Find Love Online

Speaker 1: [Music] hi I'm Melanie bar welcome to the she builted experience with Melanie you're here because you want to experience the life and business that you crave join me as I talk to women who have successfully built it a career and business that they love we dive into the topic of how they built it and talk about everything from Having the courage to make career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech innovation magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so let's dive in I'm so thrilled to introduce Julie spyra Julie is a best-selling author America's top online dating expert award-winning dating coach and the founder of cyber dating expert she's been featured in over, 1500 media interviews on almost every Network and has also given tips to Maria Shriver on The Today Show Julie it's so wonderful to have you with us today I remember years ago when you told me you were an online dating coach right when all of the dating apps were starting to emerge and I have been so impressed to watch you build such an incredible career and business in dating and finding love please tell us about when you started your business and the career and life leaps that you've made

Speaker 2: along the way I think what's so great about women is we have this ability to reinvent ourselves over and over and when I first decided what I wanted my career to be like like when I was High School I said I'm going to college because I want to be a radio broadcaster and I want to be a music radio DJ and then one day I want to be a network executive and little by little they happens I got this gig doing graveyard shift midnight to 6:00 am on Friday and Saturday nights really great for my personal life but uh it was great for my career life and so so I gave up a social life and then that really paid off because once a real shift opened up at this massive rock station I jumped at the chance so here I was I was 20 years old and my dream came true that I was a music radio DJ on a big station and I thought that was it until I had the desire to become a network executive that I figured would take another decade but fortunately for me it only took about four years so by the time I was 24 I was a network executive I moved to New York and I was an executive at the first commercial satellite radio Network and I got my first digital job and the reason I want to talk about that is because I stayed so focused and that's what helped my business continue to grow to eventually becoming an online dating expert and a dating coach where I merged love and Technology two things that I was so very passionate about so that's how I birthed a cyber dating expert it wasn't just because I wanted to write a book that could have been a Blog about my dating stories it was because I had this background in technology and I saw this need for people like myself I was a busy executive and I didn't have time to date and I was traveling all over the world for this company I was working for and while it was an amazing job it wasn't really great for my personal life so I realized that there had to be a lot of other women like me who were building their careers would like to find love hadn't found the time and they would use technology as a wing person to help them fall in love get married have children and that is exactly what happened isn't

Speaker 1: it so interesting when we reach something that we've worked so hard to accomplish that you sit there and you say okay what's next and technology is more important today because we're all on our zooms and our Google meets all day long and we are and and we have to also figure out how do we continue to be enriched with all this amazing content without getting Zoom fatigue I mean that's a balancing act that we're all going through right now what gave you the courage to make leaps along the way like when you had one of those moments where you were going to make a major life and career leap which you've done multiple times what gave you the courage to make that

Speaker 2: leap My First Leap was probably when I left New York to come to Los Angeles for my radio syndication job and my whole family was on the east coast and here I am coming out by myself to California knew a few people and really didn't have any family out here and my dad said to me you're leaving with three suitcases if you don't like it get back on a plane and come home so I left my life behind to follow my dream and my career plus the sunshine it certainly you know helped a lot knowing that I was leaving a snowstorm to go into a sunny place like Los Angeles you think about the journey and this was a new chapter in life a chance to meet new friends a chance to build my career and meet

Speaker 1: interesting people along the way good for you for making that happen my husband and I are probably married because of Facebook and when you were talking earlier about busy Executives I was working for the Los Angeles Dodgers when I met my husband and I was struggling to date because I would meet a guy and he'd think it was fun to be dating so a woman that works for the Dodgers and then he'd say can you go to dinner and I'd say can we go at 9:00 he'd say well can you go a little earlier and then it the conversation became well you're never around so seriously thanks to social media because my husband and I met and then we connected through Facebook and kept the communication really because of Facebook so what you're doing especially during Co I'd love to hear about your business and what you're doing now and the advice that you give to people dating during Co

Speaker 2: about a year ago I was getting ready to go to New York for a book tour to launch my book I worked on that project for three years I was going to be doing all of this research I had a New York media trip book and it was for March and when suddenly everything got cancelled and the Domino started falling and I have you know I'm giving birth to this book that was so important and I realized

