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Damona Hoffman

Celebrity Dating Coach

Damona Hoffman is a dating coach, on-air personality, and bestselling author. Her book "F the Fairy Tale" (2024) busts outdated dating myths and offers an empowering new approach to love. With over 15 years of experience, she's regular contributor to The Drew Barrymore Show, NPR, and NBC’s Access Daily. Damona has also written columns for The LA Times and The Washington Post. Additionally, she’s consulted for numerous dating apps including OkCupid, Match, and Bumble. Damona also hosts the award-winning podcast Dates & Mates.

Education

  • B.S., Communications, Northwestern University

Professional Achievements

  • Her book, "F the Fairy Tale", was endorsed by Drew Barrymore, Dr. Drew Pinksy, and Lori Gottlieb, and was a #1 Amazon bestseller
  • Regular contributor to The Drew Barrymore Show, Access Daily with Mario Lopez, NPR, and NBC News
  • Damona's podcast "Dates & Mates" has been listed as a top ten podcast by Cosmopolitan Magazine, HuffPost, and Mashable
  • "Dates and Mates" won Best Podcast of the Year at the Black Podcasting Awards
  • First Dating Coach in California certified by the IDCA (International Dating Coach Association)
  • Hosted two reality TV series about dating and relationships

Certifications & Organizations

  • IDCA Certified Dating Coach

Favorite Piece of Advice

Dating is a learned skill – we have all been fed a steady diet of rom-coms and fairy tales that have given us a false narrative about how love is supposed to just "happen" for us. This causes dissonance and frustration when it feels like we need to work to find our person. If you approach dating with curiosity and see it as a venue for self-growth, you can build relational skills that will aid in your dating life and impact every other person you interact with...including yourself. With a growth mindset around dating skills like profile writing, flirting, conversation techniques, texting, and even sex, you can rewrite any stories that have blocked you from finding your ultimate happily ever after.

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Forum Comments (6)

How can you become a better communicator in a relationship?
You can become a better communicator in a relationship by becoming a better listener. Many times, we are waiting for our turn to speak or we're trying to create a certain outcome in the words that we use or our persuasive arguments in conversation. I find that when you enter a conversation with a goal of listening and with a goal of understanding rather than a goal of persuading or trying to be heard, you can get to understanding a lot quicker and with a lot less effort.
How can you meet people without dating apps?
To meet people outside dating apps, I recommend making use of your connector circle. Your connector circle is often your second and third-degree friends or connections who might know the right kind of people to introduce you to. Find a hobby and a group that you can become a part of that might expand your social circle or your dating connections. Also, go to singles events. Try first Fridays at a museum, speed dating, or a mixer. Every day of week, there are these events happening.
How do you start conversations on dating apps?
First of all, I recommend keeping your first message short and sweet. My easy formula is "comment plus question". I couple those two things together because the comment is saying something specific about the profile that you connected to personally, while the question is an invitation to move the conversation forward. And it gives you something to hang the conversation on. If you're just saying, “Hi” or “I liked your profile” or something generic, it tends to start the conversation out without any real momentum. However, you absolutely need momentum to drive the relationship forward if your goal is to ultimately move it off of the app and into real life. There are so many matches and options that people are sorting through that you need a simple framework like this to get conversations going. This way, you'll be able to stay in the game, sort through your matches, communicate effectively, and figure out what you need to know about someone before you go to the next step with them. Good luck!
What does a good dating profile look like for a guy?
I find that men often don't have selfies of themselves or great photos of just them–most of their pictures are group pics or action shots. So, if you don't have good photos, why not just get some professional photos taken that really show you in your element? Then, you can mix those in with other shots of you that are less flattering and polished. The general rule of thumb for anyone's profile is that you have to be the star of your profile. That means that pictures with other people potentially give someone a reason to say no to you or a reason to confuse you with other people in your photos. You want to keep the attention and the focus on you.

Use what I call the Three C's – Color, Context, and Character. Color is strategic. It is to stand out from the crowd. No white button downs. Anything that doesn't have a story to it or isn't memorable will get swiped past. And that primary photo is really important. If you consider it again, from the perspective of someone swiping, they're going through picture after picture after picture, they might not even be getting to your second photo. You have to give them a reason to stop and pay attention. Color is really strategic in that way. A lot of times, I'll recommend the color red, because we are psychologically conditioned to see red, stop, and pay attention.

The second C is context. If you go past someone's first photo and further into the profile, that's where we need the context. That's telling your story through your photos. What do you like to do? What part of town do you live in? Tell your story visually, conveyed at a glance. This approach gets that person more invested than if you've just written it on the page.

The third C is character. This is the one that most people forget. This is showing your personality. It's showing your fun side, your wild side, your quirky side, your goofy side, your nerdy side. It's the picture that usually someone will comment on because there is so much in there to unpack with the person. And that's really the goal of the profile. Get them to stop and pay attention. Get them to like you and then get them to engage with the message. I try to make my advice as actionable and simple as possible. And then just one more guideline that might be helpful for profile writing. You want to also have a mix of face and body photos. And you also want to be aware of the focal point of the photo. Where does the eye go when someone looks at your photo initially? A lot of the apps now will crop your picture to square. Again, consider it from the point of view of the person that is going to be looking at it and how they will see it. And sometimes, a picture that is cropped to square will not look the same. If it's like a full body or three-quarter shot, it will not look the same that you will not focus in on the same things when it is sort of shrunken down to square format.
What are your favorite Bumble prompts?
I feel like any prompt that both shows emotion and creates a little bit of a question in it is the best. The prompt I like best is "I get way too excited about...". It's better than something like, “After work, you can find me...”. To me, that feels very expected and practical and down the middle. "I get way too excited about..." already has a tone of humor built into it because it's already in its essence sort of self-deprecating and shows “I'm not taking myself too seriously”. It is also a prompt that allows someone to reveal a little bit about their passions and who they are.
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Co-authored Articles (2)