How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett - 5 Fixes to Make Your Online Dating Profile a Match Magnet Today—New Photos NOT Needed

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Struggling to get matches on Hinge, Bumble or Tinder? It’s not your looks, and it’s not the dating apps. It’s your profile. Small but costly mistakes make women swipe left. In this episode of ��How to Get a Girlfriend,” dating coach and bestselling author Connell Barrett shares five proven “Match Magnet” fixes you can apply today—using the photos you already have. No photo shoot, no stress. Just make 5 simple upgrades to turn your profile into match-generating machine.Episode Highlights:04:30: Match Magnet #1: Be Hilarious, Not Handsome10:04: Match Magnet #2: Entice Her with a Good Travel Shot12:31: Match Magnet #3: Replace Red Flags with Green Flags16:30: Match Magnet #4: Get Down & Flirty21:31: Match Magnet #5: Tug at Her HeartstringsBOOK A FREE CONSULT WITH CONNELL TO SEE IF 1-1 DATING COACHING IS RIGHT FOR YOU: http://www.DatingTransformation.com

So unless your name is Jason Mamoa, put the trout down. Welcome back to the How to Get a Girlfriend Podcast. I am your host, dating coach, Connell Barrett. Bestselling author of Dating Sucks, but you don't. I'm your podcast dating coach. I'm here to help you get more matches, get more dates, flirt like a champ, and get a great girlfriend and do it all by being authentic. No sketchy pickup artist moves needed here. This is about putting your real, most charismatic, awesomely, you, self in charge of your dating life.

And today's going to be a fun episode. A lot of guys say, hey, Connell, how did you name your podcast, how to get a girlfriend? Well, that's mainly what we're talking about here. I want to help guys get a girlfriend. And maybe the most common question I get is how did you meet your girlfriend. My girlfriend, Jess, and I, met on the dating app. We met on a dating app called The League. She saw my profile, and I had a line in my bio that made her laugh. I wrote, I'm the real-life Hitch. Dating me is like being in a rom-com. Dot, dot, dot, except I would never slap Chris Rock. That made her laugh. Famously, Will Smith, who played Hitch, slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars. And that made my girlfriend or my future girlfriend, Jess, laugh. We started messaging,

hit our first date, and the rest is our romantic history. And making a woman laugh on your profile is one of five match magnets that I'm going to be talking about today. This episode, I'm going to give you five match magnets, five fast, quick things you can do to get more matches or get any matches and start getting some dates in the dating apps because chances are the apps just don't work for you very well you probably swipe a lot and get few to no good matches and very few quality dates at least with the kinds of women you would like to have dates with and the thing about online dating is it can feel like rejection on repeat swiping and swiping and swiping and getting few leads then leads come in they ghost you or they unmatch you

and it's so frustrating. So today I'm going to identify five profile mistakes that turn women off. Five mistakes that you might be making some or you're definitely making some of these. You might be making all five. And these are blind spots. Mistakes you don't even realize you're making. So five profile mistakes. I'm not going to mention mistake number six.

Mistake number six is like a nickel. back as your favorite band. Now that's unforgivable. I can't help you with that one, but the other five I can help you with. So I'm going to identify these five profile mistakes and give you five fixes for each one. And the fixes are what I call match magnets. Five little magnets to put on your profile to, you know, help magnetize some of those right swipes so that you can have, here's what I want for you, man. I want you to grab your phone or to be able to grab your phone in just a couple days from now and look at Hind or Bumble or Tinder or whatever profile or platform you're on and say and see ping, ping, ping, ping, seven new matches. And most of them are real. Hopefully

all of them are real and start lining up some dates because when you have an abundance of matches coming in, it just makes dating so much easier. It makes it easier to approach women because the pressures off. It makes first dates feel easier to you because no matter how that date goes with that girl, you can look at your phone and say, hey, I've got some other leads coming in. No huge pressure on this date. So let's get to it. And again, the thing I like about these these five match magnets I'm going to give you, I should have mentioned this before. You don't need to take any new photos. You don't need to do a photo. you just need to look at your existing profile and your existing photos and we can make

