How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett - Ask the Dating Coach Mailbag

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

FOR A FREE STRATEGY CALL WITH CONNELL, TO LEARN HOW TO ALWAYS KNOW WHAT TO SAY TO WOMEN: http://www.datingtransformation.com/contactGET CONNELL’S NO. 1 BESTSELLING GUIDE FOR MEN, “DATING SUCKS BUT YOU DON’T,” YOUR PRACTICAL GUIDE ON HOW TO GET A GIRLFRIEND BY BEING RADICALLY AUTHENTIC:www.amazon.com/Dating-Sucks-but-You-Dont-ebook/dp/B08LDZL3Featured in the episodeConnell BarrettFounder and Executive Coach of DatingTransformationWebsite: https://datingtransformation.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/datingtransformationRobbie KramerLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbiekramer/Chapters00:00 - Introduction00:53 - Deliberating Online Dating Strategies and Script Usage04:45 - Playfully Identifying Weaknesses in Conversational Tone07:18 - Effectiveness of Personalized, Effortless Messages11:39 - Enhancing Responses with Quick, Tailored Messaging14:53 - Flirting Advice for Dating Gracefully and Respectfully17:35 - Utilizing Games to Enhance Date Intimacy20:35 - Relationship Origins: Banter-Packed First Date26:50 - Photo Opinions Solicited for Enhanced Profile Quality28:21 - Crafting Profile Pictures: Appealing, Genuine, and Verified30:53 - Picture Story: Man Amid Desert and Hammock35:58 - Managing Photos Before Bio and Prompts Composition39:20 - Experimenting with Playful Sexual Prompts41:41 - Crafting Engaging Social Media Content Challenges47:06 - Balancing Self-Presentation: Discretion over Grandiosity49:35 - Prioritizing Social Circles Over Online Dating52:10 - OutroProduced by Heartcast Mediahttps://www.heartcastmedia.com

Welcome to the Dating Transformation Podcast. Here's your host, Dating Coach, Conal Barrett. Welcome back to the Dating Transformation Podcast. I'm your host, Dating Coach, Conal Barrett. I'm here to help you learn to flirt, gain confidence, and attract an amazing girlfriend all by being authentic. No sketchy pickup artist stuff needed and basically think of me as the real life hitch if hitch was a skinny nerdy ginger with glasses um yeah and i'm really psyched to do something that i normally do solo we're going to open the mailbag and answer some questions about some dating problems you might be having, like struggling on first dates, or struggling with writing openers, or perhaps not knowing if you might be doing something wrong with your online dating profile. We're going to talk about some of these issues.

What I'm really psyched about is we have a special guest today to help us do that. We have another dating coach. His name is Robbie Kramer. Robbie is a dating coach for men. He specializes in helping digital nomads and men who are working remotely improve their dating life. And he's been a guest before and by popular demand, he is back. And if you want to learn more about Robbie and how he helps guys with their confidence, create a social circle, and just basically take your dating results to the next level. Robbie is the head of the website innerconfidence.com. Robbie Kramer, thanks for coming back on the pod, man. Yeah, man. Thanks for having me again, Connell. Great to be here.

We're out of time because your resume is too long. But anyway, thanks for being here. It was a good show. I never get tired of that joke. Anyway, cool. Let's get into the mailbag because this podcast is usually me talking to the mic and talking to the introverted guy, the guy who's maybe struggling with the apps or struggling on first dates. But it's fun to kick around some ideas with another dating coach who I really respect, which is obviously you. I had you on my show and I came on your show previously and we had some great conversations. Well, there's not a lot of men who I really like and respect in this world. No disrespect to anybody else. I won't name names. But basically,

a lot of guys teach this wrong, or they have sort of creepy intentions. And you are certainly a guy of integrity and you teach... You know what you're talking about. So anyway, I'm super stoked to have you here. And I thought I'd start with a question from a guy named Nick. Nick messaged me on Instagram. And Nick basically said, Hey, Connell, I really struggle with knowing what to write for my openers. I get a lot of matches, but I don't get many women writing me back. They tend to go quiet. Any thoughts on how to write better openers on the dating apps? And let me start with you, Robbie. You're the man today. Any thoughts on sort of the art of writing good openers on the dating apps? You know, this is a pretty highly debated topic in my Discord community.

