{"version":"1.0.0","segments":[{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":0.09,"endTime":25.334,"body":"Your online dating profile should not be something that you're like, hey, I click it on, I get a date, and next week I'm going to be in an amazing relationship. That's not how things go. You need to look at it like a long term project. Take care of your photos, take care of your bio, learn what to say, don't only say hi because everybody will get bored. So learn all those things and that might take a little bit of time, but in the end, it's worth it. You."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":25.492,"endTime":77.59,"body":"Hello friend, and welcome to the Sex Upgraded Podcast, a podcast for men all about sex where we'll combine real, authentic and down to earth conversations about sex life and relationships with some pretty wild personal stories and practical how to episodes as well with guest experts from around the world to help you have the most amazing sex life you can possibly have. My name is Taylor and I'll be your host on this journey and it's my goal with each episode to give you practical, actionable things you can start doing today to improve your sex life and your entire life. Because a thriving sex life will help you thrive in all areas of your life. So let's begin today's episode by starting with a deep breath in through the nose, into the belly, together, exhaling with an audible sigh and let's get into today's episode."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":86.25,"endTime":116.72,"body":"Welcome back to another episode of the sex upgraded podcast. Today we are going to talk about online dating. We're going to talk about texting, we're going to talk about sexting, we're going to talk about dating profile optimization and you're going to hear some personal stories from myself and also from our guest today whose name is Kuhn, who is a how would you describe yourself, Kuhn? Are you a dating coach? Are you a relationship coach? What would you like to say about that? And welcome."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":117.67,"endTime":160.446,"body":"Yes, thank you very much, Taylor. I'm very excited to be on this podcast. I think you are a really cool podcast and you provide a lot of value for men who some desperately need it. So that's great work. So how I would say my title is it's a mixture of different things, but yes, we give coaching and we train people on how seducing works and how dating works and all those kind of things. But I wouldn't necessarily label myself as a dating coach because there's a lot of dating coaches out there who aren't necessarily very good for their clients or who have a bad reputation and it's always kind of like in a sleazy kind of way and not a kind of way that I would like to be associated with."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":160.548,"endTime":179.24,"body":"And also a lot of the work that we do, we give very little coaching and we give very little amount of feedback to clients because they already know exactly what to do. I've had clients who are better with women than I am. So in that regard, it's very tough to say like, hey, you need to do this or you need to do that."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":180.41,"endTime":182.52,"body":"So then why would somebody hire you?"},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":187.13,"endTime":230.082,"body":"What we do is we try to get people into relationships or try to get their dating life back in order. So what we do is we take over the dating process for them. Well, we don't necessarily go on dates for them because that would be very awkward and very weird. But what we do is we take over the dating profiles. So people have tinder profiles. Bumble. Hinge. Most of the relationships get formed through those channels nowadays. And reality is, an average dating user spends 45 hours per month on a dating app. Now, that's an enormous amount of hours. And you can imagine that some people don't have that time. So then you cut off that channel where so many people are finding their relationships, and then it's like, okay, so what's left meeting them on the streets?"},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":230.146,"endTime":265.618,"body":"Well, a lot of people are working in offices. What's left going to bars? I'm sorry, but a lot of people working 60 hours weeks or 80 hours weeks, they don't want to go party and mess up their sleep and mess up so many other things just to meet women. So that's kind of like the thing that we facilitate. Like, we take over the dating profiles for them, so we adjust their profiles to make sure that their profiles are standing out and they're in the top 1% of the profiles. And then what we also do is we do the texting for them. So instead of having to say 100 different times like, my hobbies are going to the cinema or taking a walk in the park with my dog, they just tell it to us."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":265.704,"endTime":272.98,"body":"We analyze the messages that they've sent back and forth previously, and then we keep the conversations going with the people that they match with."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":273.59,"endTime":317.586,"body":"That is really fascinating. That's fascinating on a number of different levels. Number one, when I think back to the time that I've spent on dating apps, I'm in a long term relationship right now, and I'm not currently on any dating apps. But when I think back to those times, I did spend a massive amount of time on those apps, definitely hours and many times wondered like, what the fuck am I doing here? I could have spent this time going to a park, going to a gathering, going to some sort of event where maybe I could have met people. And I feel like it's just like sometimes I felt like it has been a black hole of energy. So I definitely get the desire why somebody might want to outsource at least the initial phase of it."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":317.608,"endTime":345.02,"body":"And if I'm hearing you correctly, it sounds like you do the meeting and the swiping for people and find the matches, and then people take it over from there, which is fascinating. Which also brings up some other questions for me, which I'm sure you get things like, is that ethical? Do people tell their dates, hey, you weren't actually talking to me in the beginning. That was a service that I hired and we're just curious about that."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":346.11,"endTime":393.754,"body":"Yeah, that's a question we get very often. And over the years, my vision has changed regarding it because at the beginning, I'll be honest, at the beginning I was like, yeah, it's not the most ethical thing to say, so to say. But then I started to think about it and then analyze it further and I've gotten this question 100 different times. So 100 different times I had to think about it and analyze like, hey, what are we doing exactly? And what you're doing is what happens within dating apps and what happens with initial stages of you meeting somebody is that you're not necessarily meeting that person. Really, it's just like a facade. It's not a real person. It's like you're talking with a mask. Both partners do that. Both people do that."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":393.792,"endTime":429.298,"body":"Definitely on dating apps in real life, it's a little bit less because you have so much nonverbal communication that you can go off. But even in real life, people lie and people deceit and et cetera. But within dating apps, it's even worse because it never happens when you talk with somebody on a dating app and then you meet them in real life and you're like, oh, you're exactly how I thought you were going to be. There's a very big separation between how people's online personas are and how they are in real life. So then they need to analyze, hey, is adjusting that online persona to optimize the dating experience, is that something that's unethical?"},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":429.394,"endTime":458.41,"body":"And I personally don't think so because people everybody does it because if a girl has a conversation or a normal person has a conversation and they don't know what to send, what do they do? They ask their friends, they're like, hey, this guy said this thing, what do you guys think I should reply? Or hey, or you ask a budy of yours and you're like, hey, I'm really struggling with this girl. I don't know what to say, et cetera, et and then he comes up with a line and there's no ethical question about putting in that line. For us, it's just like, we do it on a little bit of a broader scale."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":458.49,"endTime":497.878,"body":"And at the same time, which is a very interesting fact, is that we have a lot of clients who are successful, well taken care of, amazing guys who are horrible at online dating or who just don't have the time. And then women are missing out on these people. So it's not necessarily we're trying to deceive people. They will miss out. Like, I have a client, he has zero time for texting and he doesn't want to text because reality as well. Texting for most people is just depressing. It takes up a lot of brain power, and a lot of the times you will get ghosted, you will get no replies. You need to think about, what do I need to send, et cetera. So overall, the experience for a lot of people is not pleasurable."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":498.054,"endTime":507.04,"body":"So you will have people that are amazing people and they cannot meet somebody purely because they don't have the time and energy to put in to portray themselves in the right way."