Ep. 153: Revolutionizing Online Dating: The Story of Filter Off and Founder, Zach Schleien

This is the You Winning Life podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights, and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed LMFT 🎗️, marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser.

Today's guest is Zach Schlein, digital marketer, mental health advocate, and content creator. He's an expert in personal branding, and his first company was created his senior year of college called Begin You, which was a platform for college students to find projects and work opportunities. To develop their skills. Following Begin You, he launched his second company, Top Romp, an online dating blog that reviewed hacks and apps for the modern dater. While he was pursuing his master's in information management from Syracuse University, he launched his third company, Lift Protein Muffins, where he first dipped his toe into crowdfunding and raised over $5,000 in 30 days on Kickstarter. He works as a data analyst And while in school, he co-authored the book Hacking the Internship Process, which became the bestseller for internships on Amazon. One year later, he sold his first company, TopRomp, and following, following graduation, he secured a job in IT with Johnson Johnson. He has dedicated himself to helping people with mental health issues. He has launched a $9,500 project on CaringCrowd, which is a crowdfunding platform for nonprofits, and has collaborated with the National Alliance of Mental Health NAMI. He's also the founder of the mental health Slack community 18%. And he is now the co-founder and creator of Filter Off, which is a video dating app for young professionals. All the meanwhile, he is working with entrepreneurs, helping them and others grow their companies and their nonprofits, as well as helping them reach their crowdfunding goals. Zach, thanks for hanging out and welcome to the You Winning Life podcast. All right, Zach, welcome.

Thanks so much for having me.

So of the many things we can probably talk about today, knowing that FilterOff is your primary job, day-to-day business and community engagement, I definitely want to go to the backstory a little bit about how you got here. I know that you kind of have a background in serial entrepreneurship. You've dabbled— I don't want to call it dabbling, but you've led the way in a lot of mental health advocacy. So I kind of just want to start off with a little bit of who you are, where you're from, what led you, what, you know, where did that bug bite you as far as thinking about yourself as entrepreneurial, getting into that space, moving into that tech aspect of it. And, and then we'll go from, from where that led you into other places and other things we're going to get into today.

Yeah, for sure. So I grew up in Westchester, New York, with my parents. And my brother and went to undergrad at Syracuse University. Going into college, initially I was thinking of being a veterinarian, but quickly realized I wasn't very good at science. And then I knew I loved history and I was thinking about doing like the history or poli sci program, decided on history. So I was actually a history major thinking maybe I'll go to law school. And then my senior year of college, I decided not to go to law school. Probably a smart move. And I kind of fell into, yeah, it was just, I was like, I'm not studying for the LSAT. Like, this is not my calling. And then I kind of fell into a project that I started. Uh, I found a co-founder. It was called BeginU. It was, uh, a college— it was, the idea was to help college students gain real-world experience while they're in college by connecting them to other student-run startups. And this idea of like connecting people was really something that was important to me and still is very important. And that's kind of the common thread I've seen in most of the startups that I've run. And so, yeah, I mean, to answer your question, that's what kind of gave me the entrepreneurial bug working on BeginU and falling in love with like building and building a tech product. And I was like, this is so cool. And if I could do this and it's successful where I could do this full-time and be financially independent, this would be a dream. Unfortunately, it was not. Successful and end up going back for my master's. And I did an information management, so more, much more technical. And then I started a full-time role at Johnson Johnson and had a few other startups in between. And then with FilterOff, we launched prior to the pandemic, and then the pandemic hit. And really took off. It's a video speed dating app. And then we raised last year around November, and we raised $2.4 million. It was led by Anheuser-Busch's venture arm ZX Ventures, and then left Johnson Johnson. And yeah, so it's kind of the dream finally after 11 years.

