Hinge expert shares dating advice for ambitious nerds

All right. So our friend Logan Ury, she's a behavioral scientist turned dating coach. And according to the analytics on this podcast, 93% of you listeners, you're men. A lot of you are young. And according to the data, a lot of you are also single. And so we thought it'd be cool to have Logan come on to talk about dating. And it's shockingly just like building a business in that there's actually a process that you could follow. You can iterate yourself there. And Logan actually broke down how Sean and I met our spouses and gave a bunch of useful tips on how to meet someone. And it's all backed by science. And honestly, it's pretty hilarious. So check out this episode on how to meet your future spouse. All right. Logan is a behavioral scientist. I know you, Logan, as just my good friend, but you also had a book called How Not to Die Alone. And now you're on this tear where you've become a little bit of an expert when it comes to dating, but also with masculinity. I just think you're a great conversationalist and a wonderful person, and you're really, really smart, and you have a lot of data to back a lot of your opinions.

And you have a Netflix show. You're the something, something, something high up on the research side at Hinge. Is that right?

Yeah, the director of relationship science. But sometimes people just call me the something, something, something.

Yeah, you can put that on your LinkedIn. Um, Sam, I got to tell you a story. I think I've been sitting on this story for a little while. So I met Logan for the first— you know Logan well, she's your friend. I met Logan for the first time at a conference recently. She walks up to me, I reach out my hand to basically shake her hand. She goes straight for my face and just starts fixing my eyebrows. Logan doesn't— we haven't met. She hasn't introduced herself. She's just fixing my eyebrows for me because they're all bushy and crazy. And then she's like, oh, like, she's like, my dad has crazy eyebrows. And then I just go, what? And by the way, I'm sitting down like dog. I'm sitting at the lunch table, so I'm like a pet. She's petting me. And I just thought, the confidence that this woman must have. She must come on the show because nobody has that confidence to do that.

High agency.

Isn't that an insane move?

That's a high agency move.

It was one of the craziest things ever anyone's ever done. Logan, explain yourself.

I think I did say, can I touch your face? But then you didn't seem that into it, and then I was like, that was the weirdo thing to do.

Well, did you feel more into it? Did you think I was gonna be into it?

Because Sean, I did make an impression on you.

You did. Honestly, I never forgot. I went home and my daughter since then has just been coming up to me and doing it. And she's like, you know what I'm doing? And I'm like, yeah, you're doing the thing that girl did. She goes, yeah. And this is my 5-year-old. And so she just—

I couldn't be more happy about this intro.

Well, I feel, Logan, I feel like you are incredibly confident, but you're also like, in a good way, you're like conniving. I don't know a better word where it's like you see like the end goal and you're like, I'm going to experiment with this, this, this and this, and I'm just going to follow this process. I don't know a better word to describe it. Calculating. You try things. And I think you said, you know, you had a bunch of clients where you would teach them how to date and you said men were the easiest ones because you would say like, look, you need to lose weight, you need to dress better, and then you need to get a haircut. And I need you to then go up and say these 5 words to this woman, and I need you to do that 50 times. And they would go, yes, ma'am. And then you'd tell a woman the same thing and she'd be like, well, you're screwed up too. You know what I mean? Like there was like a difference of, of like how people would react to your instruction.

Well, I think that's why I love My First Million and truly am a fan of this show. Like, have listened to it for years, is that I think the way that the two of you see the world is that it's a game, and if you know the rules, you can win it. And I feel like a lot of the show is just teaching people how to play the game. And that's really the way that I like to think about the world. And so many times I'll be like, okay, if Sam was on my shoulder, like, what would he say? Or Sam, I'll ask you specifically for your advice on things because I think you sort of just like smile your way through life and are like, yeah, I could figure that out. Oh, I need to get 30,000 followers on Instagram? Like, duh, just do some like shirtless cold plunging videos. Oh wait, that's our other friend.

But that's how—

Subtweet.

Yeah, we're talking about Sahil Blue, but that's how, uh, that's how, uh, but that's how you live. And I think that's, that, that's interesting. I think it's interesting also because. We have, you know, I think like we looked at our analytics the other day, 93% of our listeners are men and like the majority of them are young men and they look at dating like this impossible thing, but they look at like engineering or building up businesses as very like systematic and process-oriented. It's kind of the same thing though.

Totally. Yes. And this is why I'm so excited to talk to the MFM audience because I really feel like I can help them with dating because the way that I think about it is dating is a skill. So we're born knowing how to love. We have these natural instincts, but Nobody teaches you how to date, and dating is actually pretty new in the span of human history. So think about how people used to get married. So maybe your parcel of land touched somebody else's parcel of land, so your dads would marry you off so that they would be combined, or it was about economic institutions. But now, starting in around 1800s, people started dating on their own and creating these partnerships. And so we don't know how to date. We don't know how to pick a partner for ourselves. And I think a lot of people are failing at it. And so that's why I'm here to really help people understand that dating is a skill. And you can get better at it.

All right, so I've built a few companies that have made a few million dollars a year, and I've built two companies that have made tens of millions of dollars a year. And so I have a little bit of experience launching, building, creating new things, and I actually don't come up with a lot of original ideas. Instead, what I'm really, really good at, what my skillset is, is researching different ideas, different gaps in the market and reverse engineering companies. And I didn't invent this, by the way. We had this guy, Brad Jacobs. We talked about him on the podcast. He started like 4 or 5 different publicly traded companies worth tens of billions of dollars each. He actually is the one who I learned how to do this from. And so with the team at HubSpot, we put together all of my research tactics, frameworks, techniques on spotting different opportunities in the market, reverse engineering companies, and figuring out exactly where opportunities are versus just coming up with a random silly idea and throwing it against the wall and hoping that it sticks. And so if you want to see my framework, you can check it out. The link is below in the YouTube description.

So give us like, I don't know, start, start with, start, start with something here. So what's the first interesting thing that, that you think is less understood or misunderstood?

Great. Yes. I've been thinking about your audience really as a lot of maximizers. So people who might feel like they want to find the perfect partner. And so they're going to keep searching and searching until they find that person. And I too am a maximizer. It would take me months to even buy buy an espresso machine. And so that's even worse when it comes to people finding a partner. But the mistake that a lot of people make, especially the MFM maximizer audience, is that they search for too long. And so what happens is that they think, okay, well, I want to find a partner who is the hotness of this girl and the ambition of this girl and the family background of this girl, and I'm just going to keep searching until I find that person. And what they don't understand is that there's diminishing returns over time. And so there's this concept called the secretary problem. Have you heard of it?

Yeah, I'm using it right now to search for an apartment.

Perfect. Okay, so this comes from a line of mathematical inquiry called optimal stop theory, which is how long should you search and when should you stop? So imagine that you're hiring a secretary and there's 100 candidates. You have to go through them one at a time. After each one, you have to say yes or no, and you can't go back. So at what point should you stop? So what they say is you should go through the first 37 people and say, who is the single best candidate of those 37? And that person now becomes your benchmark. The next time that you find someone as good or better than that person, hire them. So the idea is you don't wanna go too long because then all the good people might be in the past, but you don't wanna go too short because you don't know the pool. And so 37% is approximately the right amount of time. So how do you apply that to dating? So imagine hypothetically you're going to date from ages 18 to 40. What is this 37% mark? It's about 26.1 years old. And so by the time you're 26, you have already met, you know, a third of the people and you have your benchmark person. Next time you find someone who you like as much or more than them, marry that person. And this is such important advice for people because I think that people have their benchmark and then meet someone they like as much and then say, well, if they're great, I can find someone even better. And then they get be 40, 41, 42, and all their friends are on their second or third kid, and they're still there trying to, you know, go to Vegas for the weekend and no one's available. And so I think that maximizers do really well in a lot of areas of life, but when it comes to dating, they can actually get left behind in their search for perfection.

I think, uh, Sean, she was at my house one time recently, and like, she was talking to Sarah, and she was like talking about maximizers, and then she was like, but Sarah, You are a settler or something like that.

A satisficer. Satisficer.

Yeah.

Just like you are just okay with like okayness.

I can— first of all, Sam and I are both obsessed with Sarah. She is wonderful. So it's not an insult at all. And actually the research shows that between maximizers and satisficers, satisficers are often happier because it's not that they settle or have a low bar. It's that when they find something that meets their bar, they just buy it or accept it or move in, whatever the matter is. And so maximizers, it takes them longer to make a decision, and once they make it, they question it. And satisficers know what they want, and then when they find it, they're happy with it. And so I think Sarah really is a happy satisficer.

