’s the thing when the conference started, so this conference on Friday, and my friend Nicky Wilkes, which I will link to her website in the show notes. She actually came to this conference from the UK and one of the things we wanted to do when we were together and we had been masterminding for years and it never been in the same room together. But it was so fun to actually be in the same room with her. One of the things that we really wanted to do was put together in person workshops where we could work together. So that was really one of our goals. And on Friday and Saturday, we started talking about that. By Sunday and Monday. This is when things started to blow up with the Cronusvirus, with the COVID-19. And all of the challenges around conferences are being canceled. People were coming up to me at the conference saying, I’ve got a conference next week, their speakers are dropping right and left, do you want to speak at this conference? Ultimately, those conferences got canceled. So in that short matter of days, that pod fest was running. The world shifted on its axis for real. And, you know, I was hesitating a little bit about well, not hesitating. I wasn’t even sure what my role was in all of this. So I basically texted Nicky on Monday, and I said, we can’t be building an in person workshop in New York City in the next month. You know, people might not want even get on the subway, from uptown to downtown, right wherever we decided to hold the show. So this event so so it really shifted. In that matter of days, it really shifted some business plans that I had for my, my event, and Nikcy and I are actually putting together a virtual workshop. I will put in the show notes because you definitely want to check that out. And that’s actually what I want to talk to you about today on the show. So here’s the deal. I am not in any of the high risk categories for this virus. So I don’t want to get the virus I 100% do not want to get this virus, but I’m not too worried because I feel like if I do, I’ll be okay. Right. So I wasn’t really worried about that maybe even a little cavalier about that, as we were going through the conference. And I what I did when I went to the conference is I flew in and out of Fort Lauderdale, because I’ve My family has a condo in Fort Lauderdale, and then I went up to Orlando for the show, took a train back to Fort Lauderdale on Monday. Again, being really careful. We had tons of hand sanitizer and soap and, you know, we were really cautious about the events we were holding at the conference. But again, a little Cavalier personally thinking not really worried about it, I’ll be fine. And on the train, I’m sitting next to this woman who was a real talker, right, which was which was fun. I had four hours to chat with her. And this is a woman that was older than me. She was in her mid 70s and she was traveling south in Florida for chemo treatments. She had a very weak immune system. And that was a slap in the face to me, because I sat there the whole time thinking, How arrogant of me to think that I was that my responsibility here ended with me. Right now I was just at a conference with 2000 people. And again, I took really good care of myself. I wasn’t worried that I was passing the virus. But, I mean, I was of course I was, I mean, I shouldn’t say I wasn’t I’m always worried about that now, like, I don’t know, I don’t know, you know, what my risk my what my exposure was to it. So it was a real eye opener to me, and made me stop to really think what is my responsibility around this, not only as a human right, as a human being that that cares about my fellow human beings, but also as a business owner, right? As somebody that supports businesses around there, what is my responsibility here? So do you can you relate to that like art and it’s so funny because I almost didn’t do the show because things are changing so quickly. Around To this virus that I by the time the show goes live, I have no idea what to even expect. Maybe it’ll be over, maybe there’ll be no scare whatsoever. Maybe life will have completely changed, I don’t know. But I decided to do the show anyway, because I think that it’s going to be helpful either way, moving forward, just the wake up call that I got around what this, this pandemic meant to me personally and my, my personal responsibility to the people in my life. Listen, I was traveling to Fort Lauderdale to spend time with my parents that are in their 80s. So not only was I worried about the risk that I would bring to this woman that I didn’t know, I was worried about the risk that I was bringing home to my parents, right? So maybe you can relate to that, like maybe you can relate to, you know, not really knowing what your responsibility is. So over the past couple days, I’ve run a couple of group coaching programs, and I did some brainstorming with my clients around this, because there’s a couple of things that I think needs to shift. And there’s things I’m shifting in my business like Nicky and I are Already shifted the fact that we’re talking about doing an in person workshop in the spring to doing something virtual, right. But there’s other things that I need to shift. And I’m going to talk a little bit about these things individually. But what I want to, I want to just kind of go through this with you and give you some ideas what your role may or may not be in relation to what’s happening in the world right now. So the first thing I want to talk about, and I’ve talked about this before, and I really believe this from the bottom of my heart, is as your visibility grows, as your visibility grows, as in with digital marketing, as your network grows on LinkedIn, as your Twitter followers grow, your Instagram followers grow, as your visibility grows, your responsibility grows. And we see this right. We often think, you know, some of us don’t realize, as digital marketers that we have the same responsibility that maybe pro sports athletes have to the little kids that look up to them, right. So while it’s not the same thing, right, if you can, you can see the correlation that I’m making, as your visit. Ability grows, people are watching what you do. And they’re watching how you behave in your business in your life. And they look up to you as a role model. And I, you know, I don’t always think about that. As a matter of fact, some of my friends that read this conference, were pointing out some things to me that I had never really seen before. As two people at the conference that were were coming to me for advice, I