Today we’re talking about dating and the true secret to romantic success with a real expert, Connell Barrett, author of the book Dating Sucks, But You Don’t.
This show offers a ton of unique and interesting insights (even if you’re not single and on the dating scene) that will help you build confidence and open your eyes to the ways we can all improve our interactions with people.
A long time prominent golf writer turned dating coach, Connell used to be shy and lonely, and totally dateless. Living in the friendzone. But then he finally found a woman who liked him, and they got married.
She dumped him nine weeks later. And Connell knew it was time for change. He went on a five-year long globe-trotting quest to understand the art of male-female connection, and now, he can fix any dating problem (perhaps because he’s already had every dating problem?!). During this show, Connell talks about his book, Dating Sucks But You Don’t, the essential guide for men looking for love, and shares the true secret to romantic success.
You’ll learn about why looks just don’t matter (Connell says that good looks are like jacuzzis: “nice to have but way overrated”) and this also goes for other myths about attracting a great girlfriend, like height, money, or a 6-pack. Connell talks about why consent is sexy, and then gives some helpful tips for anyone navigating looking for love in the time of #MeToo (he also points out that for men with integrity and good intentions, dating today is easier than you might think.) We also have a great discussion on how to handle anxiety when meeting people in real life in the time of internet dating, and Connell shares his foolproof method for overcoming “approach anxiety.”
Connell has appeared on Access Hollywood and the Today show, and has been published in Maxim, Cosmopolitan, Oprah Magazine, and Playboy. He’s also the official dating coach for The League — an exclusive dating app for high-achieving singles — and an advisor for AskMen and EliteDaily. Connect with him on Instagram here.
TIMESTAMPS:
Dating problems occur at some time for all of us. This dating coach brings some interesting insights. [01:34]
Getting out of the “friend zone” can be a struggle. [05:06]
You cannot fake or force the chemistry between two people. [12:16]
Radical authenticity is showing the real you and showing how you are feeling. [17:40]
If you are traumatized from your previous relationship breakup, you need to do some work on yourself before you start dating. [22:12]
Rather than focusing on her attractiveness, think more about talking, being open. [28:55]
When Connell is coaching, he takes the client out for on-site training. [30:25]
Connell talks about his real-life journey from a broken marriage to dating coach. [33:44]
We have to embrace rejection. It isn’t as bad as we think it is. Just do not reject yourself. [36:23]
What can women do to up their game? [37:56]
Women are attracted to guys who have confidence. [42:24]
Golfing and dating overlap. If you don’t have confidence you can rely on courage. [44:00]
Why is approaching women so hard? Learn if she rejects you, you are still a man. [48:07]
The pandemic affected the singles scene. On-line dating is okay, but we are meant to interact in person. [54:09]
How does a person know they are just settling? Have an abundance to choose from. [57:07]
Our current generation approaches this dating/marriage situation differently than our parents’. [01:00:49]
Your online dating profile should be very authentic. [01:07:16]
LINKS:
- Brad’s Shopping Page
- Dating transformation.com
- Dating Sucks
- Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
- The Way of the Superior Man
LISTEN:
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Brad (1m 34s): Let’s talk about dating with a real expert and get ready for a wild show with a bunch of interesting insights, not just for people on the single scene dating, but all kinds of male, female interactions and building confidence through courage. It’s a great show with a very interesting guest named Connell Barrett. He’s actually a long time prominent golf writer. I recognized his name and now he’s America’s favorite dating coach. As many awards have been bestowed upon him. He wrote a book called Dating Sucks, But You Don’t and you are going to learn all about his unique strategies and insights. Brad (2m 15s): He favors something called radical authenticity. And boy, it sounds so easy when he talks about it, but it’s interesting to drill down into this because so many of us come into social situations with shyness, insecurity, flawed notions of what females want to hear or what they want you to do. So let’s get some of this stuff sorted out, because guess what? Connell can fix almost any dating problem because he’s had every dating problem. He was shy dateless and lonely. He didn’t just live in the friend zone. He owned a condo there. When he finally found a woman who liked him, he married her and she dumped him nine weeks later. That’s when you decided to change and embark on a five year long globe trotting quest to understand the art of male female connection. Brad (3m 1s): And in the show, you’re going to find out why looks don’t matter. You’re going to find out that consent is sexy, especially as we are dating in the me too era. You’re going to find out how to overcome anxiety and actually meet women in real life. Yes, the lost art of real life here in the age of online dating many more interesting insights to come. And certainly they apply even to a couple in a long-term relationship where you want to have your a game and be wonderful, enjoyable company, and keep that spark alive for months and years ahead, rather than just your first or second or third date. So let’s hear it all from Connell Barrett, author of Dating Sucks, But You Don’t. Brad (3m 47s): Connell Barrett world famous golf writer turned dating coach. I’m so excited to connect with you on this level to talk about your new book. But I also want to kind of have you introduce yourself to the audience because I was a huge follower of yours for many years. And you were deep into the golf scene and you made a full career transition. So I’d like to hear about that before we head further down the road of the, the, the, the winning pickup lines and how consent is sexy these days, and all kinds of other fun stuff, Connell (4m 20s): Right? I’m such a cliche, just another golf journalist turned dating coach. We’re so sick of this. So it’s like actress who direct, right? It’s such that now I have. So I guess there’s actually some lines to connect here because golf slash golf writing was a huge passion of mine. And I also loved playing golf because it was so hard, right? Golf is hard to do well. And so I got into golf journalism because I wanted to write about it. I loved it, but also because I wanted to play free golf and get lessons and get good at it. And similarly, when I left my old job at Golf Magazine and Sports Illustrated covering golf, I got, I had already gotten into this, but I also began studying the art of connecting with women, the art of dating. Connell (5m 7s): How do you approach, how do you get out of the friend zone? How do you find confidence and find true love? And I realized that, oh, I’ve pretty much shifted into this career because it’s just like golf, girls are challenging. Dating is challenging. So it was about wanting. It was about because I love the subject. I love learning how to be a better man through the lens of your dating life. And also I realized that golf and girls, two of the greatest challenges I’ve ever faced, and maybe that’s why I’ve, I’ve tackled both topics. Brad (5m 40s): I love it. It’s, you know, that’s what life’s all about is taken on challenges. Then you have a passion and an interest for yeah. You’re you’re right there. They’re both pretty, they’re both pretty challenging. So you mentioned this getting out of the friend zone is one of the, one of the first topics. And is that a, is that a huge deal these days is like a major complaint of men trying to, trying to make that jump or something? Connell (6m 8s): Yeah. I would say the top three or four problems that single men face in their dating lives is in no particular order. How do you talk to women? How do you flirt and create that attraction? How do you approach every single straight man I’ve ever met has wanted to approach an attractive woman, but most of them can’t don’t know how, feel fear. And the friend zone is a big one too, where a guy might be getting a lot of dates or have a lot of women in his life who he talks to and is interested in, but they only see him as a quote unquote friend, or they, a guy might have a lot of friends. This was me, by the way, back in the day, my 15 years ago, I w I was getting plenty of dates. Connell (6m 51s): But then I would get that day after text message that said, Hey, I had fun, but not really feeling that spark, but Hey, let’s be friends. Let’s hang out some other time, but just as friends and don’t get me wrong. I, I think having female friends is great and we shouldn’t just look at women as they should like me as somebody’s sexual and romantic. But when there’s genuine, real chemistry between two people or there, or there could be, but that guy doesn’t know how to sort of channel that. What I call Amanda woman communication channel, that romantic vibe. Then he is going to be friends owned by a woman who wants to like him, but she can’t feel it. And I think one of the biggest myths about dating is that women put us in the friend zone, which is not true. Connell (7m 35s): Guys do it to themselves. We do it to ourselves. And women are simply the ones who are saying, okay, you’ve put yourself in the friend zone. I can’t help it. It is what it is. I’m going to go date. Some other guy who makes me feel the way I want a man to make me feel Brad (7m 51s): Wow. You know, it seems like there’s possibly a, a tight rope here that we have to walk carefully. I, I liked the work of John Gray. Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus, David Deida, The Way of the Superior Man. But there’s this message that, you know, people are attracted to someone who’s confident, decisive, they express their needs and their wants. They take charge in a certain situation and the female biological driver is to be cared for and be protected. And to have that sense, that feeling. But then today we don’t want to be a jerk ass and be dictating all the shots and saying, the lady will have the steak and I will have the salmon, you know, that’s kind of old school and that day’s gone and women are empowered and liberated. Brad (8m 36s): So maybe we could, you could talk to us about that tightrope. If it exists, I’m asking a question, but it seems to me the first thing that hit me was like, yeah, you’re, you’re in the, you just, you just got put in the friend zone, cause you’re such a nice guy and you’re not going to make an aggressive move and, and upset the woman. But then you’re, you’re on your seventh date and you still haven’t, you know, you still said, Hey, come here. I gotta grab you. So here we go, calm is going to set us up here. He’s going to set us straight. Connell (9m 1s): Absolutely. The friend zone is of our own making. And the good news is that we can make the choice to escape it. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you can guarantee that every woman’s going to be attracted to you. I don’t define the friend zone as an attractive woman only wants to be my friend. That’s not the definition of it. Lots of people aren’t going to want to date me. Lots of women won’t want to date me. The friend zone is a woman who wants to feel a certain way about me, about you about any man. She likes you on paper. She finds you attractive, but she doesn’t, but she’s just quote unquote, not feeling it because of you, your behavior. As a man, you’re treating her more like a pal or a buddy you’re talking about business or politics or being overly polite. Connell (9m 44s): And supplicating on a date instead of being really emotionally vulnerable, being a man, being honest, making a move when the time is right, flirting, letting her know you find her devastatingly sexy. If that’s how you feel. And the great news about this, as I, as I mentioned in my book, is that nice guys can, can, and should and will get the girl. You can. There’s a great quote. A beautiful woman once said to me, nice guys are sexier than six pack abs. We don’t want to date jerks. We don’t want to take quote, unquote, bad boys. We don’t want to date assholes. We want to date a nice guy. And then she added as long as he has a backbone. Connell (10m 26s): As long as he has some strength. He has a steel spine. He can make the move. He can lead us on a great date. He knows how to flirt with us. Brad. I’m the nicest guy in the world. Pretty much. I literally helped little old ladies cross the street. I volunteer at a blind residence. I’m not saying this to impress anybody. I’m just saying this to let your viewers realize that, Hey, you can be the nicest kind of planet you can be at sweet, nice gentlemen. At the same time, you can still be a man with a woman on a date and make her feel the way we want her to feel. So that if there’s that mutual interest, you can smash out of the friend zone and stop hearing. Stop, stop hearing the words. Connell (11m 7s): Let’s just be friends and start hearing. Let’s go back to your place Brad (11m 12s): Or hearing, Hey, I’m I’m not feeling it and cut your losses, right. Instead of these things that linger on where you’re uncertain and you’re interpreting this text differently than yesterday’s. And I feel like there’s possibly a lot of that going on, where you got to cut ties. If it’s not a, a big connection. And I guess I could ask a followup question. There’s how much of this, this idea of chemistry do you ascribe to where you’re going to tell them the first minute Dr. Wendy Walsh, I think mentioned this on one of my interviews with hers in four seconds, the female can tell whether she’s going to go to bed with the man or some stats that we hear a lot. Connell (11m 56s): Yeah. Yeah. There’s a great line of Californication where Hank Moody says a woman knows in the first 30 seconds that she wants to fuck, marry, or kill the guy. I think there’s a lot of truth. Oh no, maybe a little bit of everything. But I think that, I’m sorry, Brad, I lost train of thought. Cause I took a side. I know it’s Brad (12m 17s): Cause my questions, my questions are too random. Was the question let’s see. The question was, you know, is that chemistry thing legit where you are going to know if there’s a real connection in the first minute and you know, the research talks about the smells and the different immune systems and things like that, where you’re not, you’re not going to be attracted to your first cousin is how the story line goes. And then, you know, when is there, is there something such as chemistry that it’s not going to be working hard to get it six months later? Connell (12m 50s): Yeah. I think there is real chemistry that you can’t force or fake. It has to be organic and that’s just nature doing its thing. At the same time, we can definitely put our thumb on the scale a little bit as men. We can do things that help amplify that inherent chemistry that might be there. Maybe, maybe the natural chemistry is there, but it’s, it’s sort of a low burning embers. We want to learn as men. We want to learn how to put a little gasoline on that and have a, more of a brush fire as the date or the dates go on. So, so what I teach men to do among other things is be able to sort of channel, I call, I call this there’s a lot. Connell (13m 32s): There’s a, there’s a channel of communication. I call it man to woman communication. It’s a frame that a man needs to make sure that on a date or in a dating context, that he creates a context so that both himself and the woman understand that this is a story of boy meets girl. And that the, the communication is man to woman, by which I mean, maybe it’s flirting, maybe it’s teasing, complimenting her, busting her proverbial balls, pulling her proverbial, pigtails, being yourself as cliche as that as being what I call radically authentic. Part of that is getting in touch with your desires as a man and letting a woman know how you’re feeling about her and through this law of, of kind of contagious emotions, a lot of women are going to feel that connection and chemistry. Connell (14m 17s): Some aren’t and that’s totally fine. We’re not trying to attract every woman we’re trying to attract the women who are really into Connell. Really into Brad. Really into your sort of core persona. And the cool thing about this is you can let go of the dates that don’t have that connection. It’s not anything lacking in you. It might just be that she’s, she’s the Stones. You’re the Beatles. That’s cool. Find a Beatles girl. The Beatles were the greatest band of all time. It doesn’t mean you’re not enough. It just means, oh, we’re two different two different types and that’s fine. The next potential soulmate Brad (14m 54s): You think you can find that quickly if you’re attuned and there’s no noise in your, in your, in your operation, you’re going to have one date and realize it, or maybe not. Connell (15m 8s): It will take many reps to get to that point. I don’t know that you can, a man certainly knows if he’s physically attracted to a woman right away. Right. However, it might take a little bit more than a date to realize if the two of you are emotionally connected. If you have your, what I call the big life stuff aligned, you know, you need our big life stuff to be relatively aligned, to have a longterm potential together, religion, age, where you live, things like that. Kids no kids, things like that. So that can take time. But I do. I do think that I do agree with the idea that chemistry, that raw kind of animal attraction is you’re, you’re both going to know on the first date, if it’s a, if it’s a hell yes. Connell (15m 50s): Or if it’s a maybe or if it’s a hell, no. And if it’s a hell yes, obviously. Great. If it’s a, maybe have a second date, some people need a little time to kind of open up and get loose, get comfortable if it’s a hell, no, life’s too short and move on. Brad (16m 7s): If it’s a hell yes. Could that possibly get in the way cloud judgment, you know, lead you down a path, that’s going to be a disaster. I mean, I kinda feel like that story comes up frequently where you’re just have massive, you know, chemical spark, physical attraction, but we’re skipping over some