Speaker 1: because you have to be on the pulse of you know what your customers or your audience really want and people were frightened all they wanted to know is are they going to be safe what do they do about the loneliness and what do we do now that we're starting to lock down and so I pivoted and when you talk about the leap this was a big leap I put the book on hold and I just said you know what the timing isn't right and I built and launched two other companion sites to cyberdating expert and one is dating in the age of covid 19.com how to find love and pandemic to help singles navigate love mostly through virtual dating and then the companion love in the age of covid 19.com how to keep love alive in quarantine because I had two buckets of people who were screaming for help and saying I am so lonely I'm in a long-distance relationship now you my partner and I are separated because we're quarantining in different cities so we had to come up with all of these different tools of like well how do you keep keep that romance going and then on the other side the shocking part I have an ongoing poll and it's still out there 83% of singles who answered my poll how has covid-19 affected your love life and your dating life 83% said I am looking for a long-term meaningful relationship now more than ever wow and only 3% said I can't wait to getting back to hooking up like I did before and maybe 10 15% you know put dating on hold so I just completely changed all of my messaging and I just reached out and I was teaching people for the past year how to go on fun virtual dates making sure their backgrounds look good coming up with creative dating ideas and I saw that the business just started to Boom because people had time on their hands dating became efficient because you didn't have to drive across town to meet someone you can just run into the bathroom and put a cute top on we've all been through so much during this time and I'm married with seven-year-old twins we had a little too much togetherness and after going through that for a little while I thought what about someone on the other side of the spectrum like you mentioned who is feeling isolated and feeling alone so

Speaker 2: it's so great that you put those tips and tools out there for people dating cuz I can't imagine trying to date through this last year I'm sure it was incredibly hard can you share a couple

Speaker 1: tips with us one of the things that was really well was I created something called the dress rehearsal and I would go on these mock dates with people and I would be their date and we' set up a 20 minute you know Zoom or a FaceTime date depending upon their platform of choice and I would pretend to be on a date with them and then I'd say whoa whoa whoa stop you cannot talk about your ex here's a list of topics that you can't talk about on your virtual date because the goal of your virtual date is just to decide whether you want to go on another ritual date that might last longer that maybe you'll be watching a movie together but the first date is only 20 minutes and I think sometimes people

Speaker 2: blow it because they get so excited about someone new that they go on these long phone calls or long video dates that last an hour and a half and by the end of it your entire life story has been revealed to your potential partner and there's no mystery left I think brevity is important you text a few times you chat you swap phone number and then you go on a video date after you talk on the phone to make sure that you have phone chemistry because if you don't have phone chemistry don't waste your time putting your makeup on for your video date it's really important to have a flow and the dating recording process just didn't involve driving and

Speaker 1: gasoline yes and you're so right I have a friend who when she was dating would tell people that they she had to leave to pick up someone at the airport in order to have a short date right to figure out if you want to have a second one right and that's your goal your goal of the first date is only to decide do I like this person enough to want to go out with them a second time we drive ourselves emotionally crazy when we start to project to the Future on the first date and you think wow he's so cute he's so nice he's smart he's got a great job he I wonder if he'd want to have kids boy he'd make a great husband when all he's thinking about is she's kind of hot maybe I'd like to see her again so great that you're so real with your what is your strategy for motivating your clients to find the love that

Speaker 2: they're looking for well the most important thing when we talk about strategies everybody's looking for something different there are some people that come to me after the loss of a long relationship whether it's through death or divorce or a bad breakup and there are some people who are coming to me saying I just haven't dated in three years I think it's time to start but I just want to meet a lot of you interest in guys and I just want to have fun so we have the spectrum of the person who wants to have fun as compared to the person who's looking for a life partner everything I do is very customized it's a very personalized program because everybody's looking for a different type of person and a different type of relationship and then we look at what are the biggest deal breakers and the deal breakers they shift like for a long time the deal breaker was are you a trump supporter and for women it became a really big deal breaker for guys they just didn't want to talk about politics now now the deal breaker is are you getting the covid vaccine and while there might have been mask shaming in the beginning of dating in the age of covid-19 where a person wouldn't go out with someone who refused to wear a mask now people are saying well did you get vaccinated which one did you get what side effects did you have and then when they find out that the person isn't interested in getting vaccinated it's the buzz kill do you want to make sure that what's meaningful to you align right deep down people want to know you know for the people out there

Speaker 1: who are not vaccinated who are lying and saying they are that's that's going to be a tough situation because eventually it will come out especially you when the boosters come along and it's not that I want to talk about Co all the time but I like to talk about safety all the time and this fits into the bucket of safety it's high I'm a deal breaker L now as a matter of fact when I write profiles I in the profile I've got my first vaccine and the second one's coming in two weeks and then at the bottom it it will say sometimes there's a little a prompt for deal breaker deal breaker we write in um if you're not willing to take the covid vaccine that's a deal breaker with the business environment today we're all shifting and pivoting at such a rapid

