How to Use LinkedIn to Get Board Seats, Media and Speaking Gigs

GGGR Episode 356 

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

LinkedIn strategy, strategic proximity, visibility hunting, relationship-driven opportunities,

access to decision-makers, networking myths, magnetic marketing, high-level introductions,

talent discovery engine, board of directors, media opportunities, thought leadership, board recruiters,

conference engagement, women’s voices.

SPEAKERS

Speaker 1, Karen Yankovich

00:10

Karen, hello, hello, and welcome to the good girls get rich podcast. I’m your host, Karen Yankovich,

and today’s episode is, some is, is, you know, something that is near and dear to my heart, and that

really for me, it really is like at this stage of your life, you do not need to beg for access or perform for

approval or work your way up like it’s 1997 right? You need to, you need strategic proximity in a

limited, micro, targeted way. And LinkedIn is a room where those discussions are already being made,

right, where those decisions are already being made, where those discussions are already happening.

So we’re going to talk a little bit about this. Because I believe at this stage in your career, you’re not

trying to meet more people like it’s you’re trying to meet the right people, right and be taken

seriously when you do. And most of the midlife women that I meet are not job hunting, they’re

visibility hunting, and that doesn’t mean that doesn’t lead to jobs, right? But when you position

yourself as if you’re worthy, as if you’re peers with the most influential people in your industry, and

you build relationships from that premise, the jobs and the opportunities happen. So whether it’s

seats on boards of directors or media opportunities or speaking opportunities, they’re not hidden

opportunities. They’re relationship driven, right? So the gap there isn’t experience, the gap isn’t

ageism. The gap isn’t you know, you know more certifications. It’s access. It’s access to the people

making those decisions. And LinkedIn is already where those gatekeepers are looking. You know,

even if you think they’re not, even if you don’t see them looking, it absolutely is where they’re

looking. And what the best part about all of this is, is it’s like, not hustle energy, right? It’s like, kind of

quiet power, like, Who do I need to know? And this is the stuff I have been doing my whole life before

social media. Like, if you’ve heard me interviewed on podcasts, and people talk about, like, what

brought me to doing what I do now? Like, I’ve always known, like, even when they’re when social

media wasn’t a thing to to to land a contract, the question I was always asking myself, is, who do I

need to know? What rooms do I need to be in? Right? How do I how do I build my my own network?

From that premise, and that’s what we’re talking about now. So what if your next opportunity isn’t

unlocked by your additional credentials or any more certifications, but by who already recognizes

your name, right? Like, what if it’s not who you know, but who knows you right? So I’m going to, I’m

going to talk a little bit about some myths that I think are keeping women primarily out of these

opportunities. And, you know, I want more women to be making more money. I want to be more

wealthy women in the world. Our voices are being stifled all over the world right now, and we needour voices to be out there. So we have to dismantle these invisible rules that we were taught, right

and Myth number one, I need to be invited. Now, if you know anything about human design, I am a

projector, which means I need to wait to be invited. And I have a few I’ll link to the I link to it in the

show notes. I did an interview with candy Barone, who’s a human design expert, talking about exactly

that, like, Alright, what do I how do I do this? How do I build a business teaching women how to build

relationships and have to wait to be invited, right? But here’s the thing, I want to just reframe this a

little bit for you. We don’t need to wait for permission. We need to assume relevance. That’s what

men are doing, right? They’re assuming relevance, and we’re waiting to be invited and we’re waiting

for permission, right? So whether, again, whether it’s board seats or media opportunities or speaking

invitations, they often go to the most visible, not the most qualified. I know you know that. I know

you’ve seen people and opportunities that you’re like, why is it them and not me, like I am more

qualified for that opportunity, right? So let’s not wait to be invited, but create an energy of magnet,

magnetism, right? And and can and go after it. Okay? And go after it. Myth number two, networking

means asking for favors. I mean, come on. I mean, I mean, I know you, if you’ve ever been to, like, a

Chamber of Commerce event, I know you’ve met that I’m gonna say that guy, because I’m just gonna

bash on I’m not, this isn’t bad bash. You know, I don’t care. I don’t really care what your body parts

are. I just think women need to be more you need to be in more rooms, right? But you’ve met that

person. Look at the person with that person that immediately looks up to you and says, Hey, I sell

insurance. Do you need insurance? Like, hey, I sell chickens. You need to like I remember, there’s a

friend of mine who her husband was always in some kind of sales, and like, you would avoid him

when you when you saw him, because, oh, my god, maybe buy chickens from him. Now, to what I

mean, like, like, you don’t want to be that person, right? It’s not asking for favors. High level

networking is not transactional. You. It’s about familiarity, it’s about credibility, and it’s about building

actual relationships and truly making introductions for people. It is a huge part of the success of my

business. Making introductions is a huge part of the success of my business. Now, how does that help

me? I don’t know. I made an introduction recently, I made a couple of high level introductions recently

to somebody that I met, and, you know, she posted on LinkedIn with all these links to people that

have helped me this weekend, my name was in there, which got my name in front of a lot of people,

right? Is it a direct path to a sale? No, but this is how you do it, right? This is how you do this magnetic

marketing, this magnetic networking, and build your network full of the people, full of the rooms you

need to be in, right? Myth number three, LinkedIn is just for job seekers. You know? Let’s reframe that

a little bit and say LinkedIn is whatever you refer to it as, like a talent discovery engine, right?

