How to Make a Match

about dating. Oh my gosh, Well that's all we talk about. Help I suck at dating? Um, so, I guess I gotta ask you guys help people suck at dating? Suck less at dating? Then? Yeah, that's our specialty. People come to us suck at dating. Okay, well here we are. We suck at dating. Help us. No, I'm just kidding. Actually, uh we do. We do that. We suck and we

do take all the help we can get. But so, tell us what do you guys typically specialize in, Like you guys help people wink up and meet or is it more of like let's say people already dating and you help them kind of navigate those waters. Yeah, I would say we specialize and very successful singles actually who have really you know, put all of the time into their career and building you know, their place in the

in the industry and in corporate America. Some celebrities, and then all of a sudden they turn around, they're like, wait, I haven't had a date in like five years, seven years. I mean it goes up and up and up for a lot of first you know time serial daters. They just can't get past the first date. You know, so they get they meet people, but we always say, okay, they have no skills. For whatever reason, it just never moves on. So we specialize and probably those two. Yeah,

and you know we're interestingly enough. The pulse in the culture of dating, you know, it changes like every year. It's so different. Like some people they may have been in a relationship for you know, four or five years or whatever, and now they've been out of the game for a minute, they're like, whoa, whoa, what is this? What's all this text and foolishness, let's all this go stint foolitionist, Like they have no idea how to even

maneuver in the in the dating space. So we have to kind of bring them up to speed on what dating is like today because it's different than what it was last year. Even Yeah, absolutely, it's funny, uh because we were just talking to Deandrew about being signal in Los Angeles and how difficult it can be sometimes. But it's mostly it comes down to the guys. I feel like I just don't know how to act, you know, Like I feel like it's it's it's like they're not

opening conversations. Maybe they don't know how to carry on a conversation, how to bridge the gap from the first meeting into the first day into the second day, and all those kind of things. So what do you kind of see as like the biggest roadblock in a lot of those things. Is it really just meeting the people or is it what's like the biggest difficulty? You know, I would say that especially prefer some of the guys that come to us. A lot of them are socially awkward.

Like we get a lot of tech eas I mean they're they're sit behind a computer all day long and they they you know, interface with the computer. They're not really front facing with the public, so they don't they lack those social skills. They come to us and say, you know, I don't even know what to say to women. I don't know what to you know, even how to approach her, Like what do I know? Help me? And so you know, they don't they don't know, They just

don't know. So we provide them with those skills as to like what do you say when you approach her? Like we're like lead with a compliment and like who what compliment? So those types of of things we help with as well. Um, so I guess what is your success rate of like people who just like randomly approach you and then you get them into an actual relationship,

Like how often do you see that? Or do you just like help them launch into like the dating world in general, or do you like walk them through an entire relationship. Yeah, so we have an eight seven percent success rate. It kind of varies with a couple of points. But I mean a lot of people come to us for different things that we offer date coaching. So, like we said, a lot of times people don't even know

where to begin. They don't have any conversation, you know, they're just like, you know, what do what do I even say? If someone says, you know, tell me about yourself. So we're starting from there. So if that's what they come to us for, then we say it's a success if they've gotten out in their dating and they're successful. Um. But we also have people who just you know, don't have a chance to meet anybody, and so we introduced them and we actually have our we call them lovely aison.

So we have some staff that there's social lights. They go out all the time and they bring out singles for us to interview and we actually do, um, introduce them to matches until um, we find a suitable match. Thanks, you guys have really been you guys get a whole empire out there. It sounds like, yeah, we're building legacy here. How did you guys get into this? You know it's interesting. We knew you're gonna ask that questions. So so Kenny and I were both um senior vps in corporate where

we used to be marketing and advertising executives. So we used some market products and services. Now we market people. But how how we morphed into this business? Though? Um, we would be surprised at the end of a presentation like these C level executives will have us hemmed up in the corner telling us all of their personal business, and we were like, did you hear with this person's Like we could not believe they would just like release

everything to us. And we would just sit down with them, like pull up a chair and just kick our feet up and just have a conversation and kind of help them get through it. And this happened like every single time, and so we realized that, you know, we're pretty good at this. And until and then we also went through our own personal relationships struggles and kind of coached each other, helped each other with it, and we decided, you know what, let's let's do this full time. Let's go back to school,

let's get credential and launch our business. And here we are. Nice, I love it and you guys are crushing it. Yeah, thank you. Blew up to New York and once to the Matchmaking Institute, we became certified and the rest is history. That was like almost ten years ago. So Nice, I've got a question. We we talked about it amongst ourselves a little bit earlier. What's you guys stance on dating apps? Because they become so apparent and dating culture these days,

