Today we’d like to introduce you to Bela Gandhi.
Bela, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I grew up in a loving family with educated parents who immigrated from Bombay, India, to the suburbs of Chicago, and one younger brother. If you’ve ever seen the beginning of the film, The Namesake, their beginnings were pretty similar. My dad, a chemist for a large corporation, was also always an entrepreneur at heart and became a minority partner in a chemicals/coatings business when I was in junior high school.
After I graduated with two degrees from the University of IL, Urbana —German and Finance—I went to work in mergers and acquisitions with Arthur Andersen Consulting. My dad’s business had expanded quite a bit by then (he bought out his partners, was the sole owner, brought my Mom onboard, and had grown into the second largest supplier of non-stick coatings in the USA), and he wanted to build his business in Europe, and the rest of the world. I knew that this could be a great opportunity for me to really hone my business skills and “grow up quickly in business,” so I went to work for his company, Coatings, and Chemicals (CCC), which was based in Chicago – and started traveling extensively all over the world – to Europe, Asia, Australia and South America.
My dad was harder on his children—my brother had also joined the business—than on anyone else in the company; his mandate was that we would be the people who would turn the lights on in the morning and turn them off after everyone left in the evening. I learned every aspect of the business and developed a thirst to do more and more during these years. I did everything from solving technical problems on customers’ production lines to driving forklifts, from closing big client deals to helping close the books. Working in the family business is what I call “Best.Decision.Ever” (well, until my next act!).
We decided to sell the family company in 1998, during a great market, to Akzo Nobel. My parents and brother retired by 2001, and Akzo Nobel kept me on until the middle of 2006 to help manage and integrate our company (Akzo was a multi-billion dollar company). I was one of the youngest women in management in the organization (which had 66,000 employees compared to CCC’s 80 employees).
What’s interesting is that during that entire time, I was the go-to girl for dating and love advice, and had set up many happy couples (on gut!) who were now getting married and having kids. Literally, I would say, “I found a guy for you; go out on one date, and I know you will marry him! “and it started to happen. My first match became official with their engagement in 1999, and I knew at that moment that I wanted to help people find love as my purpose. It took me ten years to build up the courage, put a plan together for Smart Dating Academy, and make it happen.
We have grown into one of the top coaching companies in the US, and have helped thousands of people find love, both through real-life and online connections. We teach people how to identify partners that make them HAPPY (vs. relying on bad instincts or old patterns), and haven’t had one divorce since we’ve begun! We are national media experts, and I appear on Good Morning America, the Today Show, Steve Harvey, Harry Connick, ABC, and Fox regularly.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I don’t think life is ever a smooth road, right? If so, we’re not pushing ourselves off of the ‘comfortable’ road!
When I first started, literally everything was a struggle. I knew virtually no single people in Chicago because I had been married for 12 years at the time and started going to singles events to network and meet people, in order to get the pulse on the Chicago singles market. It was hard to walk into events alone and as a married person. People were like, “What are YOU doing here?” It ended up being great; I met so many people who are still friends today through that exercise.
I also had no “team” to bond with or any colleagues anywhere in Chicago. It was isolating in the beginning! And people really didn’t understand what “date coaching” was. People understood “Yenta style” matchmaking, but not date coaching. I had to explain it every single time I went out. People looked confused. When I realized that and started saying, “We are like personal trainers for your love life,” it clicked (and I still explain it that way today)!
I’ve learned that not everyone wants help, and to trust my gut before accepting clients into SDA. In my first year, I had a bad experience with a client from Wisconsin, who ended up being very mean and pushy, demanding hours of time for nothing. She would yell and scream so finally, one day, I fired her by phone. Ironically, she begged me not to fire her and we left things on good terms, but it felt really good to part ways. Now, I really trust and listen to my gut every time I speak with a potential client; if something sounds “off” or wrong, or the person sounds negative or unwilling to work, we don’t take them on.
I’ve also learned that I am good at certain things, and not great at others. I’ve also learned that you can only get so far by yourself—I spent way too much time doing things on my own with no help. I have now built a team of amazing people around me. I have ways to go, but it’s definitely a big step in the right direction.
Please tell us about Smart Dating Academy.
