Working on oneself and really looking inward can be daunting, emotional, and sometimes even painful. It is, however, essential to our journey of growth, success, and fulfillment. On today’s show, Kimmy Seltzer takes the time to talk with host Juliet Clark about how the inner workings are very important when it comes to dating. Kimmy, Confidence Therapist and Authentic Dating Strategist, shares how she worked from the inside out to change herself for the better, and how she has helped people find lasting love and connection, attract success, and build valuable relationships using her unique “confidence makeover” process. She then takes us into her signature formula, The Charisma Quotient, which she uses to guide people on body language, first impressions, image, and messaging and how it impacts attraction.  

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The Charisma Quotient: How To Date The Right Way With Kimmy Seltzer

Our guest is Kimmy Seltzer. She is a confidence therapist and authentic dating strategist with vast knowledge and experience as a therapist, certified style coach, dating coach and matchmaker. She’s helped people find lasting love and connection, attract success, and build valuable relationships using her unique confidence makeover process. Using an outside–in approach, she implements targeted style, emotional and social intelligence in people’s lives using her signature formula, The Charisma Quotient. She works on body language, first impressions, image, messaging, and how it impacts attraction. 

This Los Angeles based expert travels the country helping discover confidence, charisma and connection as a speaker at National Matchmaking Conferences, eHarmony, Neutrogena, The Guild of Universal, UCLA and iDate. Kimmy is also a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, with appearances in Cosmopolitan, Oprah Magazine, Redbook, Reader’s Digest, AskMen, Fox News Magazine, Yahoo and the Washington Examiner, among a myriad of other publications. You can also find her as the leading love experts on the traveling live dating show, The Great Love Debate, and the cable reality dating show, The Romance. She is the love coach for the dating app, Datefit, and you can also listen to her podcast, The Charisma Quotient. She is hosting The Flirt Academy workshops nationwide. Welcome, Kimmy. 

Thank you. It’s funny to reflect on all the stuff that I did because the reason why I got into doing what I do comes from my own transformation, my own story, and that is why I’m passionate about doing what I do. It has melted into like where I am now. 

Tell us about that story. I always find it super interesting how we got in and my readers know, I had to kill my ex-husband to get into publishing. I was going through a horrible divorce when I wrote my first mystery novel and nobody was behaving, so I killed him in it. That’s my story. I had to do it in the book because felony orange is not my color, so I couldn’t go to jail. How did you get into this? 

It’s a similar story. I didn’t kill my husband, although maybe I should have, now that I know your story. This was the defining moment of my life because if you rewind my life many years ago, it did not look like how it looks now. It was very different. I’ll try to condense it is that, once upon a time in a land far away named Chicago, that’s where I’m from. I lived this traditional life. I had the traditional picket fence, job as a therapist and I practiced that for over ten years at that point before I moved here to LA. I had two small kids at that time and everything was going on as planned. We pick up, we moved across the country to LaLa Land and we land here. Issues are going on in this little fairytale. 

There I was, all alone in this new castle, this new foreign land. Everything went crashing down. Life as I knew it, compeletely stopped. The record stopped basically. You know when there’s that defining moment, and maybe you have a similar moment where you look ahead of you and there’s a fork in the road. You can go down one path or the other. I have to tell you, at that moment, I was going down a dark path. My clothes reflected the dark period as I call it. If you saw me back then, what I looked like was this sad, frumpy mom. I was still wearing my nursing bras. It wasn’t nursing any longer with Birkenstocks. 

The Charisma Quotient: Beauty is both inside and out, but it’s got to be congruent with how you look and also how you feel.

I hadn’t crossed over to the UGG yet. I thought it was ridiculous that the Californians were wearing UGG coming from Chicago, but now guilty as charged. I wear them because I get called at 50. What happened is I look in the mirror and all I had in my closet were these black ginormous clothes that were three sizes too big for me. I had a splash of beige in my closet to mix it up a little. I recognized and realized that my clothes are a reflection of where I was at. I was going down this dark path, not knowing how to get out of my own way. Here I was a therapist, I should know better. 