Journalists, board, recruiters, event organizers, podcast hosts, right? If you are not positioned for

those opportunities, you’re invisible. You’re invisible no matter how accomplished you are, no matter

how accomplished you are. So where might you be underestimating how powerful your existing

experience actually, is alright. I’m gonna repeat those three myths. I need to be invited, and

networking means asking for favors, and LinkedIn is for job seekers. Myth, myth, myth, we’ve just

dispelled all of them. So let’s talk a little bit about what do you want to do? Because this here is like

the heart of this episode, right? Like this is like the playbook to be in those high level rooms, first and

foremost, you need to position yourself that comes with your LinkedIn profile right position First,

connect second, because you want people to be like, Whoa, wait a minute. I really want to know her

right. So does your headline reflect where you’re going, or does it reflect where you’ve been? Right of

a LinkedIn profile with resume energy is all about who you used to be, where you’ve been, and part of

that’s important on LinkedIn, right, but the energy we want is to position you for where you want to

be, right and who you are becoming. Does your profile signal board level, thinking, thought

leadership, media ready, expertise. If you are quoted in the media or interviewed on podcasts, are

you sharing that stuff so people know, oh, wow, she’s somebody that maybe I want to interview,

because other people interview her, right? So make sure you’re seeing those signals in your LinkedIn

profile, you know? So if you have, you know, if you have been on any boards of directors and you

want more, make sure you’re sharing that on there, that you’ve been a board advisor or you’ve been

in governance or financial oversight, right? These are, these are powerful words that position you asworthy of people’s time and investment. Right? Keynote speaker on whatever topic, right about

whatever outcome that you create, make sure you’re sharing that on your LinkedIn profile, maybe in

your headline. Expert source on what is your topic, right? People don’t open open doors for potential.

They open doors for clarity. They need to know. They need to know what you do, so they know how to

what door to open for you, right? So make sure, when you’re looking at your LinkedIn, that you’re

positioning, that you’re seeing all of that with an outsider’s eye, and if you, you know, share this with

your mastermind. Look at each other’s profiles. Come join my visibility Salon at visibility salon.com

you get in for free for a week, and we’ll look at it for you, right? But you it’s hard to kind of see

yourself from that perspective, right? But make sure your positioning is solid before you move on to

the outreach. And then let’s talk about that outreach, warm outreach beats cold pitching every single

time. Engage with people, comment on their content, add value publicly, and then connect privately,

if at all possible, right, if at all possible. So like, if you, if you’re I know, and you guys might have

heard me talk about examples. I have so many examples like this, of clients of mine, or people that

are in our visibility salon. Where have they they’ve engaged with a journalist content, right? And

shared their articles, whatever journalists they want to be build relationships with. That’s what we’re

talking about here, right? You know people that we want to be in the room with, share their content.

First, journalists are prolific. Find something that resonates with you and what you think will resonate

with your audience, and share it and tag the journalist. Right? That is so much more powerful than a

pitch email, especially if you want to get interviewed on a podcast, so much more powerful than a

pitch email, right? Then connect with them and say, Hey, I don’t know if you saw it, but I love the

article that you order. I listen to that episode you did with Karen Yankovich, and, you know, love this,

this and this, and I, you know, I shared it everywhere. I was gonna think, everybody needs to hear

this, like, that’s how you get booked, right? Not just cold pitches all over the place. Think about, like, if

you’re looking to get more speaking engagements, think about a conference that you want to be

speaking at next year and engage with that conference. This year, right engage with it. Maybe you’ve

maybe you went to the conference, or maybe you saw some YouTube videos from the conference, or

maybe you had a virtual ticket to

10:08

a conference. Talk about the speakers. Talk about the content that you learned at this conference.

Tag the speakers. Tag the event. Organize. If there’s an event hashtag, use the event hashtag. Make

sure remember it’s not who you know, it’s who knows you, right? Make sure the event organizers

know you, because you’re going to notice that consistent insight, not your one off messages, right?

