Category: All Interviews

CEO Interview: Seda Berber, CEO of PembePanjur, “Turkish Version of eHarmony”

Posted on September 29, 2011

OPW INTERVIEW – Sep 29 – Seda lives in L.A. and operates PembePanjur, which is the nearest thing to eHarmony in Turkey. – Mark Brooks

PembePanjur translates to “pink shutters”. What does it mean?
People say that when they grow up they want to get married and live in a house with pink shutters. It’s a cultural and traditional terminology in Turkey. You can find the term in the movies, etc. We grabbed the cultural term and used it as the name of our company, which is based on serious relationships and marriage.

You’re based in LA and you’re UCLA educated. You’re an interactive marketer and designer. Why are you interested in matchmaking?
I have a degree in Sociology. I got into interactive design and marketing just before I came to the USA and got more education in marketing. My partner is a developer and we were working on a project. We were talking about starting an online dating site.

What is your target demographic?
Our target is 30-40 year old young professionals.

Do you like eHarmony?
Yes. We looked into the serious dating sites in more depth and then adopted the model to the Turkish culture and traditions and that’s how we came up with Pembepanjur two years ago. eHarmony was a major site that we looked into.

How many questions do you have and what line of questioning do you use on the site?
We have a combination of about 130 questions. 64 cover social and economic background and 64 are personality analysis. Our service is based upon compatibility, basically character analysis.

Did you pull on your background in Sociology or more of a Psychological profile?
It’s Sociology but the questions are not done by us. We hired a psychologist and she prepared the questions based on other worldwide known questionnaires then it was adapted into Turkish.

There are some challenges working with the Turkish market in terms of billing and regulatory issues. Can you tell us more about some of the challenges you had to overcome?
We didn’t have many regulatory problems. The biggest problems we had were the merchant accounts with the banks. Turkey still has a pretty conservative society which is reflected in the banking system. It took a while to open a merchant account. Trusting a dating site service was not on the top of their list.

You are two years in, how many members do you have?
We are 1 year and 9 months in and we have over 350, 000 active members.

How do you market the service?
We have been doing online marketing so far i.e. facebook. In the last two months we did our first public relations campaign such as TV/radio and we were also in the Sunday paper in Turkey. This is just the beginning for us; we believe doing PR is the best way to promote.

Did you see an immediate jump or was it more over a period of time?
It was an immediate jump. The day after the article in the Sunday paper our revenue went up quite a bit.

What did you do to get the attention?
We had been building relationships with a big funding company in Turkey created by the top 18 online giants. They selected us as one of the top 3 Internet projects of 2011 so that’s how we started to get the press attention.

CEO Interview: Ross Williams, Founder and CEO of WhiteLabelDating

Posted on September 22, 2011

OPW INTERVIEW – Sep 22 – WhiteLabelDating is celebrating it’s 8th year anniversary. Here’s our interview with the CEO/co-founder Ross Williams. (FD: WLD is a client of Courtland Brooks) – Mark Brooks

The Futures Company came out with a white paper titled; ‘Is happiness your business?” There are 21,000 books on Amazon on “happiness”. Does this relate to your business?
We have members of the sites that we want to make happy. We’ve also got partners that run the sites. A lot of them have given up their full time job to run their dating site which means they can work where and when they want. In online dating we hope we sell the dream of happiness, we sell the promise. If I asked a single man what would you pay to meet the woman of his dreams he would say ‘anything’. We aim for happiness for consumers, partners and our staff.

I understand recently you had a run rate of about £30 million in revenue a year?  What proportion of that is from your partners/white labels?
Around 85-90%. It’s where we focus most of our time.

How many partners do you have at this stage?
It grows each day. There’s 1,000’s in the system. A couple of hundred partners generate decent revenue for us.  It’s a long term business. We have partners who are generating tens of thousands of pounds in revenue a month, who weren’t doing anything last year.

