Lakeland Business Leaders is now BRIDGE Local

Here’s what you need to know.

Watch the the full video here.

Did you miss the Insider meeting where we announced the transition to BRIDGE Local?

We have officially changed our name from Lakeland Business Leaders to BRIDGE Local. We’ve changed the name, and we’re changing the way we serve our members. It’s time we bridged the gaps!

You might have a lot of questions about what that means for LBL, what that means for your existing membership, and more. Hopefully, this blog post can answer your questions.

First things first. What does BRIDGE Local mean? 

BRIDGE stands for:

Building
Renewing
Inspiring
Developing
Generous
Entrepreneurship

In the past 8 years that we’ve existed in our community as Lakeland Business Leaders, gaining thousands of members in the LBL Forum and gathering hundreds of premium members, we learned a lot. We learned what you need, what you don’t need, what you value, and what you don’t value. We learned about all the business resources available to you in our community and how we can better connect you to them. We learned that our old membership structure in LBL wasn’t the best way to serve you, and after years of toiling and tinkering and experimenting and researching, we figured out a way to support you, our awesome members, even better.

With LBL, our focus was connecting customers with local solutions in real-time. That will continue to be our focus, but we’re stepping up our game. We’re connecting you–the business, the consumer, the local partner–to the resources you need, no matter where they exist in our community, reaching beyond just a Facebook group and networking events.

It means we will be changing the pricing structure of our membership and members will enjoy more benefits than before.

We discovered we have three different types of members:

  1. Members who connect primarily online.
  2. Members who prefer to connect online AND offline.
  3. Members who recognize the value of both online and offline connections, AND also have resources they’d like to share with other members
You can view the complete membership level details including pricing, here, but in short:
  1. Our Online Package will be available for insiders who can’t often make it to in-person events but value connecting online and searching for resources online. A directory listing is available to every Online Package insider.
  2. Our Access Package is perfect for insiders who value connecting online and offline. Those members receive access to online resources and networking, as well as some access to in-person event like Meet and Greets and signature workshops.
  3. Our Expert Plus Package is for insiders who want the most complete level of access to online and offline events with the opportunity to share their own resources and host their own in-person BRIDGE events.

Insiders are BRIDGE Local members. We’ve done away with the term “premium member”. If you join BRIDGE, you will join as either an Online Insider, an Access Insider, or an Expert Plus Insider.

  • Yes, this is true. However, as a way to welcome everyone–including our existing premium members–we’re offering a discount through Monday, July 15 so you all have an opportunity to lock in lower pricing for a full year. That’s one full year at the Access Package level for $147. That’s a savings of $153!
  • Use Coupon code FREEDOM before July 15, 2019 to take advantage of this limited time offer! BRIDGE Local wants you to join us for this next step in our journey. We will be bridging the gaps for the small businesses in our community, and beyond!

Any business that takes advantage of the FREEDOM promotion before July 9, will receive a FREE upgrade ($153 value) to the ACCESS Package membership. If the business was already an LBL Premium Member, the FREEDOM promotion will extend that business’s membership for one year. (For example, if a business was an LBL Premium Member with a membership expiration date of November 7, 2019, and they take advantage of the FREEDOM promotion, they will be given the FREE upgrade to ACCESS Package, and their membership will not expire until November 7, 2020).

Every existing paid LBL member has automatically been converted to an ACCESS Package ($300/year) for the balance of the current membership period. (For example: If your membership renewal date is November 7, 2019, you have been converted to a BRIDGE Local ACCESS member until your membership expires.)

If, at the end of your LBL membership period you have not joined BRIDGE Local at any level, we will attempt to contact you via email and/or phone to confirm you do not wish to join BRIDGE. Non-renewed members will be removed from the BRIDGE Local Insiders Group weekly, and their directory listings will be deleted from our website.

If you do not recall when you joined LBL, please send us a message or call our office. We will check our database and provide you with the details of your membership. Office: 863-606-5994 email: connect@bridgelocal.com

Absolutely not! The ACCESS Package level is $300/year, and each LBL membership has been automatically converted to this level.
Additionally, all of the additional features that were available on our previous directory have been included with ALL levels of membership. Businesses that were “Complete” members will be added as a “Featured” business listing on our home page, for the remainder of their membership period.

With BRIDGE Local, you will create a new account so that you can manage and update your BRIDGE membership. In order to make a fresh start with BRIDGE, we manually converted your listings from Lakeland Connection, but we did not carry over your account login details.

Through our experience with Lakeland Business Leaders, we discovered that many of our members would create an account, pay for their membership, but leave most of the fields of the directory blank. With BRIDGE Local, we will be managing your directory listing for you, so that we can make sure all of the necessary information about your business is completed, and accurate, so customers can contact you directly, and our members can get the most value from their membership!
If you need to update the details of your business listing, you can fill out the form here and our team will get the updates made for you within (1) business day. You will receive an email from our support team when your updates have been published.
If you’re ready to take advantage of this one-time offer, so you can move forward with BRIDGE Local, click here to join us today.