And again, we’re talking, you know, I’ve mentioned a few times, if you want to be, you know, hired on

a board of directors. Look, you know, be connecting and being building relationships and have

conversations for with people that already sound like peers, right? Again, position yourself as if your

peers, with these people that are the most influential in your industry, jump into these conversations,

right? You know this connection mindset is, is it taken away from these 100 cold connection requests

that I know you’re getting? Right? I’m getting them. We all get them. Don’t be that person. Be the

person that says, Hey, I saw you spoke at this conference. I didn’t get to get there this year, but I saw

some highlights on a YouTube video, or I saw somebody posted this comment about it. And I love this

and that I’m curious about more. Do you have the whole YouTube video? I’d love to see the whole

thing, right? Curiosity, curiosity over your credentials, beats it every time your profile is going to

speak to your credentials, right? Don’t go in there and say, Hey, I do all the like, if you walk into a

networking event, you’re like, Hey, I’m Karen Yankovich. You know, I have hundreds of 1000s of social

media followers. Like, who wants to meet that person? Right? But if I say, Hey, I’m Karen Yankovich, I

saw you did this, I’d love to learn more about that. Let them find out later, when I connect them on

LinkedIn, how much credibility I actually have, right and again, relevance over resume. Nobody reallycares about your resume. There are so many things that I have done in my career that you can’t even

find in my LinkedIn profile, because they’re so not relevant to what I’m doing now, right? Like, so, so

stop thinking about this as a resume, and start thinking about positioning yourself and as somebody

that has a point of view that’s relevant to the kinds of opportunities you want to land. Okay, you want

to land, you know, for example, I you know, you could, you could, you could talk like, let’s say, let’s

say, want to be interviewed on a podcast, right? And you hear an interview with, you know, Mary and

Suzy and and you jump into the conversation on social media. Say, I just listen to this podcast, or you,

or, better yet, you share the podcast episode, and you tag Mary and Susie, and you’re like, you guys

talked about this and this, but it. But you know what, what I love to talk about on this topic is this.

And you know, I’d love to hear your perspective on that. Maybe they’ll jump into the conversation.

Maybe they’ll invite you to speak on their show, right? You never know, right? You never know

relevance over resume and then familiarity over flattery. You know, I love it when people say, Karen, I

love you. Blah, blah, blah, that’s great. I love that. But at the end of the day, it’s flattery, and I don’t

really flattery doesn’t pay my bills. Flattery doesn’t help me, you know, do the things I need to do my

business. Help me pay my team. It doesn’t do any of that stuff. But building relationships, getting

building familiarity with the kinds of people that can change, that can that will help me land the kinds

of contracts that can grow my business. That’s what I want to do, right? That’s more important to me.

It’s I don’t really need you to feed my ego. I like to feed my bank account, right? And how I pay my

bank account is building relationships. And I build relationships when I on a human to human basis.

So build that familiarity, right? Build that familiarity. So think about some rooms that you intentionally

want to enter on LinkedIn. Okay, so again, if corporate is what you’re looking for, or board sponsor

what you’re looking for, or you know, a new job is what you’re looking for. Highlight fiduciary thinking,

nonprofit board work, governance, whatever you’re doing around those things, follow the board

members and the board recruiters and their current board of directors. Follow them, connect with

them, build relationships with them, familiarity, right? Engage where they already are. Okay, engage

where they already are. If you’re looking to get more media, I promise you, journalists are scanning

LinkedIn way more than they’re Googling. Because Google is like, I mean, listen, we all Google

everything, right? But it’s like, the cesspool everything comes up LinkedIn is where they’re going to

find out more about you. Oh, that’s where they’re going to find the people that that that they can

bring into their events, right? Your content, they’re going to be looking at your content. They’ll be

reading your content, right? And you don’t have to post every day, right? You just need to look

everything you post. Whenever you post a LinkedIn newsletter, it just becomes part of your profile. All

of these things get added into your profile. So when a journalist is is Googling, like searching for

something on LinkedIn, your profile is going to come up because you talk about that topic a lot, right?

So you’re found by your visibility. You’re. Found by your keywords that you’re using strategically

through your profile, and you’re found by your presence. You’re found by your presence. You’re found

by the fact that you’re in these conversations, you’re in you know, you’re in these rooms. And again,

build relationships over pitching people, okay? And then talking a little bit about stages, speakers are

not found by talent alone. They’re found by again, I’ll use those same things again. Visibility,

keywords, presence, that’s these are the things that people look for when they’re bringing a speaker

on. So if your profile doesn’t say speaker, organizers won’t assume it. I remember back in 2020 when

everything was going virtual. I remember like I was all was all over like, Hey, if you’re a speaker, add

the word virtual all into your profile, because people are looking for virtual speakers right now, right?

Maybe not so much anymore, but hey, if you still want to be a virtual speaker, use that word right?