Yeah. Well, that's what they— right, it's the overnight success. 10 to 15 years is the average, what they say, right? So something you started off saying of all these different things that you wanted to do, and I know it's so common that growing up, right, what little kid didn't want to be a baseball player? Or what kid doesn't want to be a doctor, right? All these things. And I saw something last night, so it's so apropos to what you're saying, is that there is a picture someone took in an interview with George Bush Jr., right, the last George Bush president, and he became a painter, right? And he's now doing all these really cool things. And the line at the top was, "This is what happens when you force your children into doing a job that they shouldn't be doing in the first place," right? He's now having this amazing stellar resurgence as this incredible artist, but yet thinking what he had to do, the family business, all these other things, but maybe his deep-down passion was being an artist. And right now he's hitting that later in life. And it's something that I've been really thinking about, especially growing up in certain communities and certain backgrounds that we kind of, you know, there's the family business, or there's a certain path that we have to take, or there's certain jobs that are deemed more esteemed in our society. And, and I'm wondering, like, as you were going through your journey, what was that? Was there any struggle to that? Was there any, um, whether spoken or unspoken pressures that you felt while you were sifting and sorting through that?

No, there was no pressure. My dad was a doctor. Um, he put zero pressure on me. It was, I think my biggest challenge was I had no idea what I wanted to do after I realized I wasn't going to be a veterinarian. And then at that point I was just like, well, maybe lawyer cuz that's something that's familiar to me. No one in my family is lawyers, but I have friends whose parents were lawyers, but like running a tech business, that was not anything that I ever thought about, and then the other thought was like sales, cuz I did sales in college, like in the summers I worked at Cutco selling knives and then also at Best Buy. And I liked sales, but I was like, it wasn't challenging enough. That's why I was like, mm-hmm, I don't really want to go into sales. Um, yeah, so it was more just like not knowing being a little unclear.

Yeah, that's what I see, right? When you find the things that are passionate, a lot of people don't realize, and I had this for me, like I was sharing with you before, before becoming a therapist, I was, you know, what we would call professional Jew. I was working in the nonprofit Jewish world doing programming in camps and working at student life programming at Hillel at Princeton University. So right down the block from New Brunswick. So, right, I always knew for me that there was something, I guess, bigger. But it didn't hit me until I realized like the whole day I was basically in conversation with everybody I was working with outside of the programs. And I was kind of doing therapy, but I wasn't trained to do therapy. And it took one of my students who was a senior going to conflict resolution program, like, oh, have you ever thought about becoming a therapist and help me look up some programs. And that's how I ended up back in South Florida. But it's, it's, it's such a struggle where I hear even people who are already 10, 15 years in a career and they're just not— there's the salary side of it, I need to have stability, but then there's the passion and purpose side of it. Where do you see as you've been journeying, whether it's when you're talking about internships for college students, I'm really curious. One, why do you believe internships are as important for exploring and experiencing what you like and you don't like versus just getting your foot into the door and offering yourself into this experience where you're like, I don't even know if I'm gonna like this? Like, what are some of your, you know, your thoughts and that you've learned for students or maybe even postgraduate that are thinking about like, maybe I should do an internship to figure that out?

Yeah, I think first of all, internships are a great way to develop yourself, and depending on the sort of company, you'll likely learn a lot. You'll get experience in like the professional world, but you'll see if you like the work or not. Um, and a lot of the projects I worked on that also gave me the experience to be like, oh, I really like this, or I really don't like this. That's kind of how I fell in love with marketing was just projects that I was working on personally. Um, yeah, all the internships was more on like sales, biz dev, less marketing. The marketing really came from my own projects. So I'm definitely an advocate of doing your own thing as well. The only downside is you may not be making money with internships. Typically they're paid nowadays.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, but I, I, I went back for my master's program to explore, uh, because at that point I was not planning on going full-time because I didn't have like a paycheck. So it kind of gave me an, like another year and a half to kind of delay entering the workforce and figuring out what I like and what I didn't like as well, and learn new skills that could be used in the workforce. So that's kind of how I looked at my master's and decided for information management, cuz I was like, well, I love tech. That was my ultimate goal. By that point I knew like I wanted to have, be entrepreneurial and have my own thing, but I also needed a paycheck. So that's why I was like, well, I'll join something full-time and hopefully one of my startups will work out. But it gave me skills and to be applied for the real world as well.