Because on one hand, you've got the guys who kind of say you should just follow scripts, right? There's a pretty easy to find online dating scripts. We certainly have a few in our community that the guys use. And it's like, why try and reinvent the wheel when there's such a low return on investment, given most women, you know, are using sort of online dating for more of the validation type of purposes, right? It's hard to know, like, is this person a waste of time or not? So am I going to really go out of my way to write a, you know, a witty, personalized opener given there very well could be a possibility she's never going to read it or

open it or give a shit, right? So, but I do think there's a lot of value in doing that because it makes you a better communicator. You get better at texting by doing that. You get better at just being flirty and by being social, right? And obviously relying on scripts and that sort of thing isn't going to really make you that much better at the end of the day. So I kind of recommend a little bit of both, right? And to see which one's working for you, one of the ones that the guys in my group are using a lot is the opener, you seem to have a few of my weaknesses. Because, of course, it's intriguing, right? And it immediately makes it a male-female you know polarizing conversation right it's not like hey what'd you have for breakfast or you know you're not like commenting on one of her pictures and then depending on what your weaknesses are you list out a few of those um you know and and i think

the guys so one of the guys i i want to give credit i think think it's to Playing with Fire. I think this is from their stuff. But effectively, when she says, what are those weaknesses? You're going to say adventurous. The ones I remember, I've got the whole document, if I need to pull it up. But the ones I remember are adventurous, doesn't take herself too seriously possible nice booty uh submissive and then like you're filling the blank one right and of course the you kind of have to assume she's going to respond to the possible nice booty with like it is nice or people have told me it's nice right and then the one that's really polarizing is a submissive comment right because if she

you get a lot of different responses from that some women will be like i'm not submissive comment right because if she you get a lot of different responses from that some women will be like i'm not submissive at all you know you're an idiot don't message me again other women will be like oh i'm very submissive are you dominant and then it kind of goes into this other conversation um where you can kind of riff off that and then once that what's interesting about this opener, in my opinion, is it's very psychological based. And everyone wants to talk about themselves. Everyone wants to talk about psychology and it's like chick crack. So that's why, that's kind of like the default that the guys in my group have been using with the most success versus anything else. I like that. And would you recommend tailoring it to the woman a little bit based on what you notice

on the profile? Because what I like about what you're saying here is you've got a largely one size fits all structure, but then you can tweak it a little bit to make it feel more personalized to her. Yeah. 100%. And the guys who are lazy and they don't do that, they typically get responses calling that out.

Like, how many girls have you sent this to? Nice, nice cut and paste. Those sorts of things, which I always tell them, like, it's okay that she's saying that because any response is a good response with online dating, right? That gets the conversation going and that continues it. But yes, you would certainly want to try to personalize it for the obvious reason that you just pointed out, which is she'll know it's a canned line. But what I mentioned earlier is you'll get better at communicating by doing that. Yeah. I really like that one because it's

not super high investment on your end. If you can find one or two things in the little multiple choice options you're giving her that feel tailored toward her, it hopefully will feel to her like you wrote it for her. At the same time, you don't need to write Shakespearean sonnet of original, amazing content if that's not your strength. My version of that, maybe great minds think alike, he said, patting himself on the back. My version of that that I came up with or I felt like I came up with it, maybe I found something similar out there,

is, hey, name, you might just have the two or three things in a girl that make my knees weak, dot, dot, dot. And then you just leave that. And that was just something I started experimenting with. And it started working pretty nicely on my profile and my openers and for some of my clients. And then it's basically clickbait. It's basically saying, hey, there's some things about you that are very special that are making me interested. And what person wouldn't want to know more?

To your point about psychology, what person wouldn't want to know what is it about me that makes your news week? I would be dying to know if a girl said that to me. I would think, what is it? My handsomeness? My wit? It plays perfectly into our inherent narcissism. Exactly.

I'm going to read your mind. Ready? I'll bet that you would love to confidently approach women, get great matches on the dating apps, flirt with charm, and attract your dream girlfriend. Right? But fear keeps you from approaching.

You're not sure how to flirt. You struggle on the apps. And desirable women just don't seem into you. Well, I have great news. Dating coach Conal Barrett can help. He's guided thousands of men like you to more confidence and help them attract their dream girlfriends. So book a free strategy call today to see if Connell's coaching is right for you. On your call, Connell or a team member will give you personalized advice to help you have more confidence, more dates, and more fun. Oh, and you'll be dating women as your best self, a charming gentleman. That's because Connell does not teach creepy pickup artist tricks. He unlocks your most confident self, so you can make authentic romantic connections.

Your next steps? Book your free call today at datingtransformation.com forward slash contact and grab a time that works for you. Then you'll be on your way to more confidence, better results, and attracting bright, beautiful women. Oh, so you know, soon Connell will stop taking on new clients. So book a call today while you still can. Go to datingtransformation.com forward slash contact and transform your love life. Bye. And then what you could do for the second message. So the idea here is that you don't have to think about the opener at all. Hey, name, except her name. There's one or two, there's a couple of things about you that really make me weak in the knees. And then that's the clickbait. And if she doesn't respond to that,

okay, maybe just move on. Maybe she doesn't want to know enough, but if she does want to know, then you can tailor your answer to say something like, well, very similar to what the tips you gave. I've never used the word submissive per se. I've say things like, I do want that first, the first line of the next message to be somewhat personalized. Like, well, you're, you know, it looks like you're really intelligent because you're a grad student at Columbia. And also you seem like one or two other things. And I like to throw in, and I feel like you might be a really good kisser. Am I close? And then a lot of women say,

