Episode Description
Bela Gandhi, Chicago’s most prominent dating and relationship expert, joins the Off the Fence Podcast to share her tips and tools for creating a lasting and fulfilling relationship. In this podcast episode, Bela peels back the curtain on her transition from the corporate world into the arena of love and relationships. She also reveals some of the secrets she imparts to her clients in the Smart Dating Academy … which has a zero divorce rate among clients who marry the love they found while working with Bela and her team.
Bela describes the process her team uses to help their clients understand what they need in a relationship and to create a plan for finding the right relationship through online dating, meeting people in real life, and getting set up on dates by friends. Bela talks about the way to create an online dating profile that showcases your strongest assets and gives you the best chance of attracting the love you really want.
Whether you’re looking for love, or just want to jump back into the dating pool, this is a podcast episode you’re not going to want to miss
Show Notes
About Bela
Bela Gandhi is a dating/relationship expert, TEDx speaker, founder of Smart Dating Academy and has been featured on most national/local media outlets including Good Morning America, Steve Harvey, the Today Show, Kelly Clarkson, Access, ABC, NBC, Fox, and more. After she graduated from the University of Illinois in Urbana/Champaign, Gandhi worked in mergers and acquisitions for a year before joining her family's chemicals manufacturing company, where she divided her time between Chicago and Europe helping to expand the business. When the Gandhi family sold its business to Fortune 500 company Akzo Nobel, she was asked to remain its leader. But even as she quickly climbed the corporate ladder, Gandhi had a feeling that her career would one day be taking a sharp turn in a different direction – because she discovered her love of matchmaking and providing dating advice. She launched her Smart Dating Academy in 2009. Smart Dating Academy has quickly become one of the nation's top date coaching firms - and teaches busy, successful professionals to jump start their dating lives successfully.
Connect with Bela
You can connect with Bela on her LinkedIn page at Bela Gandhi or her Facebook page at Smart Dating Academy. You can find Bela on YouTube at Smart Dating Academy and follow Bela on Instagram at Smart Dating Academy or Twitter at Bela Gandhi Love. To learn more about Bela’s dating academy visit her website at Smart Dating Academy.
Key Takeaways From This Episode with Bela
- Bela is a dating and relationship expert who founded Smart Dating Academy to teach people how to find healthy, happy relationships. Her clients work with coaches for about a year on average.
- Bela has never had a divorce among the thousands of clients she's matched, which she attributes to teaching people how to be good partners and identify red flags before committing.
- She advises divorced people not to date alone but to build a "village" of support from professionals, not just well-intentioned friends/family. Dating coaching helps avoid repeating past relationship mistakes.
- Having a dating plan is crucial. It should include using dating apps strategically, getting set up by friends/family, and meeting people in real life. Clarify what you want in a relationship versus what looks good "on paper."
- Photos should be less than a year old and showcase your authentic self. Don't post group shots, old photos, or fib about details like age. Authenticity attracts the right partner.
- Red flags include negativity, asking for money, and reluctance to do a video call before meeting in person. Go slowly and trust your instincts if something seems off.
- Doing a 15-30 minute video call before a first date screens for inconsistencies and saves time. Smart Dating Academy clients follow a plan to protect their time and hearts.
- Bela offers a podcast, newsletter, Instagram account, and other resources to learn more about healthy dating. Working with a pro provides guidance new daters often lack.
Do you like what you've heard?
Share the love so more people can benefit from this episode too!
Transcript
Finding Lasting Love with Bela Gandhi's Smart Dating Strategies
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
dating strategies, love, lasting love
SPEAKERS
Karen Covy, Bela Gandhi
Karen Covy: 0:10
Hello and welcome to Off the Fence, a podcast where we deconstruct difficult decision making so we can discover what keeps us stuck and, more importantly, how we can get unstuck and start making even tough decisions with confidence. I'm your host, Karen Covey, a former divorce lawyer, mediator and arbitrator, turned coach, author and entrepreneur. And now, without further ado, let's get on with the show.