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":509.25,"endTime":559.466,"body":"Yeah, that's super interesting. If you're listening or watching this on YouTube, we are definitely going to get into some practical things that you can do to optimize your profile without outsourcing. But right now I'm very curious about this concept and just want to dive into the concept of outsourcing a little bit further. And when I think about if I were to go to a big event, say I'm at a park or there's an outdoor show in Asheville, and say I was single, asheville, North Carolina is where I live. At that event, I can scan the crowd, right? And I can immediately see, based on body language, based on how people are holding themselves, based on prejudice, energy, et cetera, who am I attracted to immediately? And if all of those people were on a dating app, I would be missing all of those cues."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":559.658,"endTime":613.678,"body":"So I would have to spend time going through reading, swiping, swiping, swiping, swiping. But in person, there's a lot more information all at once, and I could kind of hone it down. And so I'm just thinking, trying to what's the word? Trying to rationalize and yeah, just trying to understand the effectiveness of like, wow, it would be kind of cool to have somebody go through all of the people online and be like, hey, actually, here are the most optimized people for you now. Meet them and just see, that's intriguing. But to segue a little bit, I do want to acknowledge there are a lot of difficulties with the online dating world. And here's one fascinating one that just hit me this past week, actually. So I know this couple and they are in Asheville and they are in an open relationship, right?"},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":613.764,"endTime":641.77,"body":"So it's a male and a female couple. They're together and they're both on a dating app, and they're both looking for other people to connect with other people to date. And the man in this couple, guess how many? Well, I'll just tell you. He's had 19 people like him, right? 19 people have liked his profile. He hasn't been very active. Same geographical region. Guess how many people have liked the woman's profile?"},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":644.11,"endTime":647.978,"body":"Either 200 or 999. One of those two?"},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":648.144,"endTime":681.846,"body":"Yeah, actually it's over 900. It's like 940 or 950 or something fucking insane. I had no idea. I had no idea it was that extreme. And both of these people are very attractive. Both of them are successful, they hold themselves well. And I was just like, fucking mind blown. 19 to 900. That ratio is just incomprehensible. So I don't know if there's anything you want to say about that, but that's something that's still blowing my mind, because I just saw that in the last week."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":681.948,"endTime":726.014,"body":"Yeah, to be honest, there's research that has been done on this, and one of the statistics that came out of it is that 64% of men felt insecure due to the lack of messages that they receive. So over half of all the men that are on dating apps are insecure from it. So for a lot of people, it's kind of like an attack on their confidence because you can be killing it alive. You can do great, you can have your life in order. And I know a lot of people who have. And then the dating is horrible. The dating apps, the performance of their dating apps is very bad. And it's just because they haven't set it up properly. It's a natural thing to have. There's a natural thing that men like to hunt. There's more men on dating apps."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":726.062,"endTime":762.96,"body":"There's more men that swipe. There's more men that just put in effort. And as a female, you just have it a little bit easier. Of course, women have different challenges. I'm definitely not saying that they don't struggle or they don't have any problems with dating apps. But yeah, that's the thing. A lot of guys will not really succeed that well. Even guys that are on the same par. If you have a guy and a girl that are both an eight, what you just stated is fully correct. The female will have 20 to 50 times more matches than the guy, and it's very bad at the other hand, for example."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":765.57,"endTime":804.4,"body":"So then it occurs to me that if you are a man and you do want to optimize your dating profile, you need to make it as close to perfect as you can, obviously without lying about yourself. But there are ways to optimize this, right? There are ways to optimize this. So what would you say? What are some of the ways guys can do that? Because it seems like you can't just be good or okay on a dating app. You have to be excellent, present your best self. And it's like if you were to go into a job interview, you wouldn't show up wearing shitty clothing. You'd put some effort into how you present yourself. Exactly. In this scenario, exactly. How can guys optimize this?"},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":804.93,"endTime":848.186,"body":"Yeah, so this comes back to reality. And when you look at reality and guys dating profiles, often they are just horrible. Often they're very bad. And it has a number of reasons for it. One, guys just don't take a lot of photos. One of my buddies, I used to live in Thailand for two years. One of my friends, he's been to I don't know how many countries, has traveled the world, business, et cetera. And you look at his Instagram, and he has like two or three photos, and he just never took photos. He's been to all of these amazing places, like resorts and you name it, like white beaches. The stuff that an Instagram influencer would be like, assign me up. What he has to show for that is cheap pictures that are mediocre. So that's just a thing."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":848.288,"endTime":886.818,"body":"The most important thing for your dating profile is the photos that you have. I want to say, like, hey, that's not the reason. And it's all about who you are on the inside. But I'm not going to lie to you. What matters most is the pictures that you have. So you need to spend time and effort into those. That's the biggest thing. Don't have selfies while you're at the gym, or don't have selfies in front of the mirror in the bathroom. Like, all of those kind of photos, they will ruin your profile. And another thing that you need to take in consideration, both for males and females, is that your worst photo decides if the person is going to swipe you left or right. This matters for guys and girls."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":886.994,"endTime":921.442,"body":"If you see a profile and you're like, oh, this photo is like an eight, this photo is like a seven, and then the next photo is like a four, they will judge you on that four. So you need to make sure that you remove all the bad photos, because if you have one photo where you look horrible all and you're like hanging out with your friends and you're the person who looks the ugliest, she's not going to swipe you. That's just it. And for the people, for example, we've had clients who are extremely short. Make sure you don't make sure you don't necessarily portray that. Don't go stand next to a friend of yours who's like six foot two while you're like five foot seven."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":921.576,"endTime":930.402,"body":"That's not something that you should be doing because you will instantly lower the value, lower your perceived value from the eye of the beholder."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":930.546,"endTime":937.89,"body":"Yeah. What do you think about selfies in general? Like you said, no selfies in front of the mirror, no selfies in the gym."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":938.05,"endTime":980.95,"body":"It's very interesting. If you're a pretty guy, you can potentially get away with it. If you're not a pretty guy, you probably don't get away with it. And this is the messed up part. It's like, women can get away with it and guys can't. We had a video recently, and the gist of the video was that as a man, you want to portray multiple things at the same time. Women not only screen you for your looks, yes, you need to look decent, but they also screen you for other things. Like are you well dressed? Are you shaving clean? And is your hair on point? Those kind of things. Those are things that women scream for as well. Does he look like he's successful? Those are all kind of metrics that women scream for that are kind of very important at the same time."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":981.1,"endTime":992.49,"body":"So with the selfie, kind of the only thing that you can often do is just have you there, you in the photo, and then also it's the easiest type of photo to take. Therefore the value is often perceived as the lowest."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":992.83,"endTime":1044.682,"body":"Yeah. So a lot of guys, when I talk to women who are expressing their dismay, their challenges on dating apps, they talk about how there's a lot of guys on holding. At least in the United States, where I am, you're in Georgia, the country right now in a different part of the world, but in my part of the world, a lot of women are really frustrated because they see a lot of guys with pictures just holding big guns, like literally guns or fish. Or fish standing next to expensive cars. Right. So if people are looking for seeing, judging as he's successful, what are some other ways to express that? How would you suggest a guy show demonstrate, like, hey, I'm actually successful in my life in photos. Do you know what I mean?"