Yeah.

I'm finding it like that when people are sifting and sorting through this and It's kind of that Jahari's window—you know what you know, other people know what you don't know, you know what other people—right? And then there's just your complete obliviousness that until you put yourself in those circumstances or situations, you wouldn't even know that something you may be interested in or good at actually shows up or appears in an industry or a career that you didn't even know could be applied. And I think that's something that, as I've seen it, one, with my clients, but two, as I'm trying to share with people listening and hearing and getting to, you know, hear your story and other stories on the podcast is, oh, I didn't know you can apply X to industry Y, or I didn't know that I can even be good enough to go into this because I don't even know where to start. Have you, have you seen like just trends or changes from where you are? I mean, the startup world has shifted so radically, and, and I know there's, you know, with cryptocurrencies and all these other things which we're not going to necessarily get in today, but Do you feel like it's one where people say like, "I wanna have a startup," they understand what that even means, or there's still a level of sexiness like Silicon Valley TV show type of thing? Like, "We're just gonna bang this out and find a bunch of people to do this at minimum wage." So I guess I wanna break that into two questions. One, what shifted in the industry from when you started? Two, what do you think is the false beliefs that people who might be wanting to get into this maybe don't think they know, or think that they know, and maybe they're really inaccurate, and it will make it more difficult for their journey to figure this out.

Yeah, I mean, I think— I mean, the statistic is most people that have a startup that's successful are above the age of 40. Um, typically when students start startups, they typically don't work because once their co-founders enter the workforce and they could get paid a pretty decent salary, they're going to stop working on their startup. But again, I, I fall back to just like gaining experience. It's great to just try something. But it is, in my opinion, sad to see students working more on the legal stuff, like, oh, I need an LLC or a C-Corp. And it's like, just start working. Like, just put yourself out there. Like, Have you even made a sale yet? They're like, no, but I'm working on this idea. I'm like, you may realize once you actually start trying, you don't even like this idea. So I think that's a little actually sad to see. 'Cause they have this like vision of what an entrepreneur is or starting a business and it's so much harder, I think people realize. And then yeah, and I often, Students, when I've spoken to students, they say, like, for example, this happened recently. Someone's like, yeah, I want to get into like data analysis. I'm like, really? That's cool. So what are you working on? They're like, well, I don't have any projects. I'm like, just use the internet. You have so much data. And that's what I used to do. Like, I loved sports. I used to work actually for an NFL agent in Atlanta. And I would take datasets and just like do statistical programming on it. Like, That's the beauty. And especially with different industries, you could find interesting industries through datasets. So like, if you like sports, you could do a sports dataset. If you like cars, you could do something in that industry. If you like finance, you could do— I think that's the beauty of the internet is like you can get so much to do without asking permission to someone or an employer giving you a project. Just diving in. And going back to what I said before, it's just about starting. It's not less about like, this idea, because ideas are just really absolutely meaningless. Yeah. Yeah.

I know that the universe rewards the action step is what one of my mentors says. And I have this conversation all the time. There's a bunch of new therapists that I'm coaching for business development and mindset, and not necessarily from the clinical side, but from their, you know, how are they being perceived and how they putting themselves out there. And they're always so stuck in like, well, I do cognitive behavioral therapy, or I do hypnosis. I like, like, I don't know if like anybody at this point, people care about these modalities. They want to know what are you uniquely trained? Like, what is the niche that you can be absolutely amazing about solving their problem? And I think that's kind of how we have to look at it for going into whether it's an internship or applying for a job, like what's the unique skill set about a unique set of problems that you are the best person, that you eventually can build into being the best person in that industry and be known for that. And I think that will bring a lot more recognition and success to someone who's like, I'm gonna get, you know, all of these tech jobs, like Substack and, and all these other whatever tech-based programs and certificates. That's great, right? But, but like, what are you— like, do you see that? Like, do you see like people are just kind of going too generic and trying to hit too much versus like becoming an expert in one unique set? And is there pros and cons to that?