With me today. I am so excited I have really been looking forward to this because my guest is Bela Gandhi. Bela is a dating and relationship expert, a TEDx speaker and the founder of Smart Dating Academy. She's been featured on most national local media outlets, including Good Morning America, Steve Harvey, the Today Show, Kelly Clarkson, access TV, ABC, NBC, Fox and more. After she graduated from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Bela worked in mergers and acquisitions for a year before joining her father or her family's Chemicals and Manufacturing Company, where she divided her time between Chicago and Europe, helping to expand the business. When the Gandhi family sold its business to Fortune 500 company Exo Noble, she was asked to remain its leader, which she did. But even as she quickly climbed the corporate ladder, Bela had a feeling that her career would one day be taking a sharp turn in a different direction because she discovered her love of matchmaking and providing dating advice. So Bela launched Smart Dating Academy in 2009 and it has quickly become one of the nation's top date coaching firms and teaches busy, successful professionals to jumpstart their dating lives successfully. Bela, welcome to the show.
Bela Gandhi: 2:02
Oh, Karen, I've been looking forward to this since we talked about it, so thank you for having me. I'm honored to be here.
Karen Covy: 2:09
Oh, you are absolutely welcome and I'd like to start, as Simon Sinek would say, with your why? Why dating and relationship coaching? What drew you into this area, out of the corporate world?
Bela Gandhi: 2:22
So I had been matchmaking my friends and myself since I was in college and I was very good at it. I will be married 27 years this year to my husband and helped so many of my friends find healthy, happy love that I knew that this was the work that I was meant to do. So I went from being a corporate matchmaker I'm kind of kidding to really starting my own business in 2009, and I haven't looked back one day since then. This is what I was put on earth to do and I'm really, really delighted to be able to do it. And what's so interesting, I never set out with this Karen that in the past 15 years, with the thousands of clients that we have helped find love, many decide that they want to get married and of those, none have gotten divorced None, none that we're aware of Zero.
Karen Covy: 3:25
That is amazing, wow. So all right, now, you've really got me intrigued. What's your secret sauce? How do you put people together who are evidently so well matched that they stay together?
Bela Gandhi: 3:46
So what we do at Smart Dating Academy is we're teaching people how to date, how to find love that lasts and how to be a good partner. Were any of us ever taught that in school? Never, ever, ever, right. We were sort of left to bumble through it on our own. So we have a process that we've created that helps people to understand what they need in a relationship to be really happy. Then we help them to create a plan that includes online dating, meeting people in real life and getting set up by people to help find great candidates. We have them have a dating funnel which they and I'm really abridging this that we help them manage through. So we're like personal trainers for their love lives, helping them in the weeds. What about this guy? What about this guy? This one's got to go back to the swap, he's terrible, and so, and ultimately, we help people to narrow down their funnel to one person that looks like he'd be great or she'd be great a good lid to the pot. And then, after that, we enter into phase two, which is making sure that this relationship is in alignment. So what we are not doing is yenta style matchmaking for people, which is an outdated way, really, because what people need is a methodology to know is this person a good person or am I just going to repeat another red flag relationship?
Karen Covy: 5:17
Wow, you just said so much. I don't even know where to start with this. I am so excited. But it sounds to me and if I don't know if this is what you mean by not yenta-style dating, right, but it sounds like you're not just helping somebody set up an online profile and then go find somebody and, okay, go have a nice life. You're actually helping them with the foundation of what do they want in a relationship, what makes a good relationship, and so you kind of work with them past, just like date number one.
Bela Gandhi: 5:54
Oh my gosh, the average 10 year of us. We work with our clients for a year, right, and so we have a whole process that we help people work through. Like I was saying, we're personal trainers for our clients' love lives and there's no one-hit wonders here. You don't turn off your contract at three dates because there's one that looks promising. That's you know, kind of famous last words. Just let me see how this one goes. So it's very much having guidance. You know we're like wrapping bubble wrap around you if you're our client for the process, so you don't get dinged up and hurt and broken through the process.
