Heroes in Business - Roseann Higgins, Expert Matchmaker Owner SPIES, ret. Navy Officer, Best Matchmaker in AZ Foothills Magazine

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

Roseann Higgins, Expert Matchmaker Owner SPIES, ret. Navy Officer, Best Matchmaker in AZ Foothills Magazine is interviewed by David Cogan of Eliances entrepreneur community and host of the Heroes Show.  

welcome back to alliances heroes where heroes in business align to be part of our super community and find out more about alliances visit www.alliances.com that's right and welcome back to the show and by the way thank you for the feedback we continue to have when we had the national administrator, right, for NASA, for the past three presidents of the United States. And guess what? He's going to be at the next Alliances Grand Table. So make sure that you go to alliances.com, E-L-I-A-N-C-S.com to also check out past episodes and various recordings of those on our show. So with that, I'm super excited. Oh, all right.

You ready? I've just got to play you a little promo here. Listen to this. That's right. So with that, we have with us the best matchmaker, matchmaker, matchmaker, find me a match. Roseanne Higgins, expert matchmaker, owner of Spies, Navy lieutenant and prior chief petty officer. She's been featured in Arizona Foothill magazines. And you can reach her by going to especiallyselective.com.

Once again, that's especiallyselective.com. Roseanne, how do we find that match? Well, you know, a million things go into it. And a lot of us are not making good choices. 53% of Americans end up in divorce or get married. So finding them means having clarity on who you are and what you really want, and not just getting excited about how beautiful somebody looks or how successful somebody looks. I just had a girl tell me a guy took her to Napa after barely knowing her. She doesn't know what the road's going to bring. And really having open eyes and an open heart. Sometimes we think he's never going to come. So we don't give the right

person a chance when they do come. So we don't give the right person a chance when they do come. And then the guys oftentimes will see a beautiful woman and all their decision-making choices fly away and they end up with somebody who's not the full picture. So it's, it's maybe having somebody you trust to help you with a bad picker, make a better choice the next time. So. And how do you go about matching? I mean, so you've got, you know, guys, girls, I'm assuming that want to be matched with one another and that, like what's the process? And then part of that too is what makes it different from these automated and various ones that are all over the internet? Thank you for the question, David.

You always ask great questions with the alliances of all of us business owners. I so appreciate you do and how you invest in us and the success of our companies. The way I do it, one reason I joined alliances is because you work with leaders and my company, if somebody can afford the investment to hire a personal matchmaker to go out and they can't be at all the events I'm going to and spotting the girls that they would want me to approach if they were there and getting to know all of these things about her. They would look a little bit like a little bit, not crazy, but to ask all the questions I do after just meeting a girl, you know, when's your date of birth? You

know, things that you could Google maybe and find out things. I'm asking her how old she is. What's the age range of somebody she'd like to date? Is she single first before I even ask any of those? And I love her smile. I'm looking at a girl for what's genuine inside of her smile. And if she laughs genuinely, is she looking at me? Is she looking away? Is she distracted? If I put a guy in front of her, is she going to be the best girlfriend and possible future wife and mother of his children? Or they merge families together. What's she going to be like for that?

Is she going to go on a trip with them? And he's going to just adore that he has a supportive woman that he can have a great conversation with and have a great time with. The men are the clients. So I created a search firm by marrying the best practices. You asked what makes us different. I married the best practices of executive search. And this didn't exist in 1994 and professional matchmaking. And I thought, what if one person hired me like this really amazing guy that any girl would be lucky to date if he's nice to me and he takes

good care of himself and he's at this level in his career, he's just not meeting somebody because he goes to the gym. If he has kids, he's taking care of the kids. If he doesn't, he's growing a career, a business and he has employees, teams, travel. You know, one of my guys just opened a location in Europe. So they're, they're busy. So they get to hire me to do all of this vetting. And most of my guys can't be on the app. Some of them aren't even on Facebook. And they are looking for a relationship. One guy said, I've lived my whole life as CEOs employed thousands of people, he can't date his employees. So he said, people fix me up all the time. I said, Are you sure there's any girl left?

