Episode 94: Stop Chasing Impressions: The LinkedIn Community Strategy That Actually Brings Consulting Clients to You

Season #1 March 31, 2026

What if the reason you're not getting clients from LinkedIn isn't your content — it's that you've been focusing on the completely wrong metric?

In this episode, host AJ Riedel talks to Sarka Risch, LinkedIn Strategy Coach and Founder of her independent consulting practice, who walked away from 20+ years in corporate sales and marketing — with no savings, no plan B, and no entrepreneurial experience — to build a thriving business that has earned her features in Forbes and a TEDx talk stage.

Why You Should Listen to This Episode
If you've been posting on LinkedIn and watching impressions pile up while your pipeline stays empty, this episode will change how you think about the platform entirely. Sarka built her consulting practice using a three-pillar LinkedIn strategy that prioritizes real relationships over vanity metrics — and it's brought her clients, podcast invitations, Forbes features, and a TEDx talk. More importantly, she shares the mindset breakthroughs around fear, perfectionism, and self-belief that made the business growth possible in the first place. This conversation is packed with immediately actionable strategies for consultants who want to use LinkedIn as a genuine, sustainable lead-generation engine — not just another place to post and hope.

What You'll Learn in This Episode
The Three-Pillar LinkedIn Strategy: Why your profile, your community-building approach, and your content must work together — and which pillar most consultants are completely ignoring.
Why Impressions Are a Vanity Metric: What LinkedIn actually counts as an 'impression' — and the meaningful metrics that predict whether your outreach will generate real consulting opportunities.
The Right Way to Use LinkedIn DMs: Why 99% of consultants are using direct messages completely wrong — and Sarka's relationship-first approach that builds trust and generates inbound inquiries without pitching.
Overcoming Fear and Perfectionism to Put Yourself Out There: How Sarka moved from hiding behind perfectionism to giving a TEDx talk with only three days of preparation — and the mindset tools she uses with her clients.
How to Get Featured in Publications Like Forbes: The relationship-building strategy Sarka used that resulted in a Forbes feature — and why it works even if you're just starting to build your profile.
Why Investing in Coaches and Mentors Accelerates Business Growth: How Sarka has continuously invested in her own development — both mindset and LinkedIn skills — and the tangible business results that have followed.

Listen to These Key Moments
[00:38] From Employee to Entrepreneur Without a Safety Net — Sarka describes leaving 20+ years in corporate sales and marketing with no savings and no plan B, and what finally pushed her to take the leap.
[05:30] The Fear That Wakes You Up at Night — And How to Work Through It — Sarka shares the specific fear-acknowledgment practice she used in the early days of her practice that helped her stop letting fear drive her decisions.
[08:13] Perfectionism Almost Cost Sarka Everything — A powerful personal story about a colleague and an experience with a corporate boss that became the catalyst for Sarka's journey out of perfectionism.
[11:29] How LinkedIn Transformed from a Scary Platform to Her Primary Business Engine — Sarka walks through her evolution from not posting or commenting in 2012 to consistently attracting clients and opportunities through strategic LinkedIn use by 2021.
[13:00] The Three Pillars of a LinkedIn Strategy That Generates Clients — Sarka breaks down the framework she uses with every client: profile, community, and content — and why all three must be active simultaneously.
[16:07] How to Build a LinkedIn Community That Brings Clients to You — Sarka explains the three types of connections every consultant should be cultivating and the specific comment-to-DM sequence she uses to build rapport before ever pitching.
[21:19] Impressions Are Worthless: What to Track Instead — Why one 'impression' means someone scrolled past your post in three seconds — and what metrics actually tell you whether your LinkedIn activity is building your business.
[23:00] How Sarka Tracks LinkedIn Relationships Without a CRM — A practical system for managing prospect lists and staying top-of-mind with connections, including how to do it with and without LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
[25:08] How a Forbes Feature Happened — and What It Did for Her Credibility — Sarka reveals the relationship-building strategy that led to a Forbes mention and why credibility markers like this compound over time.
[27:29] The TEDx Talk She Had Three Days to Prepare — Sarka shares the remarkable story of being called as a last-minute substitute TEDx speaker, how she used visualization to manage the pressure, and what happened when she walked off the stage.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight — Sarka's recommended book for consultants who need inspiration for resilience, risk-taking, and building something from nothing.
The School of Greatness Podcast by Lewis Howes — Sarka's recommended podcast for growth mindset and entrepreneurial resilience.
Dr. Joe Dispenza Meditations — Sarka credits guided meditations by Dr. Joe Dispenza as a core part of her mindset practice; she has attended five of his retreats.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator — Discussed as a tool for building and managing prospect lists; Sarka notes alternatives for those not ready to invest.