See, this, this, this makes so much sense to me. You know, when I was, when I was younger, I started a company with my two best friends. And on one, one hand, there's my buddy Trevor, and Trevor was like me where, now I know the word, he's a, he was a maximizer. We would always go try to try new food. New restaurants. So every time, every time we go out to eat, we try— we want to try a new place. Every time we try a new place, we would try to try a new dish at that place. And the reality is that when you do that, you have a lot of unsatisfying lunches, right? Because you try a bunch of stuff that you don't actually like, and you're just kind of hunting for that, the satisfying feeling of once in a while finding something great. And our other buddy, he would just eat Qdoba all the time. And Qdoba is like aggressively mediocre. And so One day he was like, yeah, I'll never try as many foods as you, but I'll be happier every day for lunch. And it, it, it kind of stuck with me. It's like, oh wow, there really are two different approaches for life. I'm not sure which one's better objectively, but there's definitely a better for me and a better for him. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So research from Adam Grant, the Wharton professor, finds that satisficers are happier and that they make just as good of decisions. So you might think, especially someone who listens to this podcast, no, no, no, but I'm gonna make the better decision by searching for longer. And that's not what the research shows.

Yeah.

But let me ask you a question. Okay. So the secretary thing makes sense to me cuz hiring a secretary is not like life or death mistakes. But marrying the wrong person, that's probably one of the, the hardest decisions to untangle yourself from. And this approach you have where you're like, you should get to 26.1 years old and then marry the next best person you meet— it's cool, sounds cool. Like, did you do that? Does anybody actually do that?

That sounds insane.

I mean, I did that. You showed it to you.

What year did you do it intentionally? You might have happened to meet somebody when you're 26. You weren't like I've gone through 37% of the dating pool. I have a benchmark. All right, I'm going to— if anybody's better than Rebecca, she's it. That wasn't the way you thought about it.

What was your number of 37%, though?

Like, dude, I went on to— I went on— I probably went on, I don't know, 20 terrible dates, you know what I mean? Like, 20 terrible dates, 2 girlfriends in that process. And then when I met my wife, I was like, oh, wow, she is not just like as good as the benchmark. I wasn't even thinking like that. I was just like, wow, she's amazing. And I just went from I just went to, oh, she's amazing. I wanna be with her. And then that was it. It was, it was like a simple caveman, like me, like me, like this, you know, that, that's how I was thinking. I wasn't like, I wasn't mathematic-ing my way there.

So I'll respond to that, which is that people definitely get tripped up in what you just asked about, which is like, wait, I'm way past 26.1. Like, have I ruined it? It's true. It sounds very mathematical, but it's meant to be a metaphor. The idea is that you likely have already met someone who would've been a great partner. Next time you find someone who you like as much, commit to that person. Don't keep searching. So the 18 to 40 as the equivalent of the secretary problem, like this is very hypothetical. It's like no one knows how long they'll be single for. And so the point is just that when you've met a bunch of people and you've sort of gotten a sense of your attractiveness in the market and what the people are like and where you live, that when you find someone great, commit to them. And I'm very happy to talk about this with both of you because both of you are married with kids and there was a version of you that could have said, um, I'm gonna wait until I'm peak fitness and peak wealth and then find the best possible person I could find at that point. But instead, you found people when you were a bit younger, when you didn't reach the level of success you're at today, and that person's been on the journey with you. I think people really underestimate the opportunity cost of not committing to someone when they're younger, because when you have this partner that's witnessing your life, where you're raising each other, where you really know them from a younger age, I think there's something so precious about that.

Yeah, that's definitely true. Now, the thing you just described, it's like I have a batch of friends in my head. I'm not going to name them, but I can—

Are you—

what would the batch being? What, wealthy single guys?

Yeah, basically. Kind of like they're still looking and it's like you found a lot, but you're still not committing. Right. So they're becoming 37, 41, 44, and then they're just not committing. And it's sort of like, I think they need to think more like the secretary.

I call them Peter Pans. They're Peter Pans.

Exactly. Um, a little bit commitment-phobic, a little bit like maximizer, like, is there something better out there? Um, they might even be in a relationship, they're just not— they're neither in all the way in nor all the way out. Okay, so I've definitely seen that. On the other hand, there's a group of people who I feel like they might get to 26 and they have not actually gone through 37% of the dating pool because they're just not putting up numbers. There's— they're very low-volume interactions with, uh, you know, with, with the, the other sex. I think there's a bunch of studies about this right now, how like you know, X percent of men under the age of 30 haven't even asked anyone out, like, you know, or they're just like sort of haven't dated in years or things like that. So what about that side of the, the barbell, the, the problem? What's your kind of take, or, or what have you learned for that, that group of people?

Yeah, that's a great segue if we want to talk about what's happening with modern men, which is a topic that I'm pursuing and that I'm really passionate about. And so it just reminds me, Sean, of this story where I was doing this Valentine's Day thing for Good Morning America, and I was talking to the one of the participants, and I was like, you know how many dates you go on? This is like a really good looking guy. And he's like, well, at night I think I could either edit videos, which will help me achieve my career goals for YouTube, or I can go on a date that might be bad. So I choose editing the videos. Right. And I was like, I am terrified about society. Like this guy who should be out there killing it is like, well, my YouTube views are more of a sure thing. So anyway, I think we have a lot of issues that we need to talk about, but what we're seeing in the data is that young men are falling behind. There's this report from the UK called the Lost Boys Report. It shows that among men in the UK, 16 through 24, 1 in 7 are NEET, which stands for not in education, employment, or training. And this number went up 40% during the pandemic for men, only 7% for women. Across all of these metrics, enrolling in college, graduating from college, earning money. Young men are really falling behind. So this is an issue for people in this age group. And if you project it out to 10 years from now, it's gonna be an even bigger issue because women are into hypergamous mating, which means that women wanna find someone who's equal or higher level of status and financial success than them. And for most of human history, that's worked out well, right? Because the guys had the resources and the women married them. But now, as women are out-earning men and being more educated than men, there just literally isn't this pool of men for them to date. And so there's this mating crisis where women are like, where's the guy on my level? And they just aren't there. So right now, 60% of enrollment in college is women. Soon it's gonna be two-thirds. So what that means is that when it's two-thirds women, half of those women won't have an equivalent guy. With a college degree. So you really have an issue where women want a certain type of guy and that guy doesn't exist. And I'm already seeing this. So many of my friends are attractive, confident, successful women in their late 30s, early 40s. They're just not dating. There just aren't guys. And I live in the Bay Area. You know who's available to them? Polyamorous guys who are like, yeah, you can have a third of me. And so this woman has to say, do I want zero of a guy or do I want a third of a good guy? And I truly think that this is Part of the reason why we're seeing the rise of poly relationships is that there's just not enough great guys. And so we have this crisis and we're already seeing the impact of it. So the marriage rate is nearing an all-time low in the US. The fertility rate has dropped 20% in 20 years. And so truly, if fewer people are getting together, fewer marriages, fewer babies, this is actually a crisis for humanity.

Did you see how, uh, do you guys remember, uh, 6'4", blue eyes, trust fund? Remember that song?

6'5".

Yeah, 6'5". It's someone like—

inflation, what are you doing here?

It's someone like, someone like did the math and they were like, this is like 20 men in New York City. Like, yeah, you know, if you like do the analysis of like, you need to have a trust fund, you need to be single, you need to be in your 20s, you need to be at least 6'5" and, you know, whatever, work in finance. It was like 20 people. Is there a thing— I think I read somewhere, I think I talked to my friend Amanda who ran The League and then my friend Dawoon who had a dating app called Cupid, and she was telling me about how—

Oh, she— yeah, she had Coffee Meets Bagel.

Sorry, Coffee Meets Bagel. And she was telling me how— and I think you told me this at Hinge and you have a lot of this data that like it's basically just a few— like women all get likes. It doesn't matter if you're like a 2 out of 10 or a 10 out of 10. It's like kind of a binary system for men, which is like, yeah, I would— I would love to go out with you for— for—

is that what I would means?

Yeah, it could be.

Take you on a romantic date.

Yeah. Like, I would love to— I would love to hang out with you. And for women or for men, it was like, you know, 5% or something like dominated. It was like a winner-take-all market. What's that data behind that?