},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":1044.736,"endTime":1095.142,"body":"Yeah. Yes, I fully understand what you mean. For example, one of our clients, he has a photo where he has a presentation. He actually has a photo where there's like two presentations combined, and he's like a speaker on stage. That's a golden photo. If you have a photo in front of a group of people where you're teaching somebody something, that's amazing because that portrays so much value that there's people that are actually active listening to you, that's a big value boost to have. Another thing that is like a hack around it is just dress well. The average person doesn't dress well on dating photos. They don't. So if you dress above average, you're already going to stand out. And there's a lot of associations with dressing well, wearing a shirt, wearing pants, wearing a nice outfit, and not like jeans and a T shirt."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":1095.206,"endTime":1137.91,"body":"There's a big difference between those two. Like, yeah, jeans and a T shirt might be more of your character, but if you want to optimize your dating profile, it's better to make your style go a little bit up. But that's also the truth. Like, we had a client, I think he was in Austin or something, and we sent him on a photo shoot because he had not optimal photos. So we sent him on a photo shoot. Then we get photos back, and then we notice, like, hey, oversized clothes that don't fit well, actually clothes with holes in them. And then I get the photos back and I'm like, so we just sent you to a photo shoot, and this is what we came out with. These photos are going to be hard to make it work."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":1137.98,"endTime":1171.62,"body":"So then we actually had to find a solution. So now we actually have like a checklist that we need to fill in and a questionnaire. And after that, we actually give them a custom lookbook with outfits with hyperlinks to webshops that they can just click and buy the items that are needed. You don't need us for that. Go watch YouTube styling advice. Go watch what is trending right now. Bump your style a little bit up and make photos of that. Even if it's just for the photo, even if it's not your real life, just do it for the photo. Do for date one or two. After that, take out your jeans. You're all good?"},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":1172.47,"endTime":1221.826,"body":"Yeah. And I guess that's where part of my curiosity comes in around where is the line of authenticity versus marketing. Because not everyone's going to want to wear the same sort of style, and there are different categories of styles and there are different categories of looks. Like some people where I live, they just want to wear a tank top, and that's just who they are. And they're not going to wear some sort of high style shirt thing. But I guess if I were to interpret this in a different way, it would be like basically just dress to impress whatever your authentic being is. But maybe beyond that, I don't know. I'm thinking out loud know? Because when I think of my style actually isn't I'm not a very stylish person overall. My friends kind of jokingly give me shit about it."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":1221.848,"endTime":1236.086,"body":"They're like, Taylor, you look like you're always ready for a is, which is true. I wear adventure shorts and adventure pants and a T shirt all the time. And that's just comfortable for yes, but."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":1236.108,"endTime":1267.89,"body":"Let'S flip it around, Taylor, let's flip it around. Because at the same time, you're matching with women, and at the same time, if you see a woman who was wearing jeans and like an ugly shirt, you're going to be turned off by that. That's going to be in your head. It's going to be like minus one. So if we focus purely on men, I understand that, but if you turn it around, you also like, if you go out with a woman, you like that she's dressed up, you like that she take care of herself. So it's kind of like, what do you want or what do you don't want? If your criteria of the women that you want to meet is low, sure. Or a little bit lower. Right."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":1267.96,"endTime":1307.214,"body":"I'm not necessarily saying it makes a massive difference, but you try to take all the wins that you can get as a person. And what you also need to understand is that you're trying to kind of wheel them in before you can show your real personality. Because the reality is we live in a fake world. Sorry, but we live in a fake world. So we can pretend that, hey, I want to be 100% authentic all the time, but at the same time that's not how Instagram works. That's not how Facebook works or LinkedIn or anything. So in any endeavor to succeed, there's some sort of marketing behind it."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":1307.332,"endTime":1350.17,"body":"That's true, yeah, even in photo shoots. So I don't know if you know this, but at my previous profession, I was a professional photographer for, like, eight years, full time. And I could take somebody in the same exact lighting and just pose their body in two different ways and make one posture of them look incredibly attractive and powerful and then just tilt their chin and adjust their shoulders in a certain way. And all of a sudden, they've lost major attraction points in the photo itself of all genders. It's fascinating. And so, yeah, of course people aren't going to put the photos of themselves where their shoulders are all hunched up and they're looking weird like everybody does 100 times a day naturally. Right. But we're marketing a certain image."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":1350.75,"endTime":1366.98,"body":"It's helpful to just talk out and sort of realize, oh yeah, we're all doing that and we all make stupid ugly ass faces every single day anyway, but that's not what we want to put on our headshot when we're applying for a job or anything. Yeah."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":1370.15,"endTime":1371.54,"body":"Once you get to that."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":1373.51,"endTime":1374.66,"body":"Go for it."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":1375.35,"endTime":1407.6,"body":"Once you get to that stage where you've matched with the post you had a conversation, then it's much easier to show who you really are and then it matters who you really are, et cetera. But in early stages it's just like that's kind of how the rules work or how the current situation of the dating market work. And I'm not saying it is ideal because of course I would prefer everybody to be themselves and 100% show everything and just have a selfie that's ugly and ugly lighting and everybody does it. So everybody that will be ideal. But that's not the world that we live in."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":1409.73,"endTime":1448.7,"body":"And what I'm really hearing is that basically on your online dating profile, there is limited real estate, there's limited space for you to express yourself in a way. And what you really want to do is make sure you're using that as effectively as possible because again, the ratio could be 19 to 900 if you are a man who is looking for a woman. I realize this conversation is primarily about heterosexual relationships, but we're just going to keep rolling with that because that's where we are right now. And so I want to ask you, photos are one thing, right? And so, if I'm hearing you correctly, some of the guidelines are like no selfies, basically."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":1449.07,"endTime":1479.058,"body":"Generally speaking, no selfies ideally get a photo of you in front of a group of people, as long as that's authentic of you, maybe leading something or showing that you have some value to society because you want to show that you're not just living in a cave, but you actually mean something to the world. And then dress well, whatever that means to you. And then are there any other boxes that people should check in their photos? Like photos with friends, photos with community, photos by themselves? What are those other boxes?"},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":1479.234,"endTime":1521.506,"body":"The photo quality. It's very interesting that you used to be a photographer. Photo quality is massively important. So the thing that you just discussed, like, hey, have somebody pose you or have somebody tell you need to stand a little bit this or a little bit that's ten times better than having only photos that are taken on your iPhone by your mother a week ago or five years ago. So invest into a photo shoot, find a person who takes photos and photos that are proper photos, preferably for social media purposes, et cetera, and use those kind of photos. Investing in a photographer is very beneficial because it will just net you so much more results than going and try to do everything yourself because photography is quite difficult."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":1521.608,"endTime":1535.32,"body":"So learning how to get good at photography and how to make a good photo, you'll be 500 hours further in order for you to get those types of pictures. So just outsource it to an expert who actually knows what they're doing."