This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)

if I see someone online and they went to maybe a great college and they have an impressive job and they have attractive photos and interesting hobbies, that very well could be someone that I would be a good match with, that you might be a good match with, or one of your listeners could be a good match with.

But the things that we know from research actually lead to happiness, none of those are captured by any of those indicators.

Welcome back to the How to Get a Girlfriend podcast.

I am your host, dating coach Connell Barrett, here to help you gain confidence, flirt with authenticity, and find yourself an amazing girlfriend.

No pickup artist moves needed.

And today I have a brand new guest, and he's got a brand new book out.

Today, my guest is Tim Molnar.

Tim is the author of Date Smarter, a strategic guide to navigating modern romance.

Tim's a really interesting author and guest because he's a former Fulbright teaching fellow and a university lecturer.

My old job, just kidding.

Tim helps single people

figure out dating, date smarter, and make real genuine connections.

He can help you with things like motivation and

having better results on dates and momentum.

And also he has a lot of data about dating and I'm really excited to talk to him.

He's got a research-backed approach that's going to be really fascinating to get into.

And you can order Date Smarter at Timothy's website, timothymolnar.com and you can also find it on Amazon.

Tim Molnar, thank you for being here on How to Get a Girlfriend.

Connell, thanks so much for having me on.

Really enjoyed the podcast and just a pleasure to be here talking with you today.

Awesome.

It's author meets author.

Let's see if we can make this good, good podcast content.

Tell us about Date Smarter.

How can people date smarter and how can your book help people date smarter?

So I may just begin with a little bit of a backstory here and talk you through the genesis of how this project came to be.

I think like many of your listeners, I was at a point with dating where I felt frustrated.

I felt like I didn't have the confidence to go up and approach people in a way that was going to bring about results.

The results being I wanted to find a life partner, someone who was going to be a great fit, someone who was going to make me feel seen, someone who was going to be kind and loyal.

And at the time, I was in graduate school.

And I was working with first a behavioral economist and then a sociologist.

So studying a lot of human behavior.

And I figured, I'm spending spending all this time going through these different academic journals.

I wonder what's been written on relationship science and if there are different theories that we can co-opt from these different studies of how humans behave to be able to date smarter myself.

And in the research field, we often like to say that research is me search.

And I think that was really true for where I was at at the time.

So

I started to kind of work backwards from the goal that I wanted, that life partner.

And I realized, you know, before that was going to happen, I was going to have, you know, at least a girlfriend, maybe several girlfriends.

And before that, there were going to be some dates.

Before that, I was going to have to find a way to go on dates.

And I started trying to figure out, you know, if I went up and had the confidence to approach someone, you know, what might I say?

Are there ways that I can do this with better efficacy, with authenticity?

And are there research studies that have been done when guys are going up to women and asking them out how often they might typically get a yes?

And are there some type of numbers that I can assign to this to eventually be able to set a goal and say, great, if I go on, you know, if I set a goal to go on 60 dates, hopefully I can just go on one date and find my right person.

But if I don't, that's okay.

I'll just view this as great.

Only 59 more, only 58 more.

Recognizing that there's this sense of rejection along the way, but that that's an inevitable part of getting to this thing that we all know is fundamental for our well-being, for our happiness, for our longevity,

which is healthy relationships, and particularly one of those healthy relationships that you're going to have with a life partner.

So

I went through this journey myself, eventually meeting my person who I've been with for almost five years now, and

other friends would begin to ask me about my approach.

That sort of led into coaching and eventually this book, which you know, Date Smarter is basically a look at how behavior science, how math can help us understand

how to date more strategically in a way that feels authentic to us, but also in a way that leverages

the cognitive biases that we might have and like how do we overcome these biases to be able to do this in a way that improves the probability, that improves the chances of us finding what it is that we're really after.

What are some cognitive biases that get in the way of singles, especially men who are trying to get a girlfriend, trying to have success?

What are some of these biases?

So one of them that I like to talk about is called the primacy effect.

And the primacy effect stems from this idea that how an interaction starts really disproportionately impacts how the other person perceives the remainder of the experience.

And so as an example, if you show up to a date and it's totally natural to feel nervous, to feel a bit anxious, you're doing this incredibly vulnerable thing, which is showing up in front of somebody and saying, this is who I am.

Yes or no?

And

from that place,

we might make an awkward joke.

And so now,

while that's totally normal, the rest of this interaction has the ability to be perceived through that lens.

We are looking to confirm our kind of our confirmation bias steps in.

And every time there's

a little wink, a little nod, we're thinking, is that just further indication that this is an awkward person?

And so, one of the ways that I would suggest listeners who are hearing this and thinking, gosh, it sounds, you know, I've had that experience before showing up to that date, and I knew within the first couple of minutes, like, I didn't make the best impression, is instead of going into this job interview mode, which I think can feel very comfortable, and saying, you know, what do you do for work?

And, you know, how many siblings do you have?

It's really showing up with, you know, a story or like something to share so that you're almost catching up like you would with a friend.

And you're like, oh gosh, Connell, on the way over here, you know, like I was riding a scooter and like I almost ran over this pigeon and it was kind of crazy.

And then this car had to slam on the brakes.

And all of a sudden you're sort of disarming the other person and they're like, oh, we're just, we're just catching up as friends.

We're not in this evaluative job interview mindset.

So you can really seek to overcome that primacy effect when you bring in that nervous energy.

And then on the other end of things, to be able to make someone else feel comfortable.

Because I think one of the things that's easy to forget is we show up to this date very focused on ourselves, thinking about, gosh, like, am I going to be good enough?

Am I going to be funny enough?

Am I tall enough?

Am I handsome enough?

Whatever insecurities or feelings we might be bringing to this, that the person on the other end of the table is experiencing those same feelings.

And so we can extend grace to them and say, gosh, if they're showing up and falling into this job interview mode, we can just kind of quickly redirect the conversation and say, ah, I love that, and

I want to dig into that.

But first, I just need to tell you about this interesting movie that I saw yesterday.

And it reminded me of this because X, Y, or Z.

So I think those are some of the ways that we can learn from behavior science, like on this first date, to be able to overcome this primacy effect and overcome some of these traps that that we are hardwired to fall into.

So if you're following this idea of the law or the rule or guideline of a primacy effect, you want to make sure that you hit try to hit the ground running on that first date in the first five to ten minutes.

You want to set, you want to make a good first impression.

or at least you want the date to start off reasonably well, and that'll help the rest of the date go better.

Is that what I'm hearing?

Absolutely.

And I think just to expound on that a little bit, there's also the concept of the recency effect, which is what has happened most recently is going to shape how we view that experience.

