Love "U": Mastering Online Dating Connections w/ Evan Katz

🫶 🌟 Navigating Dating and Relationships with Evan Marc Katz

In this episode of the Forged By Trust podcast, host Robin Dreeke interviews Evan Marc Katz, an acclaimed dating coach who has been helping women create lasting love since 2003. The conversation explores Evan's unique journey to becoming a dating coach, the role love plays in our lives, and the challenges women face in online dating. They dive deep into diverse topics such as how to create a winning online dating profile, the impact of demographic changes on dating, and the importance of character in potential partners. Evan shares his thought-provoking insight into the nature of men and women's behavior in dating, offering valuable advice for finding love in the digital age.

🌟 About Evan:
Evan Marc Katz became the world’s first dating coach in 2003, specializing in helping smart, successful women create lasting love. He
 is the author of four books, his Love U Podcast has over 2 million downloads and he has been featured in hundreds of media outlets, including Today, the New York Times, and the Wall St. Journal. 

 With a transformative approach, he helps his clients navigate the challenging terrain of dating, particularly in the digital age. Evan is known for his empathetic approach and a unique ability to understand both genders, assisting primarily women to find meaningful and healthy relationships. Though his journey was not straightforward, these twists made him into the well-rounded, experienced expert he is today, adept at handling a range of client experiences and situations. With a revolutionary method as his toolbox and a personality that invites trust, Evan Katz has built a reputation as a dependable and impactful dating coach.

😃🌟 Connect with Evan and receive your free gift with the link below :
👉 - http://www.evanmarckatz.com/trust
👉 - https://evanmarckatz.com/substack  

👉 @realevanmarckatz on Instagram and TikTok
👉 https://www.facebook.com/EvanMarcKatzFan/

Pre-Order my Latest Book: "Unbreakable Alliances: A Spy Recruiters Authoritative Guide to Cultivating Powerful & Lasting Connections" HERE

Unlocking the Power of Trust: Keynote Speaker Robin Dreeke Shares Secrets to Creating Allies - Robin is the former Chief of the FBI's Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program. With over 30 years of experience in recruiting spies and building trust, Robin is the world-renowned speaker you need. Don't miss out on the opportunity to learn from a true expert. Contact us now to book your event! Click HERE to book a time to chat.

🤔 Take Robin's FREE YouTube Keys to Communication Online Course HERE.

😃 Check out Robin's Speaking, and Training Services HERE.

Transcript

Evan: 0:04

love is that important. It's the best predictor of your future happiness. More than education, more than money, more than anything is, are you loved? So it gets really tricky. When we're trying to find what we're attracted to and what we're compatible with, and they don't completely overlap.

Robin: 0:20

Welcome to the Forged By Trust podcast. I'm your host, Robin Dreeke, professional speaker, former US marine spy recruiter, best selling author, and your trust and communication expert coming up next on the Forged by Trust podcast.

Evan: 0:31

I had to give up my dream to achieve my dream. Right. And that's a kind of heady concept. I had to let go of something that wasn't working and channel whatever I had into something else that had a chance of working. That's all my job is right now is teaching women. to value themselves more, to say no to men who treat them poorly. I'm largely a betrayer of my gender so it gets really tricky. When we're trying to find what we're attracted to and what we're compatible with, and they don't completely overlap. There's always some good person out there who has no idea you exist.

Robin: 1:09

The Forged by Trust podcast is a show where we explore the essential skill of forging trust for building an innovative culture and exceptional leadership. Join us as we delve into the behavior skills and communication techniques required for success and learn from the best in the industry. Our guests include spies, spy recruiters, master interrogators, best selling authors, thought leaders, and innovators who will share their insights on building teams, Partnerships and exceptional leadership by Forging Trust. Today's episode, Love You, Mastering Online Dating Connections is with dating expert and my good friend, Evan Marc Katz. Evan became the world's first dating coach in 2003, specializing in helping smart, successful women create lasting love. He is the author of 4 books, and his Love You podcast has over 2000000 downloads, and he has been featured in hundreds of media outlets, including Today, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. With a transformative approach, he helps his clients navigate the challenging terrain of dating, particularly in the digital age. Evan is known for his empathetic approach and unique ability to understand both genders, assisting primarily women to find meaningful and healthy relationships. Though his journey was not straightforward, these twists made him into the well rounded experienced expert he is today, adept at handling a range of client experiences and situations. With a revolutionary method as his toolbox and a personality that invites trust, Evan Katz has built a reputation as a dependable and impactful dating coach. Through your episode today, we talk about Evan's unique journey to becoming a dating coach, developing systems for online dating, challenges women face in online dating and the importance of love and healthy relationships in every aspect of our lives Evan, all I can do is say, oh my gosh, thanks for coming on Forged by Trust and sharing your amazing life and insights. And for those that are just tuning in, Evan and I can't stop just talking books because we are two book nerds that just love exchanging the amazing human condition that we all get to be part of. So

Evan: 3:15

thanks. No, I'm, I'm, I'm grateful for this conversation and our new friendship.