I had a ton of support. My friends rallied, my family came to help out with the kids. I went through counseling myself and I was completely stuck. What I’m about to tell you that changes the course of not only my life, but what I teach because up until that moment, I believed that you had to work from the inside out in order to create change for yourself. “You’ve got to do all this inside work.” I had done a ton of inside work. I remember looking in the mirror one day and hating what I saw. I said, “I‘m fed up. I’m going to go shopping. I hate the way I look.” It was shopping therapy. 

I go to the department store and I think I’m up–leveling myself by getting new clothes, but no. I’m picking all the same things, black, three sizes too big. I remember having a pile of those black clothes in my arms and then this personal shopper was watching me. She comes up and she says, “Ma’am, I’ve been watching you. I think you should try this one.” She holds up this red dress that looked like three sizes too small. I said, “That’s sweet of you, but it’s not my size and that is not my color.” She says, “It is your size. It is your color. Try it on.” I call it my room red dress moment. It was like she hit me over the head with that red dress. Like a vortex, everything came in and I’m like, “I need to try on and do something different here to get moving.” 

I slip on this dress begrudgingly and I twirl around like Cinderella. I look in the mirror and I couldn’t believe what I saw. I saw a princess. I was like, “I cannot believe that this is me. I hadn’t seen me in so long.” I bought the red dress that day almost as a costume, to be honest, because I still don’t feel it. I went out into the world and I started marinating in it. All this magic that you heard in my bio started happening to me. What I realized is that there was a symbiotic relationship between the outer and the inner when it comes to confidence, when it comes to how you feel, move and take action. It wasn’t superficial. 

There’s a lot of research since then doing what I do that backs that up. It wasn’t until I got comfortable being seen. That’s what it was is that my black clothes were acting as a cloak to keep me invisible from those alien men because I was scared. I didn’t know how to flirt with them or talk to them. I’m sure you can relate. When I embraced being seen, having a voice and coming into my own, that’s when my confidence started growing. That’s when I started attracting all these things in my life. That’s what I do now. I flipped the script. I no longer practice from the inside out. I start from the outside and then go in, which is a little unconventional and different. 

I believe that when you dial in your marketing and you know this from a business standpoint but we, as people, are no different. When we market ourselves as the datable, sexy and beautiful person that we are with confidence in the way that we move in our body and the way that we wear our clothes, the way we even like express ourselves, our presentation, that is when people get to know the inside. It works hand-in-hand and that’s where The Charisma Quotient formula came about. That’s the name of my podcast and hopefully, my book one day. I’m going to be pitching soon. We have it together and I’m super excited about it. 

Dating is like marketing. You have to be authentic. You have to know who you are. How do you embrace that journey? There’s so much marketing out there that is like, “We go out on a first date, within 30 seconds, I’m asking you to buy something,” which is the equivalent of “let’s get married” within the first 30 seconds. What do you do in dating and how can we relate that back to marketing? 

That’s one of the first things that I like to look at because I am a therapist, an image expert, and a dating coach. I have this holistic view of people. We’re multidimensional right. Too many times people do all this work on the inside, but yet they don’t put themselves out there that’s congruent with who they are inside. What I always tell people, when I work with your style, for instance, getting like a dateable style as they call it or working on your body language that sends signals out to the world that you’re interested and interesting is that it’s not changing who you are, but it’s about marketing yourself so someone gets to know who you are and it’s crucial. Especially in COVID land, when we’re all doing online dating, it’s important to dial in your marketing because you can be this great, fantastic person. 

If your pictures look like crap, you’re not going to get found. I don’t care how great you are. I was working with this woman, for instance. She was doing a virtual program that I have. It was funny because again she had a lot of inside work to do. She was attracting narcissists and emotionally unavailable men. I said, “We first have to dial in your marketing because who you are as a person is totally incongruent with what you’re putting out there on your profile.” I’ve been known to lift the hood of the engine and take a deep dive into not just your pictures, but your conversations and it’s no different than a book. 