So you can have a really nice dinner and you finish it with a dessert and you're like, we finish this on a high note.

And there's a very particular reason why that's how a typical meal goes.

And you look back and say, wow, what a great meal that was.

You leave on a high, you have that little sugar rush.

And so it's also thinking about how we can carry that through to the end of the date.

And this is not saying like, great, just be perfect the whole way through the date.

But it is saying there are ways that you can prepare, you can practice, you can, you know, run dry runs with your friends if you need to, but say, I'm going to come into this date.

And if this isn't something that comes naturally to me, here's a way that I'm going to start things off.

And here's a comfortable way that I'm going to end this.

Hey, you know, I had a really nice time tonight.

Would love to follow up and get something scheduled for another date if you had a nice time.

Just something simple like that.

Do you have any good anecdotes from your dating history?

Or maybe there's something from the book, perhaps there's an anecdote or a scene of somebody you know that shows us: here are some ways you can make sure the first five to ten minutes of a first date goes well.

Yeah, well, I certainly have an anecdote of what not to do.

So maybe we can learn.

Maybe we can learn.

We can be more valuable and do the opposite of this.

And the protagonist of this one happens to be me.

So

I was

in the midst of this dating journey that I had kind of alluded to earlier in the conversation, where I had set a certain goal or what I had called the date number, a number of dates that I was targeting to go on.

Again, just to sort of like build resilience for when it didn't end up being that first date or the second date or the third date, that I wouldn't say, gosh, this isn't really happening.

It would just sort of normalize the fact that, like, yeah, it makes sense that you might need to go on 10, 20 dates and, you know, bruise your knees a little bit before you find the person who you can really hit your stride with.

And to that end, and yes, I was a researcher, and so

I was into collecting data, and this would have been more qualitative data of go up, have a conversation with someone, write down what went well, what didn't go well.

Was I looking at my feet, and did I not come across super confidently?

Did I feel really nervous?

And so I rushed what it was that I was saying to this person.

And there was one time pretty early on in the journey where I

had seen this woman on the street and went up and told her that I thought she had a nice energy and was interested if she would be up for grabbing a coffee.

And she holds up just this like giant oversized, almost like cartoon wedding ring in my face and

was like, ah, and has like kind of like thick Eastern European accent, which I think just kind of added to the whole

to the whole experience and was like, oh, you know, like, I'm married.

And

I was just thinking, gosh, like, right, like, I'm at that age where I need to start looking for wedding rings here.

And it was just a simple little, you know, oversight, but it was something that I learned from.

And I think there are so many ways that we can learn from those first dates where, you know, maybe you're listening to this and saying, gosh, okay, so I'm going to come in with this story for my next first date.

And you show up and you're like, gosh, for whatever reason, like that story just.

didn't hit like I could feel the energy and the way I showed up like it just didn't deliver like the full charisma that I bring.

And to those people, I'd say, like,

we're not great at anything the first time we do it.

And whether that's, you know, learning Mandarin or playing the viola, you're not going to be good at it the first couple times you do it.

But you keep going and you build up those calluses on your fingers and you learn those, you know, Cantonese intonations or whatever language it might be.

And over time, you develop skills.

And dating similarly is a set of skills that allows us to be able to form what we are naturally wired to do, which is love and human connection.

And we have that innately.

But these skills, particularly in this digitized world, aren't things that we were evolved to inherently understand how to do.

So be gentle with yourself if you're feeling that.

And also recognize that you have agency to be able to hone those skills and improve for the next date.

Here's a tip I like to share with my clients for first dates.

The first five, 10 minutes of a first date.

So

you can ace the primacy effect.

Get to the venue early, earlier, 10, 15 minutes earlier.

Make sure you grab a seat for the two of you, you and your date.

Maybe you're sitting up at the bar, maybe you're at a restaurant, whatever it might be.

And then Don't sit there on your phone thinking, oh my God, how's it going to go?

Talk to somebody.

Talk to the bartender.

Talk to the people next to you.

Get into some social momentum.

What I've found, Tim, and I'd be curious to see if you ever tried this or have seen,

have a similar or different viewpoint.

If you can get into some social momentum before your date walks in, you're already in the social flow and that's going to help a date.

It's going to help you feel a lot more present.

And you're already in a social conversational mode so that when your date walks in, not only are you in the social flow, she might actually see you chatting with the couple next to you or holding court with the bartender.

And essentially, you're out of your head and you're in the present moment, which can help a date start better.

What are your thoughts on that?

And you're welcome to disagree.

That's what I like to do.

Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm going to agree because I think it's great advice.

This podcast is over.

Keep going.

No, I think it's wonderful advice.

I think it makes a lot of sense and it really is a way to harness that social science principle to be able to say, great, let me warm up my social skills and let me prime myself for this experience that I'm about to have.

And to your point, you might be able to very naturally segue into, oh yeah, I was just talking to this fun guy at the bar and he was telling me that, you know, he was just on this, you know, flight to the stratosphere and he was telling me all about, you know, that.

And, you know, it's like, and you have this like natural in to the conversation.

So I think there's a lot of value from that.

Yeah.

And I also think that it dovetails with some advice that I give to my clients, which is

when we

show up to a date,

you're so right to say the energy that you're carrying with you is instrumental in how that experience is going to go.

And there are a lot of little tips and tricks that we can do to prepare ourselves for that.

I love that idea of showing up early so that you're not coming from like, gosh, I was weaving through traffic and I couldn't find a parking spot.

And And now I'm wondering, gosh, am I going to be judged for being late?

This isn't who I am, but you know, I just did too much traffic here.

And so you're over-correcting for that.

And instead of coming right out of a work meeting and maybe hopping on a Zoom date, and you're like, great, I'm just going from one work call to the next, you're bringing in that energy of stressful corporate life into this date.

And then you're like, yeah, you're having the same conversations about KPIs and whatever other corporate jargon.

And you're like, yeah.

If you want to get friend zoned, say KPIs to your date.

Almost guaranteed.

Unless KPI stands for kisses per instant.

And then that's something different.

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Yeah, exactly.

So can I, I want to, before I forget, I want to ask you one more question about the primacy effect.

Does it, does it go for approaching as well?

Sounds like it does with your story about the woman with the wedding ring.

And assuming it does, how do we make sure the first 15, 30 seconds of an approach goes well so we can use the primacy effect to our advantage when out meeting people in real life?

Yeah, I love that question.

So I think, yes, 100% it does.

And I'm going to refer to it by the principle of the foot-in-the-door approach.

So this is something that I talk a little bit about in the book.

And it comes from the old door-to-door sales tactics, where if you could ask for a small favor and very literally get a foot in the door,

you are much more likely to have success asking for the bigger favor.

