Linnie Kern has been a Shaklee Business Leader for over 30 years and begun when she was a mom of three living out on a farm. Now, she has a business that has provided her with a six figure salary for many years.
Below I share with you the highlights from our chat. You can also watch our interview in our video below.
Interview with Linnie Kern
Shaklee Business Distributor
Cortney: Linnie has been in the health industry for over 30 years now and has a wealth of knowledge and information to share with people. I thought, what better way to get her message out than to do this. So Linnie, I am really excited to be doing this with you and I thought it would be great on this first chat for people to get to know you. I thought a great way is to kind of learn and share about how you came to learn about health and wellness and why you decided to partner up with Shaklee.
Linnie: Thank you Cortney. This is such an honor to be able to share with you and our audience whoever they may be. So I get to sort of rewind my brain which is a good memory test. Back in November of 1982 I was introduced to Shaklee. We were living on a 100 acre farm in Indiana and it was there that I was doing organic gardening and I also had three little children that were ages 6, 5 and 6 months. It was one conversation that I had with a lady that opened up my mind and my world to the area of nutrition. That was something that prior to that conversation I had very little knowledge.
What I am about to share with you is that it’s a journey and no one is expected to know a lot right in the very beginning when they are on their journey but just know that every day, every week, every month, every year you are going to pick up little bits of knowledge that are going to be ways to improve your health, your families health. That’s where it all began for me.
Cortney:How did that first conversation go and how did you know at that moment it was the right fit?
Linnie: It’s interesting because we did a 1 on 1 presentation. Back in that time there was no internet or computers. It was more like a friend conversation. Whether someone is a stranger like this woman was to me, or it is somebody you know, if somebody is speaking from their heart and not just their mouth and I know this woman was, she just shared with me that this company, the doctor who founded the company and his whole heritage prior to that, that just made so much sense to me. We didn’t have very much money at the time so I couldn’t jump in but I stepped in. That is what I always recommend people.
Don’t worry about jumping in with all two feet and two hand. It’s okay to just step into Shaklee. That’s what I did and I remember starting with the multi-vitamin. I was a tired mom of three small children and within two weeks I felt a difference. I had grown up taking a multi and so it was a huge difference and a huge eye opener that it allowed me to want to start testing more products. For myself first, then for my family.
Cortney: What were some health and wellness transitions you saw in your family aside from the improved energy in those first two weeks just from focusing on nutrition and what you put into your body? What are some of the things you have seen within your family or other people that made a big difference?
Linnie: I’d like to talk on both the nutrition side and also step into the environment side of Shaklee because with the nutrition side, one of the things that I have been paying attention to was that my son, my middle child who is your husband was developing some allergies. Something was different and it took me about three years to uncover the fact that he was diagnosed with a mild condition of Tourettes syndrome. As a mother I wanted this to go away, not accepting the fact that it was a syndrome.
That’s where my journey really opened up much wider than just nutritional supplements and the fact that just keeping the body healthy in multiple ways was something which helped him. Especially products like b complex which helps to keep stress levels down. Which is so important for somebody with Tourettes. Keep them in a more relaxed mode.
On the environmental side, learning about how Dr. Shaklee really paid attention to the environment and how we could not disturb nature and that’s how he developed all of his products. In the 1960’s he started developing natural products for cleaning care, dish care, laundry care and how the wash water that we would put out into the environment and how that was effecting negatively our environment when we were using chemical products that were on the market. So, I was buying these products at the grocery store so all I did was change brands. So that was not any new expenses to our budget, it was just a changing of dollars from the brand x’s on the market to the Shaklee cleaning care, dish care, laundry care products and now I was able to have less chemicals in the home and knowing I was helping the environment, helping our planet and I was doing so much good just in my own little home. That’s one of the things, I try to help other people to do. Help them understand that the small step that they take can really impact our planet in a positive way.
Cortney:I love that you brought that up because I think that so many times when people are beginning their health journey, they are so focused on food and supplements that they put in their body, which is extremely important, I mean that is really important, but there is also so much that affects our wellbeing such as cleaning products and personal care products that we are surrounded by. Those that we breath in, that touch our skin and that really impacts our wellness. It is really good that you touched on that because I think that is something that we will dive more into at a later time. We can talk about the big difference you can see just by using safer laundry detergents as opposed to really scent heavy chemical laden laundry products. Talking about why that matters and why you should care and how that affects you.