You know that you haven't dated in this town? He says, oh, yes. And he fell in love. He calls himself number 71, because at the time I'd had 70 people fall in love with the first person I found. And I had no guarantee he'd be 71, but he was so enthralled with the first girl that I met through her girlfriend at Bear Jackson. So it's being everywhere they can't be and finding the most important decision of their life and laying a future for them that they would never have had because they never would have been intersected. Wonderful. And again, we've got Roseanne Higgins with us. She is the owner and founder of Especially Selective, best matchmaker. So Roseanne, is it, do you know, is opposites attract or do we want to have someone

who's got, you know, the most things possible in common with us? What's the balance? I like to ask people what they want, because if you've never dated your opposite, you've never enjoyed your opposite. Why would you want to spend the rest of your life with your opposite? But sometimes a, like I just, I had a finance guy and she was the finest person. He was an engineer and they have like mind levels of processing. But what's interesting is he and his late wife would host parties at his pool and and they would have costume themes and they love dressing up. This girl that I found for him loved Halloween as her favorite party or favorite holiday. So she could dress up and they both have roots in Northern Arizona.

So there were so many common threads and he needed somebody elegant. And I found her at a girlfriend was performing at Casimir's and my girlfriend brought her girlfriends. And there she was. And that's who met. They both have a lot in common. But another couple, he was logical. He needed he had a master's from Columbia. He needed somebody fun who brought out his fun factor. And she gave me a ring before she even knew I was a matchmaker, which lets me see how generous she's going to be the rest of her life with a complete stranger, let alone the man she marries. And they fell in love by their fourth date. But they're not all, they're not a lot alike, but she grew up with entrepreneurs. She loves entrepreneurs. They're not the same, but they needed each other. So every, every person is going to be different, but we got to do better.

What's love got to do with it? Yeah, everything. The magic in the world is love, or love is the magic that's in the world. All you need is love. Yes, I love it. There's a million songs. That's why it's everywhere. When you go to sleep at night, if you can't stop thinking about someone, and you wake up in the morning, she's next to you.

It changes everything in your life. And when you know something happens in your life and you've got somebody who's got your back, you know, one girl got sick and she couldn't believe that my guy took off work and came home, brought her drugs from the pharmacy, made her dinner in bed, wasn't afraid of getting sick himself. She's like, where do you get such a man like this? Wow. Love. Excellent. Very impressive. I love it. I love it. And you've been doing this again, how long? I hit 29 years, so since 1994. So what advice, what advice seekers do you have, though, for those that are nervous about, quote, hiring a matchmaker? They may think, oh, you know, geez, I can't do you have, though, for those that are nervous about, quote, hiring a matchmaker? They may think, oh, you know, geez, I can't do it.

You know, it's like, you know, have I am I now having to do that where it shouldn't be that. But I would imagine there's some going, you know, or just giving up. There's probably a numbers that just said, you know, that's it there. There is nobody out there for me. I just i'm i'm gonna live by myself be by myself i mean what kind of what do you have for them thank you for the question the it's no there's nobody out there for me just means that you haven't been in the right places to meet somebody and or or you could be a church one of the men i worked with wanted a christian i hit seven churches then i found her hiking i found another girl for him at the Hollywood

Improv who just graduated from Biola, Bible Institute of Los Angeles. So they're out there. They're just not crossing paths. Another gentleman sent me a package with his CV, his law degree, pictures of him on company letterhead. He owned an insurance company with his dad. He said, I've been married 21 years. My wife wanted to grow and I didn't want to hold her back, but I like being a married man. Is there any hope for me? Am I even marketable? And he was a good looking guy. And he helped me when I had a booth at the wine taste recruiting women at the boys and girls club event. And he's giving. And I remember they did get married. He married the first girl I