I mean, when I was younger, I, I sometimes would think like, oh, I have my hands in too many things. But I think just follow— I don't wanna prescribe or anything. I think it's okay if you have lots of different interests. Oftentimes some of the, your initial interests kind of fall by the wayside and sometimes they kind of interconnect. Like I always knew like, oh, I like My initially started with sales, but then I got really into like digital marketing and then I was, and I was trying a few different projects and then it just kind of works itself out. I think the most important thing is just being on the field, working, pushing, executing every day, and then things will work out. May take a long time, may take a few years and being patient with that process. But I don't think you have to worry about like, oh, am I Do I have my hands in too many things? Unless you're starting things and then you stop it right away and like maybe you should put a little bit more energy and focus onto one thing. But I, again, that's really up to the person to kind of see what works and what doesn't.

Well, it sounds like consistency of, right? I mean, I know new professionals probably have to get more of a wider scope. Whatever field they're in so they can understand all the different components or aspect, at least at a bare minimum. And then you, you know, drive down maybe 5, 10 years into your, into your industry and kind of get more, more developed and focused, kind of.

Yeah. But on the flip side, to add to that, I recently hired like, um, a head of growth on my team, and almost— I probably interviewed about 30 people, and the one common denominator, being a small startup, we have 5 people on our team now, It's like, for this type of role, I needed someone who can do many things. Uh-huh. So almost everyone I spoke to was like, I am an expert at branding, or I'm an expert at email, or I'm an expert at ads as a media buyer. I'm like, that's great, but like, I need an expert at a lot of these things, especially if you are like the initial team member. This isn't like, mm-hmm. A 50-person team where I could just get someone just focused on email, right?

Eventually, as a company grows, that person might supervise one of those areas, but right now their hands in the pot. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, right? And especially in the startup, and I see this, right, that's that whole E-Myth mentality of, right, technician, entrepreneur, manager type of space. And where are you as far as the developmental stages of whether it's your company, your business, your startup, whatever it might be? Um, it's interesting to see that point of view because I do believe that's an important developmental stage of every company. And your name might be on all of the org chart and all these different roles until you— right? And I'm walking through one of my, um, one of my business coaching clients. I'm helping them figure that out. Okay, what are all the jobs that you're doing now that your company has grown to X amount of dollars that we can start like finding someone who can either be your assistant or that's a full-time position for this division of your company? And it's, it's interesting to see that like relationships, which we're going to get into in a second, like family, like our personal growth, there's developmental stages. And it's something that we have to definitely, definitely be aware of. So I want to talk a little bit just, you know, before we go into the filter office, there was a part of your life where you were really involved in being an advocate for mental health, and then you leveraged that towards crowdfunding. So let's just take a few minutes to just share a little bit about that and how that led you into crowdfunding and partnerships, and then how that took you later on, whether it was direct or indirect, but the skills you learned into how and why you created FilterOff. Yeah, sure.

So I had a close family friend by the name of Louis, and when he was 19, he was diagnosed with bipolar and schizoaffective disorder. And then 3 years later, he went for a walk and he, they found his remains like near a river. And so like, In response, I wanted to do something for the family. And I, uh, there was a platform at Johnson Johnson at the time called Caring Crowd. It's no longer, uh, no longer exists, but ended up raising $9,500 for NAMI New Jersey. Uh, and it was to support, uh, like give materials for people who have like mental health conditions, support their program. And then I ended up raising another $30,000 to support like a few, I think it was like a couple hundred families where at least one member of their family who had some sort of mental health condition. And that went to NAMI El Dorado because that's, and that's where the family was from in California. And then I partnered with someone, his name is David, and we had started 18%. As I remember, I went up to him, I was like, hey, like, it's nice to donate money, but like, how do I make a difference? Like, why don't we do a community around mental health? We host on Slack, we called it 18% because the statistic, like, 1 in 5 Americans at any given moment have some sort of mental health condition. Yeah, so it was a community grew to over like 20,000 people. Uh, there's different channels— bipolar, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia— and it just gave people a way to connect with other people that are struggling or who are doing well but are diagnosed. And it gave people community. And we had partnered with, uh, Crisis Text Line. So if you had reached out to the Crisis, uh, text and you were like, hey, I'm lonely, they would actually refer people out to our community. So it was a really cool relationship and lots of hotlines referred to 18%. No longer exists, but that went on for about 5 years and it was a pretty amazing community that we had built and Yeah, it was just a really special experience.

