Page 23 of Matched with Her Athlete Boss
The corners of her lips twitch and she finally smiles. There’s something between us, like a connection I can’t describe. It’s broken as soon as Meg speaks.
“Here is the gift card I promised. I actually wonder if you have a few minutes, Miss Sullivan? Then I can go through everything at one time.”
Kenzie frowns. I glance between the two women, wondering what Meg could want to talk to her about.
With a quick movement, Kenzie sits down in the chair next to mine. “It’s Kenzie.”
Meg smiles. “Okay, Kenzie, Trey, I’m sure you’re wondering what I’ve asked you here for. The Love, Austen company came out with an app over a year ago. We’ve had some mixed sentiment about it. The first several months was a lot of trial and error to make sure we had all the technical elements fixed. Then it was getting the right matching system in line.
“Lately, we’ve had several reports that things need to be changed on the app. More security through background checks and vetting the clients signing up. That gets difficult when we’ve reached the entire world with the app. Jorge, my amazing tech guy, is working on several fixes at the moment. But we’ve been approached about some publicity through the local tv show,Everything Your Heart Desires.”
“I’m just here for the gift card,” Kenzie says, holding it up in her hand. Her face has lost all its color.
Meg laughs and nods. “Yes, you definitely deserve that. Some of the things you shared in the paragraph section of the survey,” she turns to me and says, “We sent a survey out to a selection of past clients to get a better feel for why they stopped using our services.”
Kenzie squirms in her seat and looks down at her hands in her lap. She used to be a client for a matchmaking app. The woman is no-nonsense, but I would’ve thought she’d be against something like this. Was that why she was running away from the guy at the mud run?
“When you say they were matched and it didn’t work out, what do you mean? Does the process not work as well as you hoped?” It’s a forward question, sure, but I want facts before I commit to anything.
Meg sighs and says, “No, I believe in the program. It essentially matched my husband and I. After a little fake dating stint, of course.” There is mischief in her eyes and I lean forward, waiting for the rest of the story.
“Parker was a divorce attorney and I had this business, but I really wanted to start the app. Having no money, I’d reached out to investors, but they wanted proof that my process worked. I figured that the easiest way to do that was to have someone around who could help me out, and vice versa. Parker needed a girlfriend to prove he was ready to become a partner in his father’s law firm, but it turned out that I was his match in reality and not just on paper.”
I sit back, mulling over the information. “It's interesting that you both used it yourselves.”
She nods. “So, I believe in the process, but going global is very different from the way I started this business.”
“What all goes into a match?” Kenzie asks.
“Great question,” Meg says, standing up. “We’ll pop into the next room so I can show you the flow.” She grabs what looks to be a walkie-talkie, only a baby version. The baby in the bouncer is sleeping and she looks like a doll.
Meg leaves the room and Kenzie follows. I walk a few steps behind, curious now about this woman who refuses to date yet getting a full walk-through of a matchmaking business.
We’re led into a large room with six, large flat-screen TVs mounted on one wall. Each screen has a bunch of information displayed, a few names and characteristics.
Meg turns to us and grins. “We call this the Wall of Love. When I first started out, I did everything by hand and it took quite a while to make a match from the entries. Now the process is streamlined using code that we pull from the intake test, which you’ve already taken, Kenzie.”
Kenzie gives her a curt nod, giving me a sideways glance after. It only multiplies the questions I have in my mind. Mostly, what kind of guy is she into and what happened that made her shut down her account. If she’d been successful at finding a true match, we wouldn’t all be standing here.
“Do you have an example of a match? Like, are they similar in a certain percentage of personality traits and interests?” Kenzie’s voice shakes just slightly. Is she nervous?
Meg walks over to what looks like a command center with three computer screens and several keyboards. “Okay, let’s look you up,” she says.
“No, uh, no, I’m good,” Kenzie says, her cheeks going red as she looks over and points to me. “I don’t need this guy to see all the things. I’d just like a generalized example. When I filled out the intake form, I was working at a marketing firm but now I work as an organizer. Does that change my matches?”
“That’s great! I’ll need your help in a few weeks once we finish remodeling the next building over,” Meg says brightly. “As far as your matches, it shouldn’t be too different, but you can retake the test if you’re worried about it.”
“What are you wanting us to do?” I ask, trying to get to the heart of things. Now that I’ve seen the impressive operation that goes into the matchmaking process, I’m still not sold on taking part in it.
Meg pulls out a chair for both of us, setting her baby monitor down on the command center. “The TV show has a thriving YouTube channel that gets hundreds of thousands of views worldwide. We’ve partnered with them to help us film a docuseries on the ins and outs of the matchmaking process. What I would love to have is the two of you enter the pool of candidates and be matched. You’ll then film dates with several matches to see how the process goes.”
“What if we don’t click with our matches?” I ask.
“Or they don’t jive with us,” Kenzie says, her voice almost inaudible.
“The point of this is to keep going to find that special someone for everyone. We’ll reevaluate the matches and see if we’ve found anything we can fix on our end and then try again.”
Kenzie shakes her head. “But isn’t that bad publicity for your company if it doesn’t work out?”