And so there are a lot of different ways this can play out.

And so, you know, you can imagine you're at the dog park and you can just ask for very simple, I think it's a good practice, asking for very simple things.

Hey, you know, is that

Aussie?

Or, you know, I love your golden retriever.

Like, what's your golden retriever's name?

Is your golden retriever friendly?

You know, and can I say hi?

Just these little things that when you see people walking up to others on the street and like initiating conversations in a non-romantic context, this is a totally normal thing to do.

It's very disarming.

And it's that small favor.

That small favor now puts you into this this circle of like security.

And now when you say, hey,

I've really enjoyed this banter, and like I just love the energy that I'm picking up on here.

I don't mean to be too forward, but would you be up for going for a walk sometime?

Would you be up for, you know, give me your number, whatever it might be.

That

I think it's very closely related to the primacy effect, but it just kind of goes by a slightly different name in this context, or I'm putting it into a slightly different box here.

But the two are very closely tied together.

I agree.

Like, your approach with the woman from Eastern Europe, I would call that

it's kind of,

it's pretty, it was fairly direct.

Like she knew why you were there, right?

Absolutely.

Right.

And I call that a direct approach.

I have no problem with a direct approach at all.

If you're feeling confident and if that's congruent and authentic with how you feel, that can be very attractive.

The thing to remember, though, dear listener, is when you go direct, when you approach, you're either going to get a really big thumbs up or a really big thumbs down.

Or in Tim's case, a really big wedding ring staring him at the face.

And you got your answer, right?

Which is fine.

Nothing wrong with that.

But what I like about your foot in the door concept is it sort of takes,

it's hard to reject a question about that woman's dog at the dog park.

What is she going to say?

How dare you ask me how old my

poodle is.

No, you're going to have a very high number of at least social, socially well-accepted approaches because you're not even putting a romantic card on the table right away it's a bit more social which is why I like it because it gets you into lots of conversations with people and it takes so much of the quote fear of rejection out of the equation or at least it minimizes it

And just to add on that a little bit, because I have this research background and I like to read journal articles, there's an interesting study that was done by a French research team looking at exactly this.

How much more effective are we when we start with this small favor first approach?

So what the professors did is they sent a team of about 300 undergraduates out into

the field, so to speak, you know, a crowded area, and they tasked them with asking people on a date, just again, like to your point, to use your language, like a very direct approach.

And they recorded first like, you know, men approaching women, and then also like women approaching men, and

what were the efficacy rates around that?

And like a lot of these research studies, it was like a strictly heterosexual population.

And like there's a lot more research that, like, fortunately, like coming through on like the LGBTQ community, but it's still, it's still like fairly sparse.

And so this one looked kind of like strictly at that.

And one of the things that was interesting is they found

when you started with, and this is, this is France, so like every second person there smokes.

So they started, you know, hey, can I get a light?

Or other people would start if, you know, you know, can I get directions?

You know, where's the Eiffel Tower or wherever they were in France and

there was a 5x success rate for the men who started with the small favor first approach so they're like where are directions and then like hey would you be interested in going out versus just the direct you know I saw you thought you're cute would you want to go out

and to me when I read that it reinforced I think what we intuitively know and like what you Connell and your work with like all of your clients and all the people you've helped under like inherently understand like yeah it's disarming and you just kind of sense that it's better and it's fun to be able to tie the research to it and say wow five times as effective that's that's pretty wonderful so what was the actual experiment was this men talking to women in it in a romantic context or was this more just a social connections with people or both?

It was asking for dates.

So they would

go out and they'd say, yeah, they would say, your job is to ask for a date.

And there were two approaches, basically two groups.

One group that would say,

would you like to go on a date?

Yeah.

And then record the answers.

And then another group that would say, can I have a light?

Thanks so much.

Would you like to go on a date?

And maybe there was a little bit more in between that, right?

But

effectively the idea.

And then they just compared those two different study samples

and found pretty significant difference.

Right.

This was in France.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know if it would pass like the

IRB reviews, the ethics here in the U.S.

So I'm like, you know, you hear these like fascinating studies from psychology from like the 1950s, and they're doing these things where you're like, no chance would a research board let you do that study today.

If I was dating in France, I would just walk up to women and say, do you like Jerry Lewis movies?

And then I'd probably get an instant yes.

That's my guess.

That's so cool that the French are doing this kind of social dating science research.

I love that.

Okay, yeah.

So speaking of research, what I love about your book, and your book really is

just a gold mine of research-backed advice.

There's so much great science and research and numbers in it.

I wondered if we could segue into online dating.

And can you share any research or data or numbers to give our listener hope.

Arguably the biggest, one of the biggest pain points for people today, and men in particular, I think, but people in general, is they feel like you know, the apps just don't work.

It's all women,

women have all the power, women get all the matches, great-looking guys get all the matches, but I'm really struggling.

Can you share, whether it's from your book or your own personal knowledge and insight, can you share some numbers, some research to talk about what does and doesn't work on the dating apps?

Absolutely.

So

there were a few interesting findings that I came across, some surprising, some that aligned with my pre-existing expectations when I started digging into this more from an empirical nature.

One was

just to be able to

understand

what individual experiences were.

And so, you know, there were some interesting Reddit threads that I had just gone through where people can post their Tinder statistics.

And there was a programmer who had put together a Python script that would basically give you a chart that would start with, you know, you've been on Tinder for two years.

You've swiped 113,000 times.

You know, 37% of those were right swipes.

The others were left swipes.

This is how many matches that led to.

This is how many dates that, or

excuse me, conversations that led to.

This is how many dates that led to.

And you get to see this funnel basically from swipe down to actually meeting up for dates.

And I talk in the book, and a few of these are the more egregious examples, but I really don't think that they're complete anomalies, and I'll explain why in a second here.

So there are a couple people that I talk about in the book who had swiped upwards of 100,000 times over four years,

and that had landed them maybe a couple thousand matches, and that had landed them a couple hundred conversations, which ultimately led to zero dates.

Wow.

So, and just to kind of break that down from like top to bottom again, I was like four years, 100 and call it 13, I think was the number, 1,000 swipes, zero dates.

And you're talking hundreds, or was it thousands of matches or hundreds of matches?

They had gotten, I think in this case, it was like 200 and I'm blank on numbers, but let's call it 237-ish matches.

So 237 matches for this person and zero in real-life dates.

Yeah, and so I think hopefully this normalizes some of the experiences of people who are feeling like, gosh, you know, like I've been swiping and swiping and swiping.

And then like occasionally I do get a match and then we'll message for a bit and then maybe it just stops and I'm getting ghosted.

And certainly like other people do have a lot of success.