something really compelling all right so here we go match magnet number one be hilarious not handsome here's a mistake you're probably making you probably think that online dating success is all about good looks and that women only swipe right on really handsome guys and they swipe left on you because you're not Mr. Hollywood handsome and that's wrong that is just dead wrong women often swipe left because a guy's profile just lacks humor comes off as dull boring lacks humor and if she finds it boring then she's not going to match with you if a woman finds a profile boring or if she just doesn't laugh or get any good emotional pull from it then she's going to extrapolate. Here's how women's minds work. Oh, his profile's dull. It's boring. It's factual. It's logical.

A date with him will be logical and awkward and boring. And women hates boring dates. They hate boring dates. They hate awkward pauses, boring dates with boring seeming guys. Now, I don't know you personally listening to this, but I doubt very much. that you're boring. However, your profile is probably boring women. Here's the fix. Make her laugh. Make her laugh. Have one thing on your profile that gets her giggling and she's going to be into you or at least she's going to be very intrigued and she's going to want to keep checking out your profile. Humor is so attractive to women. And it's not just because the obvious that people love to laugh. Of course they do. A funny prompt or a funny bio line that makes her laugh.

it sends a great message it says to her a date with this guy is going to be fun so if you can get her laughing just once she's going to say all right probably not going to marry him but all right i'll have a date with this guy i'll swipe right with him he made me giggle if you can make her laugh on her phone she's looking at your profile she'll think he'll probably make me laugh in person So if you can get her laughing, you can get some incredible matches. So make her laugh and you are in. Even if you don't look like Brad Pitt, you can look like Brad Garrett. But if you can make her laugh, you can date like you're Brad Pitt, almost.

And take me, for instance, I am no male model. Okay. All right. I mean, I have a pretty nice jaw. Pretty nice jaw. I'm lucky to have a full head of hair, albeit very getting grayer and grayer as I get older. But I'm no male model. Women do not fan themselves as I walk down the street.

I've never had a woman just drop her jaw at my hotness. That don't happen. I basically look like one of Ron Weasley's brothers. But I get a shitload of matches because I can make women laugh on my profile. And that makes them feel, okay, good solid guy, good heart makes me laugh. I'll have a date with him. so we want to add one maybe two funny lines to your profile either as a prompt or as a line in your bio and i would make if you're going to go the bio route i would make the very first line of your bio

the funny line so here are a couple little examples of of fun little these these are just basically one liners just one liners here are a few ideas number one i love cooking with red wine i even add food to it sometimes. Okay, you get that right. Next. Do you like athletic guys? Because I'm training for a marathon. Dot, dot, dot, dot. Then you add a little running emoji. Next. I just got back from visiting Germany, Spain, Italy, and England. Boy, do I love Epcot Center. Okay? Just a dad joke, basically by the way dad joke humor is perfect for online dating you don't want to be like raunchy you don't want to be r pg 13 you want to be dad joky because everybody can chuckle at a dad joke or at least safe kind of not you know non r rated humor another one i've had really good success with i did

a whole episode about this i think it was a whole episode is a prompt that i was just i was just practicing seeing what might work and I wrote quote if you like tall handsome charming funny charismatic witty kind humble financially stable gentlemen who love dogs and kids dot dot dot then you should be my brother women love that one woman said that was so funny she she wondered if I even wrote it if I like did that with AI, which I did not. And you can borrow that one too. Now, don't have all the same descriptions of you. You want to have the descriptions describe the best version of you. But women love that one because it's both, it's a little bit cheeky and almost on the verge of arrogant,

but then at the very end, there's the twist. So it's very self-effacing. So it's a way to pump yourself up without coming off like you're arrogant. Anyway, if you can make her laugh, She's going to love to meet you, or she's going to want to meet you. Humor is definitely a match magnet. Okay, let's go to match magnet number two. Entice her with a really good travel shot. Again, these are photos you don't need a photo shoot for. You already have these photos, probably.