oh, well, yeah, I like to think I'm smart. And you'll have to find out about the kissing part. Now we're flirting. Now we've got a nice flirtatious vibe going back and forth. So it sounds really very similar to yours. Yeah. I mean, it's like you said, great minds think alike. So perhaps, perhaps. Yeah. I've also said, I've also sent a million openers that totally tanked. So sometimes my mind is not as great as I want it to be. Well, that's, you know, I think that's the

proper approach, right? Like if you try to spend hours on every single opener, there's just no ROI there. And once she's responding, then you reward that behavior with more interesting personalized messaging. And then that's where I feel like a lot of guys get stuck is they rely too much on the scripts and it's pretty obvious to women that there's like okay this guy just doesn't he's just not quite there socially and she'll feel that red flag she might not like consciously feel it but she'll feel it on some level and she'll you know she won't show up to that date or she won't give or she won't take it further. Yeah. I was just recording a video about this a couple days ago.

I like to talk about the three Ps of a really good online dating opener. Number one is it feels personalized to her. Hopefully it is, or at least it feels that way. Number two, the second P is playful. It's not too logical. It's not asking her a purely factual question. There's some playfulness to it. And the third would be the perfect length, which is more than five words, less than five paragraphs, two to three, four sentences. It kind of depends. If you hit those three Ps, then you're practicing something really helpful to your texting game in general, whether or not she responds. But I don't want you to spend an hour to send the perfect opener because, hey, if she's a really attractive, quality person, she's getting 100 matches a day anyway, and she might not even see it.

So there are diminishing returns there. 100%. I like the three Ps. Okay. Nick has a follow-up. Nick has another question. This is actually about first dates. His other question, thank you, by the way, Nick from Instagram for hitting me up. His other question is just about first dates.

Specifically, Nick said, hey, Connell, do you have any thoughts on whether or not to be sexual on a first date? I worry about coming across as too creepy if I am quote unquote escalating, getting too sexy too soon on a first date. Yeah, that's a good question. The topic of sexuality and how quote unquote sexual to be on a first date. Again, I'll let you have the opening swing at this one, Robbie. What are your thoughts on sexuality and flirtatious communication on a first date? I think we should designate a line between flirting and sexuality because flirting is,

you know, it's playful, as you mentioned's it's not necessarily sexual like i can flirt with you for example and that wouldn't be sexual like you can flirt with dudes and you flirt with dudes by making fun of each other typically right i see flirting as not a sexual thing it leads to a sexual connection when done with someone of the opposite sex that you're attracted to or same sex if that's your thing but it's it's not sexual by nature, right? It's just, it's playful. It's teasing. It's not logical conversation, you could say. And I'm a huge fan of flirting. I think that is exactly how you should be on the date the majority of the time, right? Like if at the end of every date, the girl's like, that guy was too flirty. I'll show you a guy with a ton of options. Right. Like that basically never happens.

Right. There is a thing of being like over gamey and making too many jokes and not not being able to, you know, ever get serious and connect. But that's that's extremely rare from what I've seen now getting sexual. Now, that's an area that I feel like most guys really screw up. They think they need to get really sexual. They want to get sexual because they wanna have sex, and they come on way too strong on dates, and they do it in a way that is uncalibrated, and that really turns women off.

They talk about sex too soon. They ask about it. Like, they're just too much about sex. And I've, you know, interviewed countless women about this. And they all agree that if most like, if a woman likes you, and she finds you sexually attractive, and there's flirtation, there's chemistry, a lot of times she'll get sexual first. And that's when you can simply mirror her and follow her suit and you, you know, you're good.

Cause she kind of went there first and the way I have a very structured way of doing it, which takes all the guesswork out of the equation. Um, I, I instruct my clients to play the questions game, which everyone's played. It's basically truth or dare without the dare. And I suggest that they set up this questions game on the second venue of the date. You don't want to do that like right off the bat. Cause it's, it or dare without the dare and i suggest that they set up this questions game on the second venue of the date you don't want to do that like right off the bat because it seems a little cheesy but you know you meet her for a drink you spend 30 minutes 45 minutes you're chatting and then you change venues like hey we're next spot let's go right you go to the

next place uh could be another bar or coffee shop you could be walking through a park and talking you sit on a park bench and say hey let's let's have a little fun let's play a little game i'm sure you played before it's called the questions game it's truth or dare without the dare there's three rules rule number one is you have to be honest rule number two is i'll ask a question then you answer and then i'll have to answer my own question and then we'll switch so you have to okay also answer your own question and the last rule is you can't ask boring or mundane questions. You have to ask something that would potentially make the other person feel a little bit uncomfortable or embarrassed or awkward. And that way we actually, you know, have fun with the game. So those are the three rules. I'll go first. Right. And then

my first question is always, what's your spirit animal? Because it's the silly and playful and also kind of interesting. And then typically, if a woman's interested in you, when it's the silly and playful and also kind of interesting um and then typically if a woman's interested in you when it's her turn to ask a question she'll ask something sexual a lot of the time because that's kind of like the game has created that structure to do so and if she doesn't you know another question i'll typically ask it's like what's your most embarrassing moment or tell me about your worst first date. And as the game progresses, most of the time, like I said, if she likes you, she'll go first with a sexual question. And if not, maybe by like question four, I might ask her, where's the craziest place you've ever had sex?

