00:00Hi, I'm Charlie Penn, the Relationships Editor for Essence.com.
00:08We got a chance to catch up with Paul Carrick Brunson, the modern-day matchmaker,
00:12to find out what matchmaking is really all about and how it can help you. Enjoy!
00:18The matchmaking industry is predominantly female.
00:20And what a lot of people don't realize is that it's also very small, right?
00:24So there are no more than about 50 5-0 full-time matchmakers in the United States.
00:31One thing that's also interesting, and this is the ugly side of matchmaking, but I'd like to point it out,
00:36is that matchmakers historically have heavily, heavily segregated against, right,
00:43or discriminated against African-American women.
00:46Within the industry, a lot of people began hearing about me, and they said,
00:50wow, there's this black matchmaker. And so other matchmakers would forward all of their black female clients to me.
00:58And when I would begin to talk to these black female clients,
01:01they would tell me that they had applied to 5, 6, 10 matchmakers, and they were denied by all of them.
01:08And so there's definitely heavy, heavy discrimination in the matchmaking space.
01:13Many matchmakers have bought into what a lot of us have bought into,
01:18what the media has been conveying over the last few years,
01:21that black women, it's hopeless in terms of being matched,
01:24or there's not enough black men out there.
01:26And so I always say that there's no brand of love in the world more tarnished than black love.
01:32I think a lot of matchmakers have bought into that.
01:34And that is, it's obviously, it's patently false,
01:37but a lot have bought into it.
01:39And so they feel hopeless instead of hopeful,
01:42and therefore they don't take on black female clients.
01:45Hiring a matchmaker is also, is always different based on the matchmaker that you're hiring.
01:51Our process is unique.
01:52What happens is someone will find us, they typically find us on Facebook or Twitter, right?
01:57So we're heavy in social media.
01:59They'll come to us and initially we will do what we call a consultation
02:03before we take them on as a coaching client or before we take them on as a matchmaking client.
02:07The consultation is built to help them to understand truly who they are.
02:13And for us also to identify their work ethic and also their pathology.
02:18Psychology Today says one out of six of us are impacted by negative pathology.
02:24So literally one out of six of us don't understand morally the difference between right or wrong, right?
02:30That's someone that shouldn't be matched, right?
02:32That's someone that shouldn't be coached.
02:34That's someone that needs to go to therapy.
02:36If your work ethic is not strong, we can't work with you.
02:39But if your work ethic is strong, you have healthy pathology, then we'll work with you.
02:43From there we move the clients on to either coaching or matchmaking, okay?
02:47Coaching is really about becoming your optimal self.
02:51Some people come to us and they just want to be able to increase the number of people they're meeting online.
02:56Some people come to us because they want to simply date.
02:59How we identify a match is that we look at your values.
03:03We look at your personality type.
03:05We look at what I call your non-starters or your non-negotiables.
03:08We also look at and help identify who you're attracted to.
03:12And based on that four criteria, we identify people and then we'll introduce you to those people.
03:18In terms of what I consider success, really what's being asked is, well, how many marriages do you have?
03:24But that is technically not success and I'll tell you why.
03:27Because many people will come to us that simply want to date.
03:31Many people will come to us because simply they want to find unconditional love within themselves.
03:36We got into this space to connect people.
03:38But what I'm realizing is that we've really gotten into matchmaking to give hope, right?
03:43To make sure that people are hopeful and not hopeless.
03:46And just from our three years of work, I think that we've made a dent.
03:50We have a far way to go, but I think we've made a good dent.
03:53So I predict that matchmakers will become more popular, also more successful and more in vogue.
03:58To hear more from Paul, check out the November issue of Essence Magazine.
04:02On stands now.
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