You’ve grown considerably. Is it true that the bigger you get the more difficult it is to introduce innovations?
It is.  You don’t want to innovate at the expense of existing business. We have over 6,000 sites on our book now and we have to test/check they all work well. We are about to see some exciting developments at our partner conference in October. We spend £1.5 million a year on development.  Two thirds of this goes on new features.

You’re 8 years old now, right?
We turned 8 last week. In the first 4 years we grew from £0 – £3 million a year, and from 2007 to 2011 we grew to £30 million a year. Exponential growth.

Would you have guessed you would be at this stage 8 years ago, was that your goal?
Yes, we were very confident. We didn’t really come out {with our numbers} until about 4 years ago but that was our intention. You don’t want to shout too loud until you are in a position to manage the growth you’ve got. We’ve gone from UK-only to International. 

In what year will you generate £100 million?
I would think by 2013 or 2014 but there are lots of things that could happen before then. There are great opportunities in mobile, social and international.

Match.com is at about £280 million revenue.
We matched Match.com in the UK about 9 months ago. We are a lot larger than them in the UK.

What would be your top 3 pieces of advice that you would give to someone new to the industry, to be successful with WhiteLabelDating?
Marketing, marketing, marketing. You just can’t start a dating site without brand marketing. 

See all posts on WhiteLabelDating.com

CEO Interview: Sam Moorcroft, CEO of ChristianCafé.com

Posted on September 15, 2011

Sam moorcroft christiancafe OPW INTERVIEW – Sep 15 – Sam was inspired by Matchmaker.com and started ChristianCafe.com in 1999. He’s also tinkering in the Brazil market.  Here’s his founding story… – Mark Brooks

Listen to the interview

One of the things that made your site quite unique for the longest time was that you had a ‘cuppa joe’ on the homepage instead of having a picture of a happy couple. For a few years you ran a picture of a cup of coffee which I thought was really unusual. Why the cup of coffee?
We were thinking; where would people meet for the first time offline when they had connected online? The most likely place would be a café; it’s unassuming, it’s cheap, they can do it at lunchtime or early afternoon, no commitment, no money involved. It’s a public place so it’s safe. We wanted to capture that whole feeling so we used a coffee cup logo which is actually from a real coffee shop. All the photos you used to see on the site were real people.

Have you tried stock photography vs real people?
Yeah, we are in the process of doing it right now. You’ve got to find a couple that does it from a marketing point of view but doesn’t lack authenticity. We now have a happy couple on homepage, have had for the longest time. We want to rotate different happy couples, real and stock, and gauge which works best.

What are you going to put on your homepage? You mentioned a very personal photograph.
We were thinking about using a picture of my wife and me because our story is very linked to online dating, it’s what we do for a living.

Let’s go back in time. What’s your founding story?
A job came up in Toronto with my brother so I moved there, started a new job but after 6 months I got laid off. So I found myself in a brand new city, only knew 3 people, single and unemployed. I started going online and I discovered personals.  I was interested but I thought that the people were weird. To my surprise the women I met were normal. I became addicted. A friend was always complaining that the sites could do a better job and that I should put my money where my mouth is. I approached my brother and he helped finance it. We launched in early 1999. I knew that it had to be niche; I couldn’t compete with Match.com. It took off in the Christian market; within 6-12 months we broke even and from then it has been phenomenally successful.

What dating sites inspired you?
Matchmaker.com, currently owned by Date.com. Their whole philosophy was based on niche markets. Unlike other sites, they allowed full access as if you were a paid subscriber for the duration of your free trial. We still do this.

We have 100,000 actual active members in the last 4/5 months because beyond that we archive people automatically. Other sites say they’ve got 2 million members because they count people who joined in 1999 for a free trial. You should count monthly logins because that is the true representation of how many people are using your site.

