Lynette Bledsoe on Creating Success in Your Home Business
Lynette Bledsoe has been in network marketing for over 16 years. She is an author, Social Media Marketing Trainer, and MLM Leader. Her story and interview are below.
Thank you so much for doing this interview, Lynette! You have quite the story and I’m really interested to learn more. So, let’s get started on our exclusive interview!
Where were you born, what was childhood like, and what did you want to be when you ‘grew up?’
I was born in Brooklyn, NY in a very diverse community called Williamsburg, which today is one of the most popular areas in the city today.
I have to admit my childhood wasn’t bad compared to most but I was raised in a single parent household after my parents divorced when I was 7 years old.
My childhood was actually pretty awesome even though our family did not have much financially but back then we had a community who looked after one another.
The highlight of my day used to be when I got off of school and play in our neighborhood playground. The kids in our neighborhood stayed outside until the street lights came on – that’s how we knew it was time to go upstairs, totally technology free zones compared to today’s kids.
When I was growing up I wanted to be a few things but the two that stand out the most were between becoming a teacher and lawyer so guess you would say I fell more so into the teaching aspect in this point of my life.
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Was there any Entrepreneurship in the family, and what interests did you have while growing up?
The closest to entrepreneurship in our family was my grandfather who was a New York City taxi driver and if anyone knows about taxi drivers besides their crazy driving is that most of them had to work hard for years to become the owners of those taxi cabs. Then they would become independent and would be able to make their own hours or even have other drivers drive the cab to make an additional income.
While growing up, I absolutely loved, totally loved music, photography, and fashion. I guess living in New York City you’re surrounded by so much creativity it’s hard not to want to be involved in so many different things.
I attended a couple of workshops on taking photos because I loved being able to find simple things and capture the uniqueness and beauty to them.
I also wanted to sing (which I can’t do so leave those for showers) but wanted to get into fashion for the free clothes. So, I can honestly say not focused on these interests at all but enjoyed them to the fullest.
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What was selling shoes like in NYC?
Selling shoes in New York City was really not my goal but was something I did because it was a flexible job to do while going to college full-time.
I worked right across the street from the Empire State building so the traffic to our store was always super busy and customers always changed every day because of all the tourists who would visit. Plus working on commissions I didn’t mind the busyness, but I have to say my feet were dying at the end of my shift.
You were actually prospected into your first network marketing company by your husband, can you tell us about that, and what were your first couple years like inside network marketing?
Yes, I think most people get a kick out of that story more than anything else. We met in 1999 at a very infamous club in NYC called The Copacabana during both of our birthday weekends (which are a couple of days a part).
He invited me on a date and said he would pick me up from work and asked if I did not mind if he stopped by his office before we headed out so naturally I said yes even though I was wiped from working an 8 hour shift.
His “Office” was an opportunity meeting and let’s just say I wasn’t the happiest camper there. I was a single mom working and attending college full-time so thought it was all a scam.
It took me about a year to begin working with him at that company full-time and even after I began helping, I was mainly the behind the scenes person who took care of the administrative part of things.
He was more so the person who got up in front of the crowds to share our story. We were both very new to network marketing, but one of the things we did from the very beginning was become great students learning everything we could from our mentors within the industry.
That’s one of the things I think a lot of people do not do. Most people are looking for the IT factor or the PERFECT SCRIPT rather than learn from as many leaders as they can to adjust what they learn to make it work for their business.
Within a few years, you and your husband managed to double your team and income each year in MLM. What were the three most important things you did to achieve that?
The 3 most important things we did to double our team within a few years was to focus on working on fast starts for new reps, building depth within our leaders, and hosting weekly calls or webinars to get everyone on the same page.
What we did with new reps was get them building their business from the start so without knowing too much we’d help them begin building their business teams using either 3-way calls or third party tools.
I actually love working with new reps because they don’t know what they don’t know. They’re so open to work hard as heck side by side with you because of their pure excitement about their new business.
New successful reps are the life-blood to any business because not only can they fire up an entire business team but because of the recognition they’re getting it pushes the team to work so they also get recognized as well.
As far as helping our leaders – we found that when your leaders don’t have a plan specified to what they personally need to move up within the company, they will stay complacent and stuck.
If they have a concrete plan of exactly how many sales or representatives they need to move up, not only does this give them a road-map, but also gives them a goal to achieve every day.
We also make a commitment with those leaders that we work with to let us know how they are doing on a daily basis to keep them accountable towards what they said they wanted to achieve.
One of the things I think made a huge difference for us was when we began implementing our weekly form of communication with our team either through a conference call or webinar was IT for us.
Not only does this keep everyone on the same page towards the team’s goals but it allowed us to give out recognition to the top representatives and we whoever is rocking their business right now share their stories on some techniques that are working for them right now to help the entire team as a whole.