Karen Covy: 6:36
Oh my gosh. That is so important because, as you know, I work with people who are going through, thinking about going through or have recently been through a divorce, and so many people I mean you want to talk about dinged up. Divorce is a great way to get you dinged up and I know a lot of my clients are. They're gun shy or they say to me I haven't been on a date in blah blah, blah years right and that blah, blah, blah could be a lot of years right. How would you? What would you tell them before they just jump into the dating pool?
Bela Gandhi: 7:11
Don't do it on your own right, because the data show that if first marriage is dissolved at a rate of 40 to 50 percent, second marriage is 67 percent. Third marriage is 74 percent. So take Zidane village to find love. Build yourself a good village. You know, I wish back in our days, Karen, when I was dating, at least dating coaches existed. They didn't right. And so build, find yourself someone that will really support you and is educated about this. This is not something for your well-intentioned friends and family to help you with. If you needed root canal, you wouldn't ask your cousin, who's a lawyer, to do your root canal. So there's all of these things that we need to kind of destigmatize, and the most important thing you'll do is the search for finding love again, especially to your point, post-divorce, when you've been dinged up, because divorce has massive costs financially, emotionally, collateral and you don't want to end up in that bucket all over again. So get some help around this from professionals.
Karen Covy: 8:23
I could not agree more and as somebody who I know you and I we've known each other a short time couple of months but you don't know this about me. I dated for a very long time before I found my husband, who I am absolutely thrilled to have found. But I know you talk about, when you're working with your clients, having a dating plan. I didn't know that was a thing. Maybe if I knew it was a thing, it wouldn't have taken me so long to find him. But what is a dating plan? What do people, how can people make a dating plan?
Bela Gandhi: 8:58
Right. Like anything big you want to accomplish in your life, you've got to have a plan. You can't just even say I want to lose 20 pounds and just you know, hope and wish that it's going to fall off of you. You need to have a plan and then you need to stick to the plan, and so a good dating plan involves the three pipelines that I mentioned using the apps in the right way, getting set up by your friends and family on dates, and then having a strategy to meet people in real life. You want to know and really ask yourself what do I want this time around, and be really honest with yourself and honest with other people about what you're looking for, and not accept red flags and you don't want to be a red flag yourself.
Karen Covy: 9:46
Okay. So when you say, be really clear on what you're looking for, typically when you know because I will admit that back in the day I did this myself okay, what are you looking for in a date? Right, and most people will tend to list like looks. You know how tall they are, what's you know what size they are, what color their hair is, what their, maybe what their profession is, or something like that. Is that good enough, or do people need to do more than that they should do more than that?
Bela Gandhi: 10:14
right, because good on paper sometimes isn't even worth the paper it's written on from a relationship standpoint. So so often we tend to over correct. For example, I will get successful women that you know have been ballers in their careers and maybe their husbands haven't kind of flown in the airspace. They do and they divorce and now they're like, oh, this time I want someone. If I have X on my balance sheet, I want someone who's got minimum of two X. It's like that wasn't the reason that your relationship fell apart. Right, you don't have any money problems and someone with more money isn't going to solve that problem. So it's really about you know juicing out what the issues actually were and making sure you don't repeat those all over again. It's very rarely about the money. It's very rarely about the career. There's larger, there's larger issues no-transcript.
Karen Covy: 11:18
That is so, so telling. I mean, I have to tell you if people take nothing else from this interview, just like understanding, that is huge because I think when people see it it's easy to blame the money, it's easy to blame the. Oh, he wasn't ambitious, I was, or she didn't. You know she was more concerned about the kids, not me, or you know you take the problem at a surface level. How do you help people get below the surface to figure out what the real issue was?
Bela Gandhi: 11:52
yeah, what's the why? Right? And it usually comes down to being afraid to use your voice, or your voice has been shot out right, and so people exist for so long in that way and it makes it look like money is the issue. You know these different things and ultimately, it's that breakdown in the friendship, the breakdown in talking to each other from an authentic place and receiving what your partner has to say to you. That's where the breakdown begins and that's when all the other maladies can happen, like saying my divorce was over money. It's kind of like saying, well, I have a cough. Well, your cough could be caused by 50 different things. You've got to get to the symptom before you're going to say do I need an antibiotic? Do I need some tea with honey? What is going to help me? And you have to figure out what the root cause was so that you don't do it all over again.