And depending on her answer and if she asked me a sexual question after that, because she's going to go again. Now I know, all right, we've bridged that gap and we can kind of talk about these things and that'll make the conversation more interesting and typically by that point in a date you'll be getting the connection will be strong enough where you can go for a kiss most of the time in my experience on dates and my clients like it's during the questions game when they typically go for the kiss because of the connection that's being built. And obviously if she's getting sexual, it's a very strong signal that you could go for it and get it. So aside from that, I basically say stay away from sexual stuff. And as the game progresses, you'll, you know, you can continue talking about that.

You can ditch the game and go and have sex if you're all over each other. But yeah, that's my two cents. I love that's great. That's worth worth way more than two cents. I love the idea of changing venues, almost like kind of rebooting the date or saying, hey, we've now graduated to a sec, almost like a second date on the first night of meeting her. And that just makes, again, psychological sense, I would imagine, to have a woman feel like, oh, here we are, second drink, second venue. Things are getting a bit more personal, potentially more risque, but also it's not required. I like the structure that you just outlined. And I love the idea of the question game. I also love the idea of saying, hey, truth or dare without the dare.

I never heard that put that way before. That's really cool. Yeah, it's fun, right? Like who doesn't want to play? Right. The thing that I have advised some of my clients on is doing the same basic thing. And you sort of like start off with very G-rated questions. Innocent, light and fun, but innocent, right? You know, like, uh, what was your dorkiest,

what were you teased about? Or what were you, what were you a big dork about in grade school? Uh, and then kind of maybe segue into some romance adjacent topics or G rated romantic topics. Like tell me about your first kiss or asking about the first kiss. I have a really good first kiss story that I'm sometimes trying to tee up for myself if she's interested and wants to know. And I like to ask her hers. So I sort of like suggest guys lead up. If you're going to try to take things to a slightly more risque sexual place, I say small, small step it there to see how she feels about it. Bottom line is it's,

it's optional. You don't have to talk about sex or be quote unquote sexual to have a really good, sexy, fun first date. It really depends on how she likes to flirt and connect with a guy and also how you like to flirt and connect as a guy. It's sort of like I say to my clients, if you were on a date with Gal Gadot

and Gal Gadot never said anything sexual to you, would you still really want to make something good happen with Gal Gadot? Yes. Because there's a natural draw attraction that you two hopefully have. Similarly, my first date with my now girlfriend, Jess, there wasn't a single risque explicit thing we said. We just bantered and joked and teased each other the whole night. And that was how we dialed things up. And then all of a sudden we were kissing and clearly into each other. So I love it. That was great stuff. Any final thoughts about being sexual or not being sexual on a date? I agree a hundred percent with everything you're saying and the psychology behind it. Cause

that's a powerful metaphor about Gal Gadot and this, you know, guys think, Oh, if I don't get sexual, she won't know I'm interested. It's like, no, bro. She knows you're interested. You're on a date, right? Like you don't have to clubber over the head with that. Like that will happen naturally when she's ready, right? Women are kind of like ovens, men are like microwaves, right? You turn the knob and we're ready, but women aren't the same, right? You gotta gotta you have to slowly escalate and that that happens on her timeline not yours so yeah less talking more listening has always been my uh you know best best dating advice if you can do less than 10 of the talking usually you'll end up you know kissing and if you're doing 90 of talking, you'll almost never end up in a,

where you want to end up at the end of the night. Yeah. There's also different ways to bring sex into the conversation that aren't necessarily, I'm trying to sexually excite you. It can just be woven into your sense of humor. And this is, by the way, the story I'm about to tell, it's not a directive I would give every guy. Do not try this at home. But I had a first date once with a woman. And I could tell from her profile, our banter back and forth, that she was pretty... She was pretty... What's the right word for it? She's very blunt. She responded like blunt, fun, more risky conversation. I could just tell. And that just comes with time and effort. Anyway, I'm sitting in a bar waiting for this woman to

show up. And I grabbed us a seat in a section of the bar that had 14 other men sitting there because a lacrosse team was having post-lacrosse practice drinks. So it was me, 14 guys, and I'm waiting for my date. She walks in, she looks at me, she looks at all these guys and gives me a look like, what's going on here? And I said, oh yeah, I just thought maybe we'd have a gangbang tonight. And that just came out of the moment. That's my authentic, probably polarizing personality. And I would not say that to a shy woman who went to Catholic school, maybe. But this woman, I could get a sense that she probably would like that. She broke up laughing and she thought that was hilarious. That wasn't said with sexual intent. It was just a stupid, funny line that came out of the moment.