Yeah. So one stat I can tell you is that a lot of women set their height filter at 6 feet or taller, and only 14% of the men in the US are 6 feet or taller. So you have women coming up to me at dinner parties holding up their phone saying, I'm on Hinge. Where's my husband? Where is he? And I'm like, yeah, he can't even get into your app. Because he's 5'9" and you're filtering him out. It's like your app is a bouncer. Your app is a club and your filters are a bouncer filtering him out. And so I do think that apps have perpetuated this thing where, because you can set filters, which maybe you think about for 30 seconds, you're like, yeah, 6 feet is good. And then you don't even realize the implications of that. And then when you multiply that across millions of people who are using apps, then yes, a disproportionate amount of attention goes to these guys over 6 feet. And then the other guys are sitting there waiting to hear back from someone.

I used to set my filter to like a really tall woman because I wanted to increase my odds, you know, like, have you ever seen, Sean, a, uh, have you ever seen like the back end of what, like making like a basketball player? That and meeting someone. Have you ever seen like the, uh, the back end of like a woman's app?

Oh, you were like, I'll go fishing over here.

Yes.

There's not a lot of people over here.

Yeah. Like there's not a lot of people who set their default to 5'10" for a woman. Have you ever seen the back? Like, have you ever seen a woman? You know, I haven't dated in 10+ years, but have you ever seen like Tinder? Like every person she clicks on is a yes.

Oh, like when they swipe right, it's a match. But for guys, you're like swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, no match.

It's basically a match 100% of the time, Logan, isn't it?

No, it totally depends on who the woman is. And it also, that's not exactly how the algorithm works because they don't only show you people who have already said yes to you. So it wouldn't be like that. But I think like certainly for certain women, they get so many more people interested in them than they could ever go through.

And then I would swipe yes on literally everyone.

I would do a favorite. Okay, Sam, we know, Sam, we know you know hot women. You can just put your status as like, listen, if you're seeing me, I'm interested.

Yeah.

And I would get no yeses, like none.

Yeah, yeah, dude, when I was on a dating app, it was brutal. But that was like, I was like a I was so old that like, it's back in the day when you had to handwrite messages to each person. There was no swiping. I was on OKCupid.

Handwrite.

Yeah. So let's play a game.

Yeah.

If I'm— let's start with I'm a guy on the dating app and then we're going to do I'm a girl on the dating app. What, what are the simple things I should be doing differently to increase my odds of success? And you're the director of relationship science at Hinge. So if anyone should know, it's you.

Great. Yeah, I'm actually gonna answer that by saying like what everyone should be doing, and then I have specific like guy things. Okay, so let's just talk really quickly about a great profile. So your profile is far and beyond the thing that matters the most because it's like you are buying a billboard on the 101 in the Bay Area. Like, what are you going to put on that expensive billboard? So you want to have a really good first photo that clearly shows your face, no filters, no sunglasses, and You should invest in a good photo. It doesn't have to be a professional photo, but people want to see what you look like. And honestly, the quality of male profiles is so low that if you just follow these instructions, you're going to be better off than 90% of guys.

Are you talking like, it's like you're dressed up? Is it casual?

Dolph?

It doesn't have to be dressed up, but it's like good lighting. Maybe have a friend take it in portrait mode. It should not be like inside, grainy. Anything like that.

Have you ever just asked a friend to take a photo of you with good lighting? I've never done that in my life. So like, no, that's why you need female friends, dude.

I'd rather go to the dentist than ask a friend to take a picture of me.

That's so funny. So okay, at some point your mom takes a good picture of you and you upload it. Then you want one picture of you with your friends because we need to see that you have a social life. It could be friends or family. Do you know this meme from a long time ago of like 10 white guys at a baseball game and each of them is like popping their head out a little bit more. It's like, you don't want a photo where you all look the same, but we should be able to see like, this is what your life is like. Then one of you doing an activity that you like. Maybe you're into hiking, cooking. I know this probably seems so awkward for guys, like, how am I gonna get these photos? But it really does matter. I heard this story about when this woman saw this guy's app profile and it was like all Burning Man pictures and she's like, I'm not into Burning Man at all. And then she swiped left and then And then a few years later she met him and she really liked him and now they're married. And when they talked about it, he's like, oh yeah, I only went to Burning Man once. I didn't like it, but those are the only photos I had.

Right.

So he didn't realize like that it was really setting him back.

Do you guys, do you guys do like Hinge just pop up like, hey guys, listen, we know, we know you got nothing. Okay. Just come, come here on Saturday morning. You're going to get your picture for Hinge. Like, do you guys do that? Like, do, is there a thing?

No, but at the next My First Million event, you should have a photographer there who's taking app profile photos.

That is a great idea.

That's a great idea.

Singles booth.

Get over here.

How many photos, how many photo, like what's the ratio of photos that you have of you and your children versus your wife and your children? Because I know at my house, Sarah is always the one taking the pictures and I would not in a million years pull out my phone and be like, here, let me capture this for you. Yeah.

Well, she asks like all the time for me, like, hey, take this picture. And I'm like, okay.

It's so funny. That's like my main feedback from my husband. You don't take enough pictures of me with my daughter.

It's so funny. Sarah's like, I have no photos of me and our baby. Like, can you please start taking more photos? Yes, seriously, man, just don't do it.

So you're saying profile matters the most. Get a good— get, uh, get your hero shot, which is you. You can see your face, good lighting, great activity picture, great. You and your friends, but not you and 5 identical friends.

Perfect.

Like, you got to have some, some diversity here. Some— get some—

get—

you want to stand out in that picture. Are we talking, you know, what's that theory where it's like, you know, you want to be the hottest out of your group or something? You know, like, oh yeah, are you like conniving like that? Can we go Machiavellian and just—

there is a funny theory in behavioral science which is that people don't make decisions in a vacuum, they make decisions through comparison, right? So if you have a friend who looks like you but is slightly less attractive, then that'll make you look even more attractive, right? Right. I wouldn't say I've tried that in the wild, but there is some, uh, data to back that up.

All right, so call me. We even told him, we were like, you're the ugly friend, dude, you just gotta come. It was like, dude, either I'm at the bottom or I'm going to the middle. And guess what? Chaos is a ladder, baby. You're going to the bottom. I'm in the middle now.

And then on Hinge, there's these prompts that you fill out which are icebreakers. And I really feel like this is a chance for a lot of guys to shine because so many of the profiles I look at are just pretty weak here. So you want to have a mixture of humor and vulnerability. So you can be funny, you can be sarcastic, you can give your hot takes, but then also have somewhere you show that you also have a heart and you're not just silly. And Hinge now has this AI profile feedback tool which will say something like, go deeper, say a little bit more. And so you can just really think about what are the 3 things that I want to get across on my profile. Maybe the fact that you're family-oriented, that you love the Warriors, and that you're really into cooking. Well, make sure through your profile pictures and your prompts that you're getting that across.

What else can a guy do to stand out on these apps?

Yeah, so then the next thing is that especially for people who aren't getting a lot of matches, besides your profile, which is the number one You should send comments with your likes because it really helps you stand out. So if you're a guy who's like, I'm just not getting that many matches, I'm just going to go for quantity and I'm just going to send a bunch of likes. Well, it's much better to send a thoughtful comment with that because you're more likely to stand out. Another insider tip that I've heard is that guys are often lazy and they only comment on like the first picture or the first prompt on a girl's profile. So if you actually scroll down and you comment on something lower, You have a higher chance of being more original because fewer people have just ever commented on that.

And how do you comment without being, uh, just like totally thirsty or just lame? So what's a, what's a good comment versus bad comment there?

Okay, so there's this line from Chris Rock, which is, if a girl's name is Eve, don't walk up to her and say, hi, I'm Adam. She's heard that a million times. So in standup comedy, you might think like the best joke is like the third punchline you come up with, cuz the first or second, other people can come up with it. So if a person has a picture of themselves skiing and says, where was this taken? Don't say, I think it's Whistler. It's like, cool, you and everyone else. But like, if you can write back something witty about like, okay, I'm gonna challenge you to a black diamond, or whatever people who ski say, then it's a much better way of getting into a conversation. And so really, you're trying to show your value here. You're trying to show your level of wit and humor, and you don't have to overthink it, but just what is a way to get into a conversation with someone, especially something that not every other guy has already said.

It seems so much easier if I look at the math of you saying like, what was the stat? How many women have been approached in real life or how many men approach? What was it like? Most, most men do not.

Zero.

Yeah. Yeah.

In real life.

So then wouldn't it be just so much like I met my wife in a real life setting? It just— and even back then when this was less common but still common, it just seems so much easier to meet people by just kind of pretending that you're confident. And like even just say like, like she's just saying hi to them. Like it just, it was so much easier that way. Can we just, shouldn't we just teach guys to do that?