Yeah. Is there any stories that just kind of stand out to you from the top of your mind without obviously breaking confidentiality, but that, that really impacted you while you guys were, were doing that and creating that community?

I mean, like, one story, there is this girl, and she's like, hey, I'm gonna kill myself. And then like, people were like supporting her. And then like the next day, she like messaged us, the moderator. She's like, by the way, because this community, I ended up not ending my life. Like I got a lot of support. But those types of stories happened weekly. Yeah. And a lot of these stories I'll never know, but I'm sure we, we definitely made a really big impact and it was very special.

I think that's what people are searching for, right? We're coming outta this really difficult time, both you know, COVID and politics and community has been kind of broken up over the last couple years. And whether, you know, people are doing stuff based on hobby or going into the office, or right now you're, you're in a WeWork right now, uh, what an interesting story that company has in and of itself, right? Um, but I think people, right, the way that we're getting segmented and our mental health has taken a massive hit. Definitely does affect us professionally, but I think also like going into the romantic side of things, into our relationships and, uh, dating and all these things. So, so let's talk a little bit about Filter Off and, and, you know, what you set off at the beginning that you thought it was going to be, what it's turned into, and, um, you know, maybe just some of the, the challenges and stressors and, and aha moments you've had along the way with that as well. Yeah, for sure.

So I really started Filter Off because I was an avid online dater and it was pretty frustrating getting lots of matches and finally going on in-person dates and realizing like 2 minutes into the date, like, I don't wanna be here. Whether it was 'cause we didn't have chemistry or whether just I was not attracted and the photos looked different. And then I started asking dates beforehand. I'm like, let me change it up. So I started asking dates beforehand if they'd be open to video chatting. Most said no, but the ones that were cool with it, it just like made all the difference. And I was like, wow, online dating is so broken. It could be so much better if this was just the user experience of video date before meeting up in person. So that's what I set out to do. And then we launched right before the pandemic. And yeah, it just took off. That April of 2020, it got covered by the BBC and then the New York Times. And then, yeah, just, yeah, it really took off. So we're in like every major market, but our focus is purely in New York City at this moment. But we have users around the world.

So walk us through, like, so someone who, you know, who is it targeted to? Who should— I mean, is it for all backgrounds? And I mean, the dating platform industry is so— I mean, as it switched from websites to apps, but like Spark, right? They're like, they own everything that you don't even realize, right? Whether it's from like, they bought JDate to JSwipe to ChristianMingle to, I don't know, was it Farmers Date? I don't know, the ones that everybody makes fun of, all the different ones for every little niche category. So this is like, last time I heard they were making over $100 million a year. I'm sure the number is somewhere larger than that at this point. So this is a big industry to get into. Was there certain struggles that you, that you had you know, one, moving it, you know, being an app-based program, and two, like, getting people to, like, A, hear about it, know about it, trust it, because it's a different— like you said, it's video-based versus just swiping and hopefully someone will answer and not have, like, or just swiping everybody. So how did you set up that intentionality a little bit more? Um, how did that, how did that take at the beginning, and what was some of those struggles and challenges you had through that?