So what you guys is like opinion of them. Yeah, we love dating apps. I think it's a great way. I think we embraced them. So even when people come to us and say I'd love to get on dating apps, can you help, and we help them with their booth file. We helped them right there, summaries so that it's fun and flirty. Sometimes they come in with like a LinkedIn kind of boring you know summary, but it has to

be like conversational. So again it's like you know, you're going in for an interview and people are looking at your pictures and all of that. So we think it's it's a great way to meet people. But again, like a lot of people come to us and say, I can't meet someone, whether it's you know, Atlanta, whether it's l a where it just really depends on the skills too. So you have to be like open to having conversation.

You have to be more assertive, um, and you have to be kind of flirtatious to keep it out of the friend zone. You know. It's interesting because we um embrace like the dating sites and the dating apps. And I met my husband on a dating site like twenty years ago. Like I was probably the only one on a dating site twenty years ago. They were like they were dating, they were dating sites twenty years ago. Yes, we met on a dating site twenty years ago, so

of course, you know, I embrace it. But it's just all about the approach. I mean, where else are you going to have access to that many singles in the palm of your hand? Swiping, swiping, swiping, I mean you're never going to see that many singles probably rowing the same way as you anywhere else in the country, But on an app, there's thousands right at your fingertips. Do you think it's been a detriment to dating at all

or do you think it's helped it? Uh? In the big picture of things, I think I think that people have gotten lazy though, you know, they sit there and it prevents them from actually like going out and interacting and having the actual you know, build up the courage

to socialize and introduce yourself and start a conversation. And that's the organic way that it used to be, right, But the apps have absolutely I think, um, it made people lazy where they can just kind of sit on their couch, jink a glass, inline, kick their feet up and just swipe, swipe, swape, swapes said, they're a cute swipe swipes, you know, I mean, and then they just want to have these electron and put morphs into an

electronic relationship. So you know, they they sometimes they never get out and actually meet, They never get on the phone. They just kind of have this electronic relationship. Well, you can't build an emotional connection that way unless you actually have face time or phone time. Yeah, I think there's a downside to it also. I mean I see where people because you can have another date tomorrow, they never

make a decision. So I mean you can have somebody wonderful in front of you and you're like, well maybe if I swipe again, you know, there might be someone else. It's like, you have someone great right in front of you, like, just go for it. But because there's so many choices, you know, people just keep going and they're like, now I think I'm gonna date three or four people and just continue going. When you have somebody, like when you have somebody great, it's hard to realize you know, I

have someone I need. You know, that's it for getting out of the app, because I have friends who go on apps and they have these relationships built and then actually getting out into the real world and like taking that next step is really inflating because you feel kind of safe and exactly, Yeah, you can kind of hide behind the app. So we always encourage our clients too, because they want to keep texting on the app. So the whole point of being on the app is getting

off of it and having a conversation. But it's so much easier. I mean, like we always say it's easier to text too. We try to get our clients off of texting and like onto the phone. So when you get onto the phone or you're actually meeting somebody on the date, that's when you know, the real skills come out. So that's kind of where we come in. Yeah, it's interesting because that's where it does prevent them from utilizing

social skills because they don't really have to. So you lose those social skills if you don't use them, you know, like you know repeatedly, you just you lose them. Yeah, absolutely, And what do you guys advise as far as like when people are dating, if they're dating multiple people, when do you advise, Like, okay, maybe at like one month, two months, three months, that's when you need to decide whether or not you want to take it to a different level of this person, Like what's your timeline as