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":1535.77,"endTime":1581.33,"body":"Yeah, and I think some people who are listening right now might be thinking, oh, that's bullshit, I don't want to do that. But I will tell you that there's a guy that I know in this region who wasn't having much luck with his online dating profile. He's super attractive guy, at least according to a lot of women. He was successful, all this stuff. He did hire a photographer to do a sort of casual, what you would call it, a lifestyle photo shoot. He just got some photos of him playing the guitar on his porch and just doing random stuff in his life, but they were good photos. And then all of a sudden he started getting a lot more matches and it was just like, wow, that did not expect that. But also, of course, it makes sense. And they weren't fake."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":1581.41,"endTime":1589.56,"body":"They were photos of him doing what he would do anyway. They were just better looking images of what he would do anyway in life."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":1590.97,"endTime":1612.79,"body":"Yeah, I fully agree. And it's also when you look at people, the people often who have the best photos are models or people who care about Instagram or people who are like fitness fanatics, like those types of people. And outside of that group, a lot of the people just don't have amazing photos. So that's the first thing that you should do is to get a photo shoot and invest into your profile."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":1612.97,"endTime":1665.2,"body":"I've also heard that what men think women find attractive is also very different from what women actually find attractive. So to say, a lot of guys think that having a super muscular body and showing it while flexing is an attractive. Thing to do. Most women apparently find that pretty unattractive and they're more interested in a guy yes. Who's fit, but who's not standing shirtless, like doing some sort of pose with himself at the gym looking ripped. Yes. Which is an interesting thing. I also imagine having a photo, if you are relatively fit, possibly having a shirtless photo might be a good thing as long as it's done tastefully potentially. And then I would also imagine that having a photo of you with friends would be useful to show that, hey, you're actually connected to people in the world too."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":1665.73,"endTime":1703.598,"body":"Yes. So two things to go into. One, if you're fit and you want to show off, amazing. Great job on taking care of your health and taking care of your body. I highly recommend it. If you want to do it tastefully, just do a photo shoot at the pool. That's the easiest way. Do some push ups before climbing out of the pool. Climbing into the pool, that's the easiest way to get away with taking photos that are you're trying to show off your body, but you're not really trying to show off your body. It's very important that those photos are like candid, so make sure that they look like they're just spontaneously taken. That's very important. Regarding that fact regarding the friends, what's important there is that you don't necessarily want to look like the loser of the group."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":1703.684,"endTime":1740.95,"body":"So your position in that group and your position within your friends is somewhat important because people will judge you based off of that. And if you stand next to a friend who's like one and a half points better looking than you can potentially hurt your profile. You even see those posts on Reddit where people message the other person and it's like, hey, what's the name of your friend? Or hey, can I get the number of your friend? Because that's what the person is going into. It's evil or it's not good, but men do it as well. I'm not going to say that a women only thing. You just want to like as a person, you try to chase value."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":1741.02,"endTime":1754.894,"body":"As a person, you try to get the best out there and if you show up a photo and you're not the best out there, then there's a subconscious thing in her mind that says, yeah, but his friend is actually like cuter, so I'm not sure about this guy."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":1754.932,"endTime":1797.466,"body":"Yeah, that makes sense. And then which brings me to another thought, which is that if you are somebody in your life that you don't actually feel that happy or satisfied about your positioning in life in general, maybe putting some effort there before trying to go into the dating apps might be a useful thing. That way you can feel like you're in more integrity and you actually feel like more of a high quality match for somebody. A lot of people will talk about, oh, I just want to meet a high quality, high value person. Right? Then my question is, okay, are you high quality, high value person? What do you bring to that table? Because you can't just fake it."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":1797.568,"endTime":1813.95,"body":"If you have all the great photos and you fake everything for your profile and then you show up in person and you're not embodying what you've put out there, boom. Like first date over, done. At least in my thought opinion."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":1815.33,"endTime":1844.54,"body":"Yeah, working out, that's the major thing. Making sure get your weighting in check and work. At least the first thing is getting your weight in check. Like being overweight, it hurts your profile a lot. It's like the biggest sign of like, hey, I'm not taking care of myself and I'm lacking certain things. That's the biggest no go there is. And I understand it's tough, but that should be your number one focus probably to make sure that you get that in check."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":1846.67,"endTime":1890.57,"body":"Heard. And then I think, yeah, we could do a whole other sub conversation around what is it that actually makes a man attractive? Because I can think of a number of men that I've known over the years, including my younger self, who were very in shape, physically in shape, had a nice, quote unquote body, but didn't have other shit together in their life. So maybe they were attractive, but they don't have security or stability in their life. And that's like another huge thing. Especially once you get out of your twenty s and people start realizing, oh, there's actually more important things than just looking good and going to parties or events and festivals, et cetera."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":1890.99,"endTime":1900.054,"body":"Yeah, that's actually an interesting point because I don't know if you know, more place, more dates. It's a big fitness YouTuber."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":1900.102,"endTime":1901.402,"body":"Yeah, I've heard that."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":1901.536,"endTime":1939.494,"body":"Yeah. So he has like a discord channel. So there's like a lot of people in that discord and they also have a section that talks about dating. So one of the pitfalls that you would see is you would have people that are highly disciplined about working out and making sure that they're taken care of and they are just jacked out of their mind. They're just like you look at them and you're like, god damn, he did some proper work in the gym and maybe some steroids. But that's besides it, right? But that's the thing. They go all out on that specific part. They max it out and then they're still going, let's say six times a week to the gym and optimizing everything. Even though their looks for being musculine is already maxed out. You're already at the cap."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":1939.612,"endTime":1968.58,"body":"You're not going to get more girls by working out more. Just stop it. Just go maintenance three times a week and focus on other things. Focus on good communication skills. Focus on getting amazing hobbies, like taking care of other people, like business. There's so much out there that it's very bad to focus one specific area and try to max out on that area and neglect all the rest. Definitely. If there's no ROI, if you're not going to compete and you're not like a fitness influencer who makes a lot of money from it, there's no reason for you to be in a gym that many times."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson: Yeah, boom. I'll share that. One piece of advice that was helpful for me years ago was that when you're looking for your partner if you're looking for a partner, if you're looking for a long term relationship, then you need to start living pretty. Much all of your life as if that person, your ideal partner, is watching what you do and then sort of question yourself like, oh, would I do this in front of that person? Is this behavior a match for the kind of level of person that I want? Oh, is watching porn at 11","startTime":1969.11,"endTime":2013.806,"body":"00 at night before I go to bed, is that in alignment with the level of person I want to date and be with?"},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2013.908,"endTime":2047.274,"body":"Oh, is skipping the gym or eating a bunch of shitty food or not pursuing my passions, is that in alignment with the level of person that I want to date? If not, then I need to either adjust my desires and expectations to a lower level or I need to make some serious changes internally to make myself a better human, to therefore be a match to the kind of person that I'm idealizing or desiring to match with. That's something that really shook my world up a bunch of years ago. And then I thought, okay, I'm going to fix this. I'm going to really optimize a whole lot of stuff."