didn’t really pay attention to the fact that they were looking up to me as a business role model. I wasn’t even really, I never really even saw that before, until the people closest to me pointed it out to me. So that’s what I’m talking about here. So as you move forward, in whatever moving forward looks like in your business in the spring of 2020. Or even if you’re listening to this in the spring of 2021. And you’re looking, hopefully looking back at this time thinking, Oh my gosh, that was such a crazy time. I’m so glad it ended so quickly. That’s what I’m hoping we’re talking about a year from now and that’s that’s what I’m sticking with. But while we’re in the meat in the meat of it, while we’re in the heart of it, people are Looking to you to see how you’re handling it, and what your role is around this, you know, maybe you’re an Instagram influencer, maybe again, you’re just building out your LinkedIn network. And you’re putting out content. You’re putting out blogs, like you’re putting out a podcast, right? Whatever you do, you have responsibility. So the first thing you really need to do is think about it. I actually saw somebody post something that said, you know, imagine your content in your social media feed, whether it’s your LinkedIn feed, right, and there’s a post about COVID-19. And then there’s your posts. And then there’s another post about COVID-19. What is your post look like? In the middle of that? Do you is that the image you want to portray? Are you I’m not saying that we all have to completely change our messaging. But we have to understand that the visibility that we have is reaching people alongside all kinds of other kinds of content. And do you feel comfortable with the with the content you’re putting out there as it sits in that feed? With all of the other content that’s out there about all these other topics, is that comfortable to you. So with visibility comes responsibility, you have a responsibility to check the kinds of content that you’re putting out on LinkedIn and other platforms and make sure that it is in line with how you want to be perceived. The second thing I really want you to do, again, around this, but also possibly around, you know, moving forward again, people listen to my shows, years later, I want you to go back and look at your LinkedIn profile, and highlight the fact if you do offer virtual services highlight that. If you don’t offer virtual services, maybe you want to think about that. Right? I think that we don’t often look at that. And when, again, when I was having these, these group calls with my people in my private programs, we were really looking at their LinkedIn profiles and saying, like, even me, I talked about the fact that I’ve digital programs, but I don’t really highlight the fact that they can be done from anywhere that they’re virtual. So if you’re maybe working from home from home for a few weeks, like I, one of my kids works for Amazon. He’s working from home for three weeks. Not that that means he’s not going to work, right. But maybe it’s going to shift the way you work. Maybe he’s going to spend more time networking on LinkedIn versus walking around his office, right? So does your LinkedIn profile position you not only as a leader in your industry, but as a leader in your industry that can help your clients whether or not they meet with you in person, okay, so take a look at your LinkedIn profile. And see maybe if you can infuse some more of that into your profile. So in these few hopefully days, maybe weeks, maybe hopefully not months or years, you are still not only supporting yourself and your family, with your income because your business is continuing to thrive. I think we’re the lucky ones those of us that that have online businesses, right but also that your that the people that you support, know that you’re still able to support them even if they are not comfortable leaving their house. Okay, so make sure sure that you go back to your LinkedIn profile, and maybe some of your other social media platforms, and make sure you’re highlighting that. And then the last thing I wanted to just mention to you is that I want you to really focus on your current tribe. And I know that a lot of times we use LinkedIn to build new relationships to build new clients. I love that. But for this moment in time, and maybe you do this, you know, moving forward as well focus on your current tribe, who are you currently working with? That might be struggling as a result of the changes in this, maybe they’ve lost their job? Maybe they’re, they’re worried about losing their job, maybe, you know, maybe you do energy work, and you can help them manage your energy as their, you know, maybe loved ones are dealing with this challenge. I don’t not sure what that looks like for you, right? There’s a million different ways that this could be happening. But I want you to focus on your current tribe and think about what do they need from you now? Okay, that is probably also going to get you new business, as I again as I was going through this with my current client In my programs out there were some of them that were really were already having people reach out to them about things. You know, people that they had offered these virtual services to before they’re now coming to them going, you know what, I need to do this now, right? We need to hustle with this now. I have clients that focus on HR, right HR departments are struggling with how do I manage these people that are home? Right. So maybe that’s not always her focus. But that’s a tiny bit of what she does. How about if she refocuses the work she’s doing reaches out to her current clients and saying, this might be something you’re struggling with just so you know, I can help you with this. I have another client and hopefully you guys are listening and you recognize themselves because I’m so impressed with the way you’ve been creating these, this, these reaching out to your current clients with this stuff that works with students in education. And now in the US. We’ve got a lot of students that are now being told college students have been working for they have to finish their semesters from home. What does that mean for the parents that now have to manage these kids being home, these kids have no idea how to, you know, finish up these courses, virtually They’ve just never had to do that before. So I want you to focus kind of go back, maybe even go back to your PayPal account or go back to your stripe account and go back through your client list and