Rejection, ghosting, loneliness, lack of dates and lack of confidence. For many men, dating just sucks, but it doesn't have to. There's a simple yet powerful way to gain instant confidence and attract a great girlfriend. Be radically authentic. It's all laid out in the number one Amazon best-selling book, Dating Sucks But You Don't, your step-by-step guide to attracting wonderful women and doing it with total authenticity. Author and dating coach Conal Barrett has had and fixed all the dating problems that you struggle with. He's also helped thousands of men gain confidence and find love. He's put his best tips and strategies into dating sucks but you don't so that you can confidently approach women and get dates. Become magnetic and attractive, even if you're not tall or great looking.

Always know what to say to make sparks fly. Get lots of great matches and dates on the dating apps and attract your dream woman. You can find Dating Sucks But You Don't on Amazon or wherever books are sold in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook. Get Dating Sucks But You Don't today to transform your confidence and find your dream girl. I guess my point is there's ways to bring talk about sex, talk about sexual things in a way that's more humorous, more just a way to convey your personality. So anyway, guys, don't do the gangbang line. I'm not recommending that. Don't do the first date gang. This is not who I am. But it just made sense for this woman. It was a really good date. She thought it was hilarious. Okay. You started the date with a bang. Yes. Okay. One more question from Instagram. This comes from Alex. Alex has another back to

online dating. He says, Hey, Connell, I have lots of photos that I think are really good photos on my dating profile, but I'm just not getting the kinds of matches that I want to from women. Is the problem my photos or do you think I should work instead on my prompts? So I think, so Alex is talking about Hinge and perhaps Bumble, which two apps that have a lot of prompt real estate. So I think what Alex is basically asking is if I think my photos are pretty good, what's the next thing a guy should look at if he's struggling on a dating app? Any thoughts there? So there's a difference, I guess, between thinking your photos are looking good and knowing they look good.

And that's where I think it's really important to get solid advice there because there's no point to work on the prompts if your photos suck and just because you think they look good doesn't mean they look good right so there's photo feeler which is a way where you can just upload your photos and people can rate them so that's one way to tell another way to tell is by simply asking you know either beautiful women that are in your target market. You know, if you're friends with them, you could ask them what they think your profile photo is. You could ask a dating coach like us. You could ask some other buddies if you value their opinion.

But I don't think there's a whole lot of benefit in working on your prompts until you know that your photos are good. And, you know, it's worth it and um you know it makes it it's worth it to invest in making sure those those photos work um and then yeah i mean what we've seen that that prompts certainly help but i feel like photos are 90 of the of the teeth i agree do you think that really good photos with mediocre prompts can still get a guy some good results? Do you think that's something a guy should say, hey, before I even worry about my prompts, make sure that I'm getting at least some nibbles, because that means my photos are good enough. Yeah, I would agree. 100%.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of validity in that because if you have really kick-ass photos, you know, a couple of great, I don't know your definition. I'd love to hear you share your thoughts in a second. My view on really good profile photos are at least one, maybe two really good portraits that just show you looking really attractive. Ideally, they've got some good scores on photo feeler, or at the very least, you've gotten some good feedback from some single women who say oh yeah these are really good and then a couple photos that are showing you living an attractive life but without looking too editorialized so

here's you on the boat on the weekend or here's you at a cool restaurant with your friends well dressed having fun or on the dance floor at the wedding. Nice combination of portraits and slice-of-life candid photos just to give a woman a sense for, hey, this is what dating this guy would be like, and it's attractive. That's my definition. What about you? Anything you'd like to add to that?

Yeah, I love that. Let me share an example here. You can see my screen. Great. We've got audio and visuals today. Sweet. There we go. So this is a buddy of mine.

He does really well with online dating. And at first glance, you're like, okay, these are just a bunch of random, cool-looking photos. But there's actually a very scientific approach to this. So if you look at these six photos, right, these are just of him, and they're in a unique and interesting location. But the way that he has himself and the background is quite by design. So you have to place yourself in either the bottom third of a photo or ideally on the in the the quadrants on either side so like if we take this photo on the

top left he's in the bottom third yeah please describe this photo for people who aren't able to see this oh my bad yeah i forgot that People are mainly listening. So this is a photo of him standing on a cool sort of art installation hand somewhere in Colombia with a beautiful background. It's like a giant hand the size of King Kong's hand, basically. Right. And there's stairs up to it. So he's basically standing on a platform that looks like a hand. He's positioned in the bottom third of the photo. He's not looking at the camera and he's he's obviously walking down the stairs. So it's kind of like an action shot. He's not posing. Right. And then the background is very beautiful.

