Destin Pfaff came into the business of love reluctantly. Its not that he doesnt believe in the power of attraction, or the institution of marriage. (For the record hes engaged, and the happy couple have a 7 month-old son.) Its just that a career in sales didn't appeal, and it never really occurred to him that one could make a living -- and a good one at that -- selling access to something that most people hope to find for free, namely a soul mate.
Pfaff had actually set his heart on a screenwriting career, with horror being his first love. He had some early success in that direction, making it to the semi-finals of Screamfest LA in 2003 with a script he penned called Ripp. However fate, or more accurately Patti Stanger, intervened and his professional life took a rather unexpected turn.
Stanger is the founder of the Millionaire's Club, a Beverly Hills-based dating service for well-heeled clients whove yet to get lucky in love. Its her job to see the potential in people, and she saw lots of that when she came across Pfaff. Despite his initial disinclination to commit to Stangers high-end matchmaking service, Pfaff turned out to be a natural in the art of pairing people off.
Pfaffs skills in the romance department can currently be seen on Bravos reality series "The Millionaire Matchmaker." Now in its third season, the show follows Stanger, Pfaff and their Millionaire's Club cohorts as they set up their clients.
SuicideGirls caught up with Pfaff to find out what it takes to be a matchmaking professional, and to get the behind-the-scenes scoop on the on camera love action.
SuicideGirls: Where did you grow up?
Destin Pfaff: I was born in Santa Barbara and I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska. I lived there for 13 years. Then, I came back to Santa Barbara for high school and college. It was just a lot of fun. I completely enjoyed it. I DJd there and I had a really good time. Then, by about 24, 25, I figured I had to get my act together and moved to LA to become a writer.
SG: Oh, that's what you moved to LA for?
DP: Yeah. I came to LA to be a horror movie writer. I found my muse a little bit and I started writing. I did exactly what I needed to do.
SG: Where in LA did you move to?
DP: I moved to Hollywood -- right in the heart of Hollywood.
SG: What year was this?
DP: Eight years ago, so it would be 2002. Ball park. Guessing. The first script that I wrote, the boys over at Fangoria Magazine and [its editor] Tony Timpone, gave me a really nice boost and did a little shopping for me. [They] wrote a nice little article about it and they bought it.
Then, Alex Wright, who's been an early supporter of mine, who did a couple of Wishmaster movies as well as Styx and a few other films, helped me write my next script and gave me notes, taught me the proper structure of everything. All the while, I was working...I ran this small business in Westwood that was a unique job place. If you were an actor or a writer or a director or model, and you just needed some cash, you'd come to us. We'd throw you out there, we'd get you costume character work. We'd get you burlesque show jobs, strip-o-grams, catering jobs, bartending jobs...
SG: Odd jobs for creative people, who aren't looking for a career but who need to make some money.
DP: Basically, they have to pay rent.
SG: Did you start that business?
DP: No, I worked for a guy by the name of Michael Weiss. He was leaving for Florida, to go become a chef somewhere. And, [he asked me to] take care of [his] business. I met him, and the next day, he said, Good luck! I said, That's a lot of trust buddy, but all right. It was cool. No, you know, he was great. The job was great. Really enjoyed that.
SG: Sounds like a good business.
DP: We got very busy, and it started kind of taking over my life a little bit. I was adamant that I didn't want to get stuck in a corporate environment. I was good at running people's businesses and I didn't want to do that, so I quit and I went to Tower.
SG: Tower Records?
DP: Tower Video actually, across the street from Tower Records. Got a day job. I was like, "OK, work the day job, write at night." Wrote a few screen plays, then, Tower was getting ready to go out of business...
[Then] Patti, from Millionaire's Club, she found me online on Craig's List. [She] called me up, asked me to help her get her shit together. This was supposed to be like a two-week gig just to get some things situated. Then, I was done. Then, she tried to convince me to stay. I said no, then she convinced me, and then I said yes. And years and years have passed.
SG: When was it that you first went to go work for her?
DP: About four and a half years ago. Right when the show was getting ready for pilot.
SG: She had a business before the show?
DP: Yeah, the Millionaire's Club has been in existence for almost 10 years now.