You have an interest in Brazil. Tell us more. What sites have you launched in Brazil and how are they going?
My wife is originally Brazilian although she’s been in Canada since 1998. About 5 years ago we decided to open a site in Brazil; my wife speaks Portuguese and knows the culture. But the Brazilian taxation system is medieval and there is so much red tape that we didn’t want to continue. We set it up outside Brazil but Brazilian credit cards can only be used in Brazil.

This is slowly changing as the economy grows. In 4-5 years time Brazil will be #5 in the world for GDP so there is definitely potential. We decided to keep a bank account there and people could pay by printing out a form, going into a bank and doing a transfer. But this is was a big hassle for people and we miss out on impulse buyers. A year ago we decided to operate a free model. We are using Google advertisements but they don’t make us a lot of money.

See all posts on ChristianCafe.com

Interview with Jay Weintraub, CEO of LeadsCon & Daily Deal Summit

Posted on September 14, 2011

OPW INTERVIEW – Sep 14 – Jay Weintraub runs the Daily Deal Summit, which happens next week. I wondered what he thought about FriendFinder's acquisition of the international daily deals service, JigoCity.com. – Mark Brooks

Interview with Gloria Diez, COO of Mamboo, Social Dating Site

Posted on September 8, 2011

OPW INTERVIEW – Sep 8 – Mamba.ru is Russia’s top dating site. They’ve turned their hand to social dating with their international social dating site Mamboo. Here’s our interview with the COO, Gloria Diez. – Mark Brooks

How was Mamboo started?
We already had a sister service, Mamba.ru which is very popular in Russia since 2004. We have the only dating system in the world that keeps users 30 min online per visit. People from other countries contacted us asking for a similar service in their country. We decided it would be a good idea to create an international site.

You define it as social dating site. What is a social dating site? How is it different from an Internet dating site?
I define social dating as any kind of system that allows the members to meet up with other people in a social atmosphere. We like to provide our users with the chance to meet their other half from among the network of friends they have. To find someone who belongs to the same peer/reference group as them and has the same social values. Social aspects are very influential in real life dating so we had to repeat that online.

How do you protect privacy at Mamboo?
We understand users have to feel relaxed to meet new people. We give users options to set up their privacy. They disclose information that they are fine with. We never share our resource data with any 3rd party. 90% of our users confirm they are real people. They send us a message after we send a code to their cell phone so we know its an actual person.

How many active members do you have on Mamboo?
We have 300,000 users. We are growing fast adding 2,000 members a day.
OPW Editor Update: Mamboo is now claiming ~10,000 new members a day.

Are you advertising?
We are starting to advertise. We are also beginning to become incorporated with subscription dating sites. We want to offer a different kind of dating to their users. We have also incorporated our services as a white label provider with other kind of websites such as ICQ.

Mamboo is mostly free; tell us about what you charge for?
Mambo is a free dating site but we do offer other extra premium services such as gifts as part of our upgraded service to help grab the attention of someone who you specially like.

There are a few social dating services but there is one that you have a special interest in, in fact you share an investor, Badoo. How is Mamboo different from Badoo?
The main difference is the social aspect. Badoo is a social network for meeting new people. Mamboo is an online dating service. Mamboo mission is to spread love around the world.

See all posts on Mamboo

Interview With Joe O’Neil, CEO of Integrity ID

Posted on August 30, 2011

OPW INTERVIEW – Aug 30 – Integrity ID is a membership association for people committed to integrity and honesty. We thought this was worthy of further investigation and an interview. – Mark Brooks

What is your founding story?
A couple of years ago I talked to a female friend who was in early 40’s, single, and was having a very difficult time finding quality men. She heard ‘horror’ stories about online dating. That began a process of a lot of research, talking to women about what they were concerned about in online dating and finding a way that could allow people to see that they are safe. That idea of screen in vs. screen out, how to find the good people is the origin of Integrity ID and that led to lots of research and a business model which is very unique.