Well, when we launched before the pandemic, I think it was kind of expected, which was most people weren't comfortable video chatting. Um, but then the pandemic and the sentiment around going on a video date became the norm. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I mean, we started with virtual speed dating events where it was like you date at a specific time and it's like round robin, you have speed dates. Then we also One thing that people kept saying was like, oh, I can't make a certain time. Uh, so then we added, uh, what we call daily picks. So like every day you get a certain amount of profiles that you could see. And then if you both like each other and you match, you then set up a video chat. You have 5 days to set up a video chat or the match expires. So like from a user experience, like the ethos of our app is the video speed date. Um, that's what we want people to go on. And then if you like them, then you can actually meet up in person, um, or jump back on another video chat with them after the speed date. So yeah, I mean, that's really the goal. Like in New York City, the average person goes on 5 video dates a week. So by far the highest out of any dating app, um, on the market. So yeah, I mean, that's the goal we want. You meet people. Not just profiles. Yeah.

And as far as successful— I mean, I'm assuming people are meeting and dating. And any, any feedback as far as like long-term relationships so far? Any engagements? Any, any weddings so far?

Yeah, I mean, we've had, uh, a number of weddings that I'm aware of, um, one of which was covered in the New York Times. It was a Jewish wedding, uh, we partnered— one of our earliest like communities that we partnered with was a Jewish Syrian community. Mm-hmm. Like that alone created like 6, 7 engagements that I'm aware of. I mean, now maybe even more. So that was pretty special to see. And that's when we started focusing on like, oh, let's bring these communities together. Mm-hmm. That are like-minded, whether it's like on religion or ethnicity. And now we do like in-person events as well in New York City. With the same sort of focus, like being on a specific niche. Yeah.

Do you find that there's any cultural competency? Like, you talk about like a very niche community within the Jewish community. Like, is there stuff that you, that you and your team had to learn in order to, um, navigate that? Or you find that there's just enough similarities between different communities through this platform to create something?

Yeah, I mean The community is just a way to bring people together. I mean, when you go on, like, you, when you're using like Daily Picks or you're attending virtual speeding events, you could attend just like a regular NYC date night. Mm-hmm. Um, you could set your preferences like on religion or on ethnicity with deal breakers. And then there's these like more niche communities and anyone could actually create events on our platform. It's self-service. So sometimes people create very niche community events and All accepted, all proven. It's private to their community. Like it requires a code to join or they sell tickets, so they actually bring in revenue, which is pretty cool. That is. Yeah. It's very peer-led.

It's not just run from an organization where you really don't have much control over, but you really, I think that's one thing I'm hearing from you consistently is the formation of an empowerment of community.

Yeah. In this case, I consider FilterOff. Less of a— it's not that we're building communities, we're enabling communities. And then, and same sort of thing, like with our in-person events, like some of our events have been like just a general like '90s party, but we've also had like Jewish singles or South Asian singles. So lots of different types of events as well. And we partner with existing communities on a lot of these in-person events as well. Yeah.

So now that you've been in this for a little bit, you're formally a matchmaker extraordinaire, um, what, what are some of the things that you're seeing? Because I see this often, as you and I were talking before, that like people are going from event to event, um, a lot of the events aren't necessarily set up to be conducive for actual engagement, right? Either the music is too loud or someone doesn't know how to approach someone, or they come into like— is there stuff that you've seen, one, from your own point of view as a person going through dating apps and dating events, but to what you're hearing from the community as like struggles that they're going through, things that, you know, a person might need to take ownership and accountability on to work on themselves in some way, shape, or form, how they're approaching messaging someone. Is there any, you know, kind of tips and hacks and, you know, little pointers that you can share with us on that?

Yeah, I think the beauty of Filter Off, we really blend the virtual worlds within person one. That's why we have these in-person events as well. Some people feel more comfortable meeting in person, some people feel more comfortable meeting in app. It's really nice when you're on Filter Off, you match with someone, let's say you're in New York and you hit it off, and then after you video chat, you message, you jump back on another video chat and you're like, hey, are you going to the 'In-person event tomorrow.' And they're like, 'Oh, I am.' And then like, then they go together to the in-person event. So it's cool to see. I think we do a really good job in bridging that gap. A lot of apps just focus on in-person, a lot of apps just focus on virtual, and I think we do a great job doing both. And I think it comes down again, I think community is an important factor. One thing we've seen based on the data is people do care about oftentimes based off of religion and ethnicity, they're by far the most important deal breakers for most people. And oftentimes when you have this common— commonality, then it helps with like trust. And with trust, it allows you to feel comfortable to connect with someone like that. So I think there's a lot of human psychology involved. I think we've done a pretty good job from a user experience where it simulates like an in-person matchmaker but in through the app, um, and doesn't feel like a clunky experience. And we also have a mobile as well as web experience. So I think we've done a really good job in kind of hitting all those bases.