Smart Dating Academy is my third child (apart from Jaden and Max my daughter and son!), and a big love of my life. We are very different than any service out there – because we are teaching people to sometimes date against their instincts. We aren’t taught how to identify partners that make us happy as part of our culture, and that is the main driver at Smart Dating Academy. We help single professionals all over the country figure out why they aren’t meeting the right people (dating patterns? family of origin issues?), and then help them to put a plan together to have fun, meet people who will give them happy and healthy love.
We coach and consult around best online sites/apps (depends on each client), take client’s photos at our awesome studio in the West Loop of Chicago, write their profiles, teach them how to write emails/texts that get responses, help them get good setups, teach them how to strike up conversations with cute strangers and find good places to meet people in person, and so much more! We are like personal trainers for their love lives—and it works. We have helped hundreds of people find love, and have lots of amazing success stories from singles in their 20s to their late 60s! Our typical clients are successful, professional men and women, from age 25-75. Our clients are national, about 50% are from the Midwest, and the remaining 50% fly in from out of state to work with us.
On occasion, we do a few hourly phone sessions with clients, but typically our clients are very ready to find happy healthy love and willing to invest the time/resources to do so. We have them fill out very extensive questionnaires and the Marriage Map, so we have a full idea of their family backgrounds, all significant relationships, why they think they’re single, and a “360 Feedback” survey where we ask their family/friends/exes, etc to email us answering the question, “Why hasn’t this person found a partner yet?” So we have a total plan put together for each person, and meet them at the Four Seasons for a “Jump Start” session to kick off the process. We clarify old patterns, and put together the “right” checklist for the first time, so that after we give them an online makeover (with new amazing lifestyle photos/profile, etc), they have the right ‘lenses’ on to focus on the good people, and to throw the bad ones ‘back to the pond’ asap, avoiding heartbreak, disappointment, and wasting time.
We see great stories happen all the time, to women over 40 on a regular basis! One woman, who graduated Harvard and has a great job in Chicago had virtually no dating experience when she came to us. She signed up for a year-long program, and we taught her who her High GHQ® man is (High in Good Husband Qualities) – made her profile over and coached her weekly. She met an amazing man online (yes online works with the right tools!), and they got engaged over Labor Day weekend! We also work with a beautiful woman who owns a very successful food business in Chicago – who found us on an ABC TV show. She had a bad picker and was chronically attracted to narcissists / unavailable men. She found love online as well – and is very happy with a successful artist that lives in Chicago. I could go on – but I promise you that love is everywhere, and it can happen to you too!
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I had to start over, I would turn the clock back and start the business even earlier.
I had been dreaming about it for years, since that moment in 1999. I watched the growth of the dating company, It’s Just Lunch, and knew that I wanted to do something like that. The feeling really began to grow after 2004, when I had my daughter Jaden. I gathered my strength and left Akzo Nobel, even though I really loved it, to figure out how to do it. I hemmed and hawed, and researched for a while, then had my son Max in 2008.
One day, in June 2009, I read something that struck a real chord in me, and it changed everything. It was an anecdote about failure vs. regret. I went for a run, and imagined myself, sitting in a rocking chair on a patio in 50 years, telling my four grandkids a story. The story could be one of the following:
Story 1: “I want to tell you something that I dreamt of, but never did because I was so scared of failure. It was a dating company… and I wish I wouldn’t have let my fear run my life. I am going to tell you about regret, so you don’t have any in your life, hopefully.”
Story 2: “I want to tell you a story today that was hilarious. I had this CRAZY idea to start a date coaching company when I was around 40, and it was a HUGE debacle and abysmal failure. But, I’m so glad I did it because I learned that I could try anything, learn something from it, and still have the love of the people in my life.”
WOW. That was seminal for me. At that moment, it crystallized. I would be happier telling Story 2 and did not want to have the regret of Story 1. That day in 2009, I started doing my research on the dating industry, and I have never looked back.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.smartdatingacademy.com
- Phone: 312-643-1516
- Email: bela@smartdatingacademy.com
- Instagram: @belagandhi7
- Facebook: @SmartDatingAcademy
- Twitter: @BelaGandhiLove
Getting in touch: VoyageChicago is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