How unique? What are you doing differently?
Several things. We're not an online dating company or a background checking company. Our members voluntarily make a commitment to integrity and honesty and undergo rigorous background checks so that other people can see that they are safe and then they can identify themselves through their membership number. Other people can easily find out if they are a member of Integrity ID by verify them at integrityid.com.

We 'screen in' vs. 'screen out.' We are not trying to identify the bad people. We are trying to allow the quality people to get seen and noticed and get credibility for that.  We have a very high quality screen. We use the same type of FCRA quality screen that would be used for employment.   We are providing a screen on behalf of those who have concerns on safety and would be interested in engaging with other members.

How would somebody report someone who stated they were married, but were in fact not?
When you become an Integrity ID member you self report your marital status. If we receive a credible report that a person has lied then we will contact them, ask for an explanation and we reserve the right to disqualify their membership based on the fact that there is evidence that they lied about their marital status.

How often do you run the background checks?
We have an initial background screen, when people join, and then we have an algorithm that we developed with our background check service provider to randomly check others through the course of their membership. So people know they’ll be checked initially and that they can be checked at anytime.

What kind of checks do you offer? I imagine there is the basic sex offender check as a basic one, but how involved do you get with the checks?
It’s actually a very extensive check. We create a screen that members must pass through. That includes the pledge of integrity, honesty and respect of others. A rigorous background screen and ongoing membership qualification and submission through additional background checks. Any felonies are a disqualifier for membership. In addition to felonies are misdemeanors that involve violence, fraud, sex offences or drug crimes which would be ground for disqualification or non-qualification for membership.

My understanding of background checks is that the magical piece of information to have is social security number. Do you collect the social security numbers?
We have a preferred vendor. You submit your social security number to them and it’s securely stored there. We never see it. There’s a very high level of security.

How much does it cost?
We charge a onetime application fee of $39.99 and offer memberships for 6, 12 and 24 months. The 24 months membership would be least expensive $199.99, a little over $8 a month. If you want to verify I’m a member it costs nothing’. You pay to join like joining a club.

Interview with Jim Rush, COO of Procall

Posted on August 30, 2011

Jim Rush 3 OPW – Aug 29 – Procall (client of Courtland Brooks) knows Internet dating and can help you offshore your customer service center. We interviewed Jim Rush, COO of Procall, to provide some background and expertise on outsourcing and what questions you should ask, if you're considering outsourcing.

Listen to the interview

Can you give us a brief introduction about yourself and your role with Procall?
I was in the U.S. Navy as a section leader for a cryptologic intelligence unit.  I learned to join teams together to process tasks in a project oriented environment. Later on, during my five year tenure at Dell, my role as a global project leader was to lead initiatives in the Americas, Europe, Japan and India regions. I was in charge of operations and process improvements for departments such as tech support, enterprise servers and HR. I also worked closely with outsourcing partners such as eTelecare, ClientLogic, and Sitel. My role with Procall as COO culminates much of my past experience in these fields. Today I review our daily operational goals and oversee process implementation for our various clients and projects. I work with a team of executive staff members to drive our business directives and streamline our operations to surpass our shared goals with our clients.

What is the background of Procall and how long has the company been in the outsourcing business?
Procall has been in the call center outsourcing space since 1997. We were one of the first outsourcers to work with the nearshore model. This term means the Latin America and Caribbean areas. Our first international center opened in Costa Rica in 1997 and due to that amazing agent pool that we had there and the infrastructure, we opened our Dominican Republic operation in Santo Domingo in 2003. We continued our expansion in 2007 to include Panama and the Philippines. In early 2009 we opened our centers in Columbia and Guyana. Today, we're one of the largest call center networks in the region.

Are you working with internet dating clients at the moment?
Yes. We provide customer service, billing, help desk and retention support to over twenty internet dating sites currently. Part of that service is complete email, chat, voice support, in addition to profile reviews, photo, video and blog reviews as well.