Big mistake that you're probably making. Too many men litter their profile with dull selfies that just show them, I don't know, looking like every other guy. Like, oh, here's a photo of me sitting in a chair and I took a selfie. Here's your fix. Go through your phone. Find some enticing travel photos either from a cool exotic location you went to, you visited. Obviously, a foreign country or a cool faraway city would be amazing.

Or if you've never traveled overseas, no worries. Grab a photo from a recent trip or any trip you took to the beach or to a visually compelling place. a mountain, you know, maybe you went hiking in the mountains once, or you were on a really cool beach. I have a photo of me. Well, I have some cool travel photos. It's a really good shot of me in Italy when I took a Vespa tour, and women are fascinated by it because you see me in Italy walking through vineyards. But if you've never been to Italy, no problem. Have you been to the beach?

Have you been to a cool destination that's visually stunning? The desert mountains? It's fine if you've never been overseas. Just find a photo of you near water. There's a photo of me. I'll post it on my Instagram. A photo of me walking on the beach. And I'm just walking on the beach wearing, you know, fairly nice beach clothes.

And it scored a whopping 9 out of 10 in attractiveness on photo feeler. PhotoFueler is a website that rates the quality of your online dating picks. So, yeah, nine out of ten in attractiveness, it got me on photofieler. I think the 10th voter just thought I was a missing Weasley brother. That's probably why I didn't get 10 out of 10. So find the best photo of you in exciting travel guy mode. This is a must for the kinds of matches you want. And you already have a good shot in your phone, I'm sure of it.

Okay. So that's the, that's match magnet number two. Let's move to match magnet number three. Number three is replace red flags on your profile with green flags. Here's a mistake you are probably making. You probably have at least one of these common red flags that churn women off. Bathroom mirror selfies, boring group photos, you with seven people where a woman can't identify you you sunglasses on or you wearing very you know underwhelming clothing you know a sweatpants ratty t-shirt instead of looking your best or worst of all a photo of you holding a fish i don't know what it is about men holding fish but women do not want to date the captain from jaws. So unless your name is Jason Mamoa, put the trout down. Okay. There's a chapter in my book called

It's not you. It's the halibut you're holding. It's all about online dating mistakes. So anyway, if you have any of those red flags, you want to get rid of them. And by the way, bathroom mirror selfies, those photos just scream. I live with my mom and she's using the good bathroom. So Get rid of those if you have those, God forbid. Oh, another red flag to remove from your profile is anything like no drama. I don't want no crazy women, no drama, no baggage. That kind of negativity is a huge turnoff. It actually signals to women the opposite of what you want to say to them.

You want to tell them you're positive. You want to tell them you are non-judgmental. You are in a good place. Right? So no negativity. So, here's the fix. Well, first, delete all those fish photos, get rid of the mirror selfies, and replace those red flags with green flags. Now, here's the best green flag of all, or not the best of all, but maybe, maybe the best of all.

It's the one I'm going to give you right here. I call it the dream boyfriend prompt. The dream boyfriend prompt. It's a simple phrase that sends all of the right messages to a woman in 22 words. Here's what you write, and you can put this on any dating app. You write this, quote, to me, a great relationship is about honest communication, lots of laughs, and letting the dog sleep on the bed with us. At the end, you add dog emoji and heart eye emoji. There you go.

I'll read it one more time. To me, a great relationship is about honest communication, lots of laughs, and letting the dog sleep on the bed with us. prompt shows that you are a relationship ready, that you're open, you're a good communicator, you're genuine, you're fun. And it also paints a cozy image that almost every woman would want her with her dream man on the bed with the dog, or at least debating whether the dog should be allowed or not. And it just sends a really great, a really great image, I should say, a really great message using that image. Now, you don't have to use that exact prompt if you don't want.