Robin: 3:21

100%. So, Evan, I have never spoken to or had on the show, definitely, a dating coach. And you have a very unique background and a fantastic skill set for engaging other human beings and helping them. with the most critical things in life, and that's creating good, healthy relationships. So, part of that is, I'm curious, many, many moon ago, what do you think was a spark or inspiration or the life skill set, or as Neil deGrasse Tyson calls it, that primordial soup, when you were younger, that you think started that whole career path of what

Evan: 4:00

you're doing today? I think a lot of people's stories are forged out of dysfunction, right? We're talking about the biography biographies that you read. How did Elon Musk become Elon Musk, right? Where he felt that we needed to colonize Mars, right? There's, we got to go back to something. My life story is actually really opposite from that. I came from a highly functional loving Upper middle class Jewish family in Long Island. My parents loved each other. They were together for 30 years until my dad died. And all I wanted was to be like my dad. So there's people who sort of overcorrect because of that. For me, I was like. This is an amazing upbringing. How could I recreate this and do it better? So when other 16 year old boys are trying to figure out how to get laid, I want them to fall in love. Which is a really weird thing for a boy of that age. I,

Robin: 5:00

I, that is probably one of the most beautiful intros anyone has ever said. I just wanted to fall in love. I wanted to be like my dad at 16. That is a beautiful, healthy upbringing relationship. So what do you think were some of the things that you're experiencing at that age that were so healthy that really stuck with you? And became part of that

Evan: 5:26

life arc. I think everybody's sort of formed by what they see. What we grow up with is normal, and we sometimes don't even know what's dysfunctional. This is actually why I have a job, is people grow up in environments that are dysfunctional, and they spend their whole life almost recreating something that's dysfunctional. Right. Right, so I, again, I am uniquely situated, having come from a highly functional family, not a perfect family. I could tell you what my, you know, the problems my parents had and I could tell you about their flaws, but for the most part, they did a really great job of raising hardworking, ethical, not rebellious kids who were really bought into what they were selling. There was, there was no rebellious phase for my sister and I and we. Really, you know, we, we, we we're not even patting ourselves on the back. Like we, we knew what a good template for the life that we wanted was. And so once I got into college and realized I didn't want to be a lawyer, which is what is expected. of Jewish kids when they don't do well with blood. Once I realized I didn't want to be a lawyer, I I moved to Hollywood. I wanted to be a screenwriter, right? Because my parents were told me, right? You, you know, they gave you that belief. You can do anything. Yes, we put you in the good schools so you could follow a safe career track, but we believe in you. And so I came out to Hollywood in 1996 to, you know, I was like, someone writes for friends, why not me? So I was given the belief that I could do anything. I was given the wings to fly high. And so I tried, and I flew. I pulled my Icarus and then I realized, Oh my God, this isn't working. And I turned 30 and I had nothing to show for my life. My friends were all, you know, New York investment bankers and lawyers and working at colleges. And I am a penniless screenwriter in Hollywood doing odd jobs for a living at age 30. And I was the most likely to succeed guy was the least successful, most clinically depressed guy. And from that. Forged this new career where I took my minimal skill set as a writer, right? And my minimal skill set as someone who really embraced dating in search of love. And I turned that into a career. And I'm glad to talk about that, but that's the short, long version of my origin story, where I became a prolific dater in my twenties and then wrote a book about online dating in my early thirties that got me out of my Hollywood trajectory. Where I made up this new career as dating coach. Now there's thousands of dating coaches. I was kind of like the first one, 20 years ago to stake a claim as someone who could help other people find love. So when you

Robin: 8:17

were muddling your way through middle school and high school, so it was an assumed path that you were either going lawyer or doctor at that point?

Evan: 8:26

It was, there actually wasn't a path, right? And this is the thing I'm hoping to do better with my kids. My parents didn't go to college, right? They're, you know, lower middle class in Brooklyn, and my dad came from Russian immigrant parents, so I was, I was, my dad was in the garment district of New York. Right, Schmata's, if you're familiar, he was just a textile broker, right, worked hard for a living, never scaled his business, did fine, you know, provided for his family. My mom was a stay at home mom with like a part time job that helped pay for our college. So we grew up better, far better than they had, but we were like the only people on the block who didn't have college educated parents, who didn't. You know, who didn't have a boat. Like we were the, we were the, like on the fringe of upper middle class. So I grew up with middle class values, even though I had, I was born on third base. Right. And then my personality was, I don't know, whatever, whatever this is. I was always this way, but this thing that I had now, I was the nice guy who couldn't get laid in high school.

Robin: 9:33

Right. So, so when you go to college, what did we go to college to do?