important parts of getting to know each other. And maybe you’re not radically authentic because you’re just too busy, you know, playing the game or Connell (16m 39s): Something. Yeah. I guess it could create a problem. I suppose, if, if a man and a woman really hit it off on a first date and it’s that, that burning brush fire of chemistry and they get too intimate too quickly before they find out that, Hey, you want kids? I don’t, or you’re moving next week. And I just came to this town, that’s a problem. Or maybe one of the people, this is usually something that happens with women, but it can also happen with men. Maybe you go to bed too quickly and maybe you get too emotionally invested too quickly if, especially if you have a lot of strong emotional links to sex, which I certainly do. Connell (17m 18s): And yeah, I like I’d rather go too slow than too quickly. So there’s something fun about a what’s that great Carly Simon song Anticipation. It’s kind of fun to, to build up to it and make sure you’re both ready and that you’re not jumping into bed slash each other’s lives too quickly. Brad (17m 40s): Can you talk more about this term that you’ve coined radical authenticity and especially in terms of how might conflict with some of the popular information out there? Because it seems like, you know, some of John Gray stuff, which I love, and I think about it every day and you know, one of them is, Hey, you gotta stay calm, cool and collected as a man, you gotta be the guy in control, the Kung Fu master. And that means eating your little petty, you know, hurt feelings and things like that. And going off and doing testosterone, boosting activities. And then coming back to the relationship refresh where you don’t have to nitpick your, your woman and make her feel, you know, unprotected. Brad (18m 25s): And that’s not the same as radical authenticity and showing the real you and showing how your feelings do get hurt when she talks too long at the party to another man or whatever was going on in your head, you know, where do we balance that? Connell (18m 39s): I, I agree with the general sentiment of Gray’s philosophy and who might’ve criticize him. He sold a hell of a lot more books than I have so far. So I admire him for that at the same time. I think that radical authenticity in a couple of sentences, it means leaning into who you truly are at your core and aligning your thoughts, words, and actions from that place at the highest frequency possible. It doesn’t mean, oh, what am I thinking and feeling right now? I’m butt hurt because you flirted with, with another guy. In other words, it doesn’t mean being an open wound. It means being open to have something of value, but be a very transparent and open about that. Connell (19m 24s): You can absolutely open up to a woman about how you’re feeling. Even if it’s something that’s scary. I would argue that that’s actually a sign of strength, a sign of value at the end of the day and the end of the date, what a woman wants comes down to two words. She wants something that’s has relevant value to her life. Women want men of value. My definition of a man of value is a man who knows who he is, who is in touch with who he is and speaks, acts thinks from that place of alignment. Let me try to get a bit more specific about what that means on a first date, which I’ve been on a lot of recently because I try to practice what I preach. I’m going to let a woman know that I’m going to be myself. Connell (20m 7s): Pardon the cliche I’m going to, I’m probably going to tell bad jokes. Cause that’s my sense of humor. I’m going to talk about some of the nerdy books on my wall. I’m going to, when she says, are you into this cool thing that I like? I’m not going to lie to her and tell him that I am. I’m going to say no, I’ve never gone zip lining in my life. Tell me about it. I’m going to, I’m going to be willing to tell her about my failed first marriage. If it comes up and talk about the thing that I screwed up and how awful and lonely and rejected, I felt just because these are all part of who I am. In other words, I’m going to show, have the courage to show the vulnerability and put myself out there. And in other words, another way, I like to put that as be emotionally naked and show her the real me. Connell (20m 50s): Because I, if I wear a mask, I try to put on some other mask. If I try to be an alpha male, which is doesn’t even exist. If I try to be a bad boy, if I try to stay cool lines that I read on Reddit or some awful dating coaches website, then okay, maybe I can pass that, pass that off for a date or so, but the mask is going to slip off and then she’s, she’s going to meet the real me anyway. So I’d rather, I’d rather sit there on a first date and say, yeah, my favorite thing in the world is watching Jeopardy and writing down my score on my Jeopardy pad. That goes back four years. She’s either going to want a date that kind of super nerd or she’s going to not. And that’s totally cool. I want to find women who love my type and that’s what radical, authentic authenticity is about. Connell (21m 34s): It’s being the best slash realest version of you and women who see value in you are going to go crazy for you. Brad (21m 42s): Gee, it doesn’t seem that hard, man, but we, we messed it up pretty well, possibly. I mean, what you just described is, you know, I guess it’s not easy when you’re sitting there in front of a real human and you’re nervous and it’s your first date or whatever, but it’s certainly an easier path to go then, you know, holding your pickup lines on your three by five card or whatever they, you know, Connell (22m 11s): I’ve done that too. Brad (22m 12s): Okay. Well, you know, let’s, let’s, let’s talk through where, where that boundary is when you do want to be yourself, you do want to be authentic, but Hey, you know, I don’t have an A game right now. I have a C minus cause I’m, I’m, I’m traumatized from my previous breakup and I just want to get out there and have fun, but I’m insecure, under-confident, you know, what is the coach step in there and do, since you, you can’t be whispering in his ear. Like some of the movies are with the earpiece or, you know, how, how do we get that guy primed? Connell (22m 45s): I can do a little bit of that in person when we go out to approach girls. But, but I, I don’t like to do that because I wanted to come from him. So if you are traumatized by from the last relationship, then you got to do a little work on yourself. Perhaps before you start dating, you want to walk into a first date or walk up to a woman with essentially a full cup, an overflowing cup of awesomeness and be able to say, Hey, I’m here to make your life better. If you’re open to it, not in an arrogant way, just in the sense that I have something to share. And so, yeah, don’t go on any dates. If you’d still deal with relationship trauma, get that handled first again, you want to be an open book on that date, not an open wound. Connell (23m 24s): And, and to, to that point, I think that, yeah, it’s you could have C minus game on a date. Women are women don’t want a man who hits them with the cool James Bond lines or some fancy moves. I mean, if you make her laugh and giggle and are totally on that night, great, but something really powerful happens when you become congruent. Congruent, meaning essentially congruent means you, you think, you speak, you act in alignment with what you’re feeling. So if you’re feeling C minus on your date, okay, there are some little moves and tricks to get that up to a B minus. Connell (24m 4s): But, but if you’re feeling at a C, then B that C date share with her what you’re thinking and feeling. So, so one of the, my training, my training for this, just so your listeners and viewers know is I spent five years working with all these different dating coaches, pickup artists, approaching thousands of women, hundreds of going on hundreds of dates. And one of the most powerful concepts I stumbled across was by being congruent by basically saying, and doing what you’re thinking and feeling you actually come across as way more confident than you might think to women. Even if you feel like you’re at a C minus. Quick story, one of the most beautiful women I ever approached early on in my journey, I was with my coach on this rooftop bar in New York city. Connell (24m 51s): And I saw this brunette who looked like Dakota Johnson at the time, who was my big crush or who became my big crush. And, and I said, oh, I really want to talk to her, but I’m just not feeling it. He said, what are your thoughts? What do you, what would you love to say to her? What’s the most honest thing you could say to her? And I said to him, I’m really nervous and shy, but I had to meet you. You’re my type. He’s like, cool, there’s your pickup line. Go give her that real vulnerable line. I walked over to her, tapped her on the shoulder and said that, hi, this is, I know this was random, but I’m actually really shy and nervous, but you’re totally my type. And she looked at me, she tilted her head and smiled and she said, oh yeah, you’re real shy. Connell (25m 34s): Hi, hi, I’m Amy. She thought it was a line. She thought I was a cool guy giving her a line, which instead of a scared to death dork giving her an honest feeling. So that