far as dating or is there no timeline? And when you believe that people are wasting their time. Yeah, I don't think that you know, there's an actual timeline. It just depends on if you both have the same end goal. So if you're dating three people, we always say we have three are we have we for our clients to date three in rotation? We say three in rotation, right, but it has to be three growing the same way, three with the same end goal. And then they'll start

to eliminate themselves. You'll start to feel where you feel closest to that individual with you know, you'll start to feel that experiences there and you're like, you know, I just kind of like this on a little bit more than that one, and they'll eliminate themselves eventually. So I don't know that there's certainly like a timeline, but you certainly don't want to waste time with just random dating for no reason. Most people that come to us are

dating with intention. They have an intention to enter into a long term relationship or eventually marriage. So we don't encourage you to just be dating just to be dating, so have an end goal in mind and see who whose goal aligns with yours. Yeah, you mentioned too that you talk to like, uh, maybe it's like some executives or something after meetings and stuff like that. I could imagine those people being kind of more picky when it

comes to who they choose to day. So how do you navigate that when someone's maybe being like super picky or uh, not being very sponsive to a lot of the advice you're giving. Do you guys ever deal with that kind of stuff? Yeah, I mean we have clients who I mean, if anybody could be a fly on the wall, which I think is a good thing about

this show. I mean, could to see like the list that come to us when people who are then all the laundry lists of things that the person has to be, the person has to bring, and then we kind of turned the tables on them and like okay, well what

are you bringing? And it's like crickets. So we really like them to to really take some time because you know, when you go out on a date, people are looking both ways, so it's not like you're going we call it a date re view, so you're not going in to interview this person and then just leave like you have to have something to share also, so we kind of give them that information that you want to really hone in on what you're bringing to the table that's

different from everybody else. Yeah, but you know what, so so UM and answer your question. The corporate UM people especially like the men and so not to pick on men, because we love our male clients, but they the more money they have, the more picky and demanding they are. They want to come in and say, you know, I want someone um that have this certain ways to hip ratio. You know, we're like, what what you know? First of all, you know what, she has two kids, it's going to expand, right,

so you understand that that's how this works? Or are you going to pay to keep that that body up? I mean, so they come in with those types of demands. It seems like the more money they have, the more demands they have, and they feel like we can We're just magicians. We can just you know, okay, here you go. Here's like a lot of them that meet your criteria.

You go. But that's not how matchmaking works. So it sounds like you have to often encourage them maybe that's like lower their standards, but to shift their standards a little bit more realistic, which is a hard conversation to have because people think, you know, the more money they have that they can command a certain type of person, which sometimes they can and sometimes they can. So that's

a tough conversation behind like you know, four walls. It's not so funny to think about too, because like, obviously money can buy you so many things in life, but at the end of the day, it's like it can't really help you there. I mean, you would be like, help you get your foot in the door, but at the end of the day, it's not gonna give you exactly what you want, right, it's not now. But you know, we have to have those conversations pretty often. Yeah, there

are people that you guys help or won't help. So like you're like, well, we won't help any this one this young, or we won't help anyone this older. Is it like anyone under the sun? Like you guys healthy. You know, let's say they're range of people that come to us are like between twenty nine and fifty five. You know, usually I would say the sweets abot is between in the thirties, um early forties. But you know, it's not really about the age that we won't help us,

more about the personality. So a lot of people will come in and tell us like, you know, kind of trying to take over our process, and we're like, you know, you're in our community, that you're in our world, so you're gonna have to if this hasn't been working, you're gonna have to take some advice from us. So a lot of times the ones that we won't take are the ones that just don't listen. So it's gonna be hard, like pulling teeth back and forth trying to tell them

something they're not listening. So we don't even take the kind of we always say, are you coachable? So if you're not coachable, it doesn't matter what. It's not gonna work, you know. But I will tell you though this year, probably last year, over the last couple of years, we've

gotten younger and younger clients. Like our sweet spot is somewhere around the forty range, because these are career people that have, like like Kelly mentioned earlier, they've taken the fast track out of college to like advanced you know, degrees, and then they've climbed the corporate ladder and they roll over and like there's nobody here. There kids, there's no spouse, there's no you know, and so those and then that's when they are waving the white flag, and that's when

they come to us. But here recently, like in this last year, we've gotten like twenty four year old and like, you know, si year old. I mean that's young for someone to say, you know whoa I I don't know what I'm doing and and are willing to invest this type of money at that age. So when they come to us at that age, we used to be like, you know, they're probably too young for this process, but

they're not. That's a sweet spot. Congratulations to them for making a decision so early to say what I'm doing isn't working and I'm going to invest in me and hire profess show that can help me in the areas that i'm weakend right, Why do you think the people have gotten younger asking for help with dating? Do you think it's because of doing you know, the dating apps and stuff like that, or do you think because of