And so like before I kind of tie a bow on this, I just want to also acknowledge Michael Rosenfeld, who's a sociologist over at Stanford, runs a study called How Couples Meet and Stay Together.

And back in 2017, there were 39% of new relationships that were formed meeting online.

And today it's closer to 50%.

So it's a statistic we hear thrown around a lot.

And what it tells us is when people ask the just binary question, do apps work?

Clearly they're working for a lot of people if we're saying that the goal is, you know, a relationship and not discussing like some of the other frustrations and whatnot that come through with this.

But to get back to this Tinder plot and kind of going from all of these

swipes down to like very few or sometimes zero dates, what's going on there?

Well, when I dug into this a little bit more, Tinder had released a statistic around the success of men getting a match on dates, and it was somewhere in the ballpark of 2.5%.

2.5%.

Can you clarify that stat?

2.5%.

So when they swipe

right on someone, there was a 2.5% chance that they were going to match with someone.

Oh, I see.

2.5% chance of swiping right and getting a match.

Yes.

So say you swiped on absolutely every pro.

Say you swiped right on 100 profiles.

Right.

You would expect 2.5 of those people to swipe back.

That's your

average man, according to Tinder in this study.

Exactly.

Okay.

Proceed.

Just getting my, making sure I'm following you.

This is great.

Yeah.

And I'm only getting into the weeds on this.

I know a lot of your audience is

a little bit more right-brained, kind of like I am in these ways.

So I think it's really interesting to understand.

There's this idea where we have a few men who are maybe very conventionally attractive who are getting much higher success rates.

So instead of 2.5%, they might be getting closer to 50%.

And I talk in the book about a theoretical sample size where this actually totally makes sense, where you have a handful of men who are doing very well and getting a lot of these swipes, and then a large swath of them who are getting zero or very few swipes, and it averages out to 2.5%,

but it's what in mathematics we call a bimodal distribution.

Basically, there are two modes, there are two averages: there's the big group of people who are getting almost no matches,

and then another group of people who's getting a high degree of matches.

So, 1% keeps getting richer, and the 90-something percent gets poorer.

Exactly.

Okay.

And so getting back to your point of, well, great, like let's figure out where is the optimism in this.

You've told me that these are really difficult platforms.

Again, just to revisit the Rosenfeld statistics, like yes, about half of new relationships start online today.

So there is a lot that we can do.

And what are those things that we can do?

Well, I really like the work.

There's a woman by the name of Logan Uri, who's a behavioral scientist over at Hinge.

And she does some great work with leading up their behavioral scientist team on what are some of the tangible things that we can do with our profiles to increase the probability of success.

Some of them I think you've probably spoken about it at length on here, but some of the biggest ones are, you know, the first picture is really your

She'll refer to it sometimes like a billboard, your billboard, your advertisement of what you're putting out into the world.

And so you want to make sure that there's a clear picture of your face.

You want to be smiling.

And this is something that

I think makes sense to

put a lot of effort into, or put some effort into.

And this could be, you know, hiring a professional photographer.

It could be just like asking a friend with a good smartphone to shoot you in some good light.

But that's super important.

You want to keep your number of pictures between about four to six.

Have some that are showing you doing activities that you care about.

You want others that have a full body shot so someone can get an idea of what the full you looks like.

And so I think that's a lot in terms of like profile design, then, especially with pictures.

With any of the prompting, I think you want to be writing questions or answers in a way that initiates conversations.

So one way that I could think about responding to, you know, if I'm into the outdoors, I could say, you know,

I love to ski.

And it gives you a data point about me.

And maybe if you're really interested in my pictures, you might write back and say, cool, you know, have you ever been out to Whistler or, you know, have you been out to Tahoe to get over in Europe?

But a different way that I can pose that same thing is,

you know,

are you interested?

You know, like, just got back from a, trip to Japan, like amazing powder and sushi.

And someone who's in the ski community understands that.

They read between the lines and like maybe even a question at the end, like, you know, like, let me know if you're up for sushi.

Right.

So that you've given a leading question to someone on the other end that they can more easily respond to.

Nice.

It's also an example of showing, not telling,

which as a writer, you probably

or anybody listening might remember from college English, high school English.

My old teacher used to say, come on, show, don't tell.

Don't tell me something, show me something, and as a reader, I'm going to feel it more.

So with online dating, sure, your prompt or your bio could say, I like to ski.

But a more vivid way to show that would be, oh, I feel amazing swooshing down the black diamond.

The powder's amazing.

Instead of saying, I like nice restaurants, oh my god,

the...

spider roll at such and such place makes life worth living.

So we can infuse some specificity and some emotion into our bios and prompts.

We can have them come to life a little bit more.

That's what I've found.

Yeah, I love that.

I think that's absolutely right.

I'm hungry for sushi all of a sudden.

This is great.

So I think some of our listeners might still be doing shots of vodka because they're depressed at the number of matches.

they think they're going to get based on that stat you gave us about two and a half percent.

And then most of those two and a half percent are going to maybe better looking guys.

But here's what I want to throw in here: tell me if you agree.

And even if you don't pretend like you do for this podcast, just kidding, just kidding.

No,

what I say to a guy is, yeah, don't worry.

The majority of men who are on online dating are, they have underwhelming profiles.

They have a first photo that's sunglasses and, you know, a hoodie making them look like the Unibomber.

They have really boring, lame prompts.

And if you can just get your profile into the top 10% in terms of editorial content, good photos, that good opening billboard you mentioned,

a couple prompts, show some personality, some humor, then I, anyway, feel free to agree or disagree to.

I feel like, okay, you might not be six foot three male model, six pack ab guy, but you're still going to elevate yourself above 90% of most men on dating apps and start to get some

matches and some dates.

I completely agree.

I think we have so much more agency than we give ourselves credit for.

And like you're saying, putting a little bit of effort into that differentiates you from a giant swath of the population who's not taking the time to do that.

And then, in terms of how we're actually engaging once we connect with someone, is also going to be really indicative of whether or not this leads to meeting in real life.

And so, one of the things that I think is just as simplest from here is recognizing these tools.

I mean, they are tools.

They're great servants, terrible masters.

And so if we're using them the way they're designed to be used, or I won't even say designed, the way that they can be used,

we can move relatively quickly from a brief back and forth into a date.

And I think that's really what we want to set the goal at here.

We don't want to have these endless pen pal relationships where we're writing and writing for days and days and weeks on end.

That's not why many people are on the apps.

And if you are, find another platform.

So

I think if we're using these intentionally and thoughtfully, we can do a lot to differentiate ourselves and move more into that other group of the bimodal distribution that I was talking about, of people who have had a lot of success on the apps and are going on dates with

interesting people.

