MICHELLE LEE MATCHMAKING

TRUE LOVE IS POSSIBLE, WHY WAIT?

Written by: Jack Collier

For men, it is a barbershop. For women—and some men—it’s a salon.

The longer the relationship with your stylist, the more we confess. It’s an intimate thing involving touch and closeness, the squeezing of warm soap from our hair as we pick up where we left off.

Just listening. And holding our secrets for the next visit. Michell Vazquez has streamed her salon/stylist experiences —and her life as a person with heartbreaks and boundless joy—into Michelle Lee Matchmaking. Her new service pairs dating professionals. A matchmaker’s job, she says, is structuring compatibility, to “really know who you are going out on a date with,” says the owner of Steel Magnolias Salon in Fort Myers and who has fused 25 years of styling and running a successful salon into the role of playing Cupid. Everyone has stumbled in the art of love. Some trip harder, of course. In modern times, we download our love dreams/hookups into a dating app … and cross our fingers. One such app has 400 million users, according to people keeping those statistics. While app users will find love, others report abuse, at least finding that new Mercedes you chatted up turned out to be a clunker with bald tires. “You hear stories, sad stories,” says Vazquez. “And I thought there’s got to be a better way to meet quality people.”

Which put into motion Michelle Lee Matchmaking. Vazquez says that clients seeking a professional matchmaker, and that can run into the thousands, deserve a safety net — trust is mandatory. Background and credit reports start the process, she says, “to decide if there’s a good fit to move forward.”

Clients then deep dive into a 5-step process in following interviews to avoid mid-air collisions.

Do the food labels on your cabinets face forward, how clean/unclean is your house, do you sit in the corner at a party or are you bubbly and outgoing, these questions and many more are asked. Sex is a hot topic, as well, which can be the ultimate compatibility issue, surveys indicate.

And everything is confidential, as Vazquez uses hard facts and her intuition to pair us with our best match.

Why not hit the ground running, she asks. “It’s like I’m their personal dating concierge,” says Vazquez, who describes herself as an empath, that rare person that feels or grasps the emotions of others, a perfect matchmaking tool.

Once a happily paired couple hits their stride, Vazquez follows in a coaching capacity, maybe romance tips or positive reinforcements, learning about love languages or healing from past failures, rare in professional matchmaking services, says Vazquez, a lifelong entrepreneur who lives and runs her businesses in southwest Florida. “I like to hear ‘truly amazing … I never experienced love like this.’” FCM