So how many centers do you have? And what are the hours of operation?
We currently have eight call centers located in the U.S., Central and South America and in Asia. We have slightly over 3000 call center reps. Our Panama center is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Most of our other center provide 8am to midnight Eastern U.S. coverage which is seven days a week as well.

What languages do you support?
We definitely are global at this point. We support English, Spanish, Portuguese – both European and Brazilian, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Swedish, Japanese, Korean and other languages.  Twelve.

So just in terms of platforms and tools that you have in place to service your accounts, can you outline some of those?
Sure. I think we have a total solution. This includes an e-learning solution, a workforce management system as well, various call management systems. I'll name a few, Phone Fusion, Five9, Touchstar and Genesis. We have a CRM and quality monitoring solutions as well.

Can you outline your base client size that you have right now?
Our voice-only customer service programs are quite large. They typically average 100-200 agents. The internet dating programs are generally smaller in nature and run roughly 30-40 reps on average. However, Procall has serviced clients with smaller requirements with 10-15 reps as well.

So if an internet dating company is considering outsourcing some or all of their customer service requirements, what should they really look for? What are the benefits?
Outsourcing allows the client to focus on running their website while leaving the outsource provider, us, to manage day to day customer support. Outsourcing provides different types of cost effectiveness in the form of employee salaries, other overhead costs such as real estate, internet and communication rates, vacation, insurance, you name it. Agents in outsource countries typically view jobs in call centers as a career. This leads to a very professional environment and with less attrition.

So what should an internet dating firm consider or look for if they are looking for a provider such as yourself?
Main questions that come to mind are: how long have they been in the business? Do they have experience currently with other dating sites? You don't want them to muddle through the process. What type of support do they provide? What requirements does the firm need to fulfill? Is the provider familiar with balancing queues and service levels, email, reviews, calls, etc. all at the same time? Do they know how to prioritize all of these? For these very reasons, the internet dating community actually has been our most complicated model and has taught us a very valuable experience in operations. 

If anybody has any questions and would like to contact Procall, what's the best way?
They can visit our website at procall.com, and they can directly contact Al, our CMO at al@procall.com, 561-416-2020.

Interview with Steve Pasternack, CEO of SugarDaddie, 7orbetter and MeetAtTheAirport

Posted on August 23, 2011

OPW INTERVIEW – Aug 23 –

You’ve got an interesting background I understand. What did you used to do?
I was a Bonds trader. I worked on the New York markets exchange.  I was a trader for 18 years.

What prompted the change?
In 2001 things were changing financially for the markets and my 18 years on the trading floor were starting to take their toll, so I decided to move back to Florida. At that time all the .coms were collapsing. It wasn’t the best industry to be in. I was looking for something different when I heard something from Ron Jeremy, a new way to make some money. The idea made me think of my multi-millionaire friends in NY and my friends in Florida and how I could put these people together through a dating site, make everyone happy.

Why would you encourage people to meet at the airport?
There are so many reasons. For example, say you’re flying to a new city, you can arrange to meet someone at the airport and they can be your tour guide, companion, possible romantic fling. It’s exciting flying somewhere and meeting someone new. The airport is actually a good place to meet a complete stranger. They have had gone through security and proven their ID, proven they are not carrying any weapons.

For 7OrBetter.com…  Do you know how many guys are 7 or better in the USA?
Obviously men in general are not 7 or better, that is not the average size. However, there are 1000's of men out there that are 7 or better and it can be difficult for them to find a woman who can accommodate their size. There are also women that require a guy that is a bit larger.

What’s your male to female ratio, are there more guys than girls?
It’s generally about 50:50.

Sugardaddie.com, is your most frequented property.  There's some controversy surrounding the sugardaddy concept. Is it really just prostitution? What’s your thoughts?
That’s a question I always get asked and sometimes it’s difficult to explain.  If a woman is charging by the hour/day then that’s a business transaction and that’s prostitution.  But if it’s part of an ongoing relationship in which the guy is taking care of the woman, not necessarily helping her financially but always taking her on trips etc then that’s a legal relationship. Some say it’s the same as a marriage, where the husband pays for everything and the wife doesn’t have to worry about anything. It’s because of the age difference and the fact that the man takes care of the woman that raises an eyebrow but apart from that it’s just the same as any other relationship.