found. They have a whole story about it on my website on the Success Stories testimonial. And I called him one day out of the blue just to check up on them. And he said, Roseanne, thank you for calling. I've got to go. Sabrina is waiting for me on the paddleboat and we're going for a paddleboat ride. You know, that's the dream. I love it. Is there truly a match, Roseanne, for everyone? God wouldn't have made us not to be loved. God made us to be loved, so definitely. Excellent. And Roseanne, you've been part of the Alliance's community for a number of years and stuff and highly respected within the community. For those that may not be so familiar with the alliances that are watching or listening now, what can you tell us about what

it's been like for you to be part of the community? Well, you only need to look at one of your grand table events and see all the amazing inventors, entrepreneurs, Hollywood people. Didn't you have the CEO of Netflix? You know, you've had those level people that you just don't find everywhere you go in Phoenix, Arizona. And David, you are the best connected guy to all of these people. So you've built an organization that you vet us in order to come into alliances. And I remember being nervous about your vetting and just praying that I would get in. And I was lucky that Victor Allison invited me as his guest.

He's a leader in the multifamily housing industry. And it was on Valentine's Day. And ever since then, you had me give a presentation on marketing. And it's all about getting to know more people that you meet in alliances and showing up. And I wish I showed up more. Now that COVID's over, you're going to see me much, muchly. And remember, Victor was just at the roundtable last Tuesday. Last Tuesday.

Yeah, what a small world in that. Did you ever think from when you were a Navy Lieutenant and prior Chief Petty Officer in the Navy that you would, you know, ever do this unique type of role? Because it really is a unique role. In fact, I, you know, I imagine people, I know when I had introduced you to others, they got excited, whether they were married or not. It was just like, oh, that's pretty cool. Meeting somebody is always exciting. And I remember though, I wasn't thinking of a career in New Orleans. My last night of career counselors school, I was asking my girlfriend, I said, what do you think of him? And I don't want to say their names, maybe. And I mean, they were friends. So it's not like I'm claiming them as a business thing. I'm like, Jane, what do you think of Richard? Oh, he's handsome, but I don't think he's interested in me. And I'm like,

I'll be right back. I go over to Richard. Richard Richard what do you think of Jane oh I think she's lovely but I'm probably too old for her and I'm like I go back to Jane he thinks he's too old he's not too old well it's too late it's our last night I'm like it's never too late I said ask her for a walk when we get back to the base and then let's just say in the small church that he always wanted to get married in on a dirt road in Maryland I went to their wedding um So but I did not see it to answer your question. I didn't see it as Oh, if you told me then that you would pay me and pay me decently to find somebody that would change everything in your life, you'd pay me for that. I would have laughed. You know, I was in the Navy. We're black and white a lot. But I was also how do you do the Charlie's Angels thing?

You know, I'm an expert pistol and rifle marksman. So expert is the highest you can get. I have precision aim. I'm super detail oriented. The Navy teaches you to log everything that happens on your watch. So when I'm meeting people, I am noticing everything that they react to. How are they with me? What's their tone of voice? What's their interest level? Are they leaning in when I'm telling them about somebody or are they just, you know, that person is not for my guy or not for my girl? Let me see. Oh, the other thing is I had to qualify for a top secret security clearance, SBI, special background investigation. They send people out to all of the places you've ever lived and talk to the neighbors,

special background investigation. They send people out to all of the places you've ever lived and talk to the neighbors, find out if you're a legit good person to trust our national secrets with. And the people I work with have to trust that their secrets, their names, everything that they're doing with me is private unless they give me permission to share their stories. And some of them do write wonderful testimonials. Thank you guys. Wow, Roseanne. I love it. I it i love it listen you hire someone when you want to have landscaping done most people do you hire someone when you want to have your pool clean most people do you hire someone when you want to have your car fixed oil changed uh perhaps and so on and so on so why won't you go ahead and hire someone to find the perfect match for you?

So with that, thank you so much, Roseanne. You help others create lasting relationships that stand the test of time and marriage. That's a hero, Roseanne Higgins, expert matchmaker, owner of Spies. That's right. You could reach her by going to especiallyselective.com. This has been David Kogan with the Alliance's Hero Show.

Thank you, David. And we got to do the dance.