It's of like a mountain or a valley behind him. And the interesting thing here is the photo seems to be of him, but it's really more about the art installation and the background than it is of actually him. Right. him but is really more about the art installation and the background than it is of actually him right and then then we'll take the the next photo is almost identical where cool interesting background somewhere in the desert um like a beautiful beautiful colors and he's actually not looking at the camera his back is facing the camera you can see the side of his head and he's in the bottom third quadrant of the photo um and then i'll show one more example which is him in a hammock he's he's in the left um he's in the he's left he's left of center in one of the third quadrants i'm doing a bad job of describing that he's looking off into the distance at an island um and he's next to a dock like i said in a hammock and there's

a little boat and this is looks like somewhere possibly in thailand again not looking at the photo so this is his instagram but he uses a lot of these photos for his online dating profile and that one third quadrant either on the bottom or the left or the right i guess it kind of could be on the top but i think that'd be weird um for most photos you know obviously because you're not floating in space right um so a combination robbie yeah oh sorry please go back to those photos i want to talk through them real quick yeah and give a couple of my takeaways or my perception but finish your thought you were saying yeah so. So the, so the, the one third quadrants, um, you with an interesting background, not looking at the camera, not smiling, not posing, right. They, they want to be as candid

as possible. And this is, this is for Instagram, but these would all work for online dating as well. And I think if it's an online dating profile and you have a couple where you are looking at the camera that would be fine um you know like this one for example this is obviously him posing looking at the camera but again not smiling which portrays a lot more masculinity um right then like the typical cheesy he smiled at the camera um right so he does very well with his both online dating and we all know Instagram is online dating. So it's kind of one in the same, in my opinion. Got it. Do me a favor. Can you go back to the first photo you showed at the giant hand? I love this shot. Here's my perception of why this could do really well for this man on his online dating profile. So we've got... Every photo has, I think, subtext.

There's the photo, but then there's the message that's being conveyed. When I look at your client, he's on vacation. He's somewhere exotic, somewhere very different than women are used to seeing. So his photo is breaking the swiping. Oh, for the record, this is just a buddy of mine. I'm sorry, a buddy of yours. Got it. Got it. Fair enough So this is a friend of yours if if this was on a dating profile looking at it through the lens of a single woman I'm sure she would think oh wow I don't see a photo like this very often

So this photo of him standing on a giant hand in an exotic tropical location would break her pattern What she's used to seeing. It's not a selfie. It's not a shot of him and his four friends holding beers, looking at the camera. It's a pattern interrupt, but in a high value way. Because look at where he is. It makes a woman say, this is different. It also, to me, it creates creates curiosity it makes me want to say hey where where were you what is this and these are really good oh sorry to cut you off I just wanted to piggyback you're saying it shows that he has access to scarce resources as well which shows status okay he is able to get to a cool location like this which must make make him a guy who is capable

of giving her a cool experience and that, which must make him a guy who is capable of giving her a cool experience. And that's how you show status online. As opposed to showing you at Fuddruckers on Tuesday night, which is not quite as high status. This episode is not sponsored by Fuddruckers, clearly. No, that's a great point about status because the subtext here is, hey, if you are in my life, single woman, who knows?

You and I might be traveling to a cool venue like this together. Or even if we don't, I'm a man of certain means. Yeah? Exactly. Fantastic. This is great. And by the way, I will, with Robbie's,

pending Robbie's approval, I'll put this on YouTube with some visuals, but we'll find out. Hopefully you're able to see these, even if you're only listening to this. These are great visuals. Fantastic. And what I like about these is what I like about these photos is they're just basically sending really positive, attractive signals to women. And that's what your photos do. Basically, here's the value I have to offer you as a man, as a single man. And some women are going to be into it. And if they're not, fine. There's other options out there. This is great. Totally. Cool. Yeah. So get your photos handled first and foremost before you tackle the prompts. All that said, just to answer Alex's question in even more detail, let's say you do feel good about your photos. Let's say you really are starting to get some nice matches, some women showing interest in you based purely on your photos. Do you have a philosophy on what you should or what you should not write on your bio or on your prompts?

Good question. Yeah, I'm going to pull up my prompts here. Let's see. Scripts. Here we go. Prompts. So a few that I have, I can share my screen again. And I'll talk them through.

These have been the ones that have been field tested in our community. So also in this order as well, they found them to be pretty good. So the first one is the hallmark of a good relationship is communication and great sex. Which is, you know, no one's going to really argue with that. But it shows. Sex? What? What? On a dating app? You creep. You weirdo.

But this is to your point. It's like you're talking about sex, but you're not overtly kind of talking about it to her. Right. So it's not going to it um yeah to her right so it's not gonna it's gonna hit differently um a shower thought i recently had you don't even want to know with the double emoji uh devil emoji sorry so that's just again like a little bit of a of a sexual innuendo but not too overt uh you should leave a comment if you want a psychological analysis based on your profile this is a great one because what girl doesn't it plays right into the those two openers um another one random fact blindfolds are much more fun than turning the

lights off yeah that's really good uh my most irrational naughty naughty naughty right uh my most irrational fear that i'll get trapped in an elevator with a slow talker um and so we and then there's there's one more um and you can see if you if you look if you're looking at the visual here we this is a living, breathing document where we disagree with each other on this one. We'll get along if you know all the words in the Macarena. It's funny because there's literally, I think, two words. You're mentioning some Google notes that somebody wrote saying, you know, Eric thinks that prompt sucks. I think that's okay. It's okay to have polarizing prompts. There's no such thing as a prompt that every single woman's going to