Do you have any plans to launch more dating sites?
I’m always looking for ideas but at the moment I just have the 3 sites.

See all posts on SugarDaddie.com
See all posts on 7OrBetter
See all posts on MeetAtTheAirport

Interview with Al Cuccinelli, CMO of Procall, Outsourced Customer Service Provider

Posted on August 15, 2011

OPW INTERVIEW – Aug 15 – Welcome to the very first online video interview for Online Personals Watch. I’m joined by All Cuccinelli who is the CMO of Procall. – Mark Brooks

(Full Disclosure: Procall is a client of Courtland Brooks. Also, Courtland Brooks is a client of Procall for our upcoming French, German and Spanish blog launches).

What is your personal background?
Years ago I started in the airline industry in sales. After that I got involved in a call center, selling software, for 20 years and then in the late 90’s I got involved in call center outsourcing. I joined Procall in 2006.

What is Procall’s founding story?
Procall was founded by Creag Harry, a brilliant entrepreneur, in the early 1990’s. The call center was in Boca Raton. In ’96 he looked into near-shoring in Latin America and came across Costa Rica, which at the time was a perfect place for outsourcing a call center. He opened up a center in San Jose for his own business, and it grew to 9 centers across the globe.

Are they offshore or outsourcing centers?
We use the term “near shore” because we have centers in the Dominican Republic, Columbia, Guyana and Panama. When outsourcing became popular, centers were in India and the Philippines. The “near shore” market became hot because you could get there in 3 hours from Miami. They have a similar culture and, of course, they speak English which makes it a better option than India or the Philippines. There was a tremendous backlash against some of the larger corporations, Dell, HP for having call centers in India.

How long have you been serving the Internet dating industry?
Our first client came on board in September of 2008 and that client is one of the top 5 dating sites in the world. We’ve had them ever since and expanded with them into more languages and it’s been a good relationship.

How many languages do you support with them?
10 languages, including English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch, German, Swedish, Japanese, and Tagalog. The Panama center supports the Internet dating industry. We have a great pool of agents to work with. Because of the banking industry there are many people who speak many languages.

What services do you specialize in?
Besides Internet dating,  we also provide customer service and help desk programs for telecommunications companies such as AT&T, Comcast and Sprint, banking and all different kinds of industries. We support a number of technology companies and provide 1st and 2nd tier help desk support for them. We also do inbound sales order taking. For the dating industry, beyond the traditional inbound voice calls, we do a lot of emails, profile reviews, picture and video reviews, and blogs.

In reality, what kind of savings can you offer Internet dating companies by outsourcing to Procall? Percentage wise what can you save them?
Somewhere between 30% and 50%. The 50% would be if they are located somewhere in the San Francisco, New York or Boston area.

But the real value proposition is not only in the savings but also in terms of the lower attrition rates. Call centers in the near shore area are prime jobs; they are great jobs for people to have. We provide great benefits and people tend to stay with us for years. In fact, I just visited the Dominican Republic recently and that center started in 2003 I believe and there are agents there who have been there since the very beginning. They become the experts because they’re there so long, it’s consistent.

So attrition is very important in creating knowledgeable employees but it’s also a way of saving money. When someone leaves, you have to search for a replacement, you have to train them and then you have the learning curve during the time they become proficient at their work, so all of that is costly.

How do you measure and maintain quality?
First we have our own Quality Assurance Department and the folks there are charged with listening to calls and monitoring calls, on average 10 calls for each agent on a weekly basis. They look at 20 different things. Did they greet the customer properly? Did they respond? They go through a questionnaire and they rank the agents. We also do the same thing with emails.