About Sarka Risch
Sarka Risch is a LinkedIn Strategy Coach and independent consultant with more than 20 years of background in corporate sales and marketing. After leaving her corporate career — with no plan B, no savings, and no prior entrepreneurial experience — she built a consulting practice centered on helping professionals and organizations use LinkedIn strategically to attract clients, build thought leadership, and grow a powerful professional community.
Sarka has been featured in Forbes and has delivered a TEDx talk. She coaches clients at the intersection of LinkedIn strategy, growth mindset, and personal branding, drawing on both her own transformation and the psychology of how human beings build trust and connection on digital platforms. She is based in Europe and works with clients internationally.

Connect with Sarka on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarka-risch/

Episode Transcript

Sarka Risch — Full Interview Transcript
Thriving Through Podcast | Host: AJ Riedel

What 'Thriving Through' Means — and How Sarka's Journey Began
AJ: Welcome to this episode of the Thriving Through Podcast. Today I'm delighted to have Sarka Risch on the episode. Sarka, it's so good to have you here.
Sarka: Thank you very much, AJ. I'm also really grateful to be here.
AJ: As you know, the podcast is called Thriving Through. What does thriving mean to you?
Sarka: That's a good question, and it's actually how I help my clients, and also how I built my business. I was an employee in sales and marketing for over 20 years. I was just living. And one day I had a thought come into my mind: where do you see yourself in 20 years? And I didn't have an answer. I just worked, went to the gym, went on holidays, and that was it.
Then I started working with my mentor, and thanks to her, I found my purpose, my vision, my mission. I realized I wasn't living with purpose — I wasn't thriving through. I was just living from day to day. And that's actually how I started to thrive on LinkedIn with my clients, and to help them as well.
AJ: Tell us a little bit more about your path to becoming a self-employed consultant.
Sarka: As I said, I wasn't living with purpose. I was an employee, and I didn't feel appreciated by my bosses. But once I became an entrepreneur, I realized it was in myself — everything starts from within. I realized that I didn't believe in myself. That was what also moved the needle.
I started on this path without any entrepreneurial experience, without a plan B, without any savings. I just started. I wanted to realize my why and to help people, to inspire them. I became the person who started realizing my why, and I let my curiosity and my intuition guide me.
AJ: Tell me more. You've talked about finding your purpose a couple of times. What does living with purpose mean to you, and what is your purpose?
Sarka: My purpose is to help and inspire people to become their best vision of themselves. Purpose is my big goal. It's different from vision — vision is the big picture, but purpose is the motivation that drives me. It's my engine. It's what gets me out of bed every day to realize my dreams.
I really want to make an impact. I want to help people understand why it's so important to find their voice on LinkedIn and to build a strong community, to realize their dreams. So many people think LinkedIn isn't that important, or they say, 'I don't want to show myself, I don't believe in myself.' That's actually what I went through, and that's why I want to help others.
AJ: So your consulting practice focuses on LinkedIn — making LinkedIn work as a lead generation tool. How would you characterize the service you offer?
Sarka: Yes, I coach and train clients to understand how LinkedIn works strategically, and also with a growth mindset, to realize their goals. Those goals could be getting clients, finding new employees, or becoming a thought leader.
Facing Fear and Overcoming Perfectionism
AJ: Tell us a story or two about the biggest challenges you've faced building your practice and how you've overcome them.
Sarka: My biggest challenge was actually fear. I had real fears of the unknown future, fears of not having a secure life. Once I left the corporate world, I suddenly realized it was me who was responsible for my life, who had to manage my life, who had to be confident and believe in myself, and trust the process.
So I started meditating with guided meditations from Dr. Joe Dispenza. I continued working with my mentor. And since I became an entrepreneur, I have consistently invested in myself.
I realized I had to acknowledge the fear and then let it go. It's easy to say, but very different to do. I'd wake up in the middle of the night with fears. But then I discovered that when I talked to the fear — when I said, 'okay, you are there' — and then focused on what I truly wanted, what my desire was, I focused on abundance and solutions. Suddenly the opportunities came to me.
I started embracing the unknown future and enjoying it. I realized that letting go is so powerful, because it really opens up so many new opportunities. That's why we should trust the process and have faith.
AJ: Trusting the process and acknowledging the fear — those sound so simple and logical, and they're so hard to do. You also mentioned perfectionism. How did you overcome that?
Sarka: I had two powerful experiences that changed me. One was when a friend of mine jumped in front of a train. She did it because she was a perfectionist. She and I had actually been talking that same day about how she could manage everything. That was a profound experience for me.
Another experience was 20 years into my career, when I went to my boss to ask for a pay raise for the first time. He didn't want to see me. He didn't want to appreciate me. It really broke me.