love. Totally. That I know of anyway. If you have that, please tell me. It's okay to have prompts that are polarizing. Hey, what is this? This is a piece of marketing. This is digital marketing for your dating life. And it's okay to have a prompt that speaks to your audience and might not speak to other women who might not be your type. So the slow talker joke, if she's a Seinfeld fan, she's totally going to get that. And she might really like it. And if she's not, it might go over her head and that's okay. And same with sexuality. Maybe you want to test some sexual prompts, some more risque prompts. If that feels authentic to you, then guess what? You should go ahead and try it out as long as it's not vulgar. One of my favorites that really worked for me was I like to combine humor and

sexuality. Hence my gangbang joke, which again, never use that without checking with me. Public servants announcement. Don't use the gangbang first date move without Connell's express written consent. Anyway, but one of my favorite prompts last time I was single was, I won't break your heart, but I might break your headboard. A woman who likes that is going to be like, find it maybe a bit edgy, a bit, well, sexy. Other women might be like, whoa, too much too soon. That's okay. Maybe I want to date a woman who's a bit more confident or open to that kind of sexy talk. That's probably more extreme than I would recommend most people. But no, I like those. I also love the blindfold one because now it's a bit more implied sexuality, which gives you some wiggle room. Totally. I like yours too.

I just meant blindfold. I didn't mean anything by it. Yeah. Get your mind out of the gutter. Are there any questions that you hear often, Robbie, from your gang, your community, or any specific questions you've heard recently that you'd like to bring to the table today? So what I'm always pushing my clients to do is to be more active with their Instagram account and with their Instagram stories. Because all roads when it comes to dating really lead through Instagram these days. Can you succeed without Instagram? Yes, but you're fighting with one hand

tied behind your back. Most people link their online dating profiles to Instagram. Before you go on a date, you're probably gonna message her on Instagram. She's probably gonna be more responsive on Instagram versus normal texting. And the other benefit of Instagram is you can stay top of mind and you can show status preselection. You could show all of these signals that you're a high value man without overtly communicating with her by posting on your stories. So naturally, the guys I coach are always like, how do I post more

interesting, better stories more often? And my first, you know, so that's, that's hard, right? Like, that's not easy to do. Because if you don't really have a whole lot of interesting stuff going on, how do you how do you find humor and interest in the mundane, which is quite a skill itself, because it's not like we're all so interesting and going traveling every week or, you know, it's like we have, like, I'm not that interesting. I work, you know, my job right now is talking to you. Most people might find that interesting as a dating coach. But like, I spend the majority of the time behind my computer.

I go golfing in my spare time, right? I hang out with my friends. But like, there's a way to make that interesting and funny if you get really good at writing captions. And one of the cool little trends right now is it's kind of like a Gen Z thing, but if you're dating, you're probably interested in dating Gen Z women, if you like younger, good looking women. Right. And what's interesting about it is like, you can put up kind of a mundane photo and with a really small caption and that's kind of like trendy right now so like you can barely read the caption

um and as long as the photo like it can kind of be of like a park bench and if you can find something like this is the crazy thing about it it It might just say, cool-looking park bench, or this park bench sucks. But it's so small, you have to zoom into the photo almost to see the caption. So that's just like a really easy hack to do this. But obviously, just like with online dating, you want to become more creative. You want to get better at writing and being a communicator. So you take the time to, anytime you're out and about or anytime there's something interesting,

you snap a photo and you try to write a witty caption for it. And I always tell the guys in my group to post those in the Discord and then we'll help come up with witty captions. Sometimes it takes a village to do this. Gotcha. But the art or the act of being more engaging

on social media will definitely take your dating life to a higher place. You said something pretty powerful a couple minutes ago. You said all dating roads lead through Instagram or many dating roads. I don't want to misquote you. Do me a favor. We never really talked about this on the pod. Can you share with our guy listening to this why he needs to be on Instagram and why he needs a good Instagram to be linked to his online dating profile? Why do women want that? How is that going to help him? Well, where are the women these days? They're on Instagram, right? They're 10 years ago,

if you wanted to meet a woman, you'd have to go to a bar or a nightclub or leave the house and walk down the street, right? For women to get validation before the internet, they needed to get dressed up and wear something cute and go to a place where they could be seen. And that would give them a sense of validation. They'd feel beautiful. feel seen right and that is a very much need for a feminine creature right there is that need to feel seen for your beauty right that is feminine energy you could say now women don't have to leave the house they can post on instagram and they're going to get that validation that attention and that's why everyone's on instagram that's why women are on instagram obviously there's other reasons.

But just from a where, if you want to date women, you have to be where they are. They are spending most of their social time on Instagram versus anywhere else. So if you're not on there, you're just not where the women are. So, you know, it's pretty straightforward. And you're not going to really understand what's going on in their world. You're not going to be plugged into pop culture. And I'm not suggesting you become addicted to Instagram and spend time like scrolling the explore page and wasting hours of your day, you know, in this vortex of Instagram, because that can be really unhealthy. But you do, you should follow the women that you're interested in because what they're posting will will give you a lot of ideas of, you know, what they're about and how you can continue that conversation.

