I’m a professional matchmaker – men with beer budgets still have champagne tastes, my red flags weed out the bad ones
A PROFESSIONAL matchmaker has confessed that she’s a snob when choosing her clients and will turn away — even the most beautiful people.
She revealed her lengthy vetting process weeds out potential gold diggers and men who aren’t looking for a “serious” long-term relationship.
Gina Hendrix built a contact book overflowing with successful and wealthy people after swapping her career as a flight attendant for one as a celebrity wardrobe stylist.
She told The U.S. Sun that the launch of Match.com inspired her to start a dating website in the early 2000s.
Around seven years later, she went “all in” and became a traditional matchmaker, advertising in Los Angeles magazine and hosting speed dating events.
“I was charging $3,500, $5,500, just essentially whatever I could get,” she said.
“As I started working with these guys, it was obvious to me very quickly that even the men who only had a beer budget often had a champagne taste.
“They always wanted supermodels, they wanted the prettiest, most amazing women they could possibly get even if they weren’t at that level financially or otherwise.”
Instead, Gina decided to focus on having men with high net worth as her main clients.
She researched the most eligible bachelors, asked her female styling clients if they knew any of the men on her matchmaking “wishlist,” and made cold calls, building up her roster.
Gina said she became a “snob” about who to accept as a client after she stopped cold calling in 2016.
She now has a small boutique company that relies on word of mouth for getting new clients.
PICKY PICKY
“I am very, very, careful if they don’t come through a recommendation,” she said.
“I only work with about seven to eight clients at one time. I charge a lot and therefore I don’t really need to work with many men.”
She often meets her clients in restaurants or at home and likes to see how they interact with staff.
“How do they treat those people, what does their home look like, what’s their taste?” she said.
Men want a woman that sort of reflects them in their lifestyle, which is active, healthy eating and in great shape.
Gina Hendrix
“I keep my overhead low, which also really affords me the luxury to continue to turn men down if I don’t like them.”
Gina said she has a phone call to vet potential clients before sending them profiles to understand their preference for women.
“What I’m really looking for is the feedback they give me on the women because that’s so telling,” she said.
“The women in my database are like next-level mind-blowing phenomenal because I’m so picky.
“I know my women are rock stars, and if a guy comes back and says he doesn’t like hardly any of the ladies, I sent that’s my first red flag.
“I don’t even think I want to work with that guy because he’s gonna be really hard to please.”
WEEDING OUT THE ISSUES
Gina said she reminds men that the women in her database have free will to decide if they want to go ahead with a date.
She has a Zoom call and an in-person meeting as the process goes back and forth for two to four weeks before her clients meet.
“I see through people pretty easily sometimes it’s not on the first interaction, but it’s gonna be after a few interactions,” she said.
“Men have tried to do meetings with me on Zoom and they’re driving in their car to me that’s a red flag.
“Even though that might not sound like much to me. It’s really telling of how serious a man is taking the process.
Matchmaker Gina Hendrix's dating red flags
- Treating people badly, such as restaurant staff
- Overly critical of potential match’s appearance
- Multitasking phone calls with other activities
- Desperate for money
- Getting drunk on a first date
- Inconsistent behavior
- Showing off material possessions early on
- Racy social media photos
“There’s men who show up, they want to rewrite my contract and that’s also very telling.
“They don’t want to agree to my success bonus that’s in the contract.
“When I was first starting, these men would steamroll me.”
BIG MONEY MEN
The relationship expert said her wealthy clients range from tech moguls and entertainers to high-level CEOs.
Most of them are aged between 26 and early 50s, but she has also worked with an 89-year-old man.
“One of my clients owns 57 companies,” she said.
“Another one was a very well-known, prominent biotech guy and he created a lot of revolutionary drugs.
“I’ve worked with celebrities that are very popular and entrepreneurs.
“If the man doesn’t end up signing with me, it’s one of two reasons.
“Either he doesn’t have the money he pretends to have or he’s not looking for a real relationship.
“If he wants to play around, he doesn’t need somebody like me, because there’s so many easier ways to do that these days.”
LEADING TO LOVE
Gina said many of her clients have tried dating apps and other matchmaking services before they come to her.
She raged that some matchmakers are “kind of con artists” who will take anybody’s money regardless of whether or not they will be able to help.
She’s met women paying high sums of money to “irresponsible” matchmakers who know it will be “almost impossible” to find what they are looking for.
“Their business model is the money first and then the match second,” she said.
“Whereas for me it’s the match first. I need to know I can match these people first and then the sale comes second.
