Nottingham woman is a matchmaking success

A woman who was born and raised in Nottingham has become a nationwide matchmaking success after changing her career path over six years ago, writes Bethan Tolley.

Caroline Brealey, who left Nottingham to attend university in Sheffield before moving to London, founded bespoke matchmaking service Mutual Attraction in 2011 after spending the first years of her graduate career working in children’s charities.

The entrepreneur was single and dating in the capital at the time and was inspired to look into a career in love after a friend of hers has an experience with a matchmaker, she said: “I started doing my research into it and I found that there were already a lot of matchmakers in the UK, but they were all targeting an older demographic. Then I thought that I could do it for a younger audience, late 20s, 30s and 40s. I decided, with 0 experience, to just go for it and I love it, I have learnt so much.”

Mutual Attraction works with clients who are looking for a serious relationship and since launching, Caroline has hired a team of people to help singletons of the capital find ‘the one’. The service works one on one with each client offline. Caroline compares it to the work of a recruitment consultant, she said: “The client tells us what they are looking for and we go and find that person. We get to know them and if we think there is a mutual match there, we introduce them and they go on a date. We then get feedback afterwards and see if they are going to continue to date. If not, we continue our search.

“It is our job to work with clients and figure out where they are going wrong, often it is a busy lifestyle, sometimes they are being too picky, we often bring them round to a different way of thinking. Sometimes we work with divorced people and even widowed, so it is a case of supporting people as they get back into dating.

“But mostly, it is working with our clients to figure out what is important to them and the sort of person they want to spend the rest of their life with.”

After seeing huge success on Mutual Attraction with 72% of clients leaving the service in a relationship last year alone, Caroline noticed that there was a need for more matchmakers across the country and she soon set up the Matchmaker Academy, she said: “The academy trains people all over the UK to become matchmakers. People with an interest come along to our intensive workshops and become qualified matchmakers, meaning that more people have access to a matchmaker in their area.

“We are a down to earth team and we are young professionals ourselves, we have been there and we understand how dating works, so we can relate to them, which makes it a success.”

Caroline has now won several awards, including ‘Best Matchmaker’ and Matchmaker of the Year at industry awards and is now on the judging panel for the UK, Euro & US Dating Awards. She has also found love herself and has now been married to husband Christian for just over a year.

The best part of the job, though? Caroline said: “The best thing about the job is hearing people’s stories, they are so fascinating and everybody has a different story. You just never know what people have been through. It is also exciting hearing back about dates and seeing matches come together. It is all about guiding our clients and supporting them.”