What else from your book can you share with us?

What's

a jaw-dropping stat or a piece of research that nobody's ever heard before that your book will unearth for them that

can give them motivation or just tell them the truth about dating and give them some hope and some help?

So there's a concept that has been talked about a bit before that I expand on in the book.

And it's this idea known as the secretary problem.

It discusses when do we know when we should stop dating.

So, we run into this paradox of choice sometimes in the apps where there's so many options, and there's the temptation to continue swiping to try and find this partner who's as good-looking as this ex and as funny and charismatic as this axe, and whose in-laws you got along well well as this other ex.

And if you don't find them in this date, there's the temptation to just swipe the grasses greener on the next date.

We know that's not the case.

We know there are a lot of fallacies and cognitive biases built into that thinking.

And so then the question becomes, how do we know when to stop?

How do we know when enough is enough when we've met someone who's met the three or four really fundamental criterias that we're looking for someone?

When you say stop dating, do you mean give up on dating or do you mean say, this is the person I want to be with?

Excellent question.

The latter.

So when do we decide, you know, I've been on some dates and this is the person who I want to commit to.

So there was this math riddle that circulated in like the 1950s known as a secretary problem.

And the idea is you're hiring for the position of a secretary and there are 100 secretaries out in the waiting room.

One of them comes in, you interview them and decide yes or no.

If you say no, then that candidate is forever gone and you continue on with the interview process.

Of course, you want to select the person who's going to be best for the job.

You can make two mistakes.

One mistake is you don't interview enough people.

So you interview two or three people, you say, yeah, this will do, and you leave the other 98 or 97 sitting out in the waiting room.

The other mistake is to wait to the other end of the distribution where you said, gosh, I've you know, interviewed 95 people at this point.

I only have five more choices, and there are actually some pretty good ones now that I'm looking back on things.

So how do we more intentionally, more thoughtfully think about optimizing our chances of finding the best secretary?

And there are no guarantees, but from a statistical standpoint, the way we maximize that is to interview the first 37% of candidates,

identify who the best fit was, call that our baseline.

and then continue to date.

Once we find someone who's better than that baseline, that's our person to settle down with.

So this is a riddle that's been likened in a dating context in different places.

Logan Yuri talks about it in her book.

I've heard it talked about in algorithms to live by.

Again, it's an old math riddle.

I think maybe Hannah Fry does a TED talk on it.

And my thought was it's an interesting corollary for the dating world, but there are a lot of simplifying assumptions that don't actually make it a great fit.

My thought is if you have a

qualified pool of 100 people, you know, you've decided, great, I've swiped with this person, they meet all these like initial criteria that I might have, and we go and meet on a date.

Within a group of, you know, 100 or 200 or whatever it might be people here,

there are probably quite a few who you could choose to build a great relationship with and say, great, like as soon as I find someone who makes me feel awesome about myself, who is

caring and generous,

that's someone where I really want to invest and decide that I'm going to make this relationship work.

And so I came up with a variation to this, which comes from

this idea of being a, what's called a satisficer.

So when we make decisions, there are a couple different ways we can go about making decisions.

One is to be a maximizer.

Maximizers are the people who want to optimize for the best outcome, the absolute

empirical best outcome.

So they're shopping for a car and they're going to test drive 130 different cars before they make a decision as opposed to saying great once i get one that you know has a pretty good safety record and has a decent you know 10 year 100 000 mile warranty and is able to accelerate as fast as i need to to you know merge onto the highway

it may not be the absolute best one but it's a really good choice.

And I'm going to choose to be happy with that decision.

And

so that is sort of the maximizing versus satisficing idea.

The maximizer wants to find like the objectively best choice out of all 130 cars.

And the satisficer says, let me set a few criteria.

And then once I find that, and maybe it's after test driving seven cars, great, I'm going to go ahead and put the down payment on and make it official.

And so what the research shows us is that the satisficers are much more happy with their decisions.

And I think there are a lot of important lessons for us in a dating context, which is it is not necessarily finding the person who is the funniest or the most attractive or has the best salary or, you know, has the dog that you get along with the absolute best.

It's, you know, it really is about understanding what are your core values and getting clear on what those are and understanding when you have

met someone who has those.

So I have kind of this extension to the secretary problem called the satisficer solution.

And I have a

calculator that you can find off my website, timothymolnar.com/slash calculator, where you can change around the parameters of the secretary problem and basically say, instead of 100, you know, if we want to consider there are still 100 people in the waiting room, instead of just one person that we could be happy with, maybe we imagine we could be happy with 20 people or 10 or 5.

And then you can play around with the number of dates you would need to go on to likely meet that person.

So it gives you a probability where it would say, you know, after you've you've gone on seven dates, if you decide there are 10 good matches out of these 100,

then it will spit out the probability that you'll have met them after that seventh date.

And so for those listeners who may be a little bit more mathematically inclined, it may be a fun thing to just kind of play around with.

And it gives you some ideas for, you know, playing with some parameters and understanding what the probabilistic implications are.

You just gave me the headline for this podcast.

How to find love by using a calculator.

Oh my God.

It's so cool.

As somebody who hated math in high school, I love that tip.

That's great.

By the way, it's TimothyMolnar.com and that's spelled M-O-L-N-A-R.

And that's where you can find the book and also this calculator.

I love that.

I love that.

That's so cool.

Speaking of your book and stats, I just wanted to ask you to talk about one more, one or two more stats from the book.

I found this, checking out your book, before we hopped on today's pod, which is a fact that paid dating app users, people people who pay for the app,

are 50% more likely to find a partner.

According to DateSmarter, page 137, quote, partnered adults who paid for dating site features were more likely to meet their significant other online.

52% of paying users versus 34% of non-paying users.

Sounds like...

Good bet is to go with the paid option assuming you have a relatively good profile.

Can you talk a bit more about that stat?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think there can be this temptation to want to always use the freemium version of whatever software it is and feel like we're gaming the system.

We're getting the free version of Zoom, we're getting the free version of Hinge.

We're getting, you know, well, Netflix is a little bit different because maybe we're using like, you know, our friend's grandma's account or something.

But, you know, just to bring it back to these more standard freemium

features,

there can be a real temptation, and I find myself falling into that as well.

But I think a good question to ask yourself is

what type of value do I put on this?

And finances are a really personal thing, and so I don't like to give blanket advice of you should or should not.

Like, it's not this binary thing for everyone.

There are a lot of things to consider.

But I think I do like to think about it this way, where if we assume that a dating app premium feature costs, you know, maybe $50 or $60.

For some of your listeners who are working engineering jobs, it's not unreasonable that they're making that per hour.

They're saying, you know, is it worth one hour of my time, the equivalent, to be able to increase my chances by 50%?