I think this is a big issue in modern dating, is almost everyone I talk to is like, I want to meet someone the old-fashioned way, I'm romantic, I don't want to meet someone on the app. But then if you ask them if they're meeting people in real life, they basically say no. And last summer there was like the run clubs, everyone's meeting at run clubs. Like I haven't met a single couple that met through the run club. So I think we're having this issue with Gen Z where they don't necessarily wanna be on apps. They wanna be meeting people in real life, but they don't have the social skills to do it. And so there's this huge problem with the younger daters that I talk to where they lack rejection resilience. So, you know, this goes down a whole pathway of parenting, but you know, they had these helicopter parents, they had these snowplow parents that kind of plowed the way for them and they never had to deal with issues. They had colleges that bended to every will, and if their dog had an ear infection, they didn't have to turn in a paper. You have these, um, workplaces where they can take a sick day, you know, for any random reason, and then you want the person to go up to someone at a coffee shop, be able to deal with rejection. Like, they don't have the skills to do that. And so yes, if everyone listened to this, got really good at approaching women and making them feel both comfortable and flattered and had a good opening line, like, bring on the babies, that would be great. But people are lacking the social skills right now to do that. And I think in a post-MeToo era, there is this fine line between confident and creepy that people have not figured out yet.

How did you meet your wife, Sean, in real life or app?

Yeah, in real life. But she was, uh, she was like best friends growing up with my cousin. And so through like a kind of like, I was there to do something for my cousin, she was there to do something for my cousin, we kind of bumped into each other that way. And then I was like, uh, that was a much easier thing because I didn't have to like approach with a pickup line. It's like I had like an hour where we're hanging out and I just had to try to make her laugh. Like, so, all right, if I get this girl to laugh 3 times in this hour, this is going to be, you know, that's pretty good. All right, that's my goal. And so I was just trying to be as entertaining and, you know, fun as possible for an hour.

So there's this concept called the power of weak ties, which is the idea that you're much more likely to get a job from an acquaintance than from one of your close friends, because your close friends have such overlapping lives with you that they know the same opportunities you know. But an acquaintance who you met at a wedding a few years ago and still are Instagram friends with, they might know something that you don't know. And the same is true with dating. So Sam, you didn't meet, or Sean, you didn't meet your wife through, you know, your sibling's best friend. It, you know, it was your cousin. And so one thing that people listening to this can do is can they can expand their network. So leave your house, go out, make new friends, meet people, volunteer, join the boards of things. The more friends and acquaintances and wider the network is, the more chance that you will have a weak tie who will eventually introduce you to your spouse. And one of the reasons I was so excited for this conversation is that I love teaching people the strategies that Sam did to meet Sarah, which I can happily summarize. Or Sam, if you want to summarize, we can do that too.

I think you should do it. I want to hear your take on this.

Okay, this is my, like, Sam super fandom. But one thing that Sam did that I really like, because I think it shows vulnerability but it also is very masculine, is that Sam's like, how can I be the most attractive mate possible? I'm gonna make myself more interesting. And so Sam really planted a lot of seeds and really worked on being more interesting. So he was like, wow, like when I talk about my interest in denim and that I'm going to a denim meet, then women seem to be into that. So he was genuinely passionate about it, but he also knew to talk about it. He was also like, well, I'm not making that much money right now, but I wanna show that I have a growth mindset and that, you know, I'm, I'm very ambitious and like, you know, potentially I'll be successful long term. Sam also likes to test out his stories. Well, How do I know what the best story is? How do I know what the funniest story is? I'm going to practice it over time and get better at it. And so I think that if somebody is a super fan of both of you, they might think, oh, these guys are just so smooth. I bet it was so easy for them. But you were intentional, Sam, about being the best possible, most attractive mate, and then you snagged a baddie.

Well, I, I want to say, first of all, I have 3 things to say. The first one is thank you. The second one is that I realize that effort goes a long way, and that the best way to be attractive to a woman is to work on myself and bring them along with my life, which hopefully is full of interesting things. And even if it's like something as nerdy as, as denim, the best thing about being a man when it comes to attracting a woman is if you're passionate about anything, it doesn't matter how lame it is, that's kind of attractive. And the third thing, 100%, is that you have to also— if you're going to say all these positive things, you have to say the line that I used to meet her.

So no, I don't want to bring it up.

So you're, you're acting like I'm like, quick, cut to a HubSpot commercial.

Okay. So Sean, do you know what this line is?

I know this line. I can't believe he's voluntarily saying this right now.

Me neither. I thought we were going to skip over this.

No, I don't mind saying it. And so basically my wife Sarah, she walked into the— we were at like a happy hour. She walked in. I was with my friend Lily. I go, Lily, that woman, she looks fantastic. I'm not leaving until she talks to me. And as I was saying that, she comes up to me and I didn't know what to say in time. And so I said, excuse me, what's the difference between a chickpea and a lentil? And she looks at her friend and she's like, I don't know. And I was like, I don't pay $500 to have a lentil on my face. And for those listening, I'm talking about a chickpea on my face. And, and she like gasps. And I was like, classic hummus joke, am I right? And, hi, I'm Sam. Nice to meet you. And it absolutely helped.

Oh my God. We need a warning label that says, do not try this at home.

Yeah, but just say, just say hit the skip button and move forward 30 seconds if you just never want to change the way you look at Sam again. Sam, why did you say that, by the way? Had you said that before? Why would that be the first thing to come to mind?

I don't remember reading that in the game.

What an absurd line.

I don't, I don't know. It just came to me.

Like, where did you read that? Where did that even come from?

I don't remember how. A friend like told me that joke. I don't remember, but I thought it would work. But here's the—

he's a homosexual.

Yeah. I'm a freak. I had just finished a cross-country motorcycle trip literally the day before, and I had all these pictures. This was in 2014. I had all these pictures on Facebook of my cross-country motorcycle trip. And so instead of asking for her phone number, I was like, here, let me friend you on Facebook and we'll talk there. And I like, so I like front-loaded like my photos with all these like where I looked cool. And so that also helped. Uh, but so I did try all those things that you said were true, and also I'm still a filthy, filthy animal, and I say things like I said, and it also worked.

Let me give the post-game analysis of that. So I wouldn't recommend that line because I think it could definitely be misinterpreted, but at least you had the guts to say something.

Misinterpreted? I think it'd be interpreted perfectly.

It's true. I mean, Sarah knew what she was signing up for. I feel like you're consistent, but I Like, so this is, feels like a very of the moment thing, which is that if you just sit at home waiting for the perfect line, then you'll never approach someone. Sam did not have the perfect line, but he just said something and it made an impression. And I feel like what you said about effort is exactly right. And so in a lot of the research I've been doing this year about how men and women are becoming increasingly polarized, right? So women are way more liberal than men right now in how they voted. People used to vote across racial lines and now they're actually voting across gender lines. For the first time in history, men in the US are more religious. They're more likely to go to church than women. And we're just seeing that men and women are really being polarized. So how do we actually get people to connect and create these couples, have babies, et cetera? So one thing through my research is that men think, oh, women expect me to be perfect. I have to be tall, financially successful, all these things. What the women are saying is like, we just want you to put some effort in. Just remember my coffee order. Know the name of my best friend at work. And I feel like effort is just underappreciated. And as I said, if you have a good profile, that's a 7 out of 10, you're still way ahead of a lot of the guys out there. And so I think when it comes to the basic things that men can do, here's a list of a few of them. So a lot of women say to me, I go on dates that are ZQ, zero questions. They ask the guy tons of questions and the guys didn't ask them a single question. And then when I talk to guys, hey, how did this happen? They say, well, she asked me a question. If she wanted to answer it, she should have just answered it already. And I was like, no, ask her the question back. Make her feel interesting. I think that's a huge tip. Make people feel interesting.

Have you guys seen Love on the Spectrum? All the autistic kids, they all say the same thing at first, and it's the greatest line ever. I guess like they're taught in a dating school or something and they say, so what are your interests? And they all say that and it's the best line ever. And it just, it's just such a good interest or it's just such a good line.

I'm obsessed with Love on the Spectrum. The spectrum.

So what are your interests? Like, if I said that to someone, or someone said that to me, I'd be like, how much time you got? I can, I can go all day.