SG: Gotcha. So she was running the business, and when they decided to do the pilot she needed some extra help.
DP: It's a boutique company, and there was so much room for her to expand it a little bit more and get a further reach. Re-do her website. Her website was straight up 1992, Republican era. She was very unorganized, everything was just a mess...She had bad people helping her, and she went through a bad slough of people. I came in there to help out and she ended up teaching me how to do what she does. I just didn't know I had a knack for it, but I guess I did -- weirdest thing in the world.
SG: Tell me about your first couple of weeks working there.
DP: Well, coming from retail was a different sort of situation, but I had worked for larger personalities before...When I met her, I went and interviewed at her house, I was like, "I don't really need a job. "
SG: But, it must have seemed interesting...
DP: No.
SG: Really? You're saying that you didn't have any initial inkling that it might be an interesting business?
DP: Not even a little bit. Couldn't care less. Completely, honestly couldn't care less. It was a paycheck. When I talked to her on the phone, she did a quick five-minute phone interview with me. She was so fast, very East Coast, and just very Patti. She's right to the point.
I interviewed at her house. I didn't interview at her office. That was kind of weird. She was in a bathrobe, and, I was like, "This is just not me. She was yelling at her assistant. I'm like, "You're yelling at somebody." Then, she offered me money and I said OK. And then a week into it...
SG: So you went to the office the next day?
DP: Yeah. Immediately. Next day I went back to her house. I actually worked out of her house with her.
SG: Gotcha. What was the first problem to tackle?
DP: It was everything. Her assistant wasn't doing things right, paperwork wasn't in order, clients weren't being serviced, the website was in disarray, her emails weren't working, her networking system was down -- everything was wrong.
SG: So you took responsibility for all of it.
DP: Yeah, the best I could. Everything that needed to get done, it was [snaps] just like that. I mean, it was a week or two's worth of work. Then she asked me to stay on as an Executive Assistant for her...She's actually a sweet pussycat, once you get past that tough exterior, and she showed that to me. She's literally my best friend. We've been best friends for four years now. I mean, we do almost everything together.
SG: So you initially had no inclination towards wanting to work in that area. Tell me about how it grew on you and how you discovered you were good at it.
DP: I was an artist guy. I was a writer, I like horror movies, that's all I really wanted to do. I was so against getting sidetracked. And, she sidetracked me -- magically! But she did it in a way that didn't take away from the writing. She gave me all the time off I needed. She wasn't overly demanding of me.
SG: If you had to go to a pitch in the middle of the day, you could go.
DP: Exactly. I had complete freedom, which was great.
SG: That is great, to have a paycheck and the ability to go do your own thing.
DP: Yeah. And then she forced me to learn what she knew. Because I was like, "I will run the business stuff, I'll help you with the website, but I don't want to deal with the clients. I don't want to deal with the girls, that's too much work." It probably took about a year...
SG: So, the whole first year, you had nothing to do with that element of the business?
DP: Nope. I was Operations Manager. That's all I was doing. I could be the figurehead, the fake lawyer so to speak, lead the basic meetings that our lawyer didn't need to do. If somebody was having a hard time with something, I would step in and figure out what the problem was.
SG: That's starting to interface with the people who you would eventually work with.
DP: I didn't mind interfacing with the clients. I just didn't want to be sucked into their lives....It was not my thing. I did sales years ago and part of this whole business, it's love, but it's the business of love. Which means, if you're in [the] business, you're in sales. In order to have a client, sell to a client, they become a part of your company so you can service them for their love needs. I didn't want to do sales. I didn't want to sell anybody anything. I was completely against it.
Essentially youre working with them for a year. And what did I know about setting people up? I knew nothing, absolutely nothing. Again, I was so hard-headed, I didn't want to learn. Then, what happened, a nameless producer friend of mine needed help finding love. I went to Patti and said, I've got a referral. Go ahead and take care of it." She said, "You take care of him. I'm making you take care of him. I'm going to help you and you're going to learn how to do this." And that was that.
SG: Walk me through what you do for a client. Tell me how it works.