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2047.312,"endTime":2095.27,"body":"So yeah, practice communication, practice learning how to be vulnerable, how to be intimate, how to make money more effectively, like all these other kinds of things besides just exercising in addition to so I would like to move on to another more practical, action step kind of thing because we talked about Photos a bunch. There's another area of the dating profile that I think a lot of people hate, or a lot of people at least hate to try to figure out what to put there. And that's the words, the written words. And I know when I think back to when I spent a lot of time on dating profiles, I was just like, god, what the fuck do I write here? Hi, I'm Taylor. I enjoy basketball and yoga and hikes."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2095.35,"endTime":2105.76,"body":"And I also like sex, but I'm not going to write that on here because everybody thinks they like sex. It wasn't as bad as that, but I was thinking those kinds of things."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2107.49,"endTime":2142.38,"body":"Yeah, that's actually a thing to note about. Like even if you're for example, because this podcast is about sex and other topics. Even if you're very much into sex, if you're going to tell it on your bio, make sure you do it in a very tactical way. Because from previous research that has been shown that there's tons of women that will swipe you left if you do it in a bad way. So like 77% of the women have swiped guys left purely because of the sexual remarks that they've put on their bio. It can also work if you do it in a more intriguing way."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2142.91,"endTime":2178.502,"body":"So, for example, we have one of our clients, he has on his profile that he's a little bit like Christian Gray, and Christian Gray, for the people who don't know, is the male character in 50 Shades of Gray who has the dominant role in that relationship. So certain women will definitely be very intrigued regarding that. And the people who don't know anything about it, they will not necessarily care too much, they will not know about it, and everybody will be intrigued to a certain extent. And it's much better than stating like, I like to hook up or something."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2178.556,"endTime":2181.43,"body":"Like along those lines or I like doggy."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2186.57,"endTime":2187.32,"body":"Yes."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2189.61,"endTime":2198.746,"body":"I guess I would say though, there are different kinds of dating apps, right? There's tinder there's bumble there's. Hinge there's. Okaycupid. There's also field. I don't know if you've heard of Field."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2198.848,"endTime":2201.434,"body":"Yes, I know Field, but Field is."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2201.472,"endTime":2221.3,"body":"More I would put it in the category of the sex positive type community. So they even have section in there. So like, what are you looking for sexually? I think in that context, that could be more of an appropriate place or useful place to put things. But still you probably want to be intentional with how you do it."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2222.39,"endTime":2248.7,"body":"Yeah, it's definitely an interesting platform and it's been growing like, I've seen it because I've known about it for a couple of years, I don't know how long, but at least for a while. And it's a very interesting platform to see and to see how it grows and more people get on it and certain regions like it's quite active and other regions is completely dead. But yeah, it's good that there's an app out there that is more open in that regard and where you can."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2249.47,"endTime":2256.206,"body":"So let's talk about Tinder or Bumble and Hinge and just go back to the written words, normal ones."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2256.388,"endTime":2256.926,"body":"Yeah."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2257.028,"endTime":2268.34,"body":"What are some tips that you would give for how to use the written space in a dating profile? What would you say first? What have you found? Works really well."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2269.59,"endTime":2308.682,"body":"Yeah, so kind of like what we label things or the way that we analyze things is we have a format that's like IEA and it stands for interest, entertainment and attraction. So those are kind of like the three things that you want to achieve, not necessarily only with a bio, but it's also something that you want to achieve within when you're texting and communicating with people. So you want to be interesting for the other person. So you want to be like snap out of it. You want something happen that like bunny, bunny. That will make people think like, why the heck is he saying bunny? But I got your attention by saying that. So that's the whole thing. That's what a lot of marketing is as well. You get confused about things like something is weird, something is off cliffhangers, et cetera."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2308.746,"endTime":2343.34,"body":"That's the interest part. Then there's the entertainment part. So the entertainment part is related to storytelling. It's related to jokes, it's related to all those kind of things. That's also very important. That's also what you see in movies and media, et cetera. And then you have the attraction part. And attraction part is like showing your values. So if you only do the first thing, you're a very interesting person and all that kind of stuff, but the person doesn't necessarily see the value. Only showing value is saying in your bio, I have a Porsche. Yeah, that's cool. But people will be like, that's awkward. Why the heck is he saying it in that way?"},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2343.95,"endTime":2375.526,"body":"But if you say, for example, in a way like love to drive my car through the mountains on long trips with the wind blowing in my hair, et cetera, if you make it in more in a storytelling, the attraction of, like, having a fast car, for example, might turn into something that's more entertaining in that sense. So whatever you want to do is you want to make a list of all the things that you have, the things that are interesting about you, that are entertaining about you, that are attractive about you, and then you want to convert those into lines and then just write it down a bunch of lines and then write it into thing."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2375.628,"endTime":2421.01,"body":"So the easiest example for that is to do is like, if you're a chef or if you're in the kitchen and you say, like, oh, I'm a chef, everybody's like, good for you, my friend. But if you say, like, on my day to day, I prefer to make extremely culinary dishes that melt in your mouth and that want to make you eat till you're obese. If you say it in that way, it becomes instantly more attractive because the value becomes bigger, because you say the value in a way that you're actually talking about it and it's more entertaining. So by just rewriting the whole thing about that, you're, a chef can have big consequences of how somebody perceives what's in your bio. So that's kind of like what you want to do."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2421.16,"endTime":2453.2,"body":"Yeah, I think this right here is a huge thing for a lot of guys, because a lot of guys, and my previous self included, will just put a bullet point list of things that they're interested in. And I can see that's a very typically masculine way of thinking about this stuff. And if you were to take those bullet points and creatively weave them into an intriguing story that perks interest and also shows that you have value to offer. It's going to be ten times better than a bullet list of anything."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2453.89,"endTime":2490.962,"body":"Yes. So I'm not sure when the last time is that you use dating apps, but right now in Bumble and in Hinge, they have this thing called prompts. So with prompts is like, they have like 30 or more things that you can select. So those are questions. So, for example, two, choose one lie, right? So that's kind of like a thing. And then you can write down two truths one lie. So that's an ideal space to just write a couple of interesting things about yourself and one lie. So that's kind of like the way that dating apps currently are trying to hijack, the way of, like, hey, guys, try to put in a little bit more effort into your bio, and let's try to get a little bit more stories out of it that are more entertaining."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2491.026,"endTime":2514.178,"body":"And then for the other person, they can react to it, they can ask questions to it. So dating apps are trying to push more and more towards, how can we help the people on the dating apps to have conversations and to build that connection? So they also have voice messages that you can voice prompts that you can add to your profile and stuff like that. So those are some very good things to add and get an idea of who somebody is."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2514.344,"endTime":2518.158,"body":"And do you recommend doing that using those features?"},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2518.334,"endTime":2534.44,"body":"Definitely, yes. You need to do that because that's a big thing, because writing a bio is like, eh, we're writing the prompts. You can write so many funny stories, you can show so much value in a natural way. That's the big thing."