We were lucky to catch up with Kelvin R. Tobias & Lynice Barnes recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Kelvin & Lynice, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
Love at First Site
Kelvin and Lynice here and together we are Love at First Site. We met online last year, April 2022, and decided to create this platform in October 2022. Together, we have been able to virtually meet real couples that want to share and highlight their online love stories while also making some memories of our own. We’ve also used our platform to connect singles and keep them optimistic about the dating world.
We’d like to think our love story is sacred because it’s truly a testament to what can happen when two people are ready to take that risk and be vulnerable enough to give & receive love.
When we met online, it was kismet. Unfortunately, we soon discovered that there would be 235 miles between us. With Lynice living in Atlanta, GA and Kelvin in Charlotte, NC it quickly became routine to travel for this love connection.
However, we did what was necessary to not only build our relationship, but also grow our platform to the successful business that it is today. Most recently, we went viral and grew from 8,000 followers to 35,000 with a wopping 9 Million views in just 30 days!
Just when we thought no one cared about our message about destigmatizing dating, one post allowed people to discover all the passionate content that we’ve been working so hard on for the last 9 months. We even made T-shirts quoting a famous line from the video and placed it on an online store geared towards making positive and funny dating apparel & games.
Speaking of games, our best project yet is our digital dating card game called “Let’s Make It Awkward”. Essentially, created an ebook that serves as an ice breaker for singles to bring on their first dates. During our interviews on our platform, a common problem that we noticed is that people were not vetting out people properly. Questions would go unanswered for fear of “scaring someone off” or being too “inquisitive”. Nonetheless, we wanted to advocate for our shy friends and serve as a median to finding their match.
So to answer your question, the biggest risk we’ve taken is honestly just putting ourselves out there. The fact that we just met last year, on a dating app, embarked on a long distance relationship, all while posting the entire journey on social media as a business model-some might think we’re batsh*t crazy.
However, as the saying goes, “when you know, you know.” Whether people are cheering us on from afar, or they are simply taking bets on how long we’ll actually stay together, we’d like to invite them either way to enjoy the ride and have a healthy conversation or two while they’re at it.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
As we’ve mentioned, we created Love at First Site to essentially serve as a safe space to discuss online, and long distance, dating.
With the climate of dating and relationships painted to be a mockery, we wanted to open the floor to actual conversations about mental health and get to the root cause of WHY people were having less than ideal experiences.
Through our research, we’ve discovered that many people had not done the inner work necessary to merge their lives with a partner. Knowing this, we often use our platform as a blog to challenge viewers to think critically about who they are and what exactly it is that THEY want-not what they THINK they want do to societal pressures.
With all this data, we’ve been able to construct dating games and even grow a consulting business that helps people optimize their dating profiles or LinkedIn for Love as we jokingly call it.
Recently, we’ve come out with dating merch and apparel that allows people to “Wear their hearts on their sleeve” so to speak. We didn’t see these type of products on the markets so we thought, why not create this for our audience. T-shirts and merch always serve as great conversations starters anyway so why not help our singles friends out a little? In the future, we will also have couples merch and much more!
You can find these items on our website loveatfirstsiteofficial.com.launchcart.store .
Also be sure to check out our growing YouTube Channel: Love at First Site where we post travel vlogs, interviews, and updates about our lives. For more exclusive, behind the scenes content, we also welcome you to join our Patreon. We send out monthly letters to our “Love Club” as well as give them full videos to our up and coming Podcast called “Love at First Site The Podcast”.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Getting to meet people from all over the internet and hearing their stories about love and relationships. Also giving people a laugh or two by being relatable is confirmation that we’re definitely on the right track.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Being transparent and relatable has always been our strong suit on social media. Even from the first date, Lynice recorded herself right before that moment and shared it to her platform. We also pride ourselves in responding to every comment, DM, or live question that is asked. We don’t ignore our audience.
Not everything we do is transactional or with a monetary agenda either and we’d like to think people truly appreciate that. Not only do you need to build a network, but you truly have to become invested in building friendships and genuine connections with your audience. They are not a means to an end. Your audience truly matters.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://loveatfirstsiteofficial.launchcart.store/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loveatfirstsite_/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theloveatfirstsite?mibextid=LQQJ4d
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@loveatfirstsite_
Image Credits
Lynice Barnes Kelvin R. Tobias