I looked at her social media and it looked like she was an escort.
Gina Hendrix
“I’m very, very picky and very, very discerning who I work with in that way.
“It affects your reputation if you have these people in your books for ages and they’re not seeing any progress because you’re thinking about the money first.”
“The only way I can really help somebody is if I genuinely like them and believe in them,” she added.
“If I don’t like a guy, how in the world am I gonna then present him in the best way to some unsuspecting woman.”
WHAT MEN WANT
She said men and women are equally picky when choosing a partner and want to be matched with someone attractive.
“Men want a woman that sort of reflects them in their lifestyle, which is active, healthy eating and in great shape,” Gina said.
“Also another big thing is they want a financially solvent woman, someone not circling the drain.
“It’s not that they want the woman to pay the bills with them or split the bills or anything like that.
“They want somebody who they know is not desperate for money because then they question that woman’s motives just like I would.
“She doesn’t have to be super rich, but she does have to have something going on in her life.”
Despite her lengthy vetting process, she still has clients behave differently on the date than she expected from their initial conversation.
She recalls in the early days of her business a woman complained about her male client drinking too much alcohol and “stumbling” out of dinner.
She had to have an awkward conversation when he sobered up explaining why the woman didn’t want to see him again.
REJECTING MODELS
Gina said she’s also had to reject a woman who physically met her client’s specifications but had undesirable intentions.
“She looked like a Victoria’s Secret model, so beautiful,” she said.
“She was 6 feet tall, blonde, blue-eyed, and Danish. I met with her in person and it was lovely.
If I told the man that she’s under the radar, she’s not even on social media, they’d say to me, ‘Oh, that’s perfect.’
Gina Hendrix
“Afterwards, she called me and said, ‘I’m just really looking for a man to pay my bills.’
“The first thing I did was thank her for her honesty because I was grateful that she came clean with me.
“I told her I appreciate that, but I’m just not in that business.
“That was the end of the road and I had to tell the client.”
A couple of years later, she learned that the woman ended up having a baby with “somebody very, very high profile.”
RED FLAGS TO WATCH
Gina said whether meeting someone from a dating app or through a matchmaker it’s a red flag if they’re inconsistent.
She advised people to trust their gut instinct and not be afraid to slow things down if something feels off.
“If they really like you, they’ll hang with it, and if their intentions weren’t honorable or they were up to something, they’re gonna go away, which is a good thing,” she said.
She has also had to advise her rich clients not to “date big” by showing their car collections and houses too soon.
She said it may not seem like love bombing on their part because it’s a normal part of their lifestyle, but it can get the women “excited” before the men decide if they’re fully interested.
Most of her male clients are under the radar, but she will also point out if their social media pages are too flashy.
“I had a client and this is going back quite a few years,” Gina said.
“He was a self-made billionaire and I set him up with this girl, and this was before I was scrutinizing people’s social media.
“I think social media is such a great way to get a window into somebody’s life.
“She was a great girl, she was smart, she spoke multiple languages. She was beautiful.
“But then they went out a couple of times and he called saying, ‘Gina, have you seen her social media?’
“I was like, no, and he said, ‘You should take a look. There’s no way I could bring her around my friends or family.’
“I looked at her social media and it looked like she was an escort.”
Men tell me things that they probably wouldn’t tell the therapists or their priests, they tell me everything
Gina Hendrix
Gina said the woman was eager to make changes to her social media page based on the feedback.
She had chosen her social media photos after looking at what other women were doing online.
Gina said the woman was confused about why the man was still asking her to go on dates despite complaining about her accounts.
“That was weird, but these guys are horn dogs,” she said,
“Sometimes they’ll date them even if they don’t think that they’ll ever take them seriously for the long term.
“I try to teach women.
“They really don’t understand the difference between men who drop into their DMs or want to take them out when they have a super, super racy Instagram, versus the guys who want to take them out and show them off like arm candy versus somebody who’s gonna take them seriously.
“If I told the man that she’s under the radar, she’s not even on social media, they’d say to me, ‘Oh, that’s perfect.’
“They would absolutely love that.
“I don’t think they ever really ask because they just assume everybody is on social media these days.”
Gina said being a matchmaker has changed her outlook on dating.
“Men tell me things that they probably wouldn’t tell the therapists or their priests, they tell me everything,” she said.
“It’s affected my life and my dating life because I know what they’re thinking even before they think it.
“I’m open-minded, but I don’t date much.”
Gina Hendrix posts dating tips regularly on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.