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2534.89,"endTime":2549.862,"body":"Yeah. And so instead of just listing off verbally, I like to cook good food, I like wine, I like dancing similar principles. Just in the prompts, in the voice prompts, in whatever those categories are."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2550.016,"endTime":2550.574,"body":"Yes."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2550.692,"endTime":2565.678,"body":"Just be fucking smart, right? Let your creativity and intelligence shine through in a good way and don't half asset and be intentional and then probably get some feedback from some friends that seems like that could be a good thing to do. Yes."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2565.764,"endTime":2578.566,"body":"Also yeah, you can even use like, chat GPT nowadays, right? So you can even have chat GPT write a bunch of things and then just like, hey, write 100 times x, y and z and then you just pick the one that you think is the best out of it."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2578.748,"endTime":2635.67,"body":"Wow, that's interesting. I didn't even consider that. Well, give chat GPT a bullet pointed list of your interests and ask it to write a short catchy bio that's entertaining and shows value based on your interest. Wow, I might just try that just for fun, just to see what it spits out because that's fascinating. Interesting. Okay. All right, so say now we have the optimized profile, we have a story that engages people. One more element to that. Different people are looking for different things when they get on a dating app, right? Some people are looking for a long term relationship. Some people are looking for short term casual encounters. It sounds like most of your clients are looking for a long term relationship, but do you recommend people write that? Do you recommend people say what they're looking for in their description?"},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2638.01,"endTime":2680.902,"body":"It depends. Where it depends on is if you're a guy and you're looking for one eyed stands and short term romance get in a line. There's a lot of guys who are looking for that. So in general the guys will look a lot more for short term relationships and a lot of the women are looking more for long term relationships. That's kind of the nature of the game. And then that's also the messed up part. So you will have a woman who is looking for a long term thing, but she matches with her very hot guy who's just looking for a one night stand. And then they probably hook up and she never gets text back because he's just like it's just like one time thing. So that's kind of like the problem that exists in the current dating market."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2681.036,"endTime":2716.18,"body":"So if you're looking for short term things, I wouldn't necessarily think it's good to mention it at the same time. Big disclaimer. Even if you're not looking for a long term relationship, you might even get one. I know plenty of people who were not in the dating market for finding a relationship, who found the girl and then they were like, hey, but this girl is actually a lot more fun to hang out with than the other girls. Let me just date her again and again and eventually they just be together for years. So that's also something that might happen if you're in that situation."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2717.03,"endTime":2751.23,"body":"Yeah. So this is an area where I notice my curiosity lights up. I don't spend a lot of time talking with people about their dating profiles. It sounds like this is something you've done a lot, but in my mind it would seem like it would be really important for the sake of authenticity and integrity to share what am I looking for on a dating app so that I'm not misleading somebody because that's a huge problem. A lot of guys will just mislead women to have short term casual sexual encounters and then not text them back. I don't think that's integrity."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2753.41,"endTime":2773.49,"body":"But then, as I'm thinking out loud about this, if a man and a woman were to meet in public and there's interest and there's attraction, probably the first like it's not going to be the first three or four or five sentences out of each other's mouth where they say, hey, by the way, I'm only looking for a one night stand. Nice to meet you, my name is Taylor."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2775.03,"endTime":2777.57,"body":"Yeah, it's not you can put it in your profile."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2778.31,"endTime":2798.22,"body":"Yeah, I just am wondering about, I don't know, thinking out loud here. It's an interesting world because that shit would never happen in person, right? That might happen on the first date or on the second date, but it would be after a certain rapport had been built and the quote unquote match had already been made at that point, right. So I don't know."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2799.95,"endTime":2840.082,"body":"Yeah, so previously when you used to go to the bar and you wouldn't meet somebody and then often the deciding factor is like, how fast does she give in to sleeping with the guy, right? So if you go to bars, then the question is like, is she going to sleep with him the first night or after the first date? And if that's the case, then the chances are just bigger that it will just be a short term thing. What might happen if she doesn't sleep with him on the first day or on the first date and at second date also not then the guy who is only looking to get laid, he will be like, I'm less interested or like, hey, why are we not hooking up? Et cetera, et cetera."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2840.146,"endTime":2876.674,"body":"Because his goal is purely going to be like, I want to hook up. So that's kind of like an important element. There's something to say, to be honest about not hooking up with somebody on the first date or in the first night. That's something that a pattern I've seen is a lot of people who tend to stay together, they don't necessarily sleep together at the first night, which is interesting because I was just analyzing it with myself and I was analyzing based off all the girls girlfriends. Like, I had, like, a web percentage came from while I slept with them on the first date or on the first night. And it was quite low."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":2876.712,"endTime":2907.71,"body":"And then I checked with a couple of my friends and then with them there was the same thing because you will just get more investment and I even would advocate against it in certain ways because if you sleep with her, you already have the feeling that you conquered her. You already have the feeling like, hey, the chapter is closed. You're less interested in her. Even if that person might be super interesting and super cool, it might be good to just hold off of it purely so you don't have the idea of like, hey, I conquered her and I'm not interested in her anymore."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2909.33,"endTime":2960.942,"body":"So here's a piece that I do want to speak to because I think using the term conquer in this context is problematic and I think it's indicative of a lot of the unhealthy behavior that happens in society. I think if a man feels like having sex with a woman is conquering her, I think that shows some problems that need to be worked out because well, yeah, just a lot of different reasons. So I'll just share personal experience. I have had one night stand experiences with people in my life that have been completely consensual and beautiful and connective and it was all expressed up front and we talked about it, we discussed desires, fears, boundaries, all this stuff. And then we're like, okay, cool, we're on the same page. We're only going to be here tonight. Let's make the most of it. Boom, beautiful."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":2961.076,"endTime":3006.926,"body":"And then we're out. And I do think that's kind of like the other paradigm that I'm working to build is not everyone having one night stands, but being able to meet each other as sexual equals in a sort of way and versus having the ideology of getting a notch on the belt and conquering. And I do recognize that mentality and I can see it still within my deeper psychology that those pieces do exist. And I think anybody who says otherwise is lying. But what I will say is I've done a lot of work to not have that be the driving force and at the forefront of my awareness, like a lot of guys will have that out front. And I think this is where a lot of women already are cautious and should be cautious too."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":3007.108,"endTime":3019.22,"body":"Yeah, if it feels like a guy is just trying to get you to be a notch on his belt, obviously I would recommend not sleeping with him unless you're trying to have him as a notch on your belt. I don't know."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3020.79,"endTime":3068.498,"body":"Yeah, as you stated as well, being together for even if it's just one night, it can be like a very magical experience. It can be a very magical experience that you have with that person and it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad thing and somebody can even want a long term thing and it can even be communicated like, hey, that's not really in the cars for me right now. And then the other person can be totally okay with it. And you can have very beautiful experiences with women that only last one night. But of course, if it goes well and if you like it and if you enjoy it, you can always put in effort into seeing those people more times because I've flown or had other women flown to me multiple times purely because the connection was so strong."