It's a question to ask yourself.

I don't want to say that there are unequivocal answers to it, but I think it's worth thinking about that opportunity cost of, you know, if I continue to date and how many more dinners do I need to buy?

How much more time am I spending scrolling through these apps?

How much, how many more like approaches do I need to prepare myself for?

And this is by no means to say that if you do pay, you will for sure have success, but it's saying like, I think the whole idea behind Date Smarter or a big

core tenant of it is how do we increase the probability of finding success?

Right.

And

I just always go back to

the fundamental idea of

having healthy relationships in our lives is the single biggest contributor to our happiness.

And so for me,

investing in those and whatever that looks like always

seems worth it from where I sit.

I mean, for the price of a couple of fancy cocktails each month, you can upgrade to a paid version of a dating app.

And assuming you have a pretty good profile,

then you're going to be shown to more women and have a better chance of getting more matches and potentially more dates.

And another stat from your book that I thought was telling, which is you write that Hinge reports that their Hinge X users, the premium feature in other words, go on three times as many dates

as people who use the free version of Hinge.

So it's all backed by data, right?

Yeah, and again, I do think that the behavioral science team who's collecting a lot of that data over at Hinge does a really nice job.

And so I think if you're hearing that and feeling frustrated and feeling like maybe you've had some messages, some dates, it's a worthwhile experiment to try.

It can be a worthwhile experiment to try and say, great, I'm going to do this for a month.

I'm going to set a reminder on my calendar for 27 days from now to cancel this or to revisit the idea of whether this has made a difference.

But I approach this from a scientific perspective.

And in my coaching, I like to do a lot of experimentation as well and say, you know, let's just run a very simple experiment.

We'll A-B test this.

Last month you had the freemium version.

This month you're going to pay the $50 odd dollars and try the paid subscription.

Did you have a different experience?

If you did and it was notably better, was it $50 odd better?

If so, great.

And if not, then revisit that too.

A lot of people listening to this episode or listening to this podcast, they don't date much at all.

Dates are few and far between for them.

And

another quote from Date Smarter,

quote, you, I'm quoting you, of course, I managed to generate only five potential partners in the first three decades of life.

In just two years, I went on, then in the next two years, I went on dates with 47 women.

So can you talk a little bit about how you went from five dates through age 30 roughly to 47 dates in two years?

How did you, I call that abundance.

I want men to have an abundance of options so that they can choose a great girlfriend from some nice options.

How did you go from five dates in 30 years to 47 dates in two years?

Yeah.

So first of all, thanks for doing your homework here and asking that question.

It's a fun one for me to answer.

So it's not something I talk about a lot, but I think it has the ability to really help individuals who are similarly situated where I was, which was, you know, not having a lot of dates, not necessarily having the confidence.

I thought about what is really truly holding me back.

What are the roadblocks?

Okay.

And

for me, it was that I was not going and saying hi to people.

I was not going up and making that comment about the, you know, Aussie at the dog park or the chicken pot stickers in Isle 5 over at Trader Joe's, just like something simple.

And so I thought to myself, what is holding me back from doing that?

It was probably confidence, self-esteem, something wrapped up in there.

And then I said, what research-backed practices do I know can help me overcome that?

And so I turned to both affirmations and visualizations, kind of borrowing from positive psychology.

And in the morning, I would sit on my floor for about five minutes and I would close my eyes and I would picture myself in various settings.

So maybe it was over at the rock climbing gym and I saw someone who I thought seemed really interesting and I wanted to go chat to.

And I would picture myself going up and just saying like, hey, you know, would, would you, would you want to belay on this on this next route?

And even from the floor of my bedroom, I would start to get that, like, that tightness, that anxiety, like in my, in my chest or in my stomach.

And I would just take like a really deep breath.

And I would do it again.

And I'd start the visualization.

And I'd go up to the same person and would ask the same question.

And the tightness would still be there.

And take that breath and do it again.

And slowly over time, and I don't wanna say slowly over like three years, like slowly over like probably like a week and a half, two weeks from when I started this to when I asked really the first person out that I'd ever really asked out.

And I had had like kind of that five-number that you brought up was like girlfriends who I'd met through, you know, clubs or whatever.

But in terms of like going up to someone who I really didn't know and who was a stranger, I idea, I hadn't done that really in the first three decades of life.

And so

that visualization practice combined with affirmations of, you know, I get to go make someone's day.

And really, I think that's a key thing.

And I know you've talked about this before for listeners who maybe haven't listened to one of those episodes where you've mentioned it, is

you have the ability to

make someone's day, to go up, make them smile, to be able to tell their friends later, hey, yeah, this nice guy came up to me today and started talking about, you know, freppuccinos in the coffee line.

And, you know, we had a really nice chat.

And I think, again, we just, we get very much in our heads about, you know, how does this make me feel, the discomfort and all of that, and lose sight of that.

So

that was something that I would just continue to remind myself of, like, you know, I'm enough and someone would be fortunate to like have a nice conversation.

And in this era of social atrophy where loneliness has never been higher, and we have the Surgeon General declaring it a pandemic.

We have countries like the UK and Japan appointing ministers of loneliness.

People crave this social connection.

And

it really could be the highlight of their day, perhaps their week, for you to go up and you know, offer to play them in the climbing gym or ask them what they're reading on the bus.

And for me to actually bring myself to actualize that and to recognize this discrepancy from like, sure, it sounds great, but like, how do I get myself to do that?

It really was the combination of these affirmation and visualization practices.

And

then I, you know, it was the difference between not being able to do that and then being able to walk up to someone in Trader Joe's and I made some stupid comment about salmon and we kept chatting and we ended up going on five great dates.

And it didn't end up being a, you know, a forever fit, but that gave me me the realization that like, yes, I can do this and I can do this again.

And certainly there were times where after that, I'd be like, great, okay, I'm going to go up and do this.

And I'd chicken out and just be like, great.

Some days I just don't feel quite as confident and that's okay.

I needed to extend grace to myself.

And other days, you know, I'd be feeling great and maybe we'll chat to a number of people.

So these 47 dates.

I'm sorry, 47 women you've met in those two years.

Do I have that number right?

It was 47.

So 47 dates.

First dates.

47 first dates.

Yeah.

Got it.

So obviously 47 different women.

Exactly.

So if you were to give me the pie chart of these 47, what percentage did you meet in real life by walking up to them and just finding them throughout your life versus online?

So I had met, I think, 31 online and 16 in person.

But what I talk about and maybe where you're getting to here and kind of the interesting finding was

I tracked, did we go on a second date?

And that was really interesting to me.

And if we had met online, did we go on a second date?

And if we had met in person, did we go on a second date?

