Watering Your LinkedIn Money Tree: Consistency vs. Vanity Visibility

Episode 382

Host: Karen Yankovich

[00:00] The Two Gardens

Karen: I want to tell you about two gardens.

Karen: The first gardener is out there every single day, rain or shine. She’s planting a seed here, a seedling there, because someone told her that the gardener who plants the most wins. Some days a flower pops up, and the neighbors lean over the fence and say, “Oh, beautiful! That’s gorgeous!” And she lives for that — so she plants faster, more, every single day for a year.

Karen: The second gardener, honestly, you’d barely notice her. She’s out there maybe three times a week, twenty minutes at a time. No audience, no show, no curtain. She’s planted one tree, and she waters it the same way, same days, every week. And I mean this lovingly — it’s boring.

Karen: A year goes by. The first gardener has a yard full of flowers that bloomed for a day and died. They were beautiful, they were applauded, and now they’re gone. The second gardener is standing under a tree, and that tree is dropping fruit she didn’t even have to ask for, because she watered it gently. The fruit is falling into her basket, onto her calendar, month after month.

Karen: Because what nobody tells you about visibility is that it was never a lightning strike to keep chasing. It’s not one bloom and then it’s over, and then you plant another one, and another one. It’s a garden. And today I’m going to teach you how to water your money tree.

Karen: Welcome to the Good Girls Get Rich Podcast. I’m your host, Karen Yankovich.

Karen: For the last few weeks we’ve been talking about getting seen — the borrowed stage, the brave thing. And now that you’ve been seen, a few of you have asked me: now what? Do I do that every week, forever?

Karen: That’s what we’re talking about this month. Seen is a moment. Getting known is a practice. I have a name for it — a ritual. But first, I want to save you from the counterfeits out there, because this is not a “post more” conversation. I am never about doing more, more, more. I’m much more interested in you being consistent, not constant. Many of you, after this episode, are going to post less and get better results.

Karen: So let me tell you about two women. You probably know them both, and maybe you’ll recognize yourself in one of them.

Karen: The first woman is Paula. Paula posts every day. She does all the things — she’s watched all the YouTube channels, taken all the courses, and declared, “This is my year of visibility.” I love that, by the way. I’m all about a strong declaration and taking courses. But then she follows everything the gurus say: daily posts, multiple posts a day, hooks, trends, trending audio, checking her numbers twice a day.

Karen: And it works — Paula’s numbers are climbing. Her followers are climbing. She gets a viral post every now and then. But inside, she’s on a treadmill. Sunday night dread. “Oh my gosh, did I post that? Did I schedule everything for this week?” Guilt on the days she skips.

Karen: And at the end of the year, what does she have to show for it? I want you to have sales calls. I want you to have income from this. You can be consistent as hell, but if you’re consistently doing the wrong things, you’ll have a viral post here, a beautiful flower there — and no money in your bank account.

Karen: Now let’s talk about Renee. Renee is the waterer. Same expertise as Paula. But instead of posting every day, all day, and doing all the things, she posts for twenty minutes, a couple days a week, coffee in hand. That’s it.

[04:09] Vanity Visibility vs. Real Relationships

Karen: Let me stop here for a second, because it doesn’t mean Renee isn’t doing some of the things Paula’s doing. If you look at my social media accounts, it looks like I post a lot — but I have help. I don’t look to that to grow my business. I look to that to grow my visibility, to grow this podcast. When I want to grow my income, I do the stuff Renee does, first.

Karen: So you can still do the things Paula’s doing — but I want to tell you what Renee’s doing, because that’s what you need to do first.

Karen: In her twenty minutes, Renee is answering comments and having conversations — jumping into conversations, not just leaving “nice post!” She’s actually engaging, real human-to-human. She greets profile viewers: “Hey, I saw you popped onto my profile — looks like you’re doing some interesting things, I’d love to hear more.” She follows up with people she talked to the week before. She sends real congratulations — not fireworks, just genuine ones.

Karen: Her follower growth is slow compared to Paula’s. Maybe even embarrassing. But then the next week, she says hello to somebody and gets invited to speak on their stage. She congratulates someone, and they think, “Oh wow — I bet she’d be great for my workshop.” All of this creates calls on her calendar — not in a flood, but in a rhythm.

Karen: Paula performed for a year and got applause. Renee tended for a year and got booked. That’s what I want for you.

Karen: I’ve talked before about vanity visibility — it’s almost like wearing a work-ethic costume. It looks diligent. It looks like homework. It recruits your goodness — you’re the good girl, right? Paula’s consistency is a virtue, but it’s misdirected, and honestly, that’s not her fault. The advice was the problem.

Karen: I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with people who listen to this show. I ask how it’s going, and they tell me: “I got a new website, I picked new branding colors, I created a lead magnet.” All good things. And then I ask — and I swear I say this in practically every conversation — “Where’s the money?” And they go, “Yeah… that’s the problem.”