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3068.584,"endTime":3078.04,"body":"And I can't even be after only one or once seeing her once or twice. You can even be so strong that you're willing to travel to another person or the other person is willing to travel towards you."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":3080.57,"endTime":3111.52,"body":"So how can I put this question into a short thing? So I'm just curious, your general thoughts online dating as a good thing or bad thing. Do you think this is a good thing? Obviously you've made a career or a business out of it, but generally speaking, would you recommend guys do the online dating thing versus trying to go out in person and meet people in real life."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3112.29,"endTime":3147.018,"body":"It's super fascinating because where I grew up is like, I used to go to the bars, talk with women. That's what I used to do a ton a lot. And then I would have friends who used online dating. I would never use online dating. And then we have friends and I was like, you're cheating. I saw it as like, you don't have the balls to go up to women that's bad. You need to have the ability to go up to people and be like, hey, my name is Kuhn. What's your name? That's it. Have the ability to say those words and that's the only thing that you need. And then you'll be successful. So yeah, I never really saw it as like a necessarily good thing or an amazing thing in that regard."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3147.104,"endTime":3190.726,"body":"But the thing though is it has pros and cons like every method. So if you go out and go to the streets and talk to women in the streets has positives there's a lot of pretty women on the streets and you don't have to drink, et cetera. The bad things is people might report you. And I know people who got kicked out of malls, who had like restraining orders, you name it, purely from going up to women and saying like, hey, how are you doing? Social events can be amazing, but you have a limiting factor in is there anybody going to be there that you like because you're sacrificing an evening or multiple evenings or you cannot find a social event and if there's nobody there that you connect with, you just wasted a whole evening."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3190.758,"endTime":3210.4,"body":"So you just wasted like 6 hours on zero potentials. Same with going to the bars. It's like you also have a lot of negatives there. So overall, I think it has ups and downs, but it's kind of like what's normal in these times."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":3212.95,"endTime":3248.362,"body":"Yeah, interesting. I noticed that you just used the term night game and some of the other things you've said around texting and this sort of stuff. It sounds like in part like there's a little bit of what's the word? I'm totally even just blanking on the word right now. But pickup artistry in a sense, right? This isn't what you're doing with people. But I'm hearing, I think, some of the threads of that terminology kind of."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3248.496,"endTime":3254.8,"body":"In the conversation terminology. Yeah, yes, that's correct. The reason for that is because I come out of that world."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":3257.49,"endTime":3294.94,"body":"Okay, so you've come out of that world of pickup artistry because my understanding of that world is that there's a lot of disingenuous things happening. Like, yes, you are having connections with people. Yes, you might have beautiful sexual experiences, but there's a lot of this sort of notch on the belt mentality. Then you move to the next person, then you move to the next person and people really struggle to create. Meaningful relationships there. So in the transition from being in that world to actually trying to have meaningful relationships, how did that happen? Are you able to."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3296.83,"endTime":3335.414,"body":"Let me give you a little bit backstory about how everything came to be. So when I was like, I think, like, 19 or 20, I had a girlfriend and everything was fine, and then she dumped me for my best friend, and that was, like, one of the only friends that I had at the time. So at the one time, I just lost my best friend and I lost my girlfriend. So that was quite bad, right? But I realized, like, hey, there's something he did that I didn't do. Therefore he got her and I lost her. Something is wrong in that element, and I didn't have any control over it. So that made me like, hey, I don't want to get into another situation where I love somebody and my relationship with somebody, and that person leaves me for somebody else."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3335.532,"endTime":3342.714,"body":"So in order to get to, let's say, to a position where that doesn't happen, you type in how to get your ex back."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":3342.752,"endTime":3343.05,"body":"Right."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3343.12,"endTime":3352.89,"body":"And then the biggest resource in that time, because this is like, ten years ago, was pickup artists, dating forums, you name it, all those kind of things."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":3353.04,"endTime":3353.642,"body":"Yeah."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3353.776,"endTime":3403.398,"body":"And then you enter that world, and that world has a lot of ups and a lot of downs as well. There's a lot of broken people in that world who are struggling a lot and some who never really come out of it. I've even seen people kind of break from doing approaches so many times and getting so many rejections that they just couldn't handle it and just got a little bit depressed from it. But that used to be the resource, because back in the days, there were no manly podcasts, there were no manosphere, there were all those resources that we have right now. They didn't exist. Back in the days, you had the guy who wrote the book, like Neil Strauss, that kind of stuff, right. Anyway, so from that moment on, I started learning how does this whole thing work, et cetera."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3403.494,"endTime":3449.434,"body":"And, yeah, you learn how to talk with women, you learn how to behave yourself, et cetera. You learn some very useful skills. But yeah, at the same time, it can be like a toxic environment because it's kind of like a competition in certain ways. And I think that's where a lot of the downsides come. And it's logical because males always have competition with each other on a subconscious level, I think. Not necessarily always on a conscious level, but on a subconscious level, I think. So you will see that there's a lot of things that are not as amazing that come from that competition that's going on between males. So you would even have people there are people that see, like, he gets into a relationship as, like, settling down and as a bad thing."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3449.632,"endTime":3453.12,"body":"I never saw it that way, but there's definitely people who saw it. That."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":3457.65,"endTime":3466.74,"body":"Interesting. Yeah, thanks for sharing a little bit of that story. I'm curious. Did you read the book the Truth by Neil Strauss? The follow up one?"},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3467.11,"endTime":3468.53,"body":"No, I did not."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":3468.68,"endTime":3495.27,"body":"Yeah, so this is a really interesting one. So he wrote the book The Game, Right, which is all about his journey, as that book became like the Bible for a lot of people and it became super popular. Then he wrote a follow up book called The Truth, which is about all the recovery he had to do psychologically and checking himself into an inpatient center to recover from all the damage that he had done on himself."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3495.43,"endTime":3496.01,"body":"That's great."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":3496.08,"endTime":3530.92,"body":"From doing pickup artistry for so long. It's really interesting. And people love that book, too, but the amount of people that have read that book is way less than the amount of people that have read his first book. And I think that's an interesting one to kind of tie it all full circle about his journey of how to actually have a healthy relationship after being in the world of pickup artistry and driving himself crazy. Like The Game Too if you haven't read that book, there's a lot of things in it that it's not just all sunshine and roses. Like, he struggles in that book, too. But the follow up one is really, like it's very eye opening. It's a very eye opening thing."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3531.29,"endTime":3571.506,"body":"I think what I've seen with a lot of people from that I want to defend that community in some regards, because it also has been one of my best friends come from that community and I've met amazing people. Because one of the cores of the whole aspect, at least the way that I grew up in it, is that you do want to improve yourself and you want to get out of your comfort zone. And there are so many good things about those aspects that it is very beneficial. But there's just people who go mental in it and there's just a lot of people that I see, actually, who have mental disabilities, so to say, right? You have a lot of people with autism and et cetera, who are in that dating space and in their dating market because they struggle so much with it."