COVID Maybe people aren't like aren't used interactions. I think that matchmaking is just there's not as much of a stigma against it. You know, people would say, for oh gosh, you have to hire a matchmaker, there's something must be wrong with you. But I think it's just becoming more commonplace that you know, you hire a headhunter if you're looking for a job, you hire you know, a life coach.

If you're looking for something else you have are your a matchmaker if you're having you know, problems in your dating and relationship life. So it's not really as you know, that stigma that people would say, oh my gosh, something's wrong, even like mental health. I mean, that's something that we're all embracing now that we didn't before. So I think just personal you know, on professional development is like more

um accepted at this point. I'm thinking, and I think that some of the younger generation there there, if they didn't meet anybody in college and they're seeing their friends and college getting married by out of college, they're like, WHOA, So there's a reason why I'm not chosen And they start feeling that that, you know, that self pity, like why haven't I gotten into a relationship, Why hasn't anyone

chosen me? Why? Why can't I seem to get this right, and and so that particular age, they're taking it on almost like the next level of education. So they're so they're continuing their education from college to Okay, let me go ahead and and get and gain these skills so I can figure this relationship thing out here. It's so funny how we love to follow what our friends are

doing too. I feel like one of the reasons that I'm so comfortable being in a relationship now is because so many of my friends are in relationships, Whereas when I was like twenty three, everyone was single, so it's like all we wanted to do is be single. But now you know, everyone's in relationship, so it kind of like, okay,

well let's see, let's give this thing a shot. Yeah. So, so when you guys are bringing on a new client or or prospective client, what do they have to go through in order to be like onboard by you guys. Do you just sit down and talk with them or do you have them go through a whole process? Mhm, yeah,

I think that. So, so initially they'll contact us UM and then our implementation director will reach out to them and kind of do like a pretty screening and set them up for like a strategy session, and they'll get an opportunity to meet with both myself and Kelly and then we just drill them. We learn more about their personality, we learn more about their past challenges, and then we make a decision based off of what we've uncovered if they're a good fit to work with us or not.

And we usually tell them on the spot, you know, whether we feel like they would be a good client for us UM and we turned down many because we don't work with everybody. What would be like a reason you would turn someone down? Yeah, I mean, I think the reason one reason that we turn people down a lot of times is, like we said, they don't listen, so they're kind of coming in and taking over the

whole conversation station. Like sometimes we can't even get a word in, and we're just like why are we here? Like you're telling us what to do and what not to do, Like why are we all sitting here? If you have all the answers or we might give some suggestions and they're like, oh no, no that doesn't work because such, So I mean, why are we here? So it's kind of like, you know, that's how the whole process is gonna be you can feel that that's gonna be like a tug of war, and we just don't

even go there. But I think the other thing is that's good when people contact us, even if we don't take them on, they can join our database and so that's like a complementary um place where it's confidential and everyone can put in there, you know, their picture and their stats and their information and kind of what their challenges have been. And that's the first place we look when we have a client who's looking for someone in their area. So it's not open to the public, but

that is the first place that we look at. And it's free. So that's a great option if we don't end up working together. And they also get you know, information about upcoming events and all of us. They get to stay close to us, um you know, if something happens to come up that they're a good match for.

And that's actually gonna be my next question. And I was like, so, do you have like an entire database and you're only matching people within this database or you like in the community, like making them go to events where there's other people who don't even know you guys that you're trying to match somewhere, Like, how does that work? Yeah, So in this industry, some matchmakers and some companies will

match client to client. However we don't because, um, you know, John over here may not be a good fit for Ashley over here just because there are two clients, I mean that they're right for each other. So we pride ourselves on our coaching so we can uncover the type of person that you need versus who you want, and then we go out and heart hunt for that specific person.