Karen: Consistency is good, but misdirected consistency creates a billboard. Nobody hires a billboard. They hire women they know — and knowing somebody comes from conversations, not from just showing up all the time.

Karen: So Paula might have reached thousands, but she touched very few people. Renee touched more people in way less time, and became known to all of them. The viral post is the beautiful flower — dead by Friday, and you’re starting all over again. But when you water your money tree — and I call LinkedIn my money tree — with relationships and real conversations, a couple of times a week, fruit shows up without you even asking. It’s magnetic. Lightning has to strike twice for you to get two beautiful flowers. Gardens just grow when you tend them. And if you overwater them, they die — you burn out. You just have to be consistent, and building real relationships while you do it.

[08:02] The Ritual: Small, Relational, Repeatable

Karen: So at the end of the week, ask yourself: what did you actually do this week? Maybe you’re exhausted because you posted a billion times and your calendar is still empty. No matter how many likes you got, if your calendar is empty, what good was any of it? The only metric I care about for high-ticket opportunities is calls on the calendar.

Karen: I like to call this the ritual — the middle move of our Seen, Known, Chosen system, the engine of getting known. If you show up once a month with a fire hose, that’s just drama — you drown people, and then you have a drought. A sprinkler on a timer gives a little water, same days, no drama. The garden doesn’t need your heroics. It needs your rhythm.

Karen: Three properties of the ritual:

• It’s small. Twenty minutes, fits into a real life. If it doesn’t fit your real life, you’ll drop out of it.
• It’s relational. It’s aimed at a person, not a feed. At people, not algorithms. We’re looking for conversations, not just content.
• It’s repeatable. You do it a couple of times a week, it runs on a timer, and you don’t need to build yourself up for it.

Karen: Sometimes my ritual is sitting on the couch in the morning with my iPhone in hand, jumping into conversations on LinkedIn while I catch up on the news.

Karen: This isn’t daily posting. It’s not chasing the algorithm, trending audio, or hacks. It’s not performing. If it feels like a show — if you’re singing and dancing — it’s not this.

Karen: You have twenty years of expertise. Your twenty minutes in this ritual outweighs a beginner’s four hours. You’ve earned the right to jump in for twenty minutes a couple times a week. This is visibility sized for a real business, run by a real woman with real expertise, building a real life around her real business.

Karen: This is how the room knows you after the mic goes cold. Maybe Paula’s flower gets you on the stage — but you need this ritual to keep it going. Real women running this exact practice — we’re going to talk about them in the next few episodes.

[12:11] Your Homework and the Path Forward

Karen: Here’s your homework for this week. 3-2-0: three sessions, twenty minutes, on the calendar, like appointments. Inside those twenty minutes:

• Answer everyone who’s commented on your posts — think of it as a conversation.
• Follow up with two people you talked to a few weeks ago, or met at a conference.
• Send three real congratulations to people doing something worth celebrating.

Karen: Jump into conversations on other people’s posts. Two follow-ups. Three real congratulations. Three times a week, twenty minutes at a time.

Karen: You’re probably not going to get any big wins this week — and that’s the point. The win is that the timer ran, the water flowed, three times. I want to give you permission to say this out loud: “I am allowed to stop performing.” Next month is measured by how many calls you’ve booked, not how many likes you have.

Karen: Here’s the one thing I want you to carry out of this episode: visibility is not a lightning strike. It’s a garden. And the woman who waters her money tree twenty minutes at a time, steadily, boringly, on a timer, a couple times a week, will significantly outearn the woman performing brilliance every single day. I’ve watched it happen too many times to count. Consistency compounds. Applause doesn’t.

Karen: Your move this week: three twenty-minute sessions on your calendar. Conversations, not content. And do it where somebody can see you — come into our Facebook group, engage with me on Threads or LinkedIn. There are other women doing this exact thing right now, so it’s easier on a shared schedule.

Karen: And remember — if nothing blooms this week, that’s okay. You’re not growing flowers. You’re growing a money tree, and it doesn’t grow in a day.

Karen: If you’re thinking, “Okay Karen, I’m in — but what exactly do I water, and how does this twenty-minute rhythm actually turn into clients?” — that’s exactly what I teach in my free masterclass. I walk you through the full Seen, Known, Chosen framework, start to finish, including exactly what those twenty minutes look like.

Karen: It’s free, it’s online, and it’s the one thing I’m asking you to do today. Grab your seat at she’slinkedup.com/masterclass — the link is in the show notes.

Karen: If this episode felt like it was written about your last year on LinkedIn… it kind of was. So go register. Here’s the secret about being the boring gardener: while everyone else is chasing lightning, your tree is getting taller and blooming, and you’ve got hundred- and thousand-dollar bills blooming quietly every single week. And one morning, sooner than you think, you’ll walk outside and there’s fruit on the ground — and it’s coming faster than you can pick it.

Karen: You’re not going to want to miss this. I’ll see you at the table.