How do you see new network marketers fail, and what can they do to fix that?
I believe most network marketers fail when they think this business is a quick results industry and honestly it’s not.
You have to give yourself at least 5 years of working consistently every day to actually see the results you want.
I also think more people have to be open to learning from all leaders. Most network marketing leaders only stick with the leaders within their company but there are so many leaders out there who are hugely successful that even though you may not be in the same company, you can still take some tips from them and figure out how to implement it for your business.
We actually got the idea of hosting weekly calls/webinars from another millionaire earner who’s a great friend to us but he’s wasn’t in our company and once we implemented that idea it just totally opened up a whole new movement not only within our personal team but within our company, because no one in our company had been hosting weekly calls.
So, when other leaders in our company saw the success of our calls they began to host them for their teams.
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You have a great blog! How old is it, how many posts are on it, and what is your daily traffic like?
Thank you very much on the complement of my blog, it’s really new and is something I have been consistently working on for exactly 1 year and 2 months.
As of today, I currently have 113 posts and my daily traffic is about 506 views lol and I’m laughing at myself because I actually had to look that up in my WordPress back office because I honestly didn’t know until you asked me.
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You have a lot of great valuable content on YouTube. How has video helped your home business, and should every network marketer do video?
I initially started off in YouTube and created those videos for our team however as we began to switch gears a bit and began coaching leaders from all types of companies I had to create videos that were more generic to help more people.
The first videos I did were probably taken 20 times before they were actually uploaded to YouTube. As I shared before, my husband was more of our video guru for our business so in the beginning not many videos from me at all.
Now in the past year I’ve been totally loving Facebook Live videos. Facebook is the main social media channel we focus on so since I can’t fix the mistakes and get to interact more with our audience. I just do them to show others you don’t have to be perfect.
Videos are a MUST right now because whether you’re creating a video to help answer questions or provide tips on the niche you are in, it can help someone.
The beauty of videos is that once you make them, you can refer to them all the time instead of answering the same questions over and over again.
So in my opinion, even though I took some time to start doing videos, just get out there and just do it. Believe me, I wish I would have started doing videos a long time ago because they do get easier to make as you continue to make them.
What is your best lead generation technique these days, both paid and free?
A technique I wish I would have learned back in 1999 was providing more value to others. I think we spammed our friends and family so much over the years that after awhile they would say “Ok Lynette, what are you doing now?” We didn’t have a burnt warm market, our warm market was super burnt lol.
The year that we reached the highest level of the company was the year we began providing more value to others.
Back then it was mainly through videos began seeing us as experts and would contact us wanting to know how to either buy from us or ask how they could join our team.
More recently as we began adding blogging to our techniques. Within our blogs we began using free offers such as a training videos, webinars, and downloadable PDFs they could sign up for to help provide them with value in an area they need help with and then provide continue to provide them with daily content to help to continue to feed their interests.
As far as paid lead generation techniques, I would have to say we get most of our results from Facebook. So, that is the main social media channel we put our advertising expenses towards to our Facebook live videos, increase our likes and our blog posts.
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You co-authored a book with your husband, entitled “A View From the Top.” Can you tell us a little about that?
Absolutely, we were very honored to have been asked to be a part of that book because it was the year we reached the highest level that year and were the youngest team to be a part of it since we grew so fast compared to the other leaders.
A View From The Top book was a book put together with the top leaders within that company sharing their stories of where they came from and how they were able to achieve success similar to how you share the stories of different entrepreneurs so uniquely within your blog, Erik.
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What is your favorite book right now and why?
Right now, my favorite books are:
The Networking Revolution by Jessica Higdon & April O’Leary
Vibrational Money Immersion – Ray Higdon
The Money Mindset – Brian Carruthers
ROCK Your Network Marketing Business by Sarah Robbins
Honestly, the reason I love these books right now because these are actually the mentors we learned from over the years who totally changed our business. I like books that give the how to’s so I guess that’s why these are my go to books right now.
What’s crazy is that all but one of these authors eventually became personal friends of ours so to read the stories of where they came from and how they achieved success despite set-up just shows it is possible for anyone to achieve it as well.
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What are your goals for 2023?
If you would have asked me this question when we first got started in the industry, I would have said reach the highest level in my company but over the years that has changed.
I have found that the more people you help achieve their goals, the faster you will achieve yours so this year one of our goals is to help more leaders rank advance in their companies.
I especially want to show other single mothers and women that despite the craziness of their lives they can achieve any goal they put their minds to.
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What is your favorite quote and why?
The Path To Success Is To Take Massive Determined Action – Tony Robbins
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Thank you so much for this interview, Lynette!