After that — not immediately, but when I became an entrepreneur — I realized I was a perfectionist. I had always wanted to be perfect. My parents wanted me to have a perfect life. But then I realized it wasn't helping me. I started to see my worth, to focus on solutions, to master challenges, to embrace the fears. Once I changed my mindset to a more balanced one, new opportunities came, and I had different results in my business.
Part of the journey is also taking risks. Without risk, it doesn't work. And also being curious and having courage — these are qualities I started to fully realize when I became an entrepreneur. I started building a strong network, asking about people, building true connections. It was the real, true me that was talking to people and connecting with them.
Discovering the Power of LinkedIn
AJ: You mentioned that discovering how powerful LinkedIn is, and finding inspirational people on the platform, changed your life. Can you walk us through that transformation?
Sarka: I signed up on LinkedIn in 2012, and I was scared. I didn't know how to use the platform, how to talk to people. I wasn't posting, commenting, or writing direct messages at all.
In 2020, my intuition and curiosity led me to take my first LinkedIn course. I had also done further education in digital marketing, and this online LinkedIn course was the first of its kind for me. I didn't know why I did it, but it inspired me so much that I started working with an American LinkedIn coach. From summer 2021, I really committed to learning. I've worked with different coaches, and currently I have two LinkedIn coaches focusing on sales and copywriting.
It's the investments in myself that help me and my clients. It's also about understanding the platform and how human beings work, because there's a lot of psychology involved.
For me, there are three pillars of LinkedIn. The first is the profile — both your personal profile and your LinkedIn company page. The second is building an active community. The third is content, which includes comments, because strategic comments are like mini-posts. It all starts with a growth mindset and the right strategy.
Once I applied this strategy for myself, I realized how powerful the platform is. So many opportunities opened up. Clients came to me. I met inspiring people. I was asked for podcast interviews. I met people in person when I was traveling, and the connection was already there because of LinkedIn. When you truly believe in the platform, when you have a growth mindset, look for opportunities, are genuinely interested in people — and when you have the right strategy — you will get results. It requires patience, but it's amazing.
Building a LinkedIn Community — The Right Way
AJ: Tell me more about community — that's a different approach than what most people talk about on LinkedIn. What does community mean to you on the platform?
Sarka: Community means people who are genuinely engaged with what I do and who also inspire me. For me, there are three types of people in my community: my target audience or potential clients, people from my industry or similar fields like marketing, sales, LinkedIn, and mindset coaching, and inspiring people from broad topics who genuinely resonate with me.
It's so important to build these connections, and I start by commenting. I comment because I want to, not because I have to. I appreciate the person and comment for the community. After a while, people reach out to me, or I send them a connection request, and then we start a conversation in the DMs. In DMs you have a real one-on-one conversation.
AJ: So it starts with commenting. You establish a relationship through comments, and then you send a connection request. Then what?
Sarka: There are still around 90–95% of people who are not regularly active, so people who are only reposting their company page or not active at all. In those cases, I start directly with a DM. But I still want to find something in common — I still want to build a real relationship based on emotional connection first. I don't pitch at all. There are so many pitches on LinkedIn already. People buy from people they know, like, and trust. We have to build trust first. If someone is only talking about themselves in DMs, it doesn't build trust.
AJ: I'd say 99% of people using DMs are doing it completely wrong.
Sarka: Yes, and that's a problem for the platform. Many people say, 'I don't like LinkedIn — it's only pitching.' But it's not about that. It's about community.
Investing in Coaches and Mentors
AJ: Since the beginning, you've consistently invested in coaches and mentors throughout your four-year journey. What drove that decision, and how has it impacted your business growth?
Sarka: The first investment I made was in my mentor, who helped me with my entrepreneurial journey. My curiosity and intuition guided me there. I also wanted to develop myself and work on myself — I found that crucial as a business owner. Learning and growing every day matters.
Once we learn something, the platform continues to develop, so it's important to stay updated — to know about algorithm changes, how people's behavior is changing, and now about AI trends as well. I invest in both personal development and mindset, and in my LinkedIn sales and marketing skills.
From Vanity Metrics to Meaningful Metrics
AJ: You mentioned shifting your focus from vanity metrics like impressions to meaningful metrics like comments, saves, and relationships. Why are impressions vanity metrics, and what should we be tracking instead?
Sarka: Many people are focused on impressions, but one impression simply means someone saw more than 50% of your post during three seconds. That means they scrolled down and read nothing. So the question is how impressions are really measured and whether they mean anything.