Karen Covy: 12:51
Yeah, and you know I tell my clients it's like you can get a divorce but you're going to take yourself into the next relationship. So you go there. You are Exactly so. It's about doing the work here in yourself so that the next time you get in a relationship it is what you want. It's better. But I know so many of my clients are worried about red flags. They're like you know, I thought I picked well the first time it did. Things didn't work out. I ended up getting a divorce. How can I, you know, trust my picker? What are the real red flags that someone should be worried about?
Bela Gandhi: 13:31
Yeah, I mean, that's the million-dollar question, right. I mean, this is what we coach our clients on a daily basis. It's smart dating academy. Is that just a bad habit or is that a red flag, and are you triggered by something that isn't really a red flag? So there's so much to that question. But the easy things that I can tell you, if you're listening to this and you're just beginning, is read, for example, when you're reading a profile. If somebody's profile has a negative tone and says, please do not contact me if and they kind of go on like all the things you shouldn't be right, please don't contact me if you're into drama, right, that's a red flag. If somebody's leading with negativity, what do you think their minds faces Negative? Does that sound like someone most of us want to be with? No Move on.
Karen Covy: 14:24
You know, it sounds like that would also be. That's a good tip for when you're writing your own dating profile. That it's kind of a reality check of where your head is, if everything that you've written is negative.
Bela Gandhi: 14:38
Yeah, call me. Right. We revise profiles all the time, right? Because it's hard to know what to write in your profile. Your profile isn't your. What I learned in my divorce manifesto, right? This is why does somebody want to connect with you?
Karen Covy: 14:57
Well, I think people have such a hard time. They feel like they're tooting their own horn or they're being braggers, or it's just it's awkward to write a dating profile. How do you, what do you tell people how they can do that?
Bela Gandhi: 15:10
Right. So you really I mean writing a profile, Karen, is one of the toughest things that people do, and in our one-on-one, in our boutique coaching practice, I had writers that used to write people's profiles and now I turned that into kind of a mad libs template for our clients that they answer eight questions and then boom out spits an online profile. That's great for different sites. So there is a way. What I can tell you is think about the interesting things, the little quirky things that make you, you right, almost like cocktail parties, start conversation starters, like what's something interesting about you? And not putting fun, quirky things like that in your profile not only helps you to stand out, but also helps people to start conversations with you, because if not, it's like oh, I'm fun, I'm just as casual, I'm just as happy, you know, being dressed down as I am, you know, at a black tie. I like long walks on the beach and move on. Who doesn't Right? I like to, you know, go out to eat Really who doesn't Right? So, really thinking about interesting, quirky things about you, and that's what our profile book helps to really elicit from our clients.
Karen Covy: 16:34
That is absolutely brilliant, because I mean, I haven't been on a dating site for you know a very long time. I've been married 15 years. But you know, I do have kids and they are, and it's just, it's, they're all. Everything starts to look generic after a while. The only thing different is the picture.
Bela Gandhi: 16:54
Yeah, and you've got to have great photos. The biggest mistake people make is thinking, oh, I'm just going to get on the apps, right, I'm going to take some photos of me, whatever I've gotten myself on, and throw those up there and see what happens. Bad, bad strategy. If you were going to sell your house, would you take six janky photos from your cell phone of what your house looked like the day after Christmas or during a dinner party, because that's all you had? No, you would say, wow, I better. You know, get some advice from my realtor and have a photographer come in and stage my house and make it look good in all the rooms. You know, look. Optimizing. This is how you need to think about yourself and your photos. Your photos do not exist in a cell phone, I promise you, and all the studies show that we don't pick the best photos of ourselves. So what? So? Through this, and my clients are drinking the Kool-Aid because we have a photo studio that they come to, where we've given them concrete outfit advice, whether they're men or women, no matter what you look like, what your age is, what your body type is, and we have them come in five to six different looks that really best suit them and we do private headshots and body shots of them so that they're looking their best. And this is not to catfish someone. This is really. We have a no Photoshop policy, so it's looking as good as you do in real life. Online, most people look worse in their photos than they do in real life. If people are telling you, oh, wow God, you're so much prettier in person than your photos, usually people like, oh, that's great, I want to do that. I'm like no, you're underselling. Would you do that with your house? No, you want to maximize the amount of great buyers, and it's the same thing for photos. A couple of quick tips. Make sure that your photos are no more than one year old, not two years old, not three years old, not two hair shades ago and bangs ago. You need photos that look like you today, less than a year old. And if you change your hair color midstream, guess what? You're going to need new photos, right, and you've got to have body shots and head shots. No other people in your photos. No one needs to know that you have friends. We all know that you've got friends. Maybe you've got kids, maybe you've got grandkids, they're looking to date you. Okay, what about if you have a dog? Look, I am kind of a purist about this. If one of my clients is really, you know, oh, I've got to have a picture of my pooch and there, that's fine. But sometimes we unwittingly eliminate people that could be perfect for us but may not be dog lovers or may say, oh my God, my ex was obsessed with her dogs. Any women that have dogs in their photos? No way. Again, we make these errors of correlation versus causation right.
