Why can’t most people find love? In this episode, April Beyer, the Founder and CEO of LEVEL Connections, joins Tanya Memme as they take a look at the world of dating from the eyes of a relationship and dating expert. April is a dating coach, matchmaker, and relationship expert with 20+ years of success. Today, learn what holds back most people and why some people can’t find love as they share heartfelt stories of inspiration. Learn from April’s incredible journey of courage. Tune in and get the real score of dating and relationships.

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Dating And Relationships: A Raw Look With April Beyer

We have April Beyer and she has a company called LEVEL Connections. She’s a dating and relationship expert. She’s phenomenal at what she does. She’s built this empire of a company here in Los Angeles. The stories, how you become who you are and everything that you do, it’s incredible. You are a master at what you do and that’s why you’re on the show. Thank you for coming.

Thank you. It’s nice to be here.

Let’s start right from the beginning. How on earth does this even come about for you?

The matchmaking and the coaching?

Let’s start with building your company. How did that start? How scary was that? What were you doing before that moving up to it?

I always say that I was a reluctant entrepreneur. It’s scary. For people who have started businesses, it’s a frightening place to be. It’s isolating. It can be extremely lonely. It wasn’t something I set out to do. I fell into matchmaking decades ago. I was running another agency. I started to see the flaws that were inherent in that company. I wanted to do something on my own. I wanted to serve people in a higher way.

You were working for a different agency? It was a dating agency.

Yes. Years later, after putting a lot of marriages and relationships together, I decided to embark on my own. I started consulting. Being a personal matchmaker, I started my own company. I did that for many years until I evolved that business into my new company.

You got into this at quite a young age.

I was in my twenties.

You can't be an entrepreneur if you're scared all the time.  Click To Tweet

That must have been somewhat challenging or maybe not. What makes it different as opposed to you at twenty doing this?

My instincts were always there and they were always sharp. As you age, you’re going to get better at anything if you’re going to do something long enough.

At least that’s one of the positives of aging.

I was always intuitive. I always thought of a puzzle as far as how can I solve this puzzle? How can I put something together? I had a love and a fascination with the why. I was always that little girl in school saying, “Why do we have to learn this? Why do we have to learn that?” Putting people together is that, listening to their needs, reading between the lines, and that’s what I was good at. I started doing it.

Did you set people up in high school? Is that what you’re saying?

No. I was the girl gathering all my friends around and making everybody work all day. When I launched my first business in 2003, it was a scary time for me. I wanted to keep doing what I was doing. I didn’t want to stay with the company that I was working for. I had no intention of working for anybody else. I knew I was an entrepreneur. I ventured out. I started on a wing and a prayer. One client at a time.

That is huge. You go from working for a company, probably a cushy little job that you have there. You’re happy but you know that there’s something more for you. You have an entrepreneurial spirit, that’s important. One day you wake up and you’re like, “I got to go do this.”

There were circumstances involved that pushed me out of the nest. It wasn’t as comfy cozy as I wanted it to be with what I was doing there. For me, it was, “I can do this better. I can serve in a higher way if I had my own company.” It was still scary for me to take that leap because I didn’t have any funding. I didn’t have anyone backing me. I was a single woman on my own. I knew I had to continue doing this for a living, and the only way to do it was to go into business for myself. I took the jump and did it.

How did you start? What was that first thing for you?

I had already been in the business for 6.5 years. I was known already in the industry. I had already put together dozens of relationships and marriages at that point. It was easy for me to start one client at a time and getting referrals. They were lean days in the beginning. I’ll never forget I was on my way to some big TV meeting and there was less than $100 in my business checking account. I remember waiting for a client’s check and I go to the PO box and I’m thinking, “That check has to be in there.” It wasn’t there. I thought, “There’s less than half a tank of gas in the car.” I had to get to Burbank and I had to show up for this meeting looking strong and confident. There was hardly any gas in that car and barely any food on the table. For me, it was, how do you do that? It was scary. The money wasn’t there. I didn’t have a relationship to come home to. It was feast or famine in those early days. It’s tough. I knew to keep going and to keep working and to keep being there for other people. Suddenly, it paid off and I’ve never looked back.

LM 5 | Dating And Relationships

Dating And Relationships: You’re going to get better at anything if you’re going to do something long enough.

 

What is it about you that makes you different in that way than a lot of other people? Not everybody has an entrepreneurial spirit and not everybody believes in themselves. A lot of people talk about false beliefs all the time and they self-sabotage. How did you become who you are during those years that were tough and be tenacious and go for it?

It starts young. It starts in childhood. I had parents who celebrated me for when I would try things on. If I failed, they’d say, “Get back up. Try it again.” If I wanted to venture down a different path, they said, “Go for it.” That confidence has allowed me to not only be a second-time business owner but also someone who can put myself out there for other people and coach and guide people on how to be more confident. If you don’t have that at an early stage in life, you have to learn that. You can’t be an entrepreneur if you’re scared all the time and if you don’t have faith. My faith and that knowing helped.

You had good parents, a good family.

I’m lucky. I had an amazing support system in my family.

It’s important for parents out there to always support your kids in whatever they want to do and support them from a young age because it’s important as they develop especially during the formative years.

A lot of men will say to me, “I don’t understand why this woman isn’t more confident. She’s beautiful. She’s smart. She’s successful.” Our confidence as women doesn’t come from beauty, it doesn’t even come necessarily from success. It comes from something else. It’s having that ability and throw your hat over the fence to try things on and to know that if you fail, you can get back up and you can reach again for something.

I’m sure that you have clients that probably suffer from that a little bit where maybe they’re scared to start dating because they didn’t have the upbringing that you did. How do you work on clients that are going through that, that maybe didn’t get the upbringing that you did and you see that it’s affecting them in their older years?

