Daily LinkedIn Routine: Do the 15-Minute Ritual With Me

I want to tell you about Margot. Margot spent 20 years in finance. She ended up as vice president, and now she’s a fractional CFO, and she’s really, really good at it. She’s the kind of good where the companies that have her never ever want to let her go. And every January, Margot does a LinkedIn push. That’s what she calls it. She says, “I’m doing my LinkedIn push: three posts in a week, 40 connection requests.” She comments on every single thing that moves. She’s there at 8 o’clock in the morning, 11 o’clock at night, like it’s her part-time job.

And she does it again after she loses a deal. Same thing: this burst of LinkedIn activity, and then nothing, and then weeks—10 weeks, 11 weeks, a couple of months—of nothing. She doesn’t comment. She doesn’t message anything. She doesn’t even log in. And then a client wraps up, and her pipeline looks a little thin, and she calls me and says, “I’m telling you, Karen, LinkedIn doesn’t work for people like me.”

So I’m going to tell you today what I told Margot: LinkedIn works just fine; you just keep leaving it.

I’m Karen Yankovich. Welcome back to Good Girls Get Rich. If you’ve been with me for the last few weeks, then you know we’ve been building something here, piece by piece. In Episode 394, we talked about why clients hire someone less qualified than you, and the answer was that she was easier to cast—the buyer could tell in about four seconds who she was for, what she was for, what she wanted. In Episode 395, you built your sentence, the one other people repeat about you in rooms that you’re not in. And in Episode 397, we read a LinkedIn profile out loud three times so you could hear the difference between a resume and something that is actually magnetic—which is what I want for you. I want you to have a LinkedIn profile that pulls people toward you.

And I kind of left you with a dare: press record, read your own profile to yourself, and listen. Did you do it? Be honest—I can’t hear you, but if you did, I bet there was at least one line where you winced. That’s good! That’s good, I like that, because that wince is useful; we want to know about these things.

Today is the piece that makes all of that keep working for you after you close the app. Because here’s the thing that nobody tells you: you can have the sharpest sentence in your industry and the best profile I’ve ever read, and if nobody runs into you again, if nobody sees you, it just sits there.

I was asked one time at a conference I was speaking at after I did a talk, “Karen, I know you gave us a lot. What’s one thing I can do?” And really, truly, what I wanted to say was “Write your profile.” But a beautiful profile that nobody sees is like a tree in the middle of the forest. That’s the whole story.

So today we’re going to talk about the ritual—what you do in a perfect world. And I know we don’t live in a perfect world, but we’re going to talk about the 15 minutes a day you can carve out. I know you—I know there are times that you played a game on your phone, or you got caught up watching the next episode of Ted Lasso, or whatever. You can carve out 15 minutes a day. I know there are going to be days you don’t, and I’m not calling you out for that; I’m calling out the “I don’t have time for that,” because you definitely have time for this.

Fifteen minutes a day: I’m going to call it the LinkedIn visibility ritual, and from here on in, I’m just going to call it “the ritual”. I’m not just going to describe it to you; I’m going to start a real timer, and we’re going to do the 15 minutes together out loud, minute by minute. If you’re driving, just listen, and you can come back to it later. If you’re at your desk, open LinkedIn now and get comfortable, because we’re working together on this one.

So let’s go back to Margot for a minute, because I want you to see what’s actually happening in that January push. It’s not laziness—Margot is anything but lazy. She’s run finance for companies with hundreds of employees; she knows how to work. The problem is the shape of the work.

You know I talk about watering your money tree—your network, your visibility, your reputation. All of this is this tree, and it grows money. Honestly, it does, I promise you, if you take care of it. And there are two ways to water a tree: you can stand there every morning with a watering can—a little bit every day—or you can ignore it for three months, feel guilty, and then drag the hose over, flood it, and see if you can bring it back to life. Because when you ignore it, we know what happens to those trees.

