Small Business: Expanding relationships

Kailen Rosenberg, president and founder of Love Architects, her boutique relationship coaching firm in Wayzata, has gained a national reputation as a celebrity matchmaker.

That's what happens when you coach Hollywood's lovelorn, offer relationship advice on network morning TV shows and co-star in an Oprah Winfrey series, "Lovetown, USA."

Yet Rosenberg would seem to prefer to be known as a successful entrepreneur working to expand her business. Above all, she wants the world to understand that her goal is helping people prepare to find a soul mate and not just serving as matchmaker to the rich and famous, however lucrative that may be.

"I could have taken advantage of my platform and all the press on a level that, truly, I could have retired right now with millions in the bank," Rosenberg said. "But I would have been miserable as a soul. … I want this to be a healthy-relationship firm, focusing on healthy families, individuals, whatever it takes to create a better world."

Efforts to broaden her reach include her recent book, "Real Love, Right Now," published by a division of Simon & Schuster, and a planned online portal for vetted singles.

Both would help make her services, which can reach into six figures for "elite matchmaking," more affordable and more widely accessible to those potential clients who, unlike some celebrities or CEOs, don't fly here or have Rosenberg flown to their location to work with her.

She's also exploring opening a Los Angeles office, to expand the work she has done there for years on a limited basis. The positive response to her book, which she succeeded in having placed in Golden Globe nominees' "swag bags," and encouragement from friends and clients in Southern California has gotten her attention.

Rosenberg, whose firm has three employees and had revenue of $700,000 last year, is looking at bringing on additional coaches to help spread her methodology. She recently launched a website, theloveradar.com, that "tracks the energy of love and hate via Twitter" in cities across the country. Rosenberg, 46, is not a licensed therapist but makes referrals to certified professionals when specific issues arise.

Rosenberg said she understood from a young age, during a chaotic childhood that included witnessing and experiencing abuse, that her mission was to "teach what love really is and that, no matter what, they can absolutely have it."

She was a top local model in the early 1990s when she began offering support to cohorts, which led her to form a self-image coaching business in 1993.

Within a few years, she had begun introducing people she had coached and others she had met everywhere from coffee shops to airplanes. Local press coverage of her matchmaking exploits led to national attention and calls from celebrities and their agents. Along the way, after an early marriage and divorce, she met her husband, Lance, a builder whose work provided a metaphor for her 2008 rebranding of her business as the Love Architects.

Dr. Dana Thompson, a Chicago-area surgeon and Love Architects client, said she had known Rosenberg for four years and at first found her methods shocking and frustrating. Instead of lining up dates for her, Thompson said, Rosenberg concentrated on issues that were "getting in my way of recognizing what was good for me in a relationship."

Alana Hamilton Stewart, a friend of Rosenberg's and ex-wife of singer Rod Stewart, said Rosenberg helps people gain insights to deal with insecurities or other issues that create problems in starting or building relationships.

"She's very intuitive about people," said Hamilton Stewart, president of the Farrah Fawcett Foundation, which supports cancer research and prevention.

Rosenberg believes her relationship-building success (she counts some 300 marriages among those she has worked with) contributed to her selection for "Lovetown," a 2012 series on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network on efforts to promote love in a small Georgia town.

Todd Nelson is a freelance writer in Woodbury. His e-mail address is todd_nelson@mac.com