So I think this goes back to like the Dale Carnegie stuff, but be interested, not interesting. People think I have to have the best stories, I have to have the Facebook photos of my motorcycle trip. No, you know what people actually want to do? They want to talk about themselves. Ask them questions, seem very interested in them, and that will make the other person like you. There's all this research that in conversations where one person is talking a lot and the other person is asking questions, the first person thinks, wow, that other person's a great conversationalist. And what that actually means is they made me feel interesting and important. And so I think that there's so much that men can do just by asking questions, asking follow-up questions, seeming really interested in somebody and remembering stuff. If a girl says on a date, I have a big project that's due on Tuesday, then text her Monday night or Tuesday morning and say, how did that go? These little things go so far.

Yeah, I think what I'm hearing is, you know, in this podcast we talk about certain businesses where you go into a space and it's just like there's like a sleepy incumbent, you know, that maybe everybody in that space still operating on pen and paper. They don't do any marketing and it just feels like, oh man, you're shooting fish in a barrel. Like if you just go and you just try, you just do the basics, you will clean up in that area. It basically sounds like dating is like this. I think in most, most of my single friends, the way they talk about dating is almost like like, it's this impossible game, but hey, I'm still putting up, I'm still fighting the good fight. And then I hear what you're talking about. I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, nobody tries in a way that matters. So like, you know, my same friends who are, you know, talking about it like it's an impossible game, if I bet, if I ask them, I'm like, hey, when's the last time you updated your profile? Like, let me just see your profile real quick. How much effort did you put into this? And it's like, yo, you know, this is the, this is your landing page. This is what everybody is seeing. This is how they're making their decisions. And you you put 14 minutes of work into it when you were signing up, just speeding through to get on the app, and then you never really touched it again. Well, that's the problem, right? Like, you're just not investing the effort in the simple things that are going to make a difference. And everything you said, like, even if you just throw out any of the specifics, like, it's not about the good lighting, or it's not about the photo with the friends and whatever, it's literally like, try on the things that matter. Sounds like, uh, you know, the biggest takeaway. And that most people are either not trying or they're trying on the things that don't matter. They're trying on things that like, they're spending a lot of time swiping, but that's not the thing that's gonna help you, uh, actually find somebody.

Yes, Sean, I love your ability to really summarize and bring out the most important points. And I think try on the things that matter is an incredible headline for this because yes, if you are taller, will you have an advantage on the app? 100%. That is a bias that is baked into these filters. But if you just give up because you're not over 6 feet tall, then that's a choice that you're making. Why not have a better profile? Why not have a friend take pictures of you even if it's, you know, more embarrassing or painful than going to the dentist? Why not send comments with likes? If you really are serious about finding someone, then there are just basic things that you can do that will set you ahead of most other men.

Right. And you only need one, which is my favorite thing about a lot of the best things in life. Like, you know, business success. I failed for 9 years and then I had one and all of a sudden I was a millionaire. It's like, oh yeah, I only needed one. Like, I didn't need all of these to work. I needed one to work. Same thing with dating. You only need one to work really to make it work.

But it definitely, it definitely helps to put up numbers though. I think like I, like I remember dating and I was like, when it rains, it pours. Like I remember when I was able to get one person interested in me, I would be more confident and that I'd go after more and more and more. And I was like, oh, I'm killing it. And I'm like, why didn't I do this earlier? And but it's hard to get over that first one is really hard. Like the rejection.

You also knew where to stop because there's a version where you were like, if I can get Sarah, who else can I get? And instead you were like, I could get Sarah, like, hell yeah, this is my wife.

Logan, you have this thing called date like a scientist. What does that mean?

Yes, I definitely think that this is sort of the My First Million approach to dating. So date like a scientist just means be willing to run experiments and see what works. So if the business equivalent is throwing up a landing page or running some Google ads, then that's what this is in dating. So let's say that I'm coaching a guy and he says, okay, well, I need a woman who has a graduate degree, then I'll say, okay, date like a scientist, date someone without graduate degrees. Maybe what you're actually looking for is someone who's intellectually curious and you're using a graduate degree as a proxy for that. Let's just have you date other types of people and see what happens. I do this for women around dating guys who have a different job than they expected or shorter than they expected. And so the whole point is that as we get older, we get clearer and clearer on what we think we want in a relationship. And I have people that walk into my office and say, here's a spreadsheet of all the women I've dated over the last 10 years, and I know exactly what I want. I want a 5'7" skinny redhead who's Jewish and plays tennis. And I'm like, I think you're wrong. I think that's what you think you want, but let's actually test and see who actually makes you happy long term. And so date like a scientist is being willing to run experiments, being proven right or wrong, and actually get clearer on who's gonna make you happy long term instead of assuming that you know.

Is there any science of like, I always, a lot of my friends are Indian and their parents had arranged marriages and many of them are just lovely couples and they're very happy. And I've always thought life's a lot better when you have less choice. And so the way that I went into marriage, it was like, this is forever. There is no such thing as like divorce. Like, you know, cause I'm like Irish Catholic background and that's just like what you're taught. And for some reason, I think that you're happier that way where you're like, like, if I'm miserable, it's just like, yeah, that's fine. I'm going to be miserable and hopefully I'll make it better. Versus like, well, I wonder, are there other options? Uh, there's something about finality or like no other choice that I think makes me happier. Is there anything?

Yeah, there is a lot of research on that. So when you compare love marriages versus arranged marriages, love marriages usually start off happier, but around the 5-year mark, arranged marriages are happier. And it's exactly what you said, Sam. It's the fact that you're committed and you're in it and you don't consider failure as an option. Okay, so my husband's working too much and I feel stressed out and I miss him. I'm gonna commit to working out this thing with him versus giving up. And there are nuances to the data and it depends on whether or not the culture allows for divorce and things like that. But I think the point is that when you think about things as temporary, you just don't commit to them as much. So I was at, oh, actually that Dialogue conference and this guy was like, I think that that, um, marriages should be like cell phone contracts, and every 7 years you decide to recommit or not, and there should be a conversation. And I was like, that's a cute thing to say, but that's not what the research supports. Because if you have an apartment versus owning a home, are you gonna put wallpaper on the wall? Are you gonna get a new dishwasher? No, you're gonna be like, this is temporary, I have one foot out the door. But when you own your home and when you're really committed, you invest a lot in it because you think about it as a forever investment. And so when you really think about, I'm committed, I'm in this, I'm going to do whatever it takes to work, then that really produces better long-term results.

I'm on this Warren Buffett kick because he just retired. And so I'm rereading a bunch of Warren Buffett books and he's got this thing where he tells his managers as well as to, as any aspiring entrepreneurs, they ask him, how do I build a great company? Because Berkshire Hathaway is famous for buying great companies. And he said, 3 things. I need you to act like this business this is the only business that you own. You are not allowed to have any other business.

Mm-hmm.

The second thing, you need to act and assume that your entire net worth is in this business. And number 3, assume that you can't sell this business for at least the next 50 years. And if you do that, I think you'll make better decisions. And it's kind of funny how what you're saying for dating and what Warren says for business and what I think a lot of us know for business, it's a lot of the similar things.

I want to add one thing to that, which is that I was at a Jewish-Indian wedding this past weekend and it was really beautiful. And especially my friend who's Indian, her parents live in Atlanta and they didn't have any other family there, but they have built this beautiful, this beautiful community around them called Potluck. And you can just see the power of the community. So during the sangeet, so many people from the Potluck community were dancing and the children of Potluck are all friends. And I think people underestimate how important it is to have a community around you. Because we are not meant to just be married and just have this one person that fulfills all of our goals and every aspect of our lives. We need a community to support us, to talk shit about our partner with, to help us when one person is sick, to help us with childcare. And so I think just watching this beautiful Indian community who really showed up for this wedding and really helped shape the bride into who she is, it really inspired me to invest even more in my community.

What are you gonna say, Sean?

Well, I was gonna ask you about like, all right, so I'm just thinking about my friends who are single, and I'm trying to think, if I was going to send them this episode, how would I make it— what question would I ask to make it most valuable for them? All right, so here's two scenarios. Scenario one, uh, go on a date, it was good, but it wasn't like, wow, I met the one, that was my soulmate, right? You don't have that level of absolute clarity and conviction. So what is the post-date psychology? So I went on a date. How should I be thinking post-date in order to, you know, I want to have— I want to give things a chance, but I also don't want to string things along if I'm settling for something that's not really what I want.

Don't you have a thing on that, Logan?

Yeah, yeah, that is kind of my tagline.

Go ahead.