Just a little bit here and there—that’s all you need to do, but it needs to be consistent. What happens when you flood a tree? Most of the water runs right off; the ground’s too dry to take it in. Even if it does take it in, it runs right through, and you stand there looking soaking wet, feeling productive, and the tree’s really not getting watered. That’s the push Margot was doing—that LinkedIn push she talks about.

So let me show you exactly where that water runs off: Margot sends 40 connection requests in one week. Great (I would never do that, but great). Say half of them accept. Now 20 people have seen her name once—one time—and then she disappears for three months. So what do those 20 people remember about Margot in March? Nothing. They don’t remember her, not because she isn’t impressive, but because they only saw her once three months ago in between the 100 other things they’re doing all day long.

Here’s what I want you to really hear: Nobody hires the person they saw once. You know this! They hire the person who comes to mind, and you come to mind because you keep showing up in small ways, again and again, until one day somebody says, “We need a fractional CFO,” and somebody else says, “Margot!” Your name is just there; it’s already in the room because you’ve been in their world, and your name keeps coming up.

And there’s a second thing the flood does that nobody talks about: it makes your connections go dormant. We talked about this way back in Episode 387, where we talked about the people you’re already connected to who have basically forgotten you exist—former colleagues, people you met at a conference in 2019, the woman you had a great lunch with and never followed up with. Those connections didn’t go dormant because something went wrong; they went dormant because nobody watered them.

The ritual is how they stop going dormant in the first place. It’s maintenance. It’s boring, but boring is beautiful: 15 minutes a day of maintenance.

So I want to tell you how all this works, not because I read it somewhere, but because of what you’re listening to right now. This right here is Episode 398 of the Good Girls Get Rich podcast; in two weeks we hit 400, and this show is in the top 2% of podcasts in the world. I’d love to tell you that happened because of one big push, one big launch, one viral episode, or some genius marketing move on my part. It didn’t. There wasn’t one thing that happened; nobody gets to 398 episodes in a burst. You get there by doing the next one and the next one—weeks where I felt brilliant, weeks where I recorded because it was Tuesday and the show goes out on Tuesday, weeks where I was going on vacation and I batched a bunch in and felt really good about it.

And I’m not going to tell you I never had a blank spot—for sure I did. Four hundred episodes is a lot of weeks, right? I definitely have times when an episode didn’t go out; I’m not going to say “never have I done this.” I am all about ease in my business, and there are just some weeks that I can’t make it happen. Now, we’ve been really consistent lately because I’ve committed to that, and it makes a difference.

We’ve had so many evolutions of this show and my business over these 400 episodes, and it’s interesting to me to see this evolution. So I’m sitting here telling you that we didn’t get to Episode 400 because I’m perfect; we did it so imperfectly, but we did it imperfectly consistent. And the episodes that bring new people to this show today—a lot of them are my old ones, episodes I recorded years ago that people are still finding in search every single week. That’s what watering looks like: you do the small thing, you forget about it, and it keeps growing without you.

That’s what I want for you. That’s part of that magnet I want for you. It doesn’t mean you have to do a podcast every week—everybody has a different way of doing this—but the ritual is about consistency.

So here’s what I want you to land before we get to the clock: Margot doesn’t need a better push. She doesn’t need a smarter January. She needs to stop doing pushes completely and trade them for something so small it almost feels silly: 15 minutes every workday.

Sometimes I sit on my couch in the morning and do this ritual while catching up on something on TV or watching the news—I still haven’t even changed out of my pajamas yet! Because flooding feels like work. What we need to remember is this: watering is the work. It’s so simple, it can be done anywhere, anytime—waiting in your car for your kids’ soccer practice to finish.

All right, so before I start the timer, two quick things, because one of them could make part of your 15 minutes completely invisible and you’d never know it.