I'm on pins and needles.

Go.

What is it?

Can I?

I'm going to make a guess.

Okay.

I'm going to guess.

I'm not going to guess the percentage, but I'm going to say it was a higher percentage of second dates or with women you met who you had met in person or approached, quote unquote, in person.

Yeah, and it wasn't just a small effect size it was 10x as much success so about 70 of the dates that i went on with someone i met in person we went on a second date and a lot of them it was like at least like three four or five dates it was like really like pretty pretty decent connections and there were only a handful from the 31 who i'd met online that led to second dates

how did you what does that give us meaning to that what does that mean or what did it mean to you anyway

so the researcher and me and the statistician wanted to see if I could run what we would use like a statistical regression to understand:

is there statistically significant difference between these sample size?

And unfortunately, the sample size was just a little bit too small to be able to register on those charts.

So, I was like, I really want to talk about that in the book, but it didn't quite check out on the little Z-test I was running.

So,

what it did tell me, though, was

there

is

a lot that we bring in person that we just couldn't possibly ever perceive even with the most honest and authentic profile.

And when you're in line at the grocery store and the person in front of you pays a really genuine thank you to the person bagging your groceries and gives them a smile,

immediately I'm thinking, gosh, this is a person who sees the little people in life and treats them well.

And when no one's looking, they're doing the right thing.

And that's the kind of person I want to be with.

And if I see someone online and they went to maybe a great college and they have an impressive job and they have attractive photos and interesting hobbies,

that very well could be someone that I would be a good match with, that you might be a good match with, or one of your listeners could be a good match with.

But the things that we know from research actually lead to happiness, none of those are captured by any of those indicators.

They're nice to have,

but

they are not predictive of whether or not you are going to be in a relationship with this person in one, two, five, ten years.

We have great research from John and Julie Gottman on this.

And for those of you listeners who aren't familiar with their work, they out of the University of Washington and they'll have couples come into their love lab and they'll hook them up to all sorts of biometrics to understand, you know, basically they'll be in the

apartment for maybe 24 hours, sometimes 72 hours.

They'll test urine to be able to understand cortisol levels, like when are they feeling stressed.

And they'll code all kinds of facial expressions to be able to understand,

running this as a longitudinal study, what is the likelihood that this couple is together again in a year, 10 years, 20 years, whatever it might be.

And they've been doing this for decades.

And they've reported that like with nearly 90% success, they can...

tell just by

watching this couple interact for a very short period of time whether or or not they're going to be together.

And from that, they've distilled down the core things that really do lead to happiness and marital satisfaction.

And none of those are how tall this person is.

None of those are what job this person has.

None of those are

you know, whether this person went to college X, Y, or Z.

It's really things like loyalty and generosity and kindness and emotional stability.

And these are things that are just very difficult to pick up on apps.

And that's what I think I could more intuitively sense.

And I think what your listeners will be able to more intuitively sense, what the other person on the other side of this interaction can intuitively sense.

We have time for just one more area, but this is an important area.

Something that might be the single universal,

most

popular, universally asked question in dating, at least from men, which is

when talking to a woman in person texting basically communicating with women how do I talk to women how do I flirt how do I make a romantic connection and I'd love for you to feel free to make this research backed if you have research on it or maybe this is a bit more art than science but when you were going on these 47 dates in two years 47 first dates, not to mention all your second dates.

What did you find worked well for you in terms of conversation and making romance happen in a win-win way?

I ask you this because I feel like our listener is a lot like you, Tim.

I feel like our listener is an analytical gentleman and is fascinated by data and research.

And I'm not saying that does or doesn't help somebody on a date, but I'm just curious what worked for you and what didn't in terms of talking to women and making some romance happen.

So I think a really important piece of this question is

how do we get ourselves in the ring?

How do we get ourselves a shot from when we've matched with someone on an app to be able to actually meet up with them in person?

Because anyone who's used these knows there can be a really big divide between those two things.

Right.

So one of the things that I talk about is

using what James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, refers to as implementation intentions.

And it's really a specific behavior date time of like like what we're going to do or in this case just specificity around when we're going to meet up so so you send over a plan an invitation and instead of like hey would you want to get together sometime

that's a really vague question because i don't know if i'm agreeing to a

all day

hike.

I don't know if we're going for coffee.

I don't know if that's at 7 in the morning or 2 p.m.

on a Saturday or on a Thursday.

And contrast that with, hey, it's been really fun chatting back and forth here.

I'd love to take this to a coffee shop.

Are you free Thursday at 6 p.m.?

There's this really fun coffee shop that I've been loving downtown called, you know, whatever.

And now the person on the other end of that has all the information that they need to make that decision.

And it's possible that that decision is, no, actually, like, I was really comfortable on the app, and I'm really not looking for

meeting up with real people here.

I'm, you know, doing this for self-gratification or other types of reasons to ward off loneliness, to, you know, as a numbing effect for some anxious feelings that I'm having.

But that's a lot better to figure out at this stage as opposed to continuing to draw the conversation on for days and days and days.

And so I think it's a lot about specificity.

I think it's about clarity of intentions.

And yeah, I think it's like people want someone who's fun too.

So the more that you can let your personality shine through and think about, you know, what are some things that are exciting to you?

How do you ask interesting questions?

I think all of those contribute to positive communication that can help people move the needle and improve their chances of having success.

Give us a story.

Give us a success story from your dating past.

A date you had that went really well.

You asked great questions.

You really clicked with her.

Any specific moments, memories jump out to you?

Yeah.

So

the first real date that I had with my now partner Paige,

we went went over to the Boulder Reservoir and we decided to bring a picnic, probably met up around 6.30 or 7.

And

immediately I knew there was something special.

She had made this like beet hummus because she had this

like CSA so she'd get little you know produce once a week and she had like taken the time to like cook these beets blend them down blend up the chickpeas

and I remember just being really taken with that.

And

from her perspective, when she talks about the date and when it really clicked for her, was we got into discussing our morning routines, you know, we get up in the morning, what do we do?

And

she would say, well, you know, like, I like to start my day with a, with like a green smoothie.

I was like, well, what goes into the green smoothie?

And I was like, genuinely fascinated.

My dad was into these for the longest time.

And

so I was curious.

You know, I had done a little green smoothie kick myself at one point.

And, you know, she's talking about like, okay, well, first I need like a thickener.

So I put in, like, I put in yogurt.

And I was like, is it Greek yogurt?

And she's like, oh, yeah, it's got to be Giobani.

And I was like, blue top, red top, like, which one are we thinking?

And I was genuinely curious to know like what went into that.

And she said, like, in that moment, that was sort of her beat hummus moment.