DP: Once you're an active client of the company, our goal is to find you a match. We have a 99% success rate. Most of them find love within 3-5 dates, 3-5 girls. We're very good at what we do. It's a lot of comparison shopping, it's a lot of gut instinct. It's about knowing people's personality or kicks, watching everything that they do very carefully in the initial interview. We don't just accept any male client, or any female client into our club. We're not an escort service, and if you are coming to us like you're ordering a pizza and you want this, this, this, this, this...then, you know what, there's a reason that you're alone and you're probably going to be alone for the rest of your life. If you come with an open mind, let us do our job, we will be successful.
It's this bizarre science that's not a science. You either can do it, or you can't. There's not many people that can do it that are really good at it. Patti is really good at it. I'm really good at it. Chelsea is really good at it, and she's a completely different type of person than I am, and Rachel who works for the company as well, is very good at it. I've seen other people come and go...they just don't have it. You have to be a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a therapist, a counselor, all wrapped into one.
SG: When you take on a client, you're not just setting them up with people, you're answering questions for them, you're talking to them on the phone.
DP: Oh, absolutely, it's a whole process. We're not a dating service. We're not Match.com. We're a matchmaking company. You're paying for our personal time and attention. And once you're in a relationship our job doesn't stop. We're actually going through the whole process with you, from the beginning, making sure that you don't screw it up half way through, you don't leave the girl, or cheat on the girl, make sure the girl doesn't blow it. It's a long tiring, yet very, very rewarding process.
SG: Got it. So the men pay to be a part of the service.
DP: We are 100% free to women. Women join free. Men do have to pay, however, we do have a non-millionaire men application a person would fill out. Women can pay if they want personal attention, otherwise we kind of throw [their info] in our database until we're ready for them.
SG: How do you find the women?
DP: When Patti started this 10 years ago, she used to work at Great Expectations. She started going out and recruiting more girls. Then word kind of got out. She got more clients and then she started getting press. Magazines started calling. She was in Marie Claire, she was in Elle. Then [women] started submitting their stuff. We didn't have to do as many recruiting sessions. Then TV started picking it up, NBC, CBS, CNBC, she was interviewed on 20/20, 60 Minutes, all these different places. So now we have complete awareness for our Millionaire's Club brand. Then the TV show just legitimized everything. We've never been sued. We have this TV show, we have a radio show, we have a huge web presence. Everyone gives us press now. We don't have to do that at all...The television show is a one hour commercial for our business...and it works better than advertising because people think that they're learning about it as opposed to being sold.
We get 100s of girls a week [when] we're not airing live, and thousands when we are. Rachel, my fianc and our Director of Registration, she's the gatekeeper. She's in charge, but she's one person. We are very selective on who we bring in. Will we take most of the applicants in? Absolutely, but the pool of people that we would actively use is a completely different thing.
SG: So TV you feel has really changed the business, made it a lot more dynamic.
DP: TV has been a huge, huge plus for us. It's had its drawbacks, the TV show it brought out the crazies. That's a little tiring. It's actually made our jobs harder...A lot of them are fame whores. They just want to be on the television show, and it's like, you shouldn't be contacting us.
SG: Clients come to you saying, I want to do your service but only if you make sure that I'm on the show?
DP: Yes, or the conversation always comes back to the TV show. Like, "I saw this guy on the TV show that did this, and that girl on the TV show did this and I think I should be on the TV show." [I'll say,] "OK, let's not talk about that, let's focus on you right now," and then the conversation ends up right back there. The TV show is great. We're not scripted, but at the same time a more significant part of our database of clients are guys that are a lot more sincere and a lot more genuine then you see on the TV show.
SG: Right, you've got to show the most extreme cases to make it most entertaining.
DP: Of course. And, the same thing goes with the women. If you look at the girls who are on the show, porn stars and models and actresses, crazy nut jobs and everything else, if you saw our real girls, it's just not as exciting.
SG: How has being on TV changed your life outside from work?
DP: Literally daily, I get recognized, someone comes up to me, which is bizarre. Because, coming from a place where the focus of energy was behind the camera, suddenly [to] find myself in front of the camera has been neat. I love it.
SG: You like it?
DP: Yeah, it doesn't bother me at all...I appreciate the people that watch the show. I appreciate bringing a certain amount of entertainment. It's awesome. I love it.