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3571.528,"endTime":3583.32,"body":"So it makes a lot of sense for somebody who is born with a deficiency in socializing to actually learn more about socializing makes a lot of sense. So there's a lot of people who have those kind of problems."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":3586.49,"endTime":3625.758,"body":"I want to acknowledge that, too. I don't think the entire world of pickup is bad or negative. I think there are a lot of really valuable things in there. Yeah, like improving yourself and actually building up the confidence to approach people. I think there are a lot of problems there as well. And when people stick to the sort of cookie cutter type approaches and don't actually learn how to be a good human in the process. That's where I think just the natural evolution is ultimately a feeling of disconnection and lack of happiness and lack of satisfaction. If you're not also learning how to be a good human in the process and improving yourself on all the levels."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3625.934,"endTime":3626.66,"body":"Yeah."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":3629.75,"endTime":3630.494,"body":"Go for it."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3630.552,"endTime":3661.918,"body":"Yeah. So that's definitely completely true because it's kind of like a drug reality is I've seen it as well because I've lived in Thailand, and for the people who don't know but Thailand is easy mode. That's like if you would normally go to a bar, okay, take that and then pretend that you're Brad Pitt. And that's how it goes if you go to Thailand in certain cases, right, for certain people. So your access to that and it's also a very open culture, so there's like slut shaming is very limited, et cetera. So it's a very open culture where there's just like a lot of hooking up culture going on."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3662.004,"endTime":3693.866,"body":"And I know people who just get addicted to the hooking up part and they don't have anything else going on in their life and that becomes their identity and they're like, I kind of don't have much going on in my life. I don't know what to do. And what's the thing that they fall back on? It's the same with a porn addiction. The only thing though, is like, you have access to something that's a little bit better. Plus you get brownie points from other people if you're like, oh my God, look how many women I've slept with. So that's the reality that you have people who just spend vast amounts of time in it, get very good at it."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3693.888,"endTime":3724.18,"body":"At the same time, they're mentally not fully stable and mentally not very amazing, and at the same time use that as a way to as a coping mechanism for their unhappiness. And that's also why I don't necessarily want to be associated with pickup artists because I left that world behind. I have a girlfriend for multiple years. I'm happy with her. So I see the value, just like with my friends in having long term relationships. Long term relationships is amazing. I want to have children. I'm not going to have children from like a one night stand. I want to build something."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":3727.75,"endTime":3779.27,"body":"Cool. So circling all the way back around. I'm happy we did that little detour, though, into that world because I think, yeah, it's important and useful to talk about. And those books I mentioned, I do think that they are. I think actually most men should read both of those books. It's fascinating. It's a really interesting look into the dating world from that perspective. And then the follow up on healthier dating, I would say it's really interesting stuff. So to circle back around online dating profiles, there are some ways that you could intentionally build a better profile, right? You can optimize your photos, your description, all this stuff to get more matches again, because the ratio is crazy, insane, and you have to stand out. If you're a man in the dating app world, you got to stand out somehow."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":3779.69,"endTime":3784.6,"body":"Any other closing thoughts or things you'd like to add at the end before we close up?"},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3786.09,"endTime":3821.41,"body":"I think that one thing that's important is see it as a long term project. Just like going to the gym. Your online dating profile should not be something that you're like, hey, I click it on, I get a date, and next week I'm going to be in an amazing relationship. That's not how things go. You need to look at it like a long term project. Take care of your photos, take care of your bio, learn what to say. Don't only say hi because everybody will get bored. So learn all those things. And that might take a little bit of time, but in the end it's worth it. Don't try to hijack it and be like, okay, I'm not going to spend any time and I'm going to settle down for the first person I'm going to see."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3821.48,"endTime":3843.82,"body":"Because then you will wake up in ten years, 20 years, and you have a wife that you're going to be unhappy with. And you're like, what the heck did I do? And then you're, oh yeah, I was lazy when I worked one of my dating profile. I was lazy that I didn't want to do those kind of things. Doesn't even have to be online dating. It can even be like talking to women in bar, talking to women in the daytime or social settings, but don't skip out on doing the work."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":3845.07,"endTime":3868.93,"body":"Yeah. So the last thing we didn't talk about and we'll just touch on it briefly here to close things up is, okay, say you have the profile, say you have the pictures and the description, and then you get a match. Then what? You don't just say, hi, how are you? Right? Because everybody says that. Do you have some suggestions for what to say in the beginning? Do you just say something random?"},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3869.43,"endTime":3907.822,"body":"The best thing is to analyze her profile. I think that's the best thing. And then try to come up with something that is relevant to her that she finds interesting. Or even say one of the lines that we would for example use is just saying, like, hey, you got me wondering about something. And that instantly spikes her interest because she was like, what are you wondering about me? What's going on? What did you see? Or like, oh, you got an interesting photo there. That's the one. And then she's going back to her photo to analyze, what did he see on my photo that he is going to make a comment about? So then you automatically already have some interest engaged in that conversation. And then you need to start building with value."},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3907.876,"endTime":3937.67,"body":"So the first thing with texting is you need to start building value. So have fun interaction, try to say some things that you might find interesting, potentially send photos, send voice messages, all those kind of things. Once value is established, can go more towards the connection, so you can go more towards, hey, who are you as a person? And kind of more of like the boring questions. It's often better to ask the boring questions later on in the conversation when a little bit more attraction has been established."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":3938.73,"endTime":3978.52,"body":"Yeah, got it. So really, I think big takeaway, one of the big takeaways is just understanding that this is a skill that can be developed like anything else, like dating. Dating is a skill. People aren't just born naturally good at it just like people aren't just born naturally good at sex, even though somehow in society, we all think that we should just be good at sex and we don't need to train. It's like, no, train with sex, potentially train with dating, learn how to communicate, learn how to talk, et cetera. And so, yeah, if there's anybody listening who has really enjoyed some of the wisdom you've brought here and some of your insights, do you have resources for people that can help them with this stuff? And if so, how could they find that?"},{"speaker":"Koen Goren","startTime":3979.13,"endTime":4000.054,"body":"Yeah, we have videos on YouTube, on Instagram, and we have a website with blog articles as well, so people can find us on Hovalo.com or Kunhovalo, on social media. So if you type that in, you'll find us and then we go into depth and we talk about there's a lot of resources out there in order to improve yourself. If you want to make the effort, you can definitely improve."},{"speaker":"Taylor Johnson","startTime":4000.182,"endTime":4032.82,"body":"Yeah, and we'll put links to that in the show. Description cone thank you so much for this conversation. It's been really interesting and fun and entertaining and I've gotten some useful tidbits out of it. Some things I think I might go try, like the little chat GPT profile creator, see what happens from there. Yeah, and thank you, listeners. If you have any questions or comments, go over to the YouTube version of this and leave them there. That's the best way right now to get in touch from these episodes and I'll check those comments, I'll answer your questions and hope you all have a beautiful rest of your day. Thank you so much."}]}