kind of congruence is a really powerful sort of projection to give women because it’s honest and it’s in alignment. She’s not getting some kind of weird shtick. And it’s amazing how quickly that, and guess what, as soon as she smiled at me, I went from a C to an A that’s all it takes. So, but it takes courage to be, get that kind of confidence. You have to take action. In other words. Brad (26m 11s): Yeah. It seems. Can it be okay to not, not call it a pickup line in your mind and just approach a female in the grocery store because you, you want to spread, you know, good energy to the world? And, you know, you could say, have you tried those onions before? Something just, it doesn’t have a motive, you know? And it might lead to something Connell (26m 35s): I agree. I totally, I don’t even, I don’t even, I never use the word pickup line almost never. I don’t even, I don’t even like the word approach, even though I use it a in my book because I just Brad (26m 45s): Call it anxiety. So I want to ask you about that too. Connell (26m 48s): Yeah. Yeah. I don’t even love the word approach just because it puts, puts me in the mind of like a baseball pitcher with a big windup. And here’s the pitch that can create anxiety. To your point. Yeah. You’re in a grocery store. You see a woman who intrigues you and might be open to chatting. I think of it as, oh, I call it open opening. In other words, open a conversation. So I’ll say to a client, go open, say hi to her because we’re not trying to pick her up. At least not at first. We’re just trying to give we’re trying. We’re not trying to get in. There’s really no agenda here with any given quote unquote approach the agenda. Connell (27m 28s): It’d be a nice benefit, a nice bonus if we hit it off and we like each other and we’re on a date. Awesome. But the intention is not to get anything from her. The intention is to make her smile, give her a moment of genuineness Make her day or night a little bit better. And guess what? When you do that, when you make that shift, it does make the results better as a, as a dividend of, of approaching this from a higher plane, as opposed to get laid, get the number, get validation. No, no, no, no, no, no. We want to give way, way more than we ever expect to receive. The more we give to women, the more they’re they from an authentic, good intention to place. Connell (28m 9s): Guess what? That changes your confidence. You stand taller, you feel better. You don’t feel like the creepy pickup guy. You feel like a solid gentlemen, just out chatting up people at Whole Foods. And that’s actually the kind of vibe women want to be, you know, opened with. Brad (28m 25s): Hmm. I imagine that the reps would really help here where you just, as a matter of course, you’re going to be friendly and converse it to whoever you come across. And it might be a dude in the park and it might be a beautiful woman, the next block down. But you’re, you’re kind of, you know, away from that, that stress and that pressure of thinking, oh, there’s one that really, it really looks attractive to me. And now I gotta tighten up my game and all of a sudden you get nervous. Connell (28m 56s): Yeah, exactly. That’s when I take guys out at night for in-person training, one of the things we do is we talk to so many people that the part of your brain that is focused on how attractive is she? What do I want? How’s it going? That part of your brain switches off and you, you go into this flow state, it’s a flow state. In the book Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes about this flow state we enter into in various vehicles of life. And in meeting women socializing, going out in the world, you can enter this flow state when you talk to lots of people, because you’re right. If I just, if I’m a target hunter trying to pick up hot girls in a bar, I am probably not going to be really present and free flowing. Connell (29m 39s): I’m going to be agenda driven. But if I talk to cute couple, an old lady, a nice plain Jane who maybe I’m not attracted to, but friendly. All of a sudden, I’m talking to a cool, sweet, smart, beautiful woman who I am interested in talking to her was so much easier because I just talked to these other four or five people. And now I’m talking to a woman who, if I was just trying to approach tense, I’d my knees would be shaking because it’d be so in my head about it. So yeah, you want to approach the world basically. And you’re looking for that win-win genuine chemistry. When one, when one of your people you’re talking to is an attractive single woman. Brad (30m 25s): Tell me about this in-person training. This sounds super exciting. So you, you, you have a client. I imagine you start with probably you’re not heading out to the rooftop bar first and foremost, but maybe take us through that experience. How, how it works with your clients. Connell (30m 42s): Yeah, we will probably actually we, the way my personal training works is you’re right. It doesn’t start with the rooftop right away. We do a little pregame. Pre-brief where we talk about goals. How I teach a system, I teach a five step system that essentially we make following the system, the goal sort of like LeBron or Tiger Woods has their routine, right? They’re focused on routine. They’re focused on a great major league pitcher. All he’s really focused on is the catcher’s met. He’s not saying I’m going to pitch a no-hitter tonight. So you, we fall in love with the process. We fall in love with the structure and, and then we go out and we start socializing with people, gravitating to attractive women within reason, but also talking to anybody. Connell (31m 30s): And, and you never know who you might connect with. I took it. I took a client. His name is I’ll call him. James took a client out a couple of years ago. James at the time was about 50. And he had just gotten divorced after about a 25 year marriage, really traumatic, really painful. And he had literally not approached an attractive woman since the Clinton administration. So we went out one night and we’re chatting up everybody we’re following this process. I call it the five master steps. I won’t take you through all of them, but basically it’s just about getting social, breaking the ice and letting that radically authentic confidence, self arise once the fear subsides and the reason why we don’t just gravitate toward women as we talk to anybody. Connell (32m 16s): And we started talking to this young man, mid twenties, nice guy, army veteran. And about two minutes later, a beautiful Latina woman in a red dress comes next to him. I’m assuming they’re boyfriend, girlfriend, but you never know. So I said one of the most important questions you can ask when you’re out talking to people, Hey, how do you two know each other? They’re brother and sister. Oh, next thing you know, James is talking to her name is Sophia. And I’m talking to her brother. His back is to James and Sophia, unbeknownst to the brother. I’m looking, I’m looking at James and Sophia against the bar. And I’m talking to the brother finding out about his service. Connell (32m 57s): He serves in the military, great guy, and I’m watching James and Sophia. And I hear this and I see this. She takes his hands and says, yes, they’re real and places them on her chest. And they’re all over each other. And I’m just talking to the brother thinking I have a really weird job, a cool job, but a weird job. So that night James went out for the first time in 25 years and connected with this beautiful, awesome stunning woman and all it happened. The reason it happened is just because he followed a process that gave him the courage to chat, flirt open up, and yeah. Connell (33m 38s): So feel free to approach a guy cause he might be with, he might have his beautiful sister with him at the bar. Brad (33m 45s): Connell. Success story from the real life, the real life world. That’s awesome, man. So back to this five-year journey that you went on and, you know, your, your, your checkpoint for your book promotion talks about this, this, you know, this, this traumatic occurrence in your life with your getting married. And then as you describe it, getting dumped nine weeks after, was that the catalyst for you to study and learn more about relationships? Or let’s talk about how you got here a little more. Yeah, Connell (34m 15s): Yeah, absolutely. It was one of two catalysts. There were two really one was when my ex dumped me after nine weeks. And as I say in the book, it was over so fast. We could have fought for custody of the wedding cake. So, so when that ended, I felt, I really felt rejected by all women because the reason I married her as wonderful a woman as she was slash is very worthy, very wonderful woman. Who’s since gone on to, to happiness and become a mom, but I didn’t even want to marry her at the time, nor does she, me, but we were both settling. Right. And I was settling. And I think this is a recurring theme in, in dating and life in general, especially for men, is we settle for what we can get. Connell (34m 55s): We settle for less instead of settling for more. So I was settling for the one woman who I thought wanted me. And then when she dumped me after nine weeks, I felt rejected by all women. And over the following, couple of years, I had a few