So it could be you know, we may start in our database or we also belong to like a international matchmaking alliance with thousands of matchmakers and we can pull from each other's databases. Um, but we still bring them in the house to screen them our way. We have recruiters that are all across the country that go to yacht club events and you know sweets sweets at the the you know, NBA or something like that, like those

types of places. Um, and they're they're out anyway like looking, and so they bring them in house and put them into our database and then we just screening from there. So so many ways that we you know, we source and find them right now, do you guys have like a minimum requirement for uh, it just it just sounds like you guys work mostly with like wealthy people. Do you guys have like a minimum requirement for that. No, now, because we what we found are a lot of people

who make a lot of money. Sometimes they're in a lot of debts. So it's not like, you know, you don't just come and say, oh, I make such and such amount, because you can be like broken than a joke really, so you know, it's not really an amount. It's more about like how if they can afford it, and you know, it's really more about them being able to want to do something differently in their personality SOT. So you don't have you have to be like a

like a minimum standard of of socialism. I guess it's like socialitism or guests, right, Not really, no, no, not really, it's just, um, I just think a lot of people that come to us are in the professional arena. So it's not always CEO THO and celebrities, but it's a lot of times it is just people who don't have the skills are just not able to get out socially

to meet um other people. And I also think that these people also resonate with us because they feel like we have a certain level of success that they trust us, you know, with their brand, they trust us with their innermost personal thoughts and so you know, those are the things so they feel more comfortable with us, I believe

because of the level of success that we've had. Yeah. Absolutely, Well, before we let you guys go, is there any advice you can give our listeners out there that might be struggling to either make that first connection or get to the second date. Um, any any kind of advice you have for them maybe trying to bridge that gap, or any type of advice whatsoever. Well, I think that you know, dating has gotten to the point where we just put so much pressure on It's like dating is this whole

scary thing. Like I think if we just get back to just getting out and meeting new people, like as soon as you leave your place of residents or when you go outside the door, like you're we always say you're on the market twenty four hours, seven days a week. So just make sure that you look approachable, make sure that you're smiling, make sure that you're open some meeting new people. That is really it's like a numbers game. So you don't. We don't want to just wait until

you see someone like this. You know, girl looks great, of this guy looks amazing. Let me go. Just be open to having conversations. You don't know if a friend of a friend can introduce you. So I think just being more social, sociable, um will really help with dating and not putting so much pressure on it. It's like it doesn't have to be as serious as it is. Yeah, I would echo that, and I also would say, you know, try to stay out of electronic relationships. Like you cannot

build an emotional connection via text. You can't understand the tone, you can't understand that delivery. So we say, you know, jump on the phone as quickly as possible. Utilize even though we're in a pandemic, it's fine. Utilize you know, zoom, utilize, you know, FaceTime. There's so many virtual platforms that you can use to start connecting with someone and you can

safely go out and meet them. I mean, our goal is for you to get into a space organically and just see if there's chemistry, because as matchmakers, we can control compatibility. However we can't control chemistry. You have to uncover if there's chemistry there or not. Ye. Yeah, absolutely well, Kelly, I like what you said. When you're you know, when

you're single, you're on the market exactly. I'm grateful that I'm not single because I look like this piece of crap and so it's uh right, very very very lucky though that's the case. Um well, guys, thank you so much for joining us. For listeners out there, be sure to check them out. It's uh the matchmaking doo dot com, right, they can find some more information on you guys there or on the social media's the matchmaking will join us and be part of our community. Would love to have

you there. You go, heck yeah, join them, be part of the community and find love that you guys so much for joining us. We can't wait to uh hear more from you to our show. Please to into let turn into love match Atlanta. Oh yeah, I love Atlanta And where can we watch that at? Yeah on PBO on Sunday nights, May eighth. The first episode of UM comes on at ten pm Eastern Standard Time, and every week after that we have the nine pm slot. So

please join our new show. We're so excited about it. Absolutely. Congratulations on the show. We're excited to walk. Thank you, thank you, you see you guys. Follow help by suck at Dating on I Heart Radio or wherever you listen to podcast