I want to know how people are telling their stories to each other and it is the same. It’s amazing to me and with this woman, how not only her pictures were off, but even how she was flowing with her conversation. What was funny is that she had this beautiful picture of her that was awesome, that she should have put the first picture that the guys should have seen because she looks super sexy. It was like a professionally well–lit done picture, but then all her other ones were crap. She looked bitty and then the picture was of a mountain. I’m like, “This is a picture of a mountain, not you.” Then there was another picture of her in sweats, that she didn’t have any makeup on, the light was bad. 

I’m like, “You’re only as good as your worst picture and this is true.” You know this, ladies, if you’re reading this, you’ve seen this in the men. You’ll see a cute guy. You’re like, “He’s cute.” You start thumbing through and you’re like, “Eh.” If there’s one bad picture, you’ll swipe left or you’ll not give him a chance. It’s important to look at that. With this woman, I had start embracing her femininity and getting new pictures done. We looked at dresses that put her in a better light and we put her in something red. By the way, that’s a trick because men love red and that is a marketing trick. Once we put in her new pictures and believe me, it wasn’t easy. 

That was part of her issue is that she didn’t like to be advertising herself like that, but she recognized that was part of the problem. It was a deeper issue. Not wanting to be seen as a sexy woman was something that she was getting caught up in. Even the fact of embracing that side of her was huge. Once we put up those pictures, you better believe a whole new inventory came through a man. In that inventory, was a guy who ended up being her boyfriend. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s giving people opportunity as they put themselves out there so that people recognize that beauty and beauty is both inside and out, but it’s got to be congruent in how you look and also how you feel. 

That is interesting because if you’ve ever been online, you’ve rejected men for the same reason like, “Am I dating your dog? Am I dating those grandchildren?” Some of the pictures people put up are funny. 

We think as women we’re different than men and we get down on men being like, “Men are pigs and they’re all visual.” I’m sorry, so are we. I had a Flirt Immersion virtual day and it was so much fun. I was teaching women how to flirt. I had a panel of men come in. We were asking men questions, what they found sexy and what they liked to women. We did a speed dating event. It was super eye–opening for women to see that we all look at and want the same things, but we go at it maybe a little bit differently. There was one exercise I did where I put up a picture of a real profile of a guy that I found on Bumble. 

I said, “Would you date him?” A lot of the women were like, “Yes. He’s cute.” We’re getting all these things. I said, “Here’s his next picture. Now, what do you think?” Everyone’s like, “Boo. Swipe left. No way.” I’m like, “Ladies, this is the same guy.” You see how powerful first impressions are. Here’s a little research that it only takes now seven seconds to make a first impression. Within those seven seconds, you’re making a judgment call on two things. Number one is the clothes that people are wearing and number two is the attitude that they have. Meaning, their facial expressions, how their body language is and 93% of communication is non-verbal. It’s not even what you say is as important in how you show up. That includes your energy and what you’re putting out there. Whether it’s online or offline, how approachable are you? What are you marketing when you’re putting yourself out there? Are you marketing the resting bitch face or the, “Don’t talk to me or I’m available?” Do you see yourself? 

A lot of professional women have trouble dating and now that you’re talking about this, I’m one of those from the ‘80s who blew through the glass ceiling, but I also don’t think I date well because I tend to be the leader in the room, which sometimes you have to relinquish a little bit. It’s interesting you said that. What am I going to do? 

Most of the women that I work with are high achievers, very successful and go-getters. What has happened a lot as women have gotten stronger in the workforce and we become more independent and finding our voice, we’ve also been losing something and that is our femininity and how we are able to receive. I think that it’s like the pendulum. We were over here in one era of our life and now we’re fighting for something else. With that, we’re losing the ability to receive. I work with as many men as I do women. I hear it from the horse’s mouth and they tell me that a lot of times, they feel like they have no role or place anymore. 