dates, but nothing really clicked and connected. And what I really wanted to do was go out and meet women in New York city where I was then living at the time. And I remember I was at a start. The other inflection point was I was at a Starbucks in park and 29th street. And it was beautiful wrunette was sitting by herself. She looked like Katie Holmes, who was my crush at the time. And I tried so hard to approach her. I even walked toward her, but then I kind of, I kind of walked around her, her table two or three times, like circling her like a frightened shark. Connell (35m 42s): And I just couldn’t summon the courage to say hi to say something. And then she got up and left and walked out. And I said to myself, wow, there’s, there’s the 1000th woman I’ve wanted to break the ice with in real life, but couldn’t do it. And that was when I went out and found a coach who helped me take the kinds of action that I wasn’t able to take inside. And the reason why I felt that way is simply because I was afraid of rejection. I was afraid that approaching a woman, if she liked me, that would, that would be incredible. That might change my life. But if she didn’t, I was afraid that that would remind me that I was unworthy, that I was not good enough for women, just how I felt. Connell (36m 23s): And that’s the big, bad Wolf here of dating for men is, is we have to embrace rejection. Rejection is not as bad as we think it is. What’s bad is rejecting yourself. It is not approaching the woman or not taking the chance because you’re afraid of rejection. I say, get, go out and get rejected a shit ton. Just do not reject yourself. Cause that’s the one kind of rejection you should fear. Brad (36m 49s): Yeah. Starting from the wrong point. Your cup’s not full. And I guess that’s where the fear of rejection comes from. Connell (36m 57s): Absolutely. You feel that you have an empty cup and if she turns you down, she’s going to take the cup and smashed it on the ground. But if your cup is full and she just says, oh no, thanks. Not, I’m not interested in sipping from that cup. That’s fine. Not everybody wants to sip that to sip that drink to stay on that metaphor for a second, a close to it. I, part of the idea of being radically authentic is showing women that real true distilled self sort of, I want you to be, I want you to be a shot of Jameson, your version of a shot of Jameson. In other words, give her that real distilled version of you. Don’t give her a watered down wine spritzer, almost guys date, give her the real shot of whiskey. Connell (37m 40s): Maybe she won’t want the drink just fine. Not everybody wants Jameson. But guess what? Women who like a nice shot of JMO are gonna are gonna catch a buzz on the good stuff, the real you, but that cup’s gotta be full in your mind too. Yeah, absolutely. What Brad (37m 56s): Do you see the women doing that you would if, if they were, if they were listening and wanted some advice, you know, on the other side of the coin, how can, how can they up their game or, you know, enhance the potential for connection instead of drama and nonsense? Connell (38m 14s): Hmm. I think that for women who are looking for men, I assume you’re talking about straight women, but for any anybody, but I’m speaking to straight women, you know what men love? We love it when a woman takes a little bit of a chance to start gives us a nice, clear signal that we can talk to her. It doesn’t mean that you have to approach us and make a big deal of it. You don’t have to be super alpha and assertive. And if that’s not your style, but gosh, I remember once being on the subway here in New York city and this really cool, cute girl just complimented me on my leather jacket and kind of with a smile. Connell (38m 55s): And that was all I needed to then keep the conversation going. And then that little like drop, I guess I would say to women drop a handkerchief or two, we know how hard it is to do that as men, because it’s kind of our job to go first. So when you can go first in real life, where at least give us a nice signal that you want us to say hi to you, or you want to chat. We appreciate it so much. We also empathize because we know how hard it is. And it’s just such a it’s. We, we, we love it. So feel free to, if you see that, if you see that, yeah. If you see that attractive man at the, at Starbucks or at the gym, or at a party, just say, Hey, excuse me, I like your tie. Connell (39m 35s): Like your shoes. I like your t-shirt. It doesn’t have to be super intense. You can still be lady like, and can you just give him drop that handkerchief? And I promise we’ll pick it up and be happy that you dropped it. Brad (39m 49s): Right. Same advice for the other side. It doesn’t have to be the, the ultimate James Bond smoothness. You could say a small compliment, right? Connell (39m 59s): Yes. Yeah. I started really simple G-rated. This goes for men and women, that opening comment, that opening line, for the most part, it should be, G-rated. Make it. Here’s a fun, little kind of bar experiment. A lot of guys say, what do I say? What’s a good opening line. Be flirtatious. Should I be really sexual? Should I be, you know, I don’t want to be in the friend zone. You’re just the point of an opener is just to open a conversation. It doesn’t have to be super sexual. It can be. In fact, it shouldn’t be for the most part. I like to say, imagine that you had a wife or a girlfriend and open with something that your imaginary wife or girlfriend would not be jealous of. Connell (40m 42s): If you said that to strange woman. Brad (40m 44s): Nice. Connell (40m 45s): In other words, Hey, looking good, honey. No, no, no, no. Good. But maybe, oh, Hey, you’re drinking chai latte. Very cool. That’s what I’m drinking. What’s your favorite? What’s your favorite kind? Or, you know, what’s your favorite kind of latte? It can be that simple. It’s just, we just want women are so used to being approached in a, the few men who do quote, unquote, approach that they do it in a very like alpha, aggressive, weird, creepy way they objectify women. So if you just go in G-rated and are friendly, that’s very charming to women. Yeah. And that’s all you need to, to kick things off. Brad (41m 19s): Oh, you’re, you’re, we’re taking a detour man. You reminded me of a, of a Tiger Woods story. So you probably tell it, but I remember, you know, when this whole thing unwound, they were, they were kind of talking about how, how did Tiger go from the nerdy college kid who his old girlfriend is, is interviewed on the documentary, saying he was so sweet and shy and this and that. And then, you know, fast forward. And they’re blaming putting a little bit of blame on, on Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan and Vegas and taking Tiger into their way. But one of the exchanges they had was, you know, Tiger confided to Charles and Michael, that he was a little shy and didn’t know how to approach women. And they took him aside and said, here’s what you say, hi, I’m Tiger Woods. Connell (42m 4s): That was their life-changing advice for the man. He went up, he went up with that a game. And what do you know? Yeah. I’ve never heard that story. Yeah. I have heard that story. That’s actually good advice. That’s good advice. Except change the name from Tiger Woods to whatever your name is. Brad (42m 19s): It was a cool idea. You just come up and say, hi, this is my name. See what happens, huh? Connell (42m 24s): Yeah. So there’s two ways I do. I there’s two ways to approach a woman or there’s two kinds of openers. I write about this. There’s indirect and there’s direct. Indirect basically means, Hey, I really like your hair, dress, skirt, cool outfit, something in the environment. You’re not saying I’m here to flirt with you. You’re talking about something in the environment. If you’re at star, if you’re standing in line at Starbucks, you say to the woman next to you, should I get a cake pop? That’s an indirect open, cause it’s not about anything. Romantic, a direct open is something where you make your intention clear from the start. And that’s okay to do. It’s a little bit scarier. But the reason I thought of it is because one of the best direct opens you can ever give a woman. Connell (43m 6s): If you’re feeling really confident is basically that the Tiger Woods move. Hey, excuse me, miss. I just had to say hi to you. Hi, my name is Connell. My name is Brad. My name is Tiger. Whoever you are the, the confidence to do that is shows a woman so much value that you see in yourself that that alone can make a lot of women get really kind of whoa, this guy, this guy believes in himself. And if you’ve got good eye contact, good vocal tonality, that’s a really powerful way to open a conversation. So you can go direct in that way too. And a lot of women who want a confident guy are going to be really excited that a man had the, the cajones is to step up to them that way. Connell (43m 46s): So that was actually good advice that Charles gave. Brad (43m 49s): We, we didn’t even detour. We came right back Connell (43m 52s): Into the zone, into man, the flow state golfing and dating. There’s a lot of overlap. Brad (44m 1s): Tell me some more about the overlap of golfing and dating my overlap that I recall when I was a kid playing junior golf and