Linnie what has Shaklee and the knowledge that you have been gaining about health and wellness do for you when you first started over 30 years ago with your family out on the farm? What is it doing for you now?
Linnie: Well for now, I would have to say that over this period of time, our family rarely had to go to the doctor other than well checks and they didn’t miss much school. We didn’t have a lot of flus and bronchitis that many suffered from in the winter time. I grew up thinking a sore throat was a natural thing you’d get every winter. But, I can’t remember, I think it has been before Shaklee that I have had a sore throat.
It’s seeing the whole family being healthier. Now my children, my daughter-in-law, son-in-law, my grandchildren and my son in-law who runs marathons every so many years are powered by Shaklee. He’s powered by Shaklee using the Performance products. You know, Shaklee has become a part of our entire families life. What is really neat is taking it beyond your own family and sharing it with the people you love.
We look at Shaklee as a gift we are giving people. We are just messengers. We are not sellers of the products, we are messengers providing gifts of better health to people that we know. It’s whether or not that person is ready for Shaklee. Sometimes they are right away, sometimes they are not but we have to accept that when they are ready, that they know they have an opportunity to work with us as educators as well as somebody that can help them make decisions on the best products for them.
Cortney: It is such a gift because I can speak from my own experience of when I was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis a few years ago, they were telling me they wanted me to get on this really expensive, potentially very dangerous drug and I went to Linnie and I said I wanted to approach this from the natural way and you really helped set me on that journey. That was a gift to me because I have been able to avoid those drugs and not only did Shaklee products help me but just beginning that journey and starting with those foundations and learning about all of the other things in my environment that could be compromising my immune system and being able to better build that up all began by a conversation I had with you. Me and my family are very thankful to you for that. It is a gift, speaking from experience.
You started off back then not really having much knowledge, trying a multi-vitamin, where are you now in your knowledge and in your business?
Linnie: Where am I now? Well it’s interesting because six months after I started using the products and got wonderful results with the products personally and for the family, that I made the decision to build my Shaklee business, because it could be my own. Everybody has an entrepreneurial spirit in them and I can reflect back when my sister and I used to make pot holders and we would sell them up and down the street to the neighbors. I remember selling Girl Scout cookies. I remember all the different things we do as mom’s. The ability to be able to share stuff with people.
I made the decision six months after I was first introduced with Shaklee, that I stepped into it and I started to share it and I had to go through personal development of accepting the fact that some people may not be ready for Shaklee or some people may want to say no, or some people are not ever interested. You go through personal development.
Every year, I try improve myself so that I can be a better person for those that I meet and be able to share this gift of Shaklee with. I would say the journey of the business has really grown me as a better person which is fun. It is not just about earning the income and all the rewards of incentive trips and bonus cars, it’s also about who you become. Being a better mother-in-law, being a better grandmother, being a better friend, being a better neighbor. It all is this great beautiful package.
Cortney: Sitting in on some of the science symposiums and hearing from some of the great speakers and doctors and scientists that you’ve been able to listen to over the past couple years, has really given you a great deal of knowledge. I feel like I can always call you up and say, hey Linnie, what do you think about this condition. You have all of the resources and you pull it out and say, we should talk to this person. That is also very valuable and I look forward to being there one day. I have definitely learned so much in the past three years that I have been in Shaklee and I am excited to learn more and share with people like this.
One last question, where do you see your nutrition business going in the future? You can do this for the rest of your life can’t you?
Linnie: Absolutely. It’s a business you can do every day, any day, wherever, whenever and so that is how I started out and then I put some discipline into my business because discipline allowed me to do more than just do appointments and educate people and have them start on the products and start getting results. I started to help talk to them about how the benefits of being in Shaklee allows you to share with the other people you know, with my help and then be able to build an income source that will help them to also be able to afford their products.
So many people get into this business on the business side to be able to get a check from Shaklee that will pay for their products. Once they start expanding who they are talking to, and to a larger field of people than they find their bonus checks expanding. Than, they find themselves being able to get to know this company better and the other rewards that are available to them, than they start wanting to share to a larger group of people. Over time, that is where I really started to enjoy building a team and coaching. The beauty of the coaching, helping other people to become successful like I have, has allowed me to spend a lot of time on coaching and helping other people be successful because, in turn, that creates success in my business overall too. It is such a win, win for everybody.
Cortney: Thank you so much for sharing. I know we wanted to keep these kind of short and we will be doing our best to get these out weekly.
Interested in starting your Shaklee business?
Let’s chat.