It's a great way to keep in touch with your friends as well. It's a great way to stay top social media and not enough, but the, you know, there's no way around that. That's, that's where women are hanging out. So sorry for that long winded answer, but hopefully that answers the question.

That's a great answer. Quick followup to that. So for a woman who is on the dating app, looking at a guy's profile, if she sees a good profile, but maybe she's not sure about whether or not she wants to take a chance. If she does see his Instagram, is that something that can push her over into the, oh yeah, I want to talk to this guy either on or off the app. Is that what I'm hearing?

Oh, totally. You know, there's a lot of women where they won't go out with a guy unless they see his Instagram first. Um, and that will be the difference maker. So it's, it's make or break, literally, with many, many women on the platform. Just like when I was single, there was no way I was going to also go on a date or hang out with a girl who didn't have Instagram because I just thought that's so weird that she doesn't have it.

She might be a bot. She might be someone trying to scam me. It's because it's weird these days if you're not on it because everyone is. Right. Plus, when I was beginning to work on my dating life and really getting into it, from the double zeros all the way into the 2010s, it was really bad form and still is bad form to at least in person come across as bragging, come across as trying to show off or show your status. Because that can come across as try hard, it can come across as being insecure, and there's

a lot of bad signals that can send. However, the cool thing about Instagram, I feel, is that it basically gives you license to show your cool life without it coming across as trying to impress a specific woman. It's like, oh, here I am at this cool beach. Here I am at this cool party. Here's my awesome car I'm driving in on Saturday afternoon. That's actually expected on Instagram. If you convey that to a woman on a date, it might come across as a little try hard. But on Instagram, it's actually what you're supposed to do. The fomo vibe is built into it yeah totally and i have a lot of clients that are traveling or they're living abroad and so they run into the language barrier a lot on their dates and i always say that's that's actually a benefit because now you can just look at each other's instagram and go

through each other's photos and have fun doing that. Use Google Translate. And it's literally like, let me go brag for an hour and just show you cool stuff that I've done. And then let me look at her photos. And you can have that conversation without any words. Just like, oh, you know, great. Like, and that is a flirty, dynamic vibe. And I can't tell you how many women when I was living in Eastern Europe, spoke zero English that I ended up, you ended up sleeping with or having cool relationships with, even though we couldn't communicate verbally. It was all nonverbal, fun, sharing pictures. So that's just an added benefit. You can use Instagram all the time.

Sounds great. Yeah, that's great. I think we might need to do a whole separate episode, either on your podcast or mine, about the art of Instagram. How to cultivate an Instagram presence that helps you both on Instagram, but also helps your dating profile. That's a really cool terrain to explore further. We don't have time to do that today, but we do have time to have you take a parting shot.

Is there anything else you didn't mention today that you'd like to mention and if nothing else please tell uh the gentleman listening to this how he can learn more about you and help get help from you sure i'll try to do a quick double whammy so sweet we've been talking about online dating a lot today. And I personally, as a strategy, think online dating should be kind of like the least thing you're investing in if you're a single guy, just by the pure fact that every other guy is using online dating. And typically when the herd goes one way, you should go the other way. And Instagram, I mentioned, is effectively online dating, but that's the way that your path can diverge. And what Instagram allows you to do is build a social circle. And that will produce, I think, the highest amount of high quality leads for a single guy. So again, just want to state the importance of building a social circle. And that happens

primarily through Instagram as a way to stay in touch and stay in contact. And that's typically what I'm helping my clients to do most of the time. So if you're a digital nomad or remote worker or an expat, you know, I specialize in those guys. I've got a community of guys that are living all over the place. And we have a very tight knit way of connecting with each other and traveling around and, and doing these things together because dating alone sucks. Dating sucks, but you don't. I love your book in the background. Dating alone without wingmen and without guys you're going through the journey is next to impossible. That really sucks too. Or that's part of the sucking. So you can find me and information about that if you just go to my

site, innerconfidence.com, which you already plugged. So thanks for the opportunity to say that again. You're welcome. Thanks for naming my second book. Dating Alone Sucks. Forward by Robbie Kramer. Oh, and by the way, Robbie did a great appearance on this show last year, all about social circle dating and how to use different social circle strategies,

which is a more of a longer game, but a really powerful and effective one. So please look up that episode on this feed if you haven't already listened to it. Robbie, thanks so much for being here. We got to talk more about Instagram and a lot of other things. And remember, something you said earlier that I love, if you get a woman at the end of the first date saying, oh, he's too flirty, you're on the right track. You're on the right track. This guy is too... He's too flirty. Damn it. He's just so romantic and charming. I hate it. Anyway, thanks, Ravi. And thank you for listening. And remember, your dream, awesome, amazing girlfriend, she's already out there and she

already likes you. She just has to meet the real, authentic you. We'll see you next time. Thank you for listening to the Dating Transformation Podcast. For lots of free tips, videos, and other goodies, go to datingtransformation.com. See you next time. Produced by Heartcast Media.