the pros always had, they were so slick and they always had girls nearby and, you know, slick dress, slick car. It seemed like they, they were very easy with the ladies. So maybe they were given a lot of lessons who knows what, but it seemed like the typecast for the teaching pro of the world. That that was my memory from back in the day. Connell (44m 30s): I think that the biggest overlap between golfing and dating is how it’s probably for both. I think it’s 80% mindset, confidence being comfortable in your own skin and 20 to 25% technique, at least with dating. In golf technique is important. Especially with puttting. Maybe putting as a better example, because putting is all different kinds of putting styles, work, different putters. You can break your wrist. You can, you can use long putter, short putters, lots of different techniques work putting is all about confidence, right? Confidence in reps, you need reps and confidence and dating is the same. Connell (45m 12s): You need experience. You need reps and you need to, you need a little bit of self confidence. How do you get that? Wow, that takes a lot of effort, but I think it starts with courage. Don’t let a lack of confidence. Stop you from taking action. Because in my view, courage is the currency that buys you confidence. I had no confidence when I started approaching women zero, I was scared to death. I was the first night I went out to approach women at a rooftop bar in New York city. 13 years ago, I did, I had the dry heaves in the men’s room stall before we went out, I was petrified. Connell (45m 53s): And that’s probably how a lot of people feel when they walk onto Augusta National or they walk onto the big tournament in their life. Brad (45m 60s): First tee club. Connell (46m 1s): First tee. Exactly. So what did I do? I could not summon confidence. I didn’t have it. So I took action anyway, how I use the value of courage. I call that a value. It’s basically the secret weapon. You can’t have confidence, but you can have courage. Guess what if you take, if you take enough action with courage propelling, you forward, the confidence comes. You buy it with that currency called courage. Now I can, within reason I can approach a woman and be confident and know what to say and get connections, but I had to earn that. And a lot of men don’t take the action they want because they say, oh, I don’t feel confident enough to, I say, hell with that use courage. Connell (46m 43s): And you might be confident in 30 seconds when she smiles at you or you might be more competent tomorrow night after you’ve approached your first two or three women. And tomorrow night, you’ll be more confident. So don’t let a lack of confidence. Stop you from action. Use courage to buy that confidence. Brad (46m 59s): Love it. Yeah, you can’t fake the confidence. It’s it’s there and it’s going to come in due time and through hard effort or whatever, but the courage, anyone can summon that. So that’s, that’s a good, yes. Works for golf for sure. Connell (47m 14s): Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think it’s, I think it’s actually easier in dating than golf, frankly. I was way better as a dater than I ever got on the golf course. Brad (47m 25s): You entered into that role due mainly to a strong interest in golf, just as a casual player. And then you just took it and ran with it for many years. Did you travel on the tour and stuff like that? Connell (47m 37s): Yeah. I met almost all the big players and at Tiger, Phil. Phil was the only one I never actually met. I met all the biggies, Arnie, Jay. I interviewed Jack amazing and I followed it because I love, excuse me. I love writing. And I knew I’d be able to write about, oh, I wanted to write about something that I loved. And also I wanted to play a lot of golf for free and get free lessons, which is, which was a thrill. And I loved it. I loved it. Brad (48m 8s): So you talk about, you know, having the, the devastating breakup and lacking confidence and dry heaves in the bathroom. And I think so many of us can relate to that. Maybe that small percentage of, you know, the high school, alpha male, who was the starting quarterback and had had a smooth sailing, you know, maybe, maybe 12.7% of the men are blank on this. But most of us have had to work through these painful lack of just straight ahead, simple skills to go up and approach a woman with an indirect it’s nothing. Right. But how did, how did we get to this point that it’s, it’s such a difficult thing. You think there’s some socialization or some cultural pressure because they, women are objectified in culture. Brad (48m 54s): And so therefore, you know, we’re, we’re, our brains are in the wrong place or something? Connell (48m 60s): Great question. This is super deep. I think there’s two pieces to this. Why is approaching women’s so hard is what you just asked. And there’s two reasons. One is that we have evolved as homo-sapiens to be comfortable in bands and groups. And I feel like on some level, actually a sports psychologist back in my golf days basically confirmed this, or I should say an expert in, in evolution and, and sports performance. He, he basically, I talked to him about golf and then we switched over to dating because that was just beginning this journey of approaching women. And he said, well, I think what’s happening here is that 200,000 years ago, we were on the savannas of east Africa. Connell (49m 43s): Right? And if you quote, unquote approached the tribal leader’s woman, guess what? You got to rock to the back of your head, or you got kicked out of the band either way, you’re dead. And I think the fear of public speaking, the fear of approaching the fear of social negative, social judgment, we’re, we’ve evolved to, to link that to death, pain, isolation, being, you know, basically extradited. So I think on some level there might be an evolutionary thing here happening like really deeply internally. But what’s much more common and more fixable. You can’t fix that it’s evolution, but what’s much more common is simply this misinterpretation that we have as men that we all, every pretty much, almost every straight single man has a desire to feel attractive to women, right? Connell (50m 31s): To be the guy, the kind of guy who can get a beautiful woman in his life. Why wouldn’t we all want that? And if you approach a woman and she says, and she rejects you, our brains are, are because of we, we doubt ourselves. And we, we misinterpret that information as rejection and proof of our lack of worthiness. So what happens, Brad? I’ve seen this so many times and I’ve felt this to myself is a man wants to talk to that woman. And if she likes him, he’ll feel like he’s a man, right? Sexy, sexy, confident. He’ll be able to reproduce. He’ll have a beautiful girlfriend. If she says, no, he’ll, he’ll catastrophize that, which is to misinterpret the quote unquote rejection as, oh, she rejected me because I’m too short. Connell (51m 19s): I’m not cool. Which means I’ll be lonely and have to only date inflatable women or settle or so, so the are missing this psychology, this misinterpretation of that information turns an approach into judgment day on your very worth as a man and whether or not you’ll have kind of women in your life. That’s heavy, it’s heavy Brad (51m 41s): And it’s heavy in eighth grade, dude. And then again in 10th, and then again in 11th, you know what I mean? I mean, I don’t think it’d be too heavy when you’re 53 and have had years of experience. It shouldn’t be too heavy, but I can definitely relate to that. You know, those early things when you’re not even sure of yourself as a person and then you get rejected. Yeah. It’s, it’s tough to come back from, you know, Connell (52m 5s): Well, what I do, how am I that in-person coaching? I do the, I call it wingman bootcamp type training. The first thing I do for the night is they don’t start off the night by approaching. I start the night out by approaching and I tell fresher, no I take, but I take it up even higher. Let’s say so I’d say, if you, if you were my client and we went to this rooftop club, rooftop bar, for example, it’s hopping, beautiful women everywhere. I’d say, okay, Brad, look around who is the least approachable woman here? Who is the scariest, most unapproachable woman. And you might say, oh, that tall blonde on the dance floor surrounded by six of her girlfriends. I’d say, cool. She’s my first approach to the night. Connell (52m 46s): So I walk over high degree of getting rejected, almost a certainty, right? And I want my clients to see me get what I call rejected out. I had been getting blown out. I like to exaggerate the point of absurdity. So we take the, we take the, the, the fear out of it, but I say, all right, watch me get blown out. Probably, or I’ll approach a couple that’s making out I’ll approach a guy and a girl, and I’ll tap them on the shoulder and say, Hey, can I cut in? And you should see the looks I get from the guys. When I do that, by the way, from the guy who’s making out with this girl, usually the girl laughs. She thinks it’s funny and the guys are not happy. I’m there. But I want them to see me get rejected. Connell (53m 27s): So then I can poke myself and say, look, I’m still a corporeal. I’m still here. I didn’t burst