They want to give to women, but women are like, “We don’t need you.” What I’m seeing out there is that a lot of times people standstill. Both genders have our responsibility when it comes to approachability. The women are getting mad at the men because they’re not alpha enough. “I need a strong man.” I hear that all the time. The men are like, “The women aren’t approachable.” They’re putting up a guard like, “I don’t need no man.” Quite honestly, they don’t in the sense of financial, but at the end of the day, as women, we all want to find that person to be cherished, to be loved, to have someone give to us. 

If you put that shield up, you’re not allowing for that. This is something that I’ve been talking to many women about and even why I do these Flirt Workshops to help women understand that it’s not about dumbing down or dialing back who you are. It’s allowing that softness, that playfulness, the femininity to also come out to balance that also independence. Otherwise, I find that this is one of the biggest complaints that a lot of high achievers have. 

I know myself. I can be a bit unapproachable sometimes. 

In what way? 

I get nervous so I clam up. I’m one of those people that quiet, I observed, but once you get to know me, then you can’t shut me up. It’s a matter of breaking through that shell. I’m going to have to find out more afterward about the Flirt Workshops. 

You mentioned something about the shyness or people who are slower to warm up, people who tend to be more observers than they are initiators. Especially when it comes to first dates or even online conversations or when you’re out and about, that can be misinterpreted as the bitch or aloof or, “She’s not interested.” This is where nonverbal communication comes in. When you start matching your non-verbals with even working on smiling and making eye contact. 

I know we’re all wearing masks now, but you can still smile with your masks on. You know when someone is smiling with their eyes and connect. I’m calling it the new masquerade because we all have these masks on, but it’s a little mysterious in some ways too. How can we be a little playful with it all? It’s a muscle that needs to be exercised even more so now as we’re all getting used to this new world and how we can renegotiate that and still connect with people in many ways. 

Relationship is online now. You and I were talking about how we were Zoom exhausted. 

Zoom fatigue is real. 

I’m jealous because she took some time off and I haven’t. Is that a thing with dating now? I know we’re getting used to, as a society building relationships, on Zoom as opposed to in–person where we’ve been doing it at events in the past, is that a thing with online dating too? How do you approach a Zoom call to date? 

You’ve got to know how to give good Zoom. This is part of the workshop. This is where the first impression comes in and learning how to navigate the online world like we once did in the physical world. There are still people dating and social distance dating in a safe way, but here’s what we’re seeing. I’ll go over the progression and this is a paradox that came out of this whole period, is that we’re seeing more successful relationships form now than ever before and I’ll tell you why. It has forced us all to slow down and pay attention to who’s even worth going out with now. With that, people are learning to build an emotional connection, slow down and see what is important to them. Whereas before in the physical sense, people would be like, “I’ll go meet and not pay attention to building that connection.” 

I almost feel like it’s going back in time when people used to court one another in an intentional way. It’s more like intentional dating. When I’m coaching, my clients to do is using the Zoom time and online time to dial in skills that maybe they didn’t have before all this happened. Were you good at flirting before all this happened? What if you learn how to flirt online in the comfort of your own home? Did you build emotional connection and conversations before this or were you relying simply on the physical? How is your conversation skills? What do your pictures look like? This is an opportunity to get a handle on these skills so that when we’re out of this thing, you’ll come out even better than you were before. We’re seeing a slowing down and a progression. 

You asked about Zoom fatigue. It is real. What I tell people all the time, you have to give yourself time and space to be in that energy so that you show up on days, playful, fun and not in your masculine work self. I teach people to get a date prep plan for themselves so that they are listening to music, they’re getting in their body, getting out of their heads, taking improv classes, like things that you can do to be more playful and fun. You’ll have more fun doing it quite honestly too, rather than going right from one zoom meeting, which was your work meeting to a date Zoom meeting that is the worst. You’ve got to change your clothes, your setting, your energy, your mood and you’ve got to pay attention to what you look like on camera. You have to learn how to navigate Zoom as well because that makes a difference. Your lighting, your sound and your background. All of that matters in a first impression. 