see what clients you’ve worked with over the past year, two years, three years, that might be time to reach back out to them and say, I was thinking about you, as I was watching the news about this and wondering how you’re making out with this, can I support you, because I know I can support you virtually these are the ways that I can do this. Not only you know, I want you to do this from and the reason one of the reasons I struggled with this was because I wanted to make sure that it was truly coming from a place of support, and and responsibility, right? You if you can help these people, it’s your responsibility to reach out to them and tell them that, yes, it’s also going to help keep your business afloat and that that hopefully will satisfy your responsibility to your life and your family and the people in your world. Right. But there’s probably a lot of people that you can help right now that you’re not even thinking about. So All of the business plans you had for 2020, I want you to kind of pause that for a second and go back through, you know, the kinds of services you do the kinds of things that are happening happening in the world. And think about, what is it that where’s my responsibility? What can I do to help people that are struggling? Whether they are now working from home for the first time, and they’ve no idea how to keep focused? Right? Or maybe their kids are home? Or maybe they’re quarantined? Right? How can it is there a way that you can support them so that they can have better success with this so that they can ride this out in a more successful way? And then are you making it really clear to them and your LinkedIn profile how you do that? So let me just recap this a little bit, reminding you a little bit that with visibility comes responsibility. Right. As your visibility grows, people are looking to you to see how they’re looking to you to see how you’re handling your business. Throughout this change of circumstances in the world. That is hopefully temporary. You need to know Know that and you need to focus on that you need to pay attention to that, whether or not you see it because very often, the people that are looking up to us, we don’t even know that, right? I don’t know who’s listening to this podcast right now. But I know that I have a very sponsibility to them, even if I don’t know who they are. The second thing is, make sure go through your website, go through your LinkedIn profile, make sure you’re highlighting the virtual services you have, make sure you’re highlighting the services that will be of most support to people struggling through this challenge. And if you’re listening to this a year from now, there’s going to be other challenges, right? So do the same thing. The content that I’m giving you in this podcast, hopefully is relevant to other changes that might happen in your world, in your business in your life, right. And then the third thing is, don’t always be going out looking for new business. Remember that sometimes your best customers are the people that have invested in you before. Think about them. Think about what they might be struggling through with through this period of time and how you can help them focus on your current tribe focus on what They need from you now and offer to them reach out to them offer a hand. You know, you probably I mean, I don’t know about you, but I know I’m working on ways that I can do that in a way that I can feel like I’m contributing to the support, right? Like, you know, co pays are being waived, and I have to still be in integrity with the clients that have paid me and have paid me well, but I think I also can create a package that supports people on a different like an almost like an emergency level, right? So think about your current tribe, go back through them, see what is your date that you can offer to them, and reach out to them? Because I think that they’re gonna appreciate it. They’re gonna appreciate it. And that is, I think what our responsibility is right now to see what it is we offer to the world. And what can we do to offer to the people that have invested in us that are in our world? What can we do to help make them have a successful transition through this crazy time on planet Earth? Here’s the deal in all businesses, there are seasons in your business, and pivoting in the world we live in regardless of what’s going on with, you know, with this pandemic pivoting, when you can pivot with your business, that’s where you’re going to have the most success. This might be a time in your business that you need to make a pivot, your LinkedIn profile is not set in stone, you can change it as your life changes as the seasons of your business change, you can update your profile and make some changes to it. And then change it back. Right? Like make like make a copy of it, like do a screenshot of it or copy and paste it or something so you can see where it is. You can change it back later. But for this moment in time, position yourself where you can best serve the world and best serve your clients. Change your LinkedIn profile to showcase that and get it in front of people. You know, we talk a little bit about success is a pebble with a ripple effect. Right you are that pebble so the ripple effect that you might be making by making these little changes and pivots in your business. That ripple effect is what is going to support the world. I’m here cheering you on, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats and I’m Helping you rise. I want you to be helping the people that you support rise in whatever way that looks like for you. I’m here to support you with that. Remember that I have a free Facebook group, we can chat about that there Karen Yankovich comm slash Facebook group, get you into that group, you can see that in the show notes as well. Let’s lift each other up, join the Facebook group. I’m happy to brainstorm with you there to find out what that what that role might be for you. I love to brainstorm these kinds of things. Remember, help me help you more often. And I will be able to help you if you share this podcast. If you take a quick screenshot of it, share it with your social media and tag me and then I can share it with my audience and I can help you that little pebble that you are making that bigger ripple effect. The bottom line is I’m here to support you. I want this to be simple for you. Let’s create our simple plans together. Be healthy, be safe, wash your hands. I’ll see you back here next week for the Good Girls Get Rich Podcast.