When we build strong relationships with people, that's worth more than any vanity metric, because we do business with people. Behind every company are people, and those relationships need to be nurtured and allowed to grow. We never know — perhaps today we talk to someone, and in one month or half a year, it becomes an amazing partnership or deal. That's why it's so important to look after the people we're already connected with, not only new connections.
People can feel whether you truly want to help them or are only interested in the money. The money follows if you truly want to help from your heart.
Tracking Relationships Without Getting Lost
AJ: How do you keep track of the relationships you're building? You've made connections, had DM conversations — how do you keep that moving forward?
Sarka: I have lists where I track my prospects and people I want to stay in touch with. I do this manually, and I also use LinkedIn's native list feature. I organize them into three categories: potential clients, people from my industry, and inspiring people. I save them as bookmarks in my browser so I can easily see their recent posts.
For DMs, I try to note what stage I'm at with each person. LinkedIn Sales Navigator also helps a lot, particularly with list management. But you can do much of this without Sales Navigator — you can save searches in your browser to see recent posts from your key connections, for example.
Getting Featured in Forbes
AJ: Your method was featured in Forbes. How did that come about, and what impact did that social proof have on your business and your confidence?
Sarka: Being featured in Forbes was a big goal of mine. My goal is really to make an impact and inspire people — that's my purpose. So I got the idea to build a relationship with a Forbes contributor, Jodie Cook. I engaged genuinely in her comments — not because I wanted something from her, but because I genuinely like her mindset and what she does. It resonates with me.
One day she reached out and asked if I'd like to be mentioned in Forbes. Of course I said yes. Then I shared my perspective on some thoughts she was exploring in a post, and I was featured. It's social proof — it's a credential that builds credibility and qualifies your expertise. And yes, I was really grateful for it.
Delivering a TEDx Talk in Three Days
AJ: You also have a TEDx talk. How did that come about?
Sarka: A TEDx talk was another big goal, another big desire. I really wanted to inspire more people. I applied, and I was placed as a substitute. I let it go — I thought, okay, if it's meant to be, it will happen. Then one day I got a phone call asking if I would like to give a TEDx talk the following week — in one week.
Of course I said yes — it was such a big dream. But I still had clients booked, so I really only had three days to prepare. I had visualized this moment before and felt the stream of excitement. But when I arrived at the rehearsal, I forgot the text — I was the only one who did, because everyone else had been preparing for six months.
I was able to run the rehearsal again, and that helped. Before the talk itself, I sat in the room visualizing myself on stage — I visualized the fear and the stress flowing down off me like a waterfall. I focused completely on myself. And it went well. I didn't forget anything.
At the end, there was an opera singer performing in the next room, which was quite loud and drew my attention briefly, but I stayed focused. After the talk, in the break, people came to me and told me how much I had inspired them. That was the best moment of the whole TEDx experience — I hadn't expected it at all.
AJ: What I really love about your story is that you were a substitute, you got the call, and you didn't need to think about it. That's all the mindset work you've been doing, epitomized in that one moment. Everyone else had six months — you had three days. That takes real courage.
Sarka: Courage, yes. And alignment.
Vision for the Future and Final Advice
AJ: Where do you see your practice in three to five years?
Sarka: I really want to make more impact and inspire more people. I want to focus more on speaking — I'm already doing workshops in companies, schools, and universities, and in public settings. I want to do more of that.
I also want to train people so they truly see the importance of building a personal brand and an employer brand, and understand how big the opportunities are once they embrace it. Building a strong LinkedIn community is helpful regardless of whether someone is looking for a job, clients, or business partnerships. When people use LinkedIn the right way, with a growth mindset, the opportunities open up.
AJ: What is one book, podcast, or resource that's been invaluable to your consulting practice?
Sarka: For books, it's Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. It inspires me because he went through all these challenges and fears, constantly on the edge between thriving and totally failing. He worked on himself throughout the journey. The stories are so captivating. It's also the book's connection to Japan — I love Japan — so it was a book I read in just a few days.
For podcasts, I really love The School of Greatness by Lewis Howes. He brings people from different industries with a growth mindset, and he's very strong on mindset himself. And I would add Dr. Joe Dispenza's meditations — I'm a big fan of his work. I've visited five of his retreats, and meditating with his guided meditations has changed my life.
AJ: And how can listeners connect with you if they want to learn more?
Sarka: Just go to LinkedIn and search Sarka Risch — S-A-R-K-A R-I-S-C-H. Connect with me and send me a message. My new website, sarkarisch.com, will also be ready soon, and you'll find more there. I look forward to hearing from you and meeting inspiring people.
AJ: Sarka, thank you so much for being my guest on the Thriving Through podcast today.
Sarka: Thank you so much, AJ. I really appreciate you.
— END OF INTERVIEW —