Yeah. So Sean, I have this sort of tagline called Fuck the Spark, which is this idea that through doing 10 years of coaching all I'll talk to a guy, I'll help him with the date, he'll come over my house afterwards. I'll say, how was it? And he'll say, she was great, she was beautiful, it was fun, I'm never gonna see her again. I'm like, are you crazy? What are you talking about? And he's like, I just didn't feel the spark. And so the spark has become my nemesis where people expect to show up and feel this rom-com moment of butterflies and rainbows, and they will give up if they don't feel that. And so I've developed these 3 myths of the spark. So the first one is, the myth is, if I don't feel it from the beginning, it can't grow. And that's absolutely not true. Only 11% Only 10% of people experience love at first sight, and many people develop feelings over time, which is why people marry someone in their apartment building, marry someone at work. It grows over time. Second myth is if you feel the spark, it's a good thing. That's also not always true. Some people are just really sparky. They give that feeling to everyone, and then you're like, oh my God, there's something special between me and that person. It's like, no, honey, he gives that feeling to everyone. He's very sparky, and he could also be narcissistic, and that's why it's happening. And then the third one is if you have a spark, then the relationship is viable. That's also not true. You can start really hot and heavy and then it fades over time. So my antidote to that is the slow burn. And I feel like I married the slow burn and Sam can attest to that where I don't think my husband is the most charming person you'll ever meet, but he's really smart. He's really funny, but he takes time to warm up. And so I feel like by giving him more time, I found this amazing lottery pick and I feel like I won the lottery. But if I had just been looking for the sparkiest person, we wouldn't have wound up together. And so I think if you feel zero attraction, especially for men, don't go on the second date. It's not going to go from zero to something. But if you feel some attraction, then give that person another chance, especially if you don't go on that many dates.

And if you were— okay, so like sometimes when you study a subject a lot or you try to help a lot of people, to that individual person, their problem feels very unique, very special, very hard. But like you've seen 100 of these and maybe even to the 100 you could say you're like, oh man, I feel like I could help you so much. I don't have all the time in the world, but there's almost this like, if I could just shake you and get you to like either do one thing or understand one thing or take on one mindset, what's the one that if you could just like shake people and be like, all right, that's like they got that. And then that will have all these positive benefits. I don't know if it's different for men and women, you know, that you run into, but like what's the advice you just want to shake somebody and just be like, like if you just really internalize this or did this action, it would really change your game.

We talked about Fuck the Spark, we talked about Date Like a Scientist. So the last one left for this is my concept called the 3 Dating Tendencies, and people can take the quiz on my website and it tells you which tendency you are. And this really helps people have language for what's going on with them.

And so I, I just took it, by the way. Do you want to— you want me to tell you my results?

I assume that you're a maximizer.

I scored equally high on hesitator and maximizer tendencies.

That's so funny. Okay, let me explain what all of those are.

It's obviously kind of like I'm not dating, so like I just kind of had to put myself back in the mindset of like, you know, 24-year-old me. And it says who you are as a hesitator. You don't think you're ready for dating because you're not the person you want to be yet. You hold yourself to a high standard. You want to be completely ready before you start a new project. And the same goes for dating. Your motto as a hesitator: I'll wait till I'm a catch. And who you are as a maximizer is you love doing research, exploring your options, turning over every stone until you're confident you found the right one. You make decisions carefully and you want to be 100% certain before you make your choice. Your motto as a maximizer is, why settle? And then it gives you like advice on how to, um, like how to kind of operate knowing that that's your tendencies, right?

And the last one is the romanticizer, which men do tend to score lower on this, but basically someone who's obsessed with the we met story. I want to find my soulmate. I'll know it when I see it. And they're so focused on kind of the rom-com element, that they ignore a lot of great potential partners. Or when they actually hit a bump in the road, instead of thinking, I'll have a work it out mindset and I'll work through it, they actually think, well, if it was my soulmate, then we wouldn't have issues, and they end the relationship. And I think having this language is very helpful for people because I get emails from men all the time that are like, I'm a hesitator, I'm not putting myself out there. And I'm like, great, you just need to go from zero to one. You just need to be on dates. And for maximizer, my advice is what I said at the beginning of the episode, which is understand that you can keep searching forever to find the perfect person, but you'll miss out on choosing someone great and building something together.

What's going to happen in like 10 years, 15 years, 20 years with a lot of the kids who are 25 right now and 20 years old? The fact— like, it's pretty crazy that you're saying— I mean, we already know this, that most women want someone who's above them or like who provides. But amongst like my company, and I don't know about you, Sean, the women are kicking the dudes' asses. Like, if you take like a man and a woman who are both 25, the 25-year-old woman is a better employee. Like, she's typically like— like, for example, we went to a— we had an event the other day, and like the women dressed wonderfully. Like, they looked presentable. And the men, I had to pull aside and be like, dude, you gotta like dress nicer at these things and at least tuck your t-shirt in. Uh, and like the men typically ask for more money but are less good at their The men tend to be sloppier. They tend to like think it's cool not to care. Uh, there's like a, there's like a bunch of issues that I've noticed, uh, themes. And this is a small sample size of dozens of employees. And, but what's going to happen in like 20 years? Is it just going to be a bunch of single people and less children? Or is it just going to be a bunch of women who are married to old men who are richer than the— I don't know what it's, what is it going to be?

Yeah. So first of all, I do my research through talking to people now and seeing patterns, recognizing that. I think predictions are pretty hard, but I will throw some, some things at the wall and see if any of the, like, end up being true. So one of them is that I do think that we are going to continue to have this mating gap where, as you say, women continue to thrive in terms of education and employment, and then there just aren't enough great guys for them. And I'm seeing, at least among my friends, the rise of single mother by choice, where women hit 40 and they're like, I didn't find the guy, I still want to be a mom, and they use a sperm donor or a known, a known donor, and they actually have kids on their own. Another thing is the rise of polyamory and a lot of these relationships where, you know, as I said, the woman is willing to have like less of a great guy than, you know, a guy that she's not interested in. Another thing that we haven't talked about yet is just the rise of AI and AI companionship. So I'm getting ads all the time from Replika, you know, get your perfect AI boyfriend, he always says the right things.

Women love this, by the way, I think more than men. I think women are liking AI boyfriends more than men are liking AI girlfriends. I I did not think it was going to be that way, but I know so many women who, like, I feel like they are in love with their ChatGPT.

I haven't seen the research on that yet. My hunch would just be that men are more early adopters here and, like, more desperate, but it could be the case.

Replica is more of the AI boyfriend use case than AI girlfriend.

Oh, that's very interesting. Okay, well, there you go.

And, like, VC Twitter, it was always like, oh yeah, girlfriend's going to be huge. But actually, AI boyfriend has been the dominant use case, uh, so far.

So imagine that you have some combination of AI glasses with really HD pornography. You have this sex robot that's very realistic, and you have companionship from your AI boyfriend or girlfriend. Like, why are you gonna go up to somebody in a coffee shop and risk rejection? Why are you gonna have a girlfriend who bugs you to pick up your socks when this person is— this chatbot is sycophantic? It tells you how great you are all the time. And So I think as the friction gets lower and lower and lower to having a digital spouse or partner, then the effort that's required for human relationships just feels extra hard. And like, that is a thing that I'm worried about because if you don't have the motivation, if you're just watching Twitch and watch other people live their lives, then like, are people just gonna slowly die off because we're not actually dating and mating?

Yeah, that's, so that's your prediction.

I, I think that's just one of them. I think other things are that women are gonna have to change their expectations and men are gonna have to raise the bar on themselves. So women right now are saying, I'm gonna earn as much or more than you. I also have to do a lot of the labor around having a kid, raising a kid. I have this double burden of domestic and work. And so no longer is a guy being a provider enough, and that's what it was for a long time. So you now need to be emotionally intelligent. So emotional intelligence is the new currency in dating, but guys were not raised to do that. They were not told how to be emotionally intelligent. They were basically told from a young age, be successful, be a provider, make money. And now the game has changed and they're caught without those skills. Plus we have the other side of it is that when they are vulnerable, women are like, oh no, you seem weak, I'm turned off by that. So I think that the genders are overlapping more where women have to be more masculine in the workplace, men have to be more feminine in relationships, and some of that blurring is making dating worse and it's making relationships more confusing. And I think that the dating hasn't caught up with the data, that people just do not know how to act in this modern world. And we need— I don't know the answer, but we need to figure out some changes to it so that people actually still want to be in partnership.

I am so thankful that I don't have to deal with this bullshit. Oh my God, bring me back to the '60s where I worked with asbestos and I had a high— you know, the average life span was 66 years old and I smoked a pack of cigs a because this sounds really hard.