She was like, gosh, like, this guy wants to know whether I use the red top jabani or the blue top jabani.

Like, he actually cares about me and what's going on.

Like, I feel seen, I feel heard, I feel understood.

And neither of us were trying to put on an act of, oh, I'm going to put together this hummus because maybe I'll impress him.

It's like, no, like, I love this CSA.

I love fresh produce.

And I want to like make this hummus.

And like, you know, if nothing else, like, I get to have a good, tasty snack, even if he doesn't like this.

And for me, I'm like, gosh, like, I just, this is so fascinating.

Like, what goes in there?

So.

I think just that ability to show up with a genuine curiosity, and this goes for so many conversations and and interactions that we have that's not just dating related but it's you know

meeting people in a professional context meeting people on the bus is like you never know where something might lead but you know I've had fascinating conversations with like

people who started medical centers and like the guy who used to run the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

And these weren't things where I was like, gosh, like this seems like a really important person sitting on this bench.

It was just like, here's a nice person.

Like I'm going to say hi and then, like, ask some interesting questions about what they're doing.

And

sometimes, like, they might not be, you know, they might be busy.

They might be doing other stuff.

They might have things going on.

They might have had a death in the family recently and might just be having an off day.

But more often than not, we're starved for that connection.

And people really appreciate that genuine curiosity.

I love that story about you asking Paige yogurt-based questions

coming from a place of genuine curiosity.

Yeah,

I don't know why it was so fascinating to me, but it was, and I just like kind of kept pressing.

And so, I think for someone listening to this, they're like, you know, I really don't care about yogurt.

There's something else that they do care about and that they're going to be able to find common ground on and gonna be able to probe a little bit more deeply on.

I think that's a great example of the power of showing genuine interest.

And

what I love about that story is

one of my big pet peeves is this whole idea of don't ask questions, avoid interview mode.

I say you can interview all you want if your interview questions are good ones, if they're interesting to her, if they're about her because you're curious about something.

If it's coming through the lens of, I'm going to ask her questions because I want to know what makes her tick, what makes her who she is.

That can be absolutely

magnetic to women because you're genuinely curious about her.

I had a first date once.

She's now my good friend, Rebecca, but at the time we dated briefly.

And on our first date, I was feeling pretty introverted, pretty shy.

And I defaulted to questions.

I just wasn't in the zone, didn't have a lot of energy.

I sort of defaulted to interview mode, but I asked pretty good, pretty interesting questions.

This is before I ever became a dating coach.

And I would say she did 80% of the talking.

And I didn't really share much about myself, but I asked good questions.

I had not yet gotten back home.

We parted ways, had a quick little good night kiss, and I got back home.

And before I'd even gotten home, she sent me a text that said, you're the most interesting person I've met in so long.

Yet I didn't say anything about me.

I was helping her feel seen.

And I think that you're sharing a similar story about how you and Parsh, a little window into how you and Paige connected.

You were genuinely curious about her.

Women love a man who is curious about her

and we love people that are curious about us like i feel great in this conversation you've been asking me great thoughtful well-curated conversations for the last 45 minutes and i feel awesome like gosh kyle's like he's such a nice guy we're having this great conversation gosh like i feel so interesting because you've made me feel that way you've given me space to talk about myself so i think for people who are like gosh like what is it that i say i need to come with like the best story or do this.

Right.

Just a reminder that people care more about how you make them feel than the things that you necessarily have to share.

And, like, those things will come.

But

the better

you can show up and just be genuinely curious, that's so many doors.

It's also a nice break in someone's normal

conversational habits to talk in a deeper way about something something so freaking dumb like yogurt.

On my first date with Jessamine, my girlfriend Jessamine, we did a deep dive on why she hates ketchup and why I hate mushrooms.

And it was fantastic.

Well, okay, well, now I need to follow up.

So what are the reasons?

I hate mushrooms because they were created by the devil.

They're slimy.

They taste terrible.

They're literally fungi.

And her ketchup issues are a little bit, she's like, eh, there's so many better sauces than ketchup.

We can do better people.

But it was fun talking about

the littlest things in a really committed way.

I think that's why Seinfeld is such a fun show to watch.

You know, it's a show about nothing.

It's not about nothing.

They just take a deep dive into the most trivial things.

But to them, it's important.

Just something about that makes the brain happy, I think.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Well, we're out of time.

Tim, I could keep talking to you, and I'd love to have you back.

This is fantastic.

Your book really is a goldmine of stats, research.

I'm fascinated by so much of what you have in your book, Date Smarter, a strategic guide to navigating modern romance.

You can go to timothymolnar.com.

You can order it there.

You can also go to Amazon.

And do you have any parting words?

I like to sometimes end the podcast.

by saying to the listener, hey, don't just consume this information, although I'm proud of it.

Dating success is about, at the end of the day, it's about taking action.

It's about going out into the world and doing something.

Any final parting words for the gentleman listening to this episode?

Absolutely.

So I think we have a lot more agency in this realm of life than we give ourselves credit for.

And I think it's easy and sometimes like cliche and a little bit trite to be like, oh yeah, just go ask someone out tomorrow.

That could feel like a really big jump.

If you feel like you're at a place to make that happen, then great.

I think that's a great next step.

If you're like me and where I was, I think a really great next step is: do you have five minutes today?

And can you sit down and visualize yourself doing something that feels hard or scary for you?

That could be approaching someone, that could be meeting up for a date, that could be sending a message that feels a little bit vulnerable, whatever it is.

Visualize that process,

feel where that discomfort comes up, repeat that, and just spend five minutes doing that today.

And that can be your first next step.

I love it.

Yeah, that daily ritual, you sat on your floor and visualized.

I have clients, I call it the confidence kickoff, where you sit down every morning, or maybe you go for a walk, or maybe you do it like I do in my swimming pool, going for morning laps.

You visualize, you focus on things you want to achieve, things you want to feel, and also getting in touch with your worth.

as a man, the value you're going to bring to some woman's dating table.

And doing that at least for a few minutes every day is a great thing.

It's a great way to start your day.

Tim, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Connell, thanks so much for having me.

Your listeners really do have a treat being able to show up and listen to you episode after episode here.

It's been fascinating chatting with you.

And I would love to come back and chat again sometime.

Right back at you.

As long as we don't talk about mushrooms in a positive way.

Only in a negative, critical way.

Thank you for listening to an hour plus of Tim and I.

Look, there's millions of podcasts out there.

Thank you for spending an hour with Tim and myself.

And don't forget, your dream girlfriend, she is out there and she's going to love you.

She's just going to want to meet the real authentic you because that is you at your most attractive.

So go out there, take action, the very least, do some morning visualization and be authentic.

Until next time.