Catch The Billionaire Matchmaker on Bravo TV. For further info go to BravoTV.com/The-Millionaire-Matchmaker.
Pfaff had actually set his heart on a screenwriting career, with horror being his first love. He had some early success in that direction, making it to the semi-finals of Screamfest LA in 2003 with a script he penned called Ripp. However fate, or more accurately Patti Stanger, intervened and his professional life took a rather unexpected turn.
Stanger is the founder of the Millionaire's Club, a Beverly Hills-based dating service for well-heeled clients whove yet to get lucky in love. Its her job to see the potential in people, and she saw lots of that when she came across Pfaff. Despite his initial disinclination to commit to Stangers high-end matchmaking service, Pfaff turned out to be a natural in the art of pairing people off.
Pfaffs skills in the romance department can currently be seen on Bravos reality series "The Millionaire Matchmaker." Now in its third season, the show follows Stanger, Pfaff and their Millionaire's Club cohorts as they set up their clients.
SuicideGirls caught up with Pfaff to find out what it takes to be a matchmaking professional, and to get the behind-the-scenes scoop on the on camera love action.
SuicideGirls: Where did you grow up?
Destin Pfaff: I was born in Santa Barbara and I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska. I lived there for 13 years. Then, I came back to Santa Barbara for high school and college. It was just a lot of fun. I completely enjoyed it. I DJd there and I had a really good time. Then, by about 24, 25, I figured I had to get my act together and moved to LA to become a writer.
SG: Oh, that's what you moved to LA for?
DP: Yeah. I came to LA to be a horror movie writer. I found my muse a little bit and I started writing. I did exactly what I needed to do.
SG: Where in LA did you move to?
DP: I moved to Hollywood -- right in the heart of Hollywood.
SG: What year was this?
DP: Eight years ago, so it would be 2002. Ball park. Guessing. The first script that I wrote, the boys over at Fangoria Magazine and [its editor] Tony Timpone, gave me a really nice boost and did a little shopping for me. [They] wrote a nice little article about it and they bought it.
Then, Alex Wright, who's been an early supporter of mine, who did a couple of Wishmaster movies as well as Styx and a few other films, helped me write my next script and gave me notes, taught me the proper structure of everything. All the while, I was working...I ran this small business in Westwood that was a unique job place. If you were an actor or a writer or a director or model, and you just needed some cash, you'd come to us. We'd throw you out there, we'd get you costume character work. We'd get you burlesque show jobs, strip-o-grams, catering jobs, bartending jobs...
SG: Odd jobs for creative people, who aren't looking for a career but who need to make some money.
DP: Basically, they have to pay rent.
SG: Did you start that business?
DP: No, I worked for a guy by the name of Michael Weiss. He was leaving for Florida, to go become a chef somewhere. And, [he asked me to] take care of [his] business. I met him, and the next day, he said, Good luck! I said, That's a lot of trust buddy, but all right. It was cool. No, you know, he was great. The job was great. Really enjoyed that.
SG: Sounds like a good business.
DP: We got very busy, and it started kind of taking over my life a little bit. I was adamant that I didn't want to get stuck in a corporate environment. I was good at running people's businesses and I didn't want to do that, so I quit and I went to Tower.
SG: Tower Records?
DP: Tower Video actually, across the street from Tower Records. Got a day job. I was like, "OK, work the day job, write at night." Wrote a few screen plays, then, Tower was getting ready to go out of business...
[Then] Patti, from Millionaire's Club, she found me online on Craig's List. [She] called me up, asked me to help her get her shit together. This was supposed to be like a two-week gig just to get some things situated. Then, I was done. Then, she tried to convince me to stay. I said no, then she convinced me, and then I said yes. And years and years have passed.
SG: When was it that you first went to go work for her?
DP: About four and a half years ago. Right when the show was getting ready for pilot.
SG: She had a business before the show?
DP: Yeah, the Millionaire's Club has been in existence for almost 10 years now.
SG: Gotcha. So she was running the business, and when they decided to do the pilot she needed some extra help.