You remember when there was that like huge tsunami in, uh, like Southeast Asia? I don't know if you know this, Sam, I was there the day before it hit and we happened to leave. And then the next day we turned on the TV and our hotel was floating in the ocean. I feel a little bit like that. I'm like, wow, we got out of there. I'm really glad I got out of there because all these shifts are sort of headwinds. None of the, none of the things you described is a tailwind that's making it easier. Um, but, you know, easy might not, might not be the, the only criteria here because the way you're describing dating is that dating is a skill and, um, it's, it's an endeavor just like any of your other endeavors. It's going to take some effort, it's going to take some rejection, it's going to take some resilience, and it's going to take you leveling up your skill if you want to be successful at it, right? Just like in business, you can't just go into business and be like, cool, I'll face no, no, no obstacles, no rejections, I will not get knocked down, and my skills from day one are good enough for me to win. Like, that's just not how it goes. So if I wanted to level up my skills, and it sounds like you've mentioned a couple of them, you talked about like emotional intelligence, you talked about conversationalists, like how to have— how to be interesting, ask questions, how to ask questions properly.

Yeah.

Like, if I just committed after listening to this and I was like, all right, I'm gonna go level up in those, is there like a killer book that you would recommend, or like a way to actually develop that skill? Like, what would be the fast-track way to develop some of these skills besides the obvious, which is get practice?

Yeah, so we talked about the idea of effort and that effort goes a long way. And remember things, follow up with things. Women really love that. Develop your relational skills. So one thing that I'm really passionate about is men's groups, and I'm very curious to hear what you both think about this. And as I was preparing for this episode, I was like, oh, I kind of feel like maybe they'll feel like it's cringy, but I just feel like men's groups are so powerful. So a year ago, my husband joined one. Our good friend David Clavin started it, and it's about 6 men. They meet once a month. They go around and they each silently write down on some Post-it notes what's top of mind for them. Then they go around and whoever has kind of the things that are most present for them and really wants to take up space, they let those people talk, they give them feedback. And it's really a great place for men to be angry, for men to be sad, for men to create this council of peers, and then they hold each other accountable. And I've seen so much growth in my husband, so much growth in the other guys in this group. And I think it's better than therapy because most therapists are female. So having your wife or having your female therapist tell you what to do, I think that's fine. But having a council of peers who can really relate to you and create a safe space for you to be angry and sad, I think that that's creating a lot more growth. And I really hope that at least one person listening to this decides to create a men's group. And it's not that complicated. Find a few guys who you respect, commit to meeting once a month, create a space where they feel feel safe to discuss what's challenging for them and then just support each other in achieving those goals.

Yeah, that's great. Um, have you ever done one, Sam? Not like business related, like have you ever done one that's like an actual men's group? I've done a few.

Yeah, look, like the one that you and I did, or you led it, that was basically this, uh, because we were all early in our relationships at the time and like we were asking each other questions. But, uh, yeah, I have. And I, I, I like to make fun of it, but the reality is it's super useful and awesome. And like making fun of it like normalizes it and like makes it cool.

Yeah, yeah, I've done it, I've done, uh, I've done it a few times, and it's, it's actually like the way you described it just now is kind of perfect. Like, it's much, much better. I haven't done therapy, I've done, uh, coaching, but like, you know, we can tell. Yeah, yeah, I could, I could imagine how someone who needs that sort of thing would, would feel. Um, but you know, in therapy it's an intense focus on self. I think one of the best things about these men's groups is actually it's not about and because it's a group, you get a lot out of it. Even when you weren't the one talking, you weren't the one sharing, because like there's so much that's either related or just taking the focus off your own problems and helping somebody out with their problems. All of a sudden you feel lighter and you're like, I don't know, I didn't do anything. I didn't even change my own situation, but I feel better. And so I think that's a great, a great idea. Okay, so men's groups is one way to get better.

One more thing about that is that but I, I don't think there's that many places for men to talk about shame. And I think in general, shame is just a very challenging feeling. And I heard this—

what's an example of a shame thing?

This was a story, and someone in a different men's group told me where it was like they had been fired from their job like 8 years ago, and they still carried this deep shame. I'm not good enough. I'm useless. I was fired because I'm a bad employee. And their men's group happens to have— this guy's 40, people in this men's group are 55. And when he shared that story as this deep trauma of his life, he heard from a bunch of other guys, oh yeah, that happened to me. That's going to be footnote in your life. I just thought it was such a beautiful story because it took this thing that he felt deeply shameful about— I can't provide for my family, I'm a problem— even though it was years ago and he has a perfectly good job now. And having these older guys say to him, that happens to everyone, it doesn't matter, kind of helped him just move on. And so I think it's a thing where you can talk about the stuff that you sort of only admit to yourself, or maybe don't even admit to yourself, and once you get it out there, it kind of goes away versus holding it in. And I think most men are just holding everything in.

Is there anything someone can go read or watch or listen to right now?

Is there anything easier you could do besides like being vulnerable and sharing and meeting people? Can I like push a button and get this result?

You need like a gateway drug, you know? Like starting a men's group is not exactly the gateway drug, you know? For like people of our generation, Sean and I probably both did the same thing. We read the book The Game, which like has so many flaws in it. In it, but the one thing that it did do was it encouraged me to go and talk to women. And that was like my gateway drug where I'm like, oh my gosh, people will respond to me if I act nice and interested.

Sure. Yeah. So Alain de Botton, however you say his name, he has really good information out there. He has an episode of Diary of a CEO. He's basically this British guy, philosopher who just has studied a lot of stuff. Yeah. School of Life guy. He's amazing. I interviewed him for my book. He's really awesome. Um, Esther Perel is one of the GOATs here and her book Mating in Captivity has changed a lot of people's lives. Really the godmother, godfather of relationship science, the scientific study of all this stuff, are John and Julie Gottman. And they really set the bar for all of this information. And so much of the research that I and other people quote is really from them. And they are really the people who created this Love Lab. They actually tested out a lot of this stuff, and they really defined a lot of this. Obviously, people can read my book, How to Not Die Alone, and I also have, um, 12 coaches who work for me who a lot of them specialize working specifically with men. And Sam, going back to what you said earlier, it's actually pretty easy for a lot of them to coach men because they are not doing some of the basic things. And when they get these guys just doing the basic things that make a difference, they start seeing success so quickly.

I'm actually reading one of John Gottman's books now. Um, he— I think he's the Man, I think 7 Things, 7 Principles to Make a Marriage Work.

I think that like, yeah, yeah, that's like the classic amazing one to me.

Like reading some of these books, like I'll tell people I'm reading them, I'm like, oh, do you have a problem with your marriage? I'm like, no, it's pretty great. It's just that like you don't want to wait until you're sick to start exercising. Like it's, it's kind of like good to like to do maintenance or like to do couples therapy. If you're like, oh, you guys are on the fritz, like no, it's like I'm pretty fit and I still go to the gym all the time. You want to like maintain and keep things nice. Otherwise, when they do get bad, you're like, ah, shoot. I wish I would have stayed.

I think one of the big edges in life right now is, uh, people think that if you, let's say you do therapy or you're doing any kind of like mental health, it's like, it's literally the word mental health is, you know, basically implies some sort of sickness, right? Like, why would you do that? Is something wrong? Is something broken? And it hasn't shifted yet to something more like mental fitness where you know, people who go to CrossFit, you don't accuse, you know, you don't look at them and be like, oh, it's because you're diseased and sick, right? It's like, no, no, no, these people just, they actually care about maximizing where they're, what they can do physically. And so similarly, I think in terms of your mindset, being as clear as you could be, being as positive as you could be, being as having a positive outlook on your own life and actually taking the time to do that is really important. And same thing with relationships. There's an assumption that if you're working on a relationship, it's because it's hurting or broken.

Broken.

I think that's just like insane. There's like a relationship fitness that, that's very different than really, you know, just relationship health, as in you're, you're sort of nursing back from some problem.

Sean, I'll add on to that and say I actually think we're halfway there in terms of the shift. So the language that we used to use would be mental illness. Now we say mental health, right? And then I think going towards what you said, mental fitness, makes so much sense.

Yeah, it's a lot better than saying you're just, you're just, you're off your rocker.