I talk a lot about training the LinkedIn algorithm, and I really want to be clear with you about this, because anybody who tells you they know exactly what the LinkedIn algorithm is doing—let me make a broad statement and qualify it—is lying, because it changes every five minutes. Now, there are people out there that I absolutely respect and pay for their reports as a fellow LinkedIn trainer because they count posts and engagement and publish findings for the rest of us. So I’m not talking about those people; I’m talking about general people who say, “Here’s what happens with the LinkedIn algorithm today.” The algorithm is a moving target, and anybody who tells you they’ve cracked the exact formula—”post at 8:14 on a Tuesday with three hashtags”—is full of it. Don’t believe it. If someone says they’ve researched 5,000 posts over six months and determined the exact formula for this minute, they’re lying to you.

However, there are some consistencies over all the years I’ve been doing this, and the biggest one is really simple: LinkedIn pays attention to who you pay attention to. So when you engage with someone—open their profile, comment on what they wrote, send them a message—LinkedIn notices. The latest algorithm reports talk about the fact that LinkedIn also notices what you talk about, and the more consistent you are with the people you talk to and the topics you discuss, LinkedIn understands this.

That’s what I mean when I say “training the LinkedIn algorithm”—not that it’s going to be perfect, but we’re doing everything we can to help LinkedIn send the right people to us. But here’s the beautiful part: when you engage with someone, open their profile, comment, or message them, not only does LinkedIn notice, the person notices. And that’s the part I care about most—the human on the other end. You’re teaching LinkedIn who your people are by actually paying attention to your people every day. It’s not a trick; it’s just showing up where you want to be known, in the communities you want to be known in, for what you want to be known for.

The second thing—and this one matters: Part of today’s ritual is opening profiles. When you open someone’s profile, if their settings and your settings allow it, they can see that you looked. If your profile viewing is set to private mode and you’re browsing anonymously, all those views disappear; nobody sees you, and you’re doing your work in the dark. So I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t make this public. Go into your settings under visibility, find profile viewing options, and select the one that shows your name and headline at least. Do that today—seriously, pause me if you need to and take care of that right now.

All right, the last thing before we start: in the second block, I’m going to ask you to open 10 profiles. So who are your 10 people? I’m talking about three kinds of people:

1. Your ideal clients—people who could hire you.

2. People you want to be connected to—the ones who’d make your network smarter, your reputation stronger, or who know people who know people.

3. Connectors and partners—people who could hand you a great contract, a great stage, a podcast host, a conference chair, journalists, or a partner at a firm who always needs someone like you.

You don’t need a perfect list today; it’s fine to just search your title plus your city, or look at who’s commented on your posts lately. One of the things I do if I’m not sure who to look at is I’ll go to the search bar, type in a topic I’m talking about this week (like “imposter syndrome”), and see who else is posting about it, then view their profiles. Or I’ll go to a group that has my ideal client in it and open a bunch of profiles of group members. Don’t make this hard on yourself; don’t spend 20 minutes trying to figure out who these 10 people are.

Here’s how this clock works: 15 minutes, four blocks. I’ll tell you when we move. When it’s time to write something, I’ll go quiet and give you room to do that. If you’re listening in the car, just ride along with me and come back to this part later; the show notes will tell you the exact minute everything starts.

All right, so here we go: the LinkedIn visibility ritual, 15 minutes. I’m starting an actual timer right now.

Block 1 (Minutes 0–3): Tending to Your Garden

For the first three minutes, we focus on the people who already showed up for you. Open your notifications and messages. Look for anyone who did something in the last day: commented on your post, replied to you, sent a message, or accepted your connection request. Every single one of them gets a comment and an answer today—not when you “have a minute to write something really thoughtful,” but today. Write something thoughtful, but don’t take a lot of time doing it.

I cannot tell you how many women I’ve worked with who’ve had a comment sitting on their post for nine days—nine days! Somebody raised their hand in public and said, “I see you,” and it just sat there. Imagine somebody said hi to you at a party and you just stared at them for nine days—that’s what this looks like from the other side.