DP: It's a boutique company, and there was so much room for her to expand it a little bit more and get a further reach. Re-do her website. Her website was straight up 1992, Republican era. She was very unorganized, everything was just a mess...She had bad people helping her, and she went through a bad slough of people. I came in there to help out and she ended up teaching me how to do what she does. I just didn't know I had a knack for it, but I guess I did -- weirdest thing in the world.
SG: Tell me about your first couple of weeks working there.
DP: Well, coming from retail was a different sort of situation, but I had worked for larger personalities before...When I met her, I went and interviewed at her house, I was like, "I don't really need a job. "
SG: But, it must have seemed interesting...
DP: No.
SG: Really? You're saying that you didn't have any initial inkling that it might be an interesting business?
DP: Not even a little bit. Couldn't care less. Completely, honestly couldn't care less. It was a paycheck. When I talked to her on the phone, she did a quick five-minute phone interview with me. She was so fast, very East Coast, and just very Patti. She's right to the point.
I interviewed at her house. I didn't interview at her office. That was kind of weird. She was in a bathrobe, and, I was like, "This is just not me. She was yelling at her assistant. I'm like, "You're yelling at somebody." Then, she offered me money and I said OK. And then a week into it...
SG: So you went to the office the next day?
DP: Yeah. Immediately. Next day I went back to her house. I actually worked out of her house with her.
SG: Gotcha. What was the first problem to tackle?
DP: It was everything. Her assistant wasn't doing things right, paperwork wasn't in order, clients weren't being serviced, the website was in disarray, her emails weren't working, her networking system was down -- everything was wrong.
SG: So you took responsibility for all of it.
DP: Yeah, the best I could. Everything that needed to get done, it was [snaps] just like that. I mean, it was a week or two's worth of work. Then she asked me to stay on as an Executive Assistant for her...She's actually a sweet pussycat, once you get past that tough exterior, and she showed that to me. She's literally my best friend. We've been best friends for four years now. I mean, we do almost everything together.
SG: So you initially had no inclination towards wanting to work in that area. Tell me about how it grew on you and how you discovered you were good at it.
DP: I was an artist guy. I was a writer, I like horror movies, that's all I really wanted to do. I was so against getting sidetracked. And, she sidetracked me -- magically! But she did it in a way that didn't take away from the writing. She gave me all the time off I needed. She wasn't overly demanding of me.
SG: If you had to go to a pitch in the middle of the day, you could go.
DP: Exactly. I had complete freedom, which was great.
SG: That is great, to have a paycheck and the ability to go do your own thing.
DP: Yeah. And then she forced me to learn what she knew. Because I was like, "I will run the business stuff, I'll help you with the website, but I don't want to deal with the clients. I don't want to deal with the girls, that's too much work." It probably took about a year...
SG: So, the whole first year, you had nothing to do with that element of the business?
DP: Nope. I was Operations Manager. That's all I was doing. I could be the figurehead, the fake lawyer so to speak, lead the basic meetings that our lawyer didn't need to do. If somebody was having a hard time with something, I would step in and figure out what the problem was.
SG: That's starting to interface with the people who you would eventually work with.
DP: I didn't mind interfacing with the clients. I just didn't want to be sucked into their lives....It was not my thing. I did sales years ago and part of this whole business, it's love, but it's the business of love. Which means, if you're in [the] business, you're in sales. In order to have a client, sell to a client, they become a part of your company so you can service them for their love needs. I didn't want to do sales. I didn't want to sell anybody anything. I was completely against it.
Essentially youre working with them for a year. And what did I know about setting people up? I knew nothing, absolutely nothing. Again, I was so hard-headed, I didn't want to learn. Then, what happened, a nameless producer friend of mine needed help finding love. I went to Patti and said, I've got a referral. Go ahead and take care of it." She said, "You take care of him. I'm making you take care of him. I'm going to help you and you're going to learn how to do this." And that was that.
SG: Walk me through what you do for a client. Tell me how it works.