The Charisma Quotient: Women have become more independent, and finding our voice made us realize we’ve also been losing something, and that is our femininity.

One of my clients, Nina Froriep Nina, who is a video expert, I had my production boards back here and she said to me, “You seem like when you were in the business world, you would have been addressed for success type of girl.” I was like, “I was.” She’s like, “Your background is not saying dress for success.” We went and got a painting. Those are the kinds of things you’re talking about where the background matters that what you’re wearing matters and working at home, we haven’t thought so much about that in the past. Now we’re working from home and dating from home. 

You’ve got to have to set boundaries for yourself and have a container where you’re in that date energy because it’s different than your work energy. When you’re in your work mode, you are in your masculine. That’s what makes everyone productive, task–oriented, goal–oriented and that’s all great. If you don’t give yourself time to shake that off, and be in a different space, that’s the femininity piece. That’s where you’re going to be more open to receiving and paying attention to how you connect with that guy. 

Where do we find you? Do you have something that you want to give us? 

The easiest would be to go to my site. It’s KimmySeltzer.com. You can find all of the information there. Every handle I have on social media is @KimmySeltzer. You’ll be able to find me anywhere. The Charisma Quotient is my podcast and you can check out what I’m about, I coach people live on there and you can get a feel for my style. I have one free gift in mind before we were talking. Now that we’re talking, this is more on point. I have a Dating Archetype Quiz that I would love to offer your audience because there are five dating archetypes. I encourage all of you to take it, to see what archetype you are. 

I developed this because before COVID hit, I was doing these winged girl sessions where I go out with people and I teach them how to flirt and navigate the outside world. I will get back to that hopefully one day. I found that there were some commonalities and similarities in people that seemed to hold true, and people fall into one of these five categories. There’s not a total science to it and you may be more than one, but there’s one that stands out. I’ll give you the link to that and you can download the dating archetype. There’s a little guide that goes with it and you can see that as well. I also have an audio series and it’s called This May Be Why You Suck at Dating that goes with that. If you want to take it one step further, you can download that. You can listen to it as you do my podcast. 

Where do we find that link at?  

You can find it on my website. 

Thank you. This was a lot of fun. I got a lot of information and I’m going to check out those flirt. I need to learn how to flirt again. 

You can do it, it’s pushing the button and then once you unleash it, you’re like a butterfly and dating becomes more fun. That’s the whole thing. When you find it fun, that’s when usually you find the one. 

 Important Links

• Kimmy Seltzer 
• Datefit 
• The Charisma Quotient 
• @KimmySeltzer – Instagram 
• https://Glow.fm/thismaybewhyyousuckatdatingwithkimmyseltzer 
• https://Bit.ly/2JZsSYY 

About Kimmy Seltzer

Kimmy Seltzer is a Confidence Therapist and Authentic Dating Strategist. With a vat of knowledge and experience as a therapist, certified style coach, dating coach, and matchmaker, she has helped people find lasting love and connection, attract success and build valuable relationships using her unique “confidence makeover” process.

Using an outside-in approach, Kimmy implements targeted style, emotional and social intelligence in people’s lives using her signature formula, “The Charisma Quotient,” working on body language, first impressions, image and messaging and how it impacts attraction. This Los Angeles-based expert travels the country helping people discover confidence, charisma and connection as a speaker at National Matchmaking Conferences, eHarmony, Neutrogena, The Guild at Universal, UCLA and iDate. Kimmy is also a regular contributor to the Huffington Post with appearances in Cosmopolitan, Oprah Magazine, Redbook, Reader’s Digest, AskMen, Fox News Magazine, Yahoo and the Washington Examiner, among a myriad of other publications.

You can also find Kimmy as the leading love expert on the traveling live dating show The Great Love Debate and the cable reality dating show, The Romance. She is the Love Coach for the dating app Datefit. You can also listen to her on her podcast, The Charisma Quotient. And she currently is hosting The Flirt Academy workshops nationwide.

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