So answer it, and here’s the rule for how: don’t just say “Thanks so much.” A thank you is great, but a thank you ends the conversation. You want to do what you can to keep the conversation going. If someone comments, “This is so true, I see this with my clients all the time,” say thank you and add something like, “Which version do you see most? I’m curious if it’s the same in your industry as it is in mine.” Make it a conversation, because now she’ll come back.

Same with messages: if someone accepted your connection request, you don’t need to write them a novel. A quick “Glad we’re connected! I love what you wrote about…”—whatever made you connect with them in the first place—is enough. Just don’t let it go quiet.

One thing you are not doing in this block: you’re not looking at how many likes your post got. Nothing like that. You’re just engaging. If you have nothing in your notifications today, great—that’s information too, and you just bank that extra time.

Block 2 (Minutes 3–7): Training the Algorithm (Opening 10 Profiles)

This is the block where we train the algorithm. You’re going to open 10 profiles: your ideal clients, people you want to know, people who can hand you a contract or a stage. If there’s a conference you’re speaking at, look at its LinkedIn group to see who’s talking about it.

All you’re doing is opening their profile and looking at it—give each one about 20 seconds. Did they post something recently? Did they change jobs? Are they speaking somewhere? Did they just get promoted? Is there something in their about section that surprises you? Don’t spend a lot of time on this.

You’re doing two things at once:

1. You’re teaching LinkedIn who matters to you. LinkedIn notices when you open her profile, and over time, you’ll see more of the kinds of people you pay attention to.

2. She sees you looked. Your name, headline, and what you share are sitting there in her list of who viewed her profile. And if your headline is the one we worked on last week—the one saying what you’re for—that’s a tiny introduction you didn’t even have to write.

Go ahead and open the first one now. What did you notice? Hold onto it, because in a minute that observation turns into a comment or message. That’s how these blocks connect—you’re not just browsing, you’re gathering information. Open a second one. Leave them open if you want to go back to them.

What am I looking for when I do this? I’m looking for a reason to say something: a new job, a post about a struggle, a talk she’s giving next month, or a podcast she went on. If I see someone just borrowed a stage, I want to be the person who noticed. If you find a profile where she hasn’t posted since 2022 and her headline is outdated, that’s okay—she’s probably not hanging on LinkedIn, so a comment won’t reach her, but a message might.

Block 3 (Minutes 7–11): Watering Your Money Tree (Leaving 3 Real Comments)

This is where we water our money tree: three real comments. Make your life easy by going to posts from the people you just looked at.

I want to show you what a real comment means, because this is where most people lose it. Let’s look at two comments on the same post from a founder running a company of 60 people who wrote about finding out at the end of the quarter that cash was tighter than she thought:

• Comment 1: “So true, great post! Thanks for sharing.” A bot could have written that on 10 people’s posts. It’s not necessarily bad, but it’s invisible. She’s going to get 40 of those; nobody remembers who wrote “so true.”

• Comment 2: “The end-of-quarter surprise is the worst feeling, and it’s almost never because someone did something wrong—it’s usually that nobody owned a weekly cash view. When I was VP of finance, we fixed it with a 15-minute Monday look at three numbers. Did you find out from your bank or from your team?”

Do you hear the difference? She agreed (so the founder feels heard), added a specific thing only someone who has done the job would know, and asked a real, easy question that the founder actually wants to answer. She didn’t pitch anything (“I help companies with cash flow, let’s talk”). She didn’t need to—anyone reading that comment knows exactly what Margot does.

The formula: Agree with something real + add one thing only you would know + ask one easy question = done.

Go find a post in those 10 profiles you opened (or use the search bar to find a topic you’re interested in) and write your comment. Delete “great post”—please! Pretend I can see you through the interwebs. Find something that starts or joins a conversation.

Block 4 (Minutes 11–15): The Warm Open (Sending 1 Real DM)

Send one warm open message to one person—not 10, not a copy-and-paste to everyone on your list. One real direct message to one real human. Maybe it’s someone from your 10, or a dormant connection (someone you used to know who’s probably forgotten about you).