Yeah. So if someone's listening, like, okay, I want to try this, but I'm a little nervous, and maybe, you know, I'm not good at like approaching someone, or You know, I'm not good at getting certainty of whether that person's into me or not. What advice, what guidance would you give them as, you know, one, again, from your own personal experience of what you've learned about yourself through dating, and two, what you're maybe hearing as feedback as like best practices for that person?

Yeah, I mean, I think a common pushback is, oh, I don't feel comfortable going on a video chat. And the reality is, it's 2022, almost 2023. So it's, uh, at this point, get comfortable. Yeah, get over it, I guess, to say as nicely as possible. But like, it's just a really— it is a really frustrating experience going on an in-person date and being very confident it's gonna be good because the texting was amazing, and then you get there and you're like, whoa, I do not want to be here. And especially in some of these major markets where drinks can be $100 for a date. It's like, whoa. So I would just say just jump on a video chat. You'll probably be a little nervous, and that's okay. And you could share that you're nervous, and you could say that's your first time doing this. But video gives you such an incredible experience that a text will never be able to provide. So I say just try it. It's okay to be nervous. And don't just meet someone cold at a bar.

You feel like there's maybe— because I can hear there's like, well, someone's like, well, I just want to meet them. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to do this texting thing. I don't want to do this video thing. I just want to go straight to meeting. And there is that, that maybe it could be seen as it's more advantageous for one gender over the other gender, or, um, I don't know. And, or maybe people are just struggling or stuck in like, I only want to date within a certain parameter. Do you find that this is allowing, like, where people are like, well, I'm in New York, and I don't want to date on from the Upper West Side to the Upper East Side, or I definitely won't go to Brooklyn, or if I'm in Brooklyn, I definitely won't go to the, you know, the Upper East Side. Do you find that this is allowing people to expand that radius, that circle? Or do you feel like there's— you're still seeing maybe— I don't know if the algorithm or you can track this, like, where people are typically matching.

So you can set like your radius of how far out you want to date. I think when you go on video chat, and again, based off the data, like the likelihood of you like ghosting someone after you see them on video chat is gonna be a lot less than just like texting back and forth. And then in terms of genders, I think there are value adds to both sides. I mean, for women, oftentimes like safety is a big one. Like, is this guy who he says he is? Is he a creep? And I think video just lets you kind of screen them. I think for men it's often like, hey, do I have chemistry with this person? Am I gonna vibe with them? And I think that goes for both parties. And yeah, I think filter off with— by being video first, it's— video is the best medium at this time. That's not to say in the future there won't be other mediums that are better than video, like artificial reality, but at this time, the technology that exists right now that makes the most sense is just jumping on a FaceTime. Yeah, can you imagine?

I mean, I just realized putting together what you are doing but then actually setting up an augmented reality or virtual reality date. I mean, not that I want to— if there's any secret tech stuff that's going on behind the end that you can't release yet, but is that stuff that you guys are thinking about moving in the future as that becomes— In the future, in the future.

Nothing right now. In the future.

But it's been, but it's been, but it's been floated around in a, in a little bit of a, but people are talking about that, whether it's matchmaking or, um, I mean, I, I think in the future it's inevitable.

I think it's inevitable in the future. Yeah. Um, I think it's still a bit far out, but yeah, one day. Um, again, all people care about is, is this an authentic experience and an efficient experience? If the experience is just like an avatar character of someone that doesn't even look like you, then that's going to lead to catfishing. So it's silly.