into dust. I’m still awesome. I’m still enough. I’m still a really cool guy for lots of women. And I want my, my lesson or my clients to learn the same thing as I want you to know that if you approach that woman and she rejects you, blows you out, you’re still a man. You’re still a great guy. If she loves you and she takes you home and you have a hookup with a bikini model you’re still a flawed regular dude. You’re still a man. We don’t want to get too high or too low, but mainly it’s about not getting too low. So rejection rejection is something to embrace, not something to fear. In fact, it’s actually part of the process. Brad (54m 9s): So we had a little hiccup in the, in the routine here with a quarantine for the last year. And some, I think we’re coming out of it in certain ways. But how did that affect your, the whole scene here and the people you coached and, and in general, how has it affected the, the single scene? Connell (54m 32s): I think that for obvious reasons, people weren’t going out except in Miami to meet to what’s up Miami and other, other pockets of the world. And yeah, I haven’t been doing my in-person training for the last 14 months for COVID related reasons. Just for health-related reasons. And, but the silver lining to this is that I think we’re about to enter like right now, like literally right now, we’re about to enter this golden age of going back to meeting people in real life. Even before COVID there was a lot of dating app fatigue. I’ve done. I’ve been parts of focus groups. I’ve talked to a lot of people, a lot of women say pre COVID women were telling me guys never approached me anymore. Connell (55m 13s): I’m so sick of the apps. I love it. Just a cool guy to come chat me up and it’s sexy. It makes us feel wanted. It makes us feel interested. And that was there’s a market share, but that was before lots of lockdown. And now that we’ve, we’ve been on zoom and FaceTime and, and the apps for the last year, plus I think that now is the perfect time to just drop, get rid of the apps, get your head out of your apps and a walk up, walk up to an attractive stranger. We’re dying for that human connection. And gents, you might be surprised how much women want the right guy to approach them. Do women want every guy to approach? Connell (55m 53s): No. Do women want authentic? Well-meaning charming man to approach hell. Yeah. Even if she’s not available, she’ll say thank you. You made my day. I’m wearing a ring, but you’re amazing. Keep it up. And I think that, yeah, I think that the second half of 2021 and beyond it’s going to be this new era of, Hey, let’s go out and meet people in real life, because think about it. What’s weirde online, dating versus approaching. What’s weird. Are you telling me taking a rectangular box out of your pocket, swiping on an 87 times, finding a duck face looking woman who you find attractive, pressing a star, sending messages back and forth over this weird system or doing what we’ve been doing for 200,000 years, which is, oh, cute girl. Connell (56m 39s): Let me go say hi. See if we hit it off. One of those things is way more natural and normal than the other, but over the last 12 years or so in the Tinder age, we’ve been kind of reconditioned. So I, I like both. I like having a little bit of online dating fun and also meeting people in real life. I think that’s healthy, but we don’t want to do only online dating. We were meant to, we were meant to meet each other in person. And so thank God for vaccines, right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Brad (57m 8s): One thing you said a while back that you realized you were settling as did your ex-wife and how does someone know that they’re settling and where’s that, where’s that idea coming from and in contrast to saying, well, you know, no, one’s perfect, but we’re going to work on this relationship. And it has potential rather than a black and white where the new black and white view. Connell (57m 37s): I think that, okay. Good question. No, one’s really ever asked me that. Brad (57m 42s): And I’m trying to keep this guy on his toes. Connell (57m 44s): Got me. It’s funny. That’s how I got the Jack Nicholas interview is I pitched his agent and I said, I’m going to ask Jack questions he’s never been asked before. Right. And the first thing he said to me on our, on our interview on our interview was all right, Mr. Mr. Big shot shot. What do you got? I hear you. I hear you got some questions I’ve never heard. So it worked, it worked . Brad (58m 5s): What did you ask about what are some of your favorites? Connell (58m 7s): Oh man. I, I think I asked him Jack, if you could travel back in time to visit your 18 year old self and give him one piece of advice, what would you give? And for the life of me, I don’t remember his answer. So I’m not going to, I’m not going to pretend. I remember it’s been awhile, but he, he liked most of my questions. He did give me a little bit of shit. He said, I heard that one before, but eh, not bad Brad (58m 31s): That counts right there. Connell (58m 34s): Yeah. Yeah. But I think that before you get into a relationship, I think that it it’s in, it’s in a guy’s interest to be able to say, okay, I dated around a little bit. I’ve had a few dates, a few girlfriends or, or at least a handful of dates to kind of get a sense for who you vibe with and who you connect with. Because when I got married, I had never dated anybody before. I, I literally married the first woman who I thought loved me. And so I was coming from a place of scarcity. I didn’t know it was settling at the time. I just felt like, Hey, this is the best I can do. I’d rather marry her than be alone. Right? Which of course is a terrible mindset to have going into a wedding. And hers was similar actually in her own way. She was settling. Connell (59m 14s): She was totally settling for me. And, and so how do you know, I guess if you’ve never dated anybody and the first woman who kisses you and looks at you with big puppy, dog eyes, if you think she’s the one, maybe she is, but give yourself a few options. Give yourself a little bit of abundance. Not saying you have to date five women a week and be a player with some rotation. Not saying you can’t say you don’t have to. But I do highly recommend you get a sense of abundance because the right way to kind of settle down with somebody, I feel, is to be able to say, wow, Jessica’s awesome. And oh man, Isabella was what? Connell (59m 54s): A fun, wild, little fling that was, but wow. There’s just something about Allie. Gosh, she’s like my she’s like, we’re like best friends, but, but sexual energies there and we just watch movies all night and it just felt so right. I think Allie is the one, because now you get to make a choice from a little bit of context and reasonable number of options instead of just trying to glom onto the first woman who, who likes you. So yeah, I, I recommend, we try to make these relationship choices from a place of, of reasonable abundance. Brad (1h 0m 26s): Do we have an alternative problem today with an excess of choices and getting that strange sensation of, I forget the term is where, you know, you’re, you’re unsatisfied when they have research where you go to the car dealership and if you have 23 choices and you, you make one, you’re less satisfied than if you choose the best out of three, Connell (1h 0m 49s): Right? Yeah. I think that’s called. Is that something fatigue? Like decision fatigue, decision fatigue. Yeah. There’s you can have too many options. Absolutely. Certainly a first world problem to have, but a problem, a champagne problem, but a problem. Nevertheless, and I, I like to look at it like this. I think there’s, there’s different categories of, of women based on where you are in your life as a man there’s like wrong person, wrong time. That’s a bad time to settle down. There’s right. There’s right person, wrong time, which is trickier. Connell (1h 1m 32s): There’s wrong person, right time. And that’s what a lot of men where a lot of men find themselves in a, oh, I want to settle down and ready for a relationship, but, but wrong person. What I asked men to do, there’s a whole chapter about this in the book is, is you want to get to that place where it’s right time, of course, and right person, right person, right time. So that’s the model I think men should try to follow is if you want to be single and quote unquote, so your for a little while, then do that to get that out of your system or to experience a little bit of fun and dating fun so that you can get to that point where you’re like, okay, it’s the right time for me. Now I have sown some oats, women like me all good. Connell (1h 2m 12s): Now it’s time to find that real, incredible quality woman who I really connect with. And then when you get right, right woman, right time, boom. That’s when you put a ring on it, as they say, literally or figuratively. Brad (1h 2m 25s): What percentage of men do you think today are looking for everlasting love to put a ring on it? And what percentage are seeing a future where it’s going to be nonstop, dopamine excitement with maximum expiration date, six months to two years or whatever? Because Wendy Walsh talks about this too. Where now there’s no more rules like there were in, let’s say our parents’ generation where you’re, there’s a lot of social pressure to get married. If you don’t get married by the time you are two years out of college, you’re gonna, the pickings are going to get slimmer and all this kind of stuff where today people can choose whatever life they want to live. Brad (1h 3m 5s): And they may, there’s no, there’s no obligation to reproduce anymore. We’ve got enough people in the world and women don’t need a man for economic support as they did a few generations ago. So how does that look on the landscape today? Connell (1h 3m 20s): That’s a great question about the percentage it’s. I think the majority of men want a soulmate partner long-term person in their life. At the same time. I think a majority of those men also want to have a little bit of variety. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I think as men, we are wired to want to feel really sexy and insignificant about ourselves through the lens of women. I think about it. What are the, what are the top three ways men feel like men? A top three or four ways making lots of money, sports, muscles, and dating success. Connell (1h 4m 1s): Being with a beautiful woman or two or three. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with getting a little bit of variety. I enjoy Baskin Robbins more than any other ice cream store at the same time. I don’t want to be some 65 year old guy. Who’s at Baskin-Robbins every week. I want one, I want one flavor. I want one flavor eventually. So I think most men are most men. I think if I was going to give you like, kind of like the, the, not the ideal, but the, the most common sort of profile of a single guy, I think most guys would like to date around a little bit, have a little bit of fun, have a fling or two, or just get some experience to realize, Hey, I’m good enough. Women do like me. Connell (1h 4m 41s): I’m attractive. I’m sexy too. Plenty of women. Now that I’ve got that part of me handled. Now let’s settle down to, to, to know that I’m, I’m going to be able to have that love and connection because we all need love. We all need that deep connection. Almost pretty much all of us, I think. So. Yeah. I think the number of men who are just like, I want to be at Baskin-Robbins for the rest of my life. I think those guys are actually a small, small man. Brad (1h 5m 8s): Interesting. I guess we should, we should end asking you about your, your current status. And also, are you still single in New York City or that’s your deal right now? Connell (1h 5m 20s): Yeah, I, two years ago, I fell in love with a woman. I wanted her to be the one. She is chapter 13 of my book. I dedicate the book to her. It didn’t work out. You can find out why, if you’d read the book. It’s a really heartwarming, heartbreaking and heartwarming story at the same time. So after and I was about ready to start dating in March of 2020, gee, what could go wrong there? Brad (1h 5m 45s): Ladies and gentlemen, Connell is ready. He is announced he is ready Connell (1h 5m 49s): Right? I think the universe just said, no, now’s not the right time for you. Listen COVID is going to happen. So I took 2020 off from dating and I’ve been back out there again the last six weeks going on dates from online dating and basically practicing what I preach. And I have a date lined up tomorrow, actually, as we talk about this and my goal is exactly what we’ve been talking about. I am looking to get, get back out there, feel good about dating, meet a few different women and then absolutely various, as soon as reasonably possible, settle down with somebody really wonderful, who feels, I feel connected with who I can snuggle up with who I feel that sexual connection with because yeah, I played the field. Connell (1h 6m 36s): I’m so lucky to have been able to get the kind of validation and confidence from women that I never had for the first 38 years of my life. And that, that felt great for a lot of years off and on. But it’s, it’s, I feel that’s candy for the ego. That’s that kind of like jumping around bed hopping just flings only. There’s a time and place for that for many men, but it’s really ego for the, for the candy, for the ego. I want something longterm or nutritious. So yeah, I’m looking for, I tell guys I’m Hitch or I tell, I tell women on Bumble, on dating apps. Hey, I’m hitch looking for is either [inaudible] which is definitely where I am. Brad (1h 7m 17s): Yeah, love it. Does this issue ever arise of your, your, your life’s work and your, your profile? You know what I mean? Like, are you recognized when you’re out there with the clients ever or when you get to dating and you’re being your radical, authentic self, I suppose, you know, there might be a certain percentage of, of dates that feel intimidated or uncomfortable due to your vast knowledge of what’s happening in real time? Even maybe your perspective from the 20,000 foot level where they’re going to be watching what they say, because you’re, you’re the ultimate perception and, you know, redirection person, I don’t know. Connell (1h 7m 56s): Yeah. That goes away after about five or 10 minutes when a woman tells me being really genuine. Yeah. Brad (1h 8m 2s): Right. Yeah. On this interview. Yeah. Connell (1h 8m 5s): Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah. You felt authentic to me. Brad (1h 8m 8s): How about you and listeners? This guy? Didn’t he, wasn’t trying to pull a fast one on us and, and sell more books, even though you’re going to sell more books, you were doing it right way. I love it. Yeah. Connell (1h 8m 17s): Well, when you’re really radically authentic, which includes being present, being really present with that person listening, there’s nothing to get caught doing. A good friend of mine, a good friend of mine said, oh, Connell, you’re screwed when your book comes out with, with your dating life, because all your moves are in the book. And I said to her, but wait a minute. Like really the moves are be super awesome and find out if that woman likes you’re awesomeness. Like how do you get caught doing that? But there’s one cool lesson I’ve learned in the last six weeks that I can share with your listeners, because this is important. I lean into the whole dating coach thing on my profile. Connell (1h 8m 59s): I lean hard into it. I say, Hey, I’m a dating coach for men. I’m Hitch looking for him, either Mendez that women either really love that. And I hear from them because I know, or they probably a lot of them probably don’t a lot of them probably won’t swipe on that, which is totally fine. Just as an in approaching in any kind of staining situation, you want to make sure your online dating profile has a very clear avatar that kind of just jumps off of a woman’s phone that says who you are, whatever that might be. I’m a dating coach. Maybe you’re maybe you’re an adrenaline junkie or maybe you’re I have a, I have a client who’s like a self-help nerd. And his, his profile is all about, he loves extremes he’s into self-improvement. Connell (1h 9m 40s): He goes to seminars and there’s kind of a sense of like extremes and women like that. So don’t water down your profile, lean into like a clear, simple avatar that that’s that’s high value, but also different than all the other guys. And that’s, what’s going to get women to kind of break out of their swiping hypnosis and say, oh, this is a podcast host, who also is a golf nut. That’s different. That’s not, I like long walks on the beach. That’s yeah. And so find your avatar, whoever you are, a single dad, a jock, a bad boy, if that’s your thing, although most I’m a super nerd. Connell (1h 10m 22s): Yeah. Find, find a clear, simple avatar to kind of show women who you are and that’s going to speak to like that market of women. That’s how you get lots of matches on the, on the app. Brad (1h 10m 31s): Oh my gosh. I love it. Great. Take away advice. Connell (1h 10m 37s): Don’t there you go. Yeah. Even if you’re not gonna work that out, Brad (1h 10m 42s): You can become one oh, Connell Barrett, great interview Dating Sucks. But You Don’t, it’s the name of his new book, go get it on Amazon or wherever you’d like to get books. And how else can we connect with you, including taking it all the way to the, the private client outing on the, on the rooftop that, that sounds enticing to, to someone in the right category? Connell (1h 11m 3s): Yeah, absolutely. They can go to my website, which is dating transformation.com and I’m on dating transformation.com. Lots of free tips. I have a free video series where every week they get free tips from, and there’s also a way to reach out to me if you’re interested in coaching. Brad (1h 11m 18s): Thank you for listening everybody. Thank you, Connell Barrett. Thank you for listening to the show. I love sharing the experience with you and greatly appreciate your support please. Email podcast@bradventures.com with feedback, suggestions and questions for the Q and A shows. Subscribe to our email list to Brad kearns.com for a weekly blast about the published episodes and a wonderful bi-monthly newsletter edition with informative articles and practical tips for all aspects of healthy living. You can also download several awesome free eBooks when you subscribe to the email list. 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