We have calibration sessions on a weekly basis for quality standards. We also have service goals and objectives that we need to meet every day and even within the day. For example, we have targets of average speed of answer. So when a call comes in we need to answer that call within the first 20 seconds.

Do you have dedicated agents by company?
Yes we have 100% company dedicated agents.

Why?
We don’t want to share information between companies of course and the agent is dedicated to one program so they become comfortable with it. There is no confusion on what is acceptable for a profile review. It just works out much better that way.

See www.Procall.com. Contact Al at Al@Procall.com, 561-416-2020

An Interview with Roy Sheppard, Speaker and Author of How To Be The One

Posted on August 5, 2011

GCCF08-46 OPW INTERVIEW – Aug 5 – We like Roy Sheppard's book, How To Be the One. He's prime for the dating industry to work with.  Here's my interview with him. – Mark Brooks

Can you tell us a little bit about your background?
I worked as a reporter for the BBC 1. I was working on radio and TV almost every day for 10 years and trained to think on my feet and do everything live. Now I work as a moderator at large international conferences.

What inspired you to write How To Be the One?
I’ve been writing and lecturing on various aspects of relationships for many years, mainly on the business side. I lecture on MBA courses on building relationships in business. Then in 2007, with Mary T. Cleary, I wrote a book about personal relationships but the taboo side – how you deal with sociopathic dangerous people.  After working on that, I thought I needed something a bit more uplifting, a look at the dating world.

In a nutshell, what would you say the book advises singles to do?
One of the most important elements of the book is that it’s not about trying to find the one person who you think is going to make you happy. It’s about working on being the person that somebody else would choose to want to stay with. That is something you have control over. It’s all too easy to meet a succession of people in dating and dismiss each and every one by saying: “Well,  they are not the perfect version that I have in my mind”, when, in fact, you never think about how perfect you are in the minds of other people.

So I’ve developed what I call your emotional core. The emotional core are 4 elements of personality – attitude, self esteem, happiness and kindness. Kindness isn’t seen as being fashionable but when it comes to a long, meaningful, loving relationship kindness is probably the most important overlooked area.

Are you a fan of Internet dating?
Yes and I had personal experience with Internet dating many years ago. I’m a practitioner and not just a theorist or academic, so I know exactly what’s involved.  I think there is an enormous amount of fatigue with Internet dating. The expectations of everybody are just not matched.

How does your book help people do Internet dating better?
It helps people be much clearer about who they are, what they want from themselves and what they bring to a relationship rather than focusing on what they get from a relationship.

How can the dating industry work with you? What are you looking for from the dating industry?
I would ask the dating industry to look very closely at what the trends are. One of the problems is that people aren’t learning how to be somebody who is a truly appealing individual to someone else. I’ve created an e-book called How to Be Loved and it basically takes each of the elements of the emotional core that I talked about earlier and just provides the reader with any number of daily reminders of areas to think about in order to be someone who would be more appealing to a future partner. And in some ways it is no different than preparing yourself for the most fantastic job interview you would ever have.

Read the e-book, it’s free, any Internet dating site can have it to offer it to their members.

You give them content and they give you distribution, right?
Absolutely! What I’m talking about is a much deeper personal development for people who are serious about being the best person they can be for either the partner they are with right now or the stranger they haven’t had a date with yet, who could be the person they choose to spend time with or for the rest of their lives.

I would encourage men and women to share the e-book with each other and use it as a way of discussing how to get more intimacy in their relationship. And I’m not talking about physical intimacy; I’m talking about an emotional connection. I’m always asked what love is. Scott Peck, a psychologist, said something outrageous about 30 to 40 years ago and it’s in my book. He said love is a decision, it’s not something that just happens to you.

And I deal with the subject of love at the end of the book and it is sandwiched between 2 different chapters, one is about trust and the other chapter is about commitment. And I believe love is sandwiched between trust and commitment.