For me, the coaching side of my business evolved from many years of matchmaking and realizing that you can put the two most perfect people together and give them that introduction. If they don’t know how to walk through that door, it can be painful not only for them but for me too. When you’re the matchmaker and you’re behind the scenes and you can see why these two people are phenomenal for one another but one or both is missing that because they don’t have the confidence in themselves, that can be tough.

I started coaching because I wanted people to have awareness and that confidence. What I’m learning is it’s the confidence, the clarity, and having this feeling of abundance as opposed to scarcity. A lot of people come to me with the scarcity and the fear driving them as opposed to the abundance. That’s what I work on. I work on what is your true romantic value? If we took away your job and the money you have in the bank, what do you have left? Where do you get your confidence? When people have that confidence, then they get to practice it, and then they have hope. We should never, ever underestimate the power of hope. I work through that.

You do a lot.

Never ever underestimate the power of hope.  Click To Tweet

It feels more like life coaching and life strategy. Too many people are compartmentalizing their dating life. They think that their work-life is here and their dating life is over here. I say, “No. You are one man, one woman, 24/7. You have to be seamless.” We have to look at friendships. We have to look at the work environment. We have to look at economics. There’s so much that goes into this that’s above and beyond dating.

People are swayed by life circumstances or by work. It can infect the situation, I’m sure. You work with them on that.

We have to. When I’m interviewing somebody that comes on as a client, I have to do that holistic 360-degree view. How were you raised? Tell me about the family. Tell me about your siblings. Tell me about your work, your friendships, your lifestyle. What are your needs? What do you need when you get up in the morning? What do you need when you come home at night?

This is so much the reason why you want to work with somebody like April and not go on online dating. Because with online dating, you are not going to get this. This is one-on-one, personal. When you do connect to people, you do your research.

You have to.

You care, too.

I don’t think there’s anybody that’s teaching how to educate yourself on you. It’s difficult to find that. A lot of people have skipped over that. Sometimes, when you’re working with successful-driven people, they have missed several steps along the way or they have the wrong mindset or perception. They’re not wrong. They’re not doing anything wrong. If their mindset and perception are off, then every single thing is off. We have to get clear. I used to think that my work was intuitive, and it is, but it’s also based on a lot of practicality. I’m pragmatic and logical because if you can get somebody to think logically, you can take their pain down. You can take their pain from a 10 down to a 2 almost immediately if you can get them to understand the why and the what.

I don’t want to say dating experts, people that have these dating companies and stuff. Why I wanted you on my show is because you go above and beyond. The services that you offer are nothing I’ve ever experienced before. You started Level Connections. That’s a new facet. That’s a brand-new company. How does that compare to what the old company was? Why did you do it?

Matchmaking has become stale and archaic. It’s old school. Before, matchmaking was something that only the wealthy could do. Along the way of doing this, being a high paid matchmaker and dating and relationship coach, I kept thinking, “What about the people that can’t afford it? They can’t necessarily have me. What can I do? How can I instill my beliefs, my philosophies, my business practices in someone else?” It was always challenging for me to train other people.

I realized there were a method and a process on how I bring clients in. Not only how I match them, but we’re also talking about what happens long before I match them. There is a process that I follow from the interview to bringing them into how we guide them to how we do pre-date, post-date feedback. I wanted to make matchmaking, which was once held only for the wealthy and I wanted to make it more accessible and affordable for people. The only way I could do that was to create intuitive, intelligent technology, AI and infuse that with personal matchmaking to allow those people to get the support.

LM 5 | Dating And Relationships

Dating And Relationships: If you can get somebody to think logically, you can actually take their pain down.

 

You did a lot of technology yourself.

I did it all myself.

For all of us female entrepreneurs out there, you self-funded your company.

I did. I felt like I was back in the beginning days when I started my first company in 2003. We had some investor conversations early on but I kept going back to what can we do? What can I do on my own? Also, the learning. When you are hanging out there and it’s your own thing and you’re self-funding, the pain is there. I don’t run from pain. Why I’m a good coach is because I don’t think that the pain and the discomfort is something that you should run through. It’s something that you should run towards because that’s when the learning happens. When you have funding, it’s stressful in a different way. When you are self-funded and you are responsible for creating it and paying for it and being responsible for it, the learning is something that I’m grateful for to this day. It took a lot of sacrifices.

Through these years, what would you say was the most difficult thing that you’ve ever had to push through for you as April and a business builder, somebody who’s done what you’ve done?

Many things. The difficulty is starting this self-funding and having aging parents at the same time, a father having a stroke and my mother being in the ER at the same exact time. I had some health issues during all of this as well where I had a couple of surgeries. Probably the most difficult point of my life was how to be everywhere all at once and to be in a personally painful situation and then having to be there for other people. Not only for my staff but for my clients, for the people that were helping us build all of this. That was extremely challenging for me to learn how to give myself in all these different directions and be there for everyone. Did I learn what I was made up of?

Would you say that was the biggest payoff with all of that?

Yeah because I realized what I can do. I realized that when I’m pushed up against that wall of stress, something in me comes out that I like. I didn’t know that I could persevere in that way. I didn’t know that I could be that strong. Also, being the lead and having to work with engineers who work from a completely different side of the brain, an intuitive-creative, and having to have those conversations and being a woman in those conference rooms and having to assert my power. What I needed and what I wanted and not be walked all over, but to also do it. How can you do that as a female leader and do it without losing your femininity? That’s a huge challenge for a lot of people and I certainly faced it.

I love hearing your story. I could ask you a bazillion questions, hence this is why she’s on the show, Life Masters.

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