By the way, feel free to take any of these tips I've given you and channel them and make it very authentic. Make it very you. It's all about authenticity, baby. But I really like this prompt. It's pretty much copy and paste, although you can certainly adjust it. Okay, let's move to match magnet number four. I think this is a secret weapon.

oh man i forgot to tease it as like the secret weapon stick around for number four because you'll be getting your secret weapon but really this is a secret weapon of all the things you can do without a photo shoot just quickly upgrading and up improving your profile here's match magnet number four which is get down and flirty get down and flirty a big mistake you're making is you are not flirting on your bio. Your bio lacks flirtatiousness. It's a dating app. You're supposed to flirt. A dating profile that has no flirtatiousness. It's like a rom-com that has no rom, has no kiss. You're supposed to flirt at least a little bit. There's nothing creepy about a flirty dating prompt, but most men don't do it. So, well, you of course know all about the front zone, right? You know about getting

stuck in the friend zone in real life? A woman meets you and she just doesn't feel what she wants to feel. Well, the same thing can happen to you online on your profile before you ever even connect with a woman. It happens to your profile. Your profile can get friend zoned. Without some hint of romance or some flirtatiousness, your profile can get stuck in the online dating friend zone let's call it the the tinder hinterland the bumble stumble coffee ghost bagel call it what you will uh yeah it's the friend zone but here's the fix add at least one playful flirtatious prompt that paints the picture of what a connected romantic first date with you would look like one of your prompts should absolutely

convey romance here are a couple prompts i've written for my clients and or i've used myself number one quote let's get red wine at my favorite candlelit hideaway for flirty conversation and maybe end with a kiss that you can't stop thinking about mm not bad right um you're you're feeling romance for me right now, aren't you? I know you are. I know you want me. I know you want me. Next. Quote, together we can hit the dance floor, move with the music, and see if the rhythm, bah, rhythm. Rism, it's my rap name. You start that one again. Quote, together we can hit the dance floor, move with the music, and see if the rhythm leads to a makeout session. Feel free to add a cute little winky emoji to any of these and this next prompt has literally gotten me a hundred

plus matches i've used this one so many times not even used it it's just it was on my profile for a while so many women matched with me and on hinge of course on hinge you can count or you you know what women heart and like because every piece of hinge tells you what people respond to this got this has got me over a hundred matches on hinge i'll take us to my favorite secret rooftop bar for flirty banter and some stunning views of the city had so many women match with me many of them asked me hey where's this rooftop bar what do you mean by secret so feel free to use your variation of this one it won't be a secret rooftop bar perhaps depending on where you live but the nice thing about this prompt is I'm basically saying I am going to lead you on a fun

romantic date. So I'll read this one again. I'll take us to my favorite secret rooftop bar for flirty banter and some stunning views of the city. Just painting an enticing image, a scene that a woman would want to be a part of, I hope. That's what we're going for here. So you're simply setting the scene for what women want, which is a romantic date with a great guy like you. So again, it's a dating app. You're allowed to flirt. You are allowed to flirt. In fact, it's kind of weird not to, or at least it's not sexy, not too. All right. And here is the fifth one. Match magnet number five. This is an absolute must. At least if you want to be a boyfriend and you want to attract girlfriend material, this is the one that.

makes all the others work really well. So we finish with match magnet number five. Tug at her heartstrings. A mistake you're making on your profile is if you're like most guys, you treat your profile like it's a LinkedIn resume. Here are your stats, hobbies, facts, but nothing that stirs in motion, nothing that speaks to her heart. Here's your fix.

I want you to add what I call an awe photo, as in awe, a photo that makes a woman smile and just go, aw, it could be you dancing with great grandma at the wedding, or cuddling with your dog, or better yet, your dog is like licking your face and it's so gross, but it's also really cute. it could be you at the zoo and you're feeding peanuts to the elephant anything with animals can be really awe-inducing and heartstring tugging these are these are shots that show warmth kindness and heart and of course kindness warmth these are traits that are absolutely essential that women want in a man and a boyfriend now If you're there hooking up on Tinder and just want something quicker and more casual, it's not going to, it's not quite as important. But still, even women who are looking for something casual want a guy with heart who's

a kind, good guy. So it's not going to hurt you. And on my profile in the past, I've had a combination of good awe photos. I have a really nice photo of my dad and me at a film festival, just dad and son, really bonding. I have a really great shot of my niece, my niece, Tara, at her wedding. It's a selfie, and it's, but I'm well-dressed, and there's clearly a party vibe behind us. And it says, fun, uncle, fun-loving uncle. And a lot of women have complimented that photo.