So yeah. Yeah. Any, any dating resources for the, for the, for the young professional that you think that you've come across on your, on your lap, you know, whether it's books that you've read or podcasts or YouTube people or anything like that, that will help people leverage and benefit from what you are sharing already with the platform?

Yeah, I mean, good question. Um, I've read David Deida. I've read— I love David Deida. Yeah, I've read, um, Tim Ferriss, more personal development, but he's recommended books, and there's books like She Comes First, um, There's so many books about human or intimacy. Yeah. And also just understanding like a woman's mindset, I think is very important. Mm-hmm. Um, as I think oftentimes men just focus on themselves and versus like the other party, like, am I providing a good experience to this other person? Um, So yeah, I think, I mean, there's lots of resources. I mean, Reddit, you could take it as it is and some subreddits through it. Yeah. Filter through it. But yeah, I mean, there's lots of resources. I think reading and listening to podcasts is super important to just understanding humanity. Yeah.

Well, it took a hundred and something. What am I up to? 150-something episodes for finally someone to quote, you know, to share the name David Deida. And so I stumbled upon him. I was in Boulder, Colorado a bunch of years ago, and there was this really cool hippie, uh, well, Boulder's all pretty hippie, but it was a hippie modern Orthodox synagogue. And on the bookshelf with all the other books was David Deida's The Way of the Superior Man. I'm like, okay, this sounds— first of all, the title, The Way of the Superior Man, right? That's, that's a pretty punch-you-in-the-face title. And then when you're reading the book, I'm like, the first 20 pages, I'm like, I'm like getting upset and frustrated, like at this author. And then I go further into it. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is like right between the eyes. And then I asked a bunch of women if they've read it, and they read it and they're like, oh my gosh, this is so spot on, whatever. And, and it's so cool to see. So I don't know, is there anything that you found as a takeaway from, from that that you found really helpful for you in your, in your own life?

I don't recall. And it was a number of years ago. When I've read it, but I just think also just like communication, I've done like personal development courses that have helped me communicate better and deal with traumas or past experiences in my own life. I think very easy to bring that into relationships.

So yeah. Yeah. Very cool. So let's just set the, let's do a few plugs. One, you have your your book that, uh, you did about internships. So what's, what's the name of that for everybody? If anybody who's looking for the internship stuff, they can find that?

Yeah, on Amazon you can find it. It's called Hacking the Internship Process. Awesome.

And then we have Filter Off, the app, which is pretty much, I'm assuming, on every platform at this point, both iPhone, Android, and anywhere else we want people to, uh, check out or follow or—

yeah, I mean, we're on every major channel, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. If you wanna host your own virtual speeding event, you could do that right just on the website. You could find it. And then if you wanna host an in-person event, you could also find that on the website. We're doing in-person events right now just in New York City, and we could get you a venue, security, alcohol, DJ, all for free. Wow.

So it's a pretty good deal. It's a pretty good deal.

Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, and Filter Off, it's available on Android and Apple. It's free to use and, uh, hopefully we could find you, uh, your person. Nice. And if I know there's the other side of what you're doing, the personal branding, is that still, um, I mean, just really primarily focused on Filter Off. Obviously if people have questions or need coaching, I'm available and I have a website that you can find me, or you can find me on Instagram. Um, things like that. Awesome.

All right, so everybody, if you're single and you're listening to this, please do, do both of us a favor and jump on, on Zach's, uh, podcast— I mean, on his platform on Filter Off. And, um, obviously there's some amazing good stuff. If you're in the internship stages and you're right in college, graduate school, and you're trying to figure out how you can figure out what you want to be doing, you can grab his book. And Zach, I really want to thank you again. And, um, you know, May you continue to have successful matches and happy, healthy relationships. And hopefully it's also working out for you. I know that's, like you said, it was part of your struggle of why you wanted to create it, and hopefully it's being favorable to you as well.

For sure. Well, thank you so much for having me on.

All right, thanks so much.

Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at You Winning Life.