Karen Covy: 20:06
So keep your photos of you, and only you, I love that and I love that you're telling people go get current photos because I mean otherwise, you walk in the door and somebody's still looking for the you that they thought they were going to have, but it was the you from 10 years ago and it's the first act of self-sabotage.
Bela Gandhi: 20:31
It's game over at that point and you're not getting your foot in the door. Oh, I'm going to wow them with these photos of me 30 pounds ago or five years ago. No, they're going to say you catfished me game over. Yeah, no, you're, you're 100% right.
Karen Covy: 20:46
I know, like back in the day when I was still dating, I had some experiences like that. We will just say and you don't. I mean, I just don't understand why somebody would do that because you think some, the date isn't going to notice that you don't look the same.
Bela Gandhi: 21:04
Oh they noticed they're looking for inconsistencies. From the time you arrive, women are like, okay, how tall is he? Did he overestimate or not? We are looking because we, ultimately, the first thing we want to know is authenticity Is this person telling the truth or not? And our brains have a negativity bias. So that's just the way humans are wired and we're going to do that first. So my best advice is don't white lie or fib about anything in your profile. Not your age down by a couple of years, because you know I'm a really young 59. I'm like if I had a dollar for every person that said that to me. Every person does say that to me, right? So tell the truth, because it's one less thing to worry about in the dating world. We carry the weight of those little white lies on us. Like, oh, I said I was 35, but I'm 38. Ooh, I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I was 35, but I'm 38. Ooh, see, looking at the lines around my eyes. Oh, he's figured it out, right, you're now. You're not invested in the date, you're thinking about yourself and you're not projecting connected energy.
Karen Covy: 22:17
That is brilliant. That is just absolutely brilliant. Plus, you know if you have, when you make the little white lies, you've got to keep them straight. And if things do work out, what are you going to be doing five years from now when, all of a sudden, your then spouse finds out that he or she's been lied to all along?
Bela Gandhi: 22:37
It's awful. I've seen it happen. It's a nightmare.
Karen Covy: 22:41
Yeah, so I love that. But let's go back, if we can, to red flags, because I know that people are always, you know they're trying to figure out what are the red flags, what should I be really worried if I see who knows what? Right, so there are any other like common major red flags that would that should send somebody you know back, make them back off a little bit and go. I don't know if this one's for me.
Bela Gandhi: 23:08
I mean, if something sounds too good to be true, it might be right. And if somebody says that they're working on an oil rig right now, or doctors without borders and they're stationed in Saudi Arabia, it's probably someone and they look like George Clooney or a mall right, they're probably just out to you know, they're up to no good. Let's just say and if somebody is asking you too much personal information over the sites and over messaging, right. And especially if somebody even says like, oh my gosh, you know and I've had this happen to people they've come to me nobody ever gets catfished at Smart Dating Academy, but I've got stories of people that are brilliant authors, PhDs, very well respected public figures that will say, oh my God, I had this relationship with this guy who was coming from London and on the way to the airport he got into some trouble, the car got wrecked and he was like, oh my God, my wallet was thrown out of the car. We can't find it. Can you just Venmo me $500, right, because I just need to get my car towed so I can get to the airport to come and see you People fall for this all the time. You're kidding? No, it's amazing. It's amazing, so don't, and it sounds strange to you and me sitting here, but when you're in it, Karen, this person has been wooing you for the last month and you feel this level of intimacy. It's very intoxicating and we want to believe. We want to believe in the fairytale, right, and so this is why we're in the weeds, with people going throw them back to the pond. So we've never had a catfishing incident.