Because that’s you. Want people to know what you’re available for. You want to make it so stinking

easy for people to know what you stand for. And by the way, we’ve talked about this a lot on this

show, not only are you letting the rest of the world know that you’re letting LinkedIn know this, right?

So LinkedIn is now consistently knowing what you’re talking about, what you’re available for, and that

and LinkedIn is algorithm, will bring more people to you, right? So I want you to think a little bit to

yourself, right?16:23

What room do you have the right to be in? But you haven’t claimed it yet. You haven’t claimed it yet.

16:33

You know, I can think of a, I can think of a an opportunity. There’s a, there’s a, I have a client,

somebody that’s part of our visibility salon, and she was speaking at this conference, and the

conference happened to have multiple conferences over the year across the country. One of them

happens to be in New York, and I live right outside, right outside of New York City, so I connected with

the conference organizer. I mean, anybody could have done that like I shouldn’t know me from a hole

in the wall, but I just, I saw, I said, you know, I’ve heard a lot about this conference, and I see you’re

running a conference, you know, good for you. Blah, blah. I heard you do a great job, and I connected

with her, and that’s it. That’s it. And then I when I saw that they were looking for speakers in New

York, I damned her, and I said, Hey, I you know, I don’t know, I didn’t even see a speaker application

or anything, but I’m right outside of New York City, and I know they pay their speakers, but I wanted

to just get a foot in the door, right? So I was like, it’s really easy for me. Like, if you have a space for

me, if you’ve got this, I’d love to be a part of your event. And she’s like, Oh, we’ve, you know, we’ve

got all our speakers booked, but I’ll keep you in mind. Blah, blah, blah. And the next day, she

messaged me and said, You know what? I think I could put you want a panel like that was it? That’s all

I had to do, right? You could do that. You could do that like this wasn’t anything, you know. Again, my

presence, my LinkedIn presence, spoke for my I didn’t have to tell her all that stuff. My Profile did the

speaking for me. Um, and, you know, this is, this is, this is how you can get that speaking

engagement right. If you’re looking for spots on boards of directors, there’s a spot on LinkedIn that

says actively looking for, say you’re actively looking for a spot on the board of directors. I’ve had, I

had that on I don’t I might still have an online profile. I had an online profile at one point, and I got a

couple of people that that did outreach for me on that. Nothing that really spoke to me. But it was,

you know, like, be really focused on what you’re looking for, because the opportunities will come to

you. Because here’s the deal, these opportunities don’t always arrive. Like, loudly, like the speaking

opportunity I got at this huge conference wasn’t because I was one of many in the speaker

applications with 60 billion people. I quietly went into her DMs and said, What do you think? Right?

They they arrived. So that opportunity didn’t arrive loudly. It arrived because she already knew who I

was, right? I didn’t connect with her on Tuesday and picture on Wednesday. I am building these

relationships all the freaking time. So I just want you to think about this almost from like an identity

standpoint. Networking at this level requires that you see yourself a little bit differently, because

you’re not trying to get in with the cool crowd. You are the cool crowd, right? You’re joining

conversations you already belong in. So you’re not networking your way into these opportunities.

You’re positioning yourself and building relationships so these rooms and these opportunities

recognize you. Okay, so I’m going to say this again, because at this moment in time, it can’t be said

enough women’s voices need to be heard. We need to be proactively putting our voices out there,

this at this moment in time, this visibility is the act of leadership. It is not self promotion. It is an act of

leadership. Your voice is needed, and if you’re not doing this, you are not showing up as a leader at

this space in the world, right? So think if that’s true, right? If you can connect. To that, how differently

would you show up? How do you shift your energy around all of this? You know, the beautiful thing

about all of this is especially about LinkedIn, which is why I love it. It’s like, it’s like networking for lazy

people. You don’t need to do everything. You just need to do, like, one thing intentionally. This week,

where does it matter? Like, where does it where? What rooms do you want to be in? Make acomment. Or a couple of comments around there, update a line or two of positioning in your profile.

Connect with one person that maybe you know from somewhere. Maybe you heard this week at a

conference, maybe you saw somebody else interview them, who already shapes the decisions that

you want to be a part of. You know, we have recreated the visibility salon in 2026 to our she’s linked

up program, which is now a part of this visibility salon. You can get the entire training for the she’s

linked up program, which was many 1000s of dollars for very little money in the visibility salon. Like I

said, you can get it a week for free. We created it because I want there to be more women that have

more money, and I know we need to be having these conversations with each other. We need to be

lifting each other up. And I know that the women that are going to be shaping our future are not

louder, they’re clearer, they’re clearer, and they’ve learned how to be seen on purpose. Okay, so

check us out at visibility salon.com We’d love to have you there and make those couple changes this

week, just a couple little steps, and I’ll be back here next week with more. See you then bye.