But my friend Emily had a book that just came out about being emotionally fit, and it's basically like, yeah, how can go to the gym for your fitness and it's not like, oh, I worked out arms yesterday, I'm good for life. It's like you have to constantly work at it. And that's actually the crux of what the Gottmans say. And my favorite takeaway from their many years of research is this idea that relationships are not about the honeymoon or the trip to Hawaii. They're about the daily life interactions. And so they talk about this concept of a bid. So a bid could be something really small. It could be that Sam walks into the room where Sarah's on her laptop, and she sighs. And that's a bid from Sarah for Sam to say, "Oh, no. What's going on?" And Sam can do one of three things. He can turn towards her and say, "What's happening?" He can turn away from her or ignore it. Or he can turn against her and be like, "Why are you making so much sound? You know, I'm on an important phone call." And so, life is really about these interactions. And so, successful couples that have happy, long marriages, they turn towards each other each other 86% of the time. And this— the couples that break up or are the relationship disasters, they only turn towards each other 33% of the time. So it's really about in these small moments how you turn towards your partner.

We should actually, Shawn, do an episode on this John Gottman guy. He's kind of crazy. Like, he's so great. He's, he's elderly now, but he like has done this for probably 50 years. And he's been doing it— well, yeah, but you know, he's been doing it whatever. But there's some crazy stats where like he, uh, he could predict within 90% or of the, he could do it 90% of the time. He could predict if you're going to get divorced or not, I think within like 3 minutes or something.

Yeah.

Something like insane.

You know, he was like the, yeah, for people who haven't checked it out, you should, uh, should go look it up. He's got this thing called Love Lab and he would have couples come in and essentially argue or fight and he would observe them and they would mark on a score sheet, like every, like every second there was an inter— like some, some mark of like what the interaction was doing. And they had this like sort of scoring system. System. And basically they could score a couple's interactions in just a couple of minutes and predict with a 90% accuracy, like, what the— whether that couple's gonna sort of stay together or end up, uh, you know, breaking apart. Which is, which is kind of amazing when you think about it. And, uh, it really shows you, like, life is in the micro, it's not the— it's not the macro. Like, we think— I think you were talking about this with dating, right? Like, oh, I have a type, and I have this idea of how we're gonna meet, or I have a soulmate, I have the one. And it's like all these, like, macro language when like a huge amount of life is just in the micro. It's like, oh yeah, she, you know, she said she was training for, um, you know, an Ironman or something like that. And then I just said, oh, me too, I did one. And this, instead of like asking her about it, I pulled the conversation to me instead of like leaning into what she was saying. And that is like, the micro is the difference between a great date and an okay date. And then, and then how you think about it afterwards, right? Like each one of those is just like a bunch of micro decisions that lead to your actual result.

Sean, this is, I feel like, your superpower. I feel like you're kind of like what I say, like 10 minutes worth of stuff, and then you just summarize the stuff that's worth the takeaway. It's kind of like your ChatGPT just being like, here's what she really meant. So I really appreciate that. And there's a good term for what you're talking about, which is a shift versus support response. I think a lot of people, especially men, get this wrong. So let's say a woman says, oh, I'm going to Lake Tahoe this summer. The guy's like, cool, I'm gonna seem interested and add on to that by saying, I went to Lake Tahoe last summer. That's actually shifting the energy back towards yourself. What women and people in general like is when you help them go deeper and you say, how did you choose Lake Tahoe? Have you ever been there before? What are you most looking forward to? Have you ever traveled with your family before? Support responses help that person go deeper. And so you might think that they're equal, but people actually appreciate the support responses more because it shows shows curiosity about the other person and it makes them feel interesting.

Oh yeah, by the way, Logan, what's your deal? So you got a Netflix show, you wrote a book, it did great, you're doing stuff at Hinge, you're on this podcast, like you're kind of a superstar in the making here. What's— or maybe you already are and I'm late to the party, but like what's your— what's your deal? Are you trying to be like the love guru? What's— what are you trying to do?

I mean, I feel pretty happy right now. It's like I made a vision board about 7 years ago. So I was— how I met Sam's wife is that we worked together Airbnb We didn't even overlap that long. And I was just like, I really have this passion for dating and relationships. Everything's telling me that there's an opportunity here. People are lost and I can help them. And so I quit my job not knowing what I would do. And I sort of just from scratch created this career and it's taken the form of a newsletter, a book, the job at Hinge, the Netflix show. I am hopefully gonna have my own podcast this year. And so I'm just kind of like, how can I keep learning and how can I keep helping people find love? But I don't feel like there's like a next level that I need to get to. I kind of just want to enjoy where I am right now.

And what's your, uh, do you feel a lot of pressure? Because let's say you're a relationship coach, the stupid, like, kind of layman version of me is just like, so do they have it all figured out? Like, and I know that's never the case, but like, I think there is like this weird expectation that people have, especially the further you are away from doing the work yourself. Yourself that if you're talking about this, that means you need to be like fully self-actualized in some way. And so do you feel pressure in that? And like, I guess, like, I guess like, what's your— I don't know, when did you get married? How did that go for you? I'm just curious.

Sure. Yeah. So I will quote one of my mentors here. So Eli Finkel is one of the best relationship scientists in the country, and he's at Northwestern. And the dedication in his book is to my wife Allison, who thinks it's hilarious that I'm a marriage expert. And so I kind of, I kind of feel the same way. But what I will say is basically the thing that fascinates me the most, the thing that I feel like I always want to work on, is the decision-making process of who do you marry. So I actually feel like I'm more of a dating expert than a marriage expert. So sometimes when people ask me about sex, I'm like, I don't know shit about sex, I'm not a sex expert. What I'm actually really good at is who you should be with and why. And so I don't feel as much pressure as someone who's putting out there a book about marriage, But I would say like, of course I have my own issues and of course there's moments where I'm like, oh, my husband's pretty introverted. My life would be easier if he wanted to go to this party with me. And then I just remind myself like, here's all the things that are great about him. And I also say to myself, here's all the annoying things that are annoying about me. And by kind of like negging myself, it also helps me be more understanding of my husband. One last thing I'll say about that is that I think having a kid has changed our relationship so much more. More so much for the positive. Because in the past, if he did something that annoyed me, I might either say something about it or bubble it up and then it explodes later. But because I see what a great dad he is, my tank is so full with love for him that I can just let most things go. And that has been a really good development.

Sean, her husband's hilarious. And if I say anything that is too much, we can take this out. But basically, he, uh, he's a vegan, like hardcore but he's shredded. And you're like, why do you— and he'll tell you he's going for the hungry wolf or hungry lion.

Hungry warrior. Hungry warrior.

So he like looks hungry, but he's like trying to get after it in life. He's shredded. And he, uh, he, he's an engineer. He works at a big AI company where he's like brilliant. And also he lost his leg recently because of cancer a couple of years ago, but he like laughs about it. And he's just like a very principled, very very interesting, almost strange guy in the best way. Like, he doesn't have any social media. Everything about him, you're like, that's strange. And then you start hearing his reasoning and you're like, oh, you're— you're— you live the right way. I'm the flawed one. Uh, it's like, it's a very funny— he's a very funny guy.

Yeah, I think that's a beautiful testament to my husband. And I think that I'm drawn to very extreme people. Like, I think that's one of the reasons why I love Sam, I love My First Million. I, I think it kind of goes back to this thing like you can create the life that you want. You can create your own rules. You can live that way. And I've never met anyone more than my husband who doesn't care what other people think. And so it is hard to be this hardcore vegan. We went to this wedding and there was basically no food for him to eat. Well, guess what? He brings packets of Justin's peanut butter and he chugs them in the bathroom and he pre-games with Sweet Greens. Like he just basically adapts. And I think he's very extreme. Like, yeah, he's, he's super healthy. He works out every day. He meditates every day. He lost his leg to cancer, but a few weeks from now he's going to be climbing in the Paraclimbing World Cup Championship. And so he's just an extreme guy who's very disciplined and has been very successful. Oh, and he's really funny.

Amazing. Logan, this was great. Uh, to all you singles out there, you're welcome. You're welcome for the advice. You're welcome for the, uh, the tips. Go take some photos, get some good lighting. Um, by the way, what's a good first date spot? So somebody goes, somebody wants to do a first date with somebody they meet on an app. Should they be doing coffee, dinner? What's the move?

Dinner's too intense. I think coffee feels too much like a job interview. What if you go get an interesting, maybe non-alcoholic drink somewhere and go for a walk? I think people have really great conversations when they don't have to make this direct eye contact. Or just go, go do something fun. Go play pickleball and kind of shake out your sillies and, you know, take yourself a little less seriously. Seriously.

All right, thank you so much, Logan. Great to have you.

Thanks a lot.

See you. Thank you.