Karen Covy: 24:58
Wow, that is amazing because I have heard stories, nightmare stories, about people who get in relationships with these people. They've never actually met and things can go badly pretty quickly. Yeah terrible.
Bela Gandhi: 25:15
So yeah, all those red flags, trust your gut, if something seems off, it probably is, and get some help.
Karen Covy: 25:22
I know this is probably a hard question to answer, but is there an amount of time that you should talk to somebody offline before you meet them in person, like on the phone or on a video call, on a, however you connect with them. Is there a certain amount of time that after that you should say no, we really need to meet in person.
Bela Gandhi: 25:45
Yeah, you always have to have a plan at some point to meet in person. But I'm not here to expedite that, because my job as my client's dating coach is to protect their energy and to protect their time and their heart. So I have people follow a really good process. You know, go on a video date for 15 to 30 minutes before you agree to meet somebody out for a date. Right, because a picture, a video, is worth a thousand pictures. You can see what the person looks like 3D. People are so absurdly hungry to meet people in person on dates and like why wouldn't you do video first? Because you don't know if you're going to show up to a date. You know where it's 30 pounds ago, three teeth ago, you know just crazy, can't hide for more than 10 minutes. People do a video date before you agree to go out with someone online and I know you want to check the chemistry. I know we're all better in person than video. Oh, and I don't want to be on video. I'm on video all day for my job. I'm not hearing any reasons to not do video. I'm like and you're going to do video before and they thank us later. They're like I'm not going on bad dates because they're protecting themselves.
Karen Covy: 27:00
That is absolutely brilliant. I never thought of a video date.
Bela Gandhi: 27:05
Right, and this is the thing. People don't think about video dates because, again, they're not taught how to do this.
Karen Covy: 27:13
This is gold for someone who wants a real relationship and not a date, not just, you know, to casually date once in a while and whatever happens, happens Right.
Bela Gandhi: 27:25
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm so glad it's gold that made my day.
Karen Covy: 27:30
No, really, this is just. I think it's brilliant and I love the idea that you have, that people have a plan and that they follow the plan, and that you're there to support them long term. I mean, you're saying you're preaching to the choir here. You're saying all the same things that I tell my clients while they're going through a divorce, and nobody wants to think that it's going to be more than two weeks before they're done. Right, everybody wants to be out of it, but it doesn't work that way and if you don't have a plan, you end up with what you end up with. So I absolutely love this. Bela. I could I mean, I could talk to you forever. This is just fascinating stuff to me, but I know our time. I want to be respectful of your time. Tell people, if you can, where they could find you. They're interested in really boosting their love life and forming real relationships. Where do they find you?
Bela Gandhi: 28:25
So the first thing to do is go to smartdatingacademy.com, fill out a contact form which, even if you're not ready for contact, you can just write newsletter and you'll be put into our newsletter database. I'm the host of the Smart Dating Academy podcast. We have over 120 episodes. You can find it on Apple, Spotify, iTunes wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on Instagram at Smart Dating Academy, and we post a couple of times a day and lots of funny, quirky, good advice that you'll love. So there's a lot of stuff out there on us.
Karen Covy: 29:02
Bela, this has just been such a wealth of information I mean the little tiny bit that you shared in this episode. I mean, if this is the kind of thing that you share on your podcast in your newsletter, I can't encourage people enough to go join you. Check out your Smart Dating Academy, check out the podcast and, for those of you who are out there and listening now or watching, if you like what you've seen, if you want more of this, if you like what you heard here, please give us a thumbs up like subscribe, and thank you again, Bela, and I look forward to seeing all of you next time.