Here is what a warm open is not: It is not a pitch. Nobody gets pitched in message one—not on my watch.

Here’s what Margot might send to a woman she worked with years ago who just became a COO somewhere:

“Hey Priya, your profile just came across my desk, and I saw that you moved to the COO seat. Congrats, that’s so deserved! I can still tell the story about the night you rebuilt that board deck two hours before the audit committee. How’s it going? How are you liking the COO seat? How’s it treating you so far?”

Look at that message: it’s not about Margot; it has one specific memory only Margot could know (so it’s definitely not AI), and it ends with an easy question—no “Would love to grab coffee and tell you what I’m up to” dodge required. Priya is going to write back, “So what are you up to?” That’s when the conversation starts.

Write your one message about her, with one specific thing and one easy question. Read it out loud: Is it about her? Is there a pitch in it? If so, cut it out and hit send.

Look What You Did in 15 Minutes:

• You answered the people who showed up for you.

• You opened 10 profiles of people you want to be known by, and 10 people saw your name today.

• You left three comments that actually said something.

• You sent one real message to one real person.

Nothing went viral, nobody got pitched, and you didn’t post a single thing. Fifteen minutes, and look how many people your profile got in front of. You’re strengthening your magnet.

Posting vs. The Ritual

We just did 15 minutes of LinkedIn strategy without posting anything, and that’s on purpose. Posting on LinkedIn and your LinkedIn visibility ritual are apples and oranges—they are not the same. When you mush them together (which almost everyone does), you end up doing neither well.

Posting is part of your marketing strategy; you schedule posts when you create your marketing content. It’s you talking to a lot of people at once, hoping the right ones hear you. But the ritual is client-getting work—one-to-one relationship building with specific people who can hire you, refer you, or put you on a stage. Known is how you get chosen.

Accomplished women often make the mistake of putting all their energy into posting—agonizing over posts, refreshing the feed to check likes, and deciding LinkedIn doesn’t work when it gets 12 likes. That’s like standing on a stage talking and walking off before anyone can come up to talk to you. The talking was never what gets you hired; it’s the conversation after the talk, which is what the ritual covers. Separate these two things.

What Does NOT Go Into the 15 Minutes:

• Scrolling the feed: Do not let LinkedIn decide who you look at.

• Writing your posts: Two different jobs.

• Rewriting your headline: Fix it once the way we talked about last week, and leave it alone.

• Checking who viewed your profile: That’s you keeping score; do that another time.

• Pitching in the first message: Never do this (“Hey, love your profile, I help women scale to 7 figures, do you have 15 minutes?”)—no one wants that.

Measuring Your Success

Don’t measure the ritual daily—daily numbers will make you crazy. Measure once a month, and don’t count likes or followers—count conversations. How many real conversations did you start this month? How many people wrote back? Those are the numbers that turn into money. Give it a full month of consistency before you even look at the scorecard.

If you miss a week, don’t try to make it up with an hour on Saturday—just do your 15 minutes today. That’s the whole recovery plan.

And if you’re in corporate and worried about visibility while planning your next move, remember: the ritual is the quietest form of visibility there is. Opening profiles, leaving thoughtful comments, and messaging a former colleague doesn’t scream “I’m leaving my job”—it just looks like a smart, generous professional paying attention to people.

Takeaway & Masterclass

You don’t need a perfect list on day one; you just need to start. The 15-minute section is in the show notes with the exact minute it starts so you can replay it tomorrow morning if you need guidance.

If you want to learn how to get seen on stages that already have an audience and turn that into being known and chosen right here on LinkedIn, that’s what I teach in my free on-demand masterclass called Borrow the Stage. Just go to karenyankovich.com/bts (BTS for Borrow the Stage).

Check it out—it’s on demand and free. For now, stop flooding and start watering your money tree, and I’ll see you back here next week.