Video Transcript: Introduction

I think in ministry, whether you want to or not, I'm a pastor. And I think you always want your people to be aligned with like-minded people. So I don't think if you asked me that question, do you want to just do it? No, I think, but naturally, you have a tendency, when you start to develop relationships, to say: “Oh, he would be good for her. And she would be good for him.” And so you, you find yourself sometimes in that position when you think you may want to do that?

Yeah. Right. And then the question is, what's the right way to go about it? Right? Where are the kind of guidelines and parameters and how you do that? We're gonna talk about that a lot in the later sessions today. So our first session today is called Match Made in Eden. And a lot of people talk about a match made in Heaven. But God doesn't actually match make us. So we're going to talk about Match Made in Eden. And then our second session is going to be on coaching. And then the third session is going to be focused on matchmaking. And so a little background on me, I've been a matchmaker for the better part of 20 years, I fell into being a matchmaker completely by accident. And after I graduated from college, I was a dot-com entrepreneur in California. And we were getting investor money. And I created an online mediation tool. At the time, that people were just starting to do transactions on the internet. And so the Department of Commerce and the Federal Trade Commission, excuse me, were very concerned about, you know, where is the jurisdiction or the venue for the dispute, if it's happening cross border on the internet, and a lot of times to get a legal remedy, it costs more money to go to court, then whatever it is that you paid for something on the internet, so. So I had this venture capital funded dot-com that I was working on, and then the bubble burst, and I really needed a job. And so I took a job that I thought was beneath me doing membership sales for a dating service. And I realized that I was actually really good at it. Excuse me. I was really good at it. But I ended up getting in trouble all the time. And the reason that I ended up getting in trouble was because they had certain rules and parameters that only clients could meet other clients, and it was kind of a small pool of people. So a lot of times somebody would come in, and I would personally know somebody who would be great for them. And so I'd match them up, and it would work out. But I'd get in trouble because I didn't sign the other person up as a member, right, or somebody would come in. And, you know, we'd have a one hour consultation where I'd really talk to them and get to know them and what was going on in their life and their relationship history. And one woman in particular, I remember, came in, and I said, you should not sign up to be a member here. You're still in love with your ex-boyfriend. Let me help you get back together with him. And so I started coaching before I even really knew what coaching was. And of course, I got in trouble because I didn't sign her up and take her money, right. So I realized pretty quickly that I was not a dating service membership salesperson, but that I was a matchmaker. And so I then launched my own matchmaking company from my kitchen table in Beverly Hills, and started writing blogs on MySpace. And that's how I grew my business. And I got the attention of a company that was headquartered just down the street for competing with them in town. And they attracted me to come and work for them as their executive director of matchmaking. And I ended up overseeing 42 international offices and over 60,000 clients. I from there launch, the first international Millionaire Matchmaker program and we had clients, wealthy clients and celebrities fly in from all over the world, basically to Beverly Hills to meet with me to be their personal matchmaker. And then I also worked for MTV, on a dating show was called Are You The One? I don't know if you've seen it? But that's a little bit of my history in the matchmaking business. And so I learned a lot from my clients about relationships because of course, they'd all come in and tell me their stories about their, you know, divorce or their last breakup, or the challenges that they're having in, in finding somebody. And, of course, all of their online dating stories, which I'll probably tell a few of those today. They're pretty entertaining. But I learned actually the most in my own relationship struggles. And it's kind of that old paradigm about the shoemaker whose children have no shoes, right. And so even though I was showing up for work every morning, helping people with their love lives and doing a really good job, I struggled and suffered in my own love life and one relationship after another, I would probably call myself a serial monogamist. Right, one relationship after another, that just really wasn't working out. And at the same time, I was living a good life, I was a good person. But I had left the Christian faith that I had been brought up in, and I was I was brought up in church, my mom's a minister, my parents have been now married for 50 years. And as as an adult, I pursued a more spiritual yogic path, and considered myself you know, I was living the very, super spiritual LA lifestyle. And that didn't offer a lot of guidelines for how to operate in relationships. And so one heartbreak after another, I finally found myself on my knees to the Lord, just really asking for help. And so at that point, I embarked on a really interesting journey, because of course, in being reintroduced to God's world, to His Word, as an adult, and a grown up and having had the matchmaking experience, I saw things in a totally different way. And of course, when you hear the truth, you recognize it. Right. Now I had studied for almost two decades, all the relationship books that were out there, and as many of you who are older, remember Barnes and Noble, when you would go to Barnes and Noble, there is an entire relationship section that you could go in. And I'm also going to note that about 96% of those books were written for women, I read most of them. And I also knew a lot of the people who had written those books from living in Los Angeles. And none of it helped me. And I got to the point where I threw away five, you know, those Hefty black outdoor garbage bags, they're really big. It's not the kitchen bags, it's the big ones they use for leaves in the yard, I throw away about five of those of just relationship books. And those had gotten me nowhere. But when I did an in-depth analysis of Genesis chapter two, and then I went back and I looked at the original Hebrew translations, not the distorted translations, but you know, what are the real meanings and the original meanings that God was getting at for us? Everything really synced up for me. And what was really exciting is that I started taking that and implementing that with my clients. And I also made a rule at that point that I wouldn't match anyone unless they had gone through five weeks of coaching with me. And during that five week coaching process, which we'll talk about in the later session, we really got in-depth, I got very in-depth with my clients on what is God's plan for your relationships, and not all of them were Christian. But I'll tell you, when people are in pain over relationships, they're really searching, and they're seeking and they're willing to listen, right? So it wasn't just an opportunity to help them in their love lives, it was also an opportunity to lead them to the Lord. And I think that a lot of you are going to have that experience where you're gonna come into contact with people who really aren't living a Christian life, but they're in pain, and their relationships and they're struggling, and they're really open to listen, maybe for the first time in their lives. Or maybe like me, they've strayed away from the faith. Right. And it's a great opportunity for us as ministers and as Christian leaders to be able to help people in that way, as you're talking about. And then, interestingly enough, I talk to a lot of people who are Christians, and they shared with me that they really weren't getting support in their church. They really hadn't got a lot of education in their church. And they were so grateful for the information. I had one client who told me that he had gone through 20 years of Catholic school and never learned what I had taught him in five sessions of coaching together. I had another woman who was very much like myself, she was, you know, living the super spiritual yoga life, but had been raised in a Christian home, and really swore off of Christianity, right. And by the time we were done with our sessions, she called me and she said, I'm on Amazon.com, and I want to buy a Bible, what's the Bible that you recommended that I should buy? And she said, she never thought that she would hear those words come out of her mouth. And I recommend that she buy the passion translation. So that was really an exciting moment for me. And the next thing that was so exciting is that I was finding that in combination with the coaching, and then doing the matchmaking, that the success rate that I had was absolutely unheard of for the matchmaking industry. It was higher than any of my competitors. And not only were my people getting into relationships faster, they were evaluating people better and they were being set up for relationships that were going to last, which was really exciting for me. And of course, as all of you know, when you get into a relationship with the with the Lord, it's not just your love life that changes, right, every aspect of their lives were changing. So we're really seeing total transformation in the people that I was working with in all areas of their lives, which was so exciting.