Speaker 2: Pace what is one obstacle that you came up against and I know you shared a few during covid as it relates to your business and how did you overcome it the

Speaker 1: biggest obstacle was my my disappointment of not being able to release my political book but I realized that politics was lower on the totem pole than safety I decided to quarantine in Palm Springs because it felt safer I was closer to my elderly parents I wanted to be close to them to make sure that they stayed home and they stayed safe so how is this going to affect my business well most of my business prior to this was trying to take my relationships from online to offline and S I'm in a business where I'm already online so for me it was really easy I just started doing Zoom calls with clients which I was already doing phone calls and zoom calls this became the way we weren't meeting in person and it was really easy for the media because everyone had guests on that were in Zoom rooms so it really didn't matter so for Good Morning America they sent me a zoom link whereas they used to send a crew to my house so that's the it was easy for me to shift my business because that's where it really has

Speaker 2: resided for so long I can see how your

Speaker 1: Tech background had to help tremendously I learned so much about apps and platforms from listening to podcasts

Speaker 2: what are your favorite apps that you use in either your personal or professional life that you love or any dating apps

Speaker 1: that you recommend to clients I love them all everybody has a LoveHate relationship with dating apps they're great when you meet someone and you fall in love and you can tell someone oh I met him on Okay Cupid oh we met on Match if you look at the New York Times wedding announcements there are more couples that met on Okay Cupid in the New York Times wedding section than any other app so I happen to love OK Cupid I have a business relationship with them I happen to love match because they have a very large critical mass of members so it's always great to go where the people are I love Bumble because women we get to make the first move and it's kind of fun to flirt on Bumble the guys like it because then they're tired of writing messages and getting no responses when I meet someone who says online dating's not working for me and I've tried every

Speaker 2: app and I said well how many are you on right now and they say 10 I'm like okay wipe that slate clean we're starting from scratch with one and then in three weeks I'm going to roll in a second one and then three weeks later I'm going to roll in a third one and that is it you really have to look at the saturation level there are the same people are on multiple apps you have to do something that's manageable

Speaker 1: that's such good advice because if you're on so many are you paying attention to any at all right and everybody else is finding love and you can't find anyone well that's because you're so busy with 10 apps that you're disorganized and you're not being able to move the relationship forward magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy what is one tip you can leave with us today about how you find and

Speaker 2: live your joy well I'm in the business of love so I get great joy when a client will send me a text message and say I just heard back from death and we're having lunch on Wednesday or someone sends a text message and says I just had a great time on the phone with Carl I can't wait to meet him in person so when people connect because I connect people and they find love and happiness and we take down their profiles that is how I get my joy aside from those wedding invitations that I receive yeah that's that's filled with love and joy as well

Speaker 1: that's so great what a wonderful response for you to get and how good does it make you feel because we all want to build relationships and we all want to have love in our life we really do and there's so many different definitions of love and I had this conversation with someone yesterday about the difference of loving someone or being in love and there's so many different phases that you go through when you're falling in love with someone and I think the most important thing is

Speaker 2: that you have the similar values similar goals you don't have to get there on the same day and the same hour of the day as long as you know the other person is willing to catch up that's so true and someone that you find interesting right that you can keep the interesting conversations going it's really important so I think my best advice is to cast a wide net when you meet someone again I said earlier don't project to the Future ask yourself is this a person that I'd want to be the dinner party with and is this a person that I could be friends with and does he have other friends to introduce me to if we don't be turn into a romantic relationship so I think you need to look at building a network of really interesting people in your life and if love will happen with that person great but it might happen with their best friend such incredible

Speaker 1: advice you have built a tremendous career I love how you keep pivoting and keep making leaps throughout your career and doing what is innovative and needed and you are such a wealth of information when it comes to love and and helping people find it so thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today and being on the show thank you for having me it's really been a lot of fun the easiest way to find me is at cyberdating expert.com or follow me on social Julie spyra j l i s p i r a Instagram Twitter Clubhouse Facebook you name it there I am at Julie spy if you are new to Sheil it we'd love for you to join us we offer Community memberships masterminds Innovative virtual events and meaningful connections to entrepreneurs and corporate leaders please also check out our sheb built it shop curated products from women-owned businesses who put their heart and soul into their beautiful and Innovative products we offer Sheil tip business Consulting and the Sheil tip blog thank you to everyone around the world who joined today thank you to my editor Rich stalino please download And subscribe wherever you get your podcast and until next time together let's let nothing stop us from experiencing the life that We crave [Music]