And, oh, I've got a really good little, a good three-second video loop, as well as a still photo of my friend's dog, Bishi, licking my face. It's adorable. Now, if you don't have an off photo, that's okay. There is, and you probably do. I mean, I would look into, look at your phone for holiday photos, anything where you're interacting with your family and some kind of heart, warmth, family love is just popping off of the photo, whether you're giggling and laughing, hugging, something really warm. but if you don't have anything in your phone that's okay you can use a prompt instead you can go

with a prompt that conveys how you like to give back how you like to give how you like to help others and a good way you can write this prompt would be you start it with the phrase quote the way i love to give back is by dot dot dot and then fill in the blank so for example i had a client several years ago named Victor, and he's now married, I'm happy to say. And Victor, I don't know if this is the prompt that got him a match with his now wife, but I know that it got him a lot of positive responses. He wrote, the way I love to give back is by volunteering with the Ronald McDonald House. It feels so good to help sick kids who need housing while getting treatment. I think that's almost verbatim what he wrote. And he and I talked about this

prompt. He said, is this okay for me to put on here? I don't want to brag. I don't want to come off like, you know, I'm being showing off that I give back. And I said, it's totally fine because it's coming from the heart. You actually do this. You're a loving, caring guy. And there is nothing wrong with projecting them on your profile. So of course, we want this heart-tugging prompt to be a 100% truthful, authentic real. Of course, that should go without saying. I'll say it anyway. But because it will be in your case, then you can absolutely lean into that. It's part of who you are. Part of who you are is if you are a man who gives back in some way, shape, or form, then you can do that. I used to volunteer at a blind residence here in New York City, a place called Visions.

Visions at Sell Us Manor, wonderful place where blind people who are blind and visually impaired live there full time. I used to take blind people bowling in their basement. They have two bowling alleys. And I take their residence shopping sometimes. We go to Whole Foods. and I escort them and help them shop, help them read the mail. Anyway, I put that on my profile several years ago. And because it's real, because it's genuine, it's heartfelt, I leaned into it,

and a lot of women appreciated it and noticed it. And we talked about it. And that just made me an overall better boyfriend proposition. So anyway, that's a great option too. If you don't have a heart-tugging photo, then you can write a prompt that starts with the phrase the way I love to give, the way I love to give back is buy dot, dot, dot, and then fill in that blank. Okay, those are your five match magnets. And again, what I love about these is you don't even need new photos.

The reason why you don't always have to get new and improved photos taken is I've seen this incredible shift in what women are attracted to online. and it's less about polished, perfect photos taken by professional photographers. It's more about raw, real snapshots, no pun intended, literally and figuratively snapshots of your life, who you are, that real you. Women want to feel like they have a glimpse into your attractive, warm, wonderful life, and they want to see themselves as a part of it. So, yes, you do want good quality photos, but you don't have to have amazing, perfect

portraits all the time. Sometimes it's just the right, it's just the right message you're sending. Anyway, thank you so much for listening, by the way. If you want to know how my coaching works, I do one-on-one coaching. When I have time, I'm sort of taking a little bit of fewer clients right now because I'm working on my second book. But right now, I do have the availability to work with men who are looking for help. So if you want to find out how online data, how my coaching works, I do very personalized coaching. I only do one-on-one coaching. Then just go to datingtransformation.com. You can book a free call,

free consult with my team, and eventually get on the phone with me, and we can review your profile together. And I can show you how we can overhaul your profile or anything else, overhaul your confidence, overhaul how you flirt with women so that we can get you the girlfriend that you deserve. So anyway, go to datingtransformation.com if you would like to. And if not, that's cool. That's chill. Just stay here twice a week. I'll give you my best dating advice I can. And don't forget, your dream girlfriend. She is out there and she's going to love you. But she's going to have to meet the real authentic you. Until next time. Thank you.

You know,