DP: Once you're an active client of the company, our goal is to find you a match. We have a 99% success rate. Most of them find love within 3-5 dates, 3-5 girls. We're very good at what we do. It's a lot of comparison shopping, it's a lot of gut instinct. It's about knowing people's personality or kicks, watching everything that they do very carefully in the initial interview. We don't just accept any male client, or any female client into our club. We're not an escort service, and if you are coming to us like you're ordering a pizza and you want this, this, this, this, this...then, you know what, there's a reason that you're alone and you're probably going to be alone for the rest of your life. If you come with an open mind, let us do our job, we will be successful.
It's this bizarre science that's not a science. You either can do it, or you can't. There's not many people that can do it that are really good at it. Patti is really good at it. I'm really good at it. Chelsea is really good at it, and she's a completely different type of person than I am, and Rachel who works for the company as well, is very good at it. I've seen other people come and go...they just don't have it. You have to be a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a therapist, a counselor, all wrapped into one.
SG: When you take on a client, you're not just setting them up with people, you're answering questions for them, you're talking to them on the phone.
DP: Oh, absolutely, it's a whole process. We're not a dating service. We're not Match.com. We're a matchmaking company. You're paying for our personal time and attention. And once you're in a relationship our job doesn't stop. We're actually going through the whole process with you, from the beginning, making sure that you don't screw it up half way through, you don't leave the girl, or cheat on the girl, make sure the girl doesn't blow it. It's a long tiring, yet very, very rewarding process.
SG: Got it. So the men pay to be a part of the service.
DP: We are 100% free to women. Women join free. Men do have to pay, however, we do have a non-millionaire men application a person would fill out. Women can pay if they want personal attention, otherwise we kind of throw [their info] in our database until we're ready for them.
SG: How do you find the women?
DP: When Patti started this 10 years ago, she used to work at Great Expectations. She started going out and recruiting more girls. Then word kind of got out. She got more clients and then she started getting press. Magazines started calling. She was in Marie Claire, she was in Elle. Then [women] started submitting their stuff. We didn't have to do as many recruiting sessions. Then TV started picking it up, NBC, CBS, CNBC, she was interviewed on 20/20, 60 Minutes, all these different places. So now we have complete awareness for our Millionaire's Club brand. Then the TV show just legitimized everything. We've never been sued. We have this TV show, we have a radio show, we have a huge web presence. Everyone gives us press now. We don't have to do that at all...The television show is a one hour commercial for our business...and it works better than advertising because people think that they're learning about it as opposed to being sold.
We get 100s of girls a week [when] we're not airing live, and thousands when we are. Rachel, my fianc and our Director of Registration, she's the gatekeeper. She's in charge, but she's one person. We are very selective on who we bring in. Will we take most of the applicants in? Absolutely, but the pool of people that we would actively use is a completely different thing.
SG: So TV you feel has really changed the business, made it a lot more dynamic.
DP: TV has been a huge, huge plus for us. It's had its drawbacks, the TV show it brought out the crazies. That's a little tiring. It's actually made our jobs harder...A lot of them are fame whores. They just want to be on the television show, and it's like, you shouldn't be contacting us.
SG: Clients come to you saying, I want to do your service but only if you make sure that I'm on the show?
DP: Yes, or the conversation always comes back to the TV show. Like, "I saw this guy on the TV show that did this, and that girl on the TV show did this and I think I should be on the TV show." [I'll say,] "OK, let's not talk about that, let's focus on you right now," and then the conversation ends up right back there. The TV show is great. We're not scripted, but at the same time a more significant part of our database of clients are guys that are a lot more sincere and a lot more genuine then you see on the TV show.
SG: Right, you've got to show the most extreme cases to make it most entertaining.
DP: Of course. And, the same thing goes with the women. If you look at the girls who are on the show, porn stars and models and actresses, crazy nut jobs and everything else, if you saw our real girls, it's just not as exciting.
SG: How has being on TV changed your life outside from work?
DP: Literally daily, I get recognized, someone comes up to me, which is bizarre. Because, coming from a place where the focus of energy was behind the camera, suddenly [to] find myself in front of the camera has been neat. I love it.
SG: You like it?
DP: Yeah, it doesn't bother me at all...I appreciate the people that watch the show. I appreciate bringing a certain amount of entertainment. It's awesome. I love it.
Catch The Billionaire Matchmaker on Bravo TV. For further info go to BravoTV.com/The-Millionaire-Matchmaker.