Evan: 9:37

I, I was told to get good grades. And you could do whatever you want, but I didn't have a path. It was just, it was just like a get good grades machine. So I was taking PSAT courses, right. To get national merit scholarships. Like I was like, really like just work hard, study, maximize this potential you've been given. Like, whatever you have, it's a gift. Utilize your gift. Don't squander it. Don't let anybody outwork you. So I didn't have a plan, I just knew I always liked to make people laugh. And so I was the comedy columnist in the school newspaper, and I took my LSATs and I was like, I think I'd rather make people laugh. And so that's, that's when I moved, you know, moved after, after a couple of years in New York post my, I went to Duke. A couple of years after that, I ended up in LA and I did all the things, right? I had agents and managers and I was in the Warner Brothers Writer's Workshop and I was in Project Greenlight with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. And Matt Damon gives me his email address. He's like, dude, keep in touch. Use me as a resource. And I never heard from him again. It was like finishing second in Miss America. I finished third in a screenwriting contest on HBO, 7, 500 entries, and I ended up nowhere. So I basically gave it the old college try before I decided to pack it in. And per sort of maybe the one of the themes of our previous conversations before we got here, I had to give up my dream to achieve my dream. Right. And that's a kind of heady concept. I had to let go of something that wasn't working and channel whatever I had into something else that had a chance of working. So you

Robin: 11:19

mentioned, you know, part of that, you had a spark back then in the area of dating. So what was the dating challenge that. You think you got exposed to that kind of became the impetus for what you later

Evan: 11:34

did. I mean, listen, I'm right now, I'm a dating coach for smart, strong, successful women. I've been doing that specializing in that for over 15 years. When I just hung out my shingle, I was just a dating coach. I mean, there was no, I, there was no, there was no business plan for this. And so I was I was unisex. I would listen to men. I was listening to women. I was sort of like a translator. So who struggles the most in dating? Well, very often it's nice guys. Right, for men. It's nice, guys. who don't have game, who don't have confidence, who don't have experience, and they're watching jerks do really well with women. Why do jerks do well with women? It's not because they're jerks, it's because they're confident. Women don't like jerks, they put up with jerks because they respond to their confidence. So I observe this as the nice guy who befriended all the pretty girls in high school, right, who'd complain to me about the guys they were dating. And I was like, do you have to be a jerk to do well with women? And the answer was no. There was a time in my life, high school, when I thought that was the case. When I went to college, I found myself among people like me. And I blossomed in college. And I took that confidence out into the real world and got very, very experienced at dating in a way that most people don't cause they don't have the desire or the fortitude. So I went out with 300 people. I had a count before I wrote my first book. Went out with 300 people from 25 to 34 simultaneously, you know, before I got married, I spent four years coaching. So I had all of this life experience that I can then channel into, okay, here's best practices for dating relationships and, you know, created a, created a very fortunate living from helping other people understand Stuff that, hey, if you've spent 2, 000 hours at the law firm, you're not going to spend that much time on dating dynamics. You sort of hope it comes naturally, and this is an area to be studied like anything else, but everybody thinks dating and relationships come naturally. Yeah,

Robin: 13:44

no doubt, and obviously it didn't for you. What was really curious in there, And I'm curious what the girls saw in you. So here you are in high school.

Evan: 13:53

I'm curious what they saw in you. I'm not seeing it.

Robin: 13:56

No, no. Cause it was, they saw something really unique. So they're dating the jerks, but they didn't like the jerks. They liked their confidence. They're talking to you about it. What did they see in you in high school that they, what, in other words, what were you doing that inspired them to open up to you because that's where your life reps really started?

Evan: 14:16

I mean, I think it's. I think it's The Plight of the Nice Guy, right? There's a, there's a, there's a, a good book for nice guys, right? This is not, not this is not, no longer my area of expertise, called No More Mr. Nice Guy. I forgot the author. I interviewed him on my podcast, Robert Glover, I believe. Right, right, right. Right. Nice guys think being nice is enough. If I treat someone well, shouldn't that be enough? So it never occurred to me to be a dick. Right? I, I, what? I'm fundamentally like a nice, ethical person. I, I, you know, I was close to my sister. I respected my mom. Like, that was never hard. It was, you can't nice your, your way into someone's heart. Nice isn't enough, right? Because nice doesn't build attraction, right? And that's the hard part. You need to have the confidence of your convictions. You have to embrace a certain masculinity. instead of putting women completely up on a pedestal and treating them like they're God's gift. So you can be a nice guy with balls. And the problem is nice guys abdicate their balls and then wonder, why do I not do well with women? So it's the both and approach that I was missing when I was young, that I figured out when I was older, that I could easily help men achieve now. It's just not my mandate as a coach for women.

Robin: 15:43

What was the event that gave you the ah ha of what you were missing? I don't know that it was a single event or, you

Evan: 15:51

know that it was an ah ha. I mean, again, I, I, it's funny that, that this is where you're directing the conversation. And it's, it's fine. It's just more, I haven't spent much time thinking about what I did in high school for a really long time. I don't think there was an ah ha. I think, and I don't know why this would be interesting to other people. If you're the nice, smart kid in high school. And I might have been. You know, a basketball player, and I might have been, and I was, like, I might have been a basketball player, and I might have been president of student government, and I might have won the Nassau County Trivia Championship, and I might have been the class clown, but it didn't matter, because I wasn't seen in that way by women. So. It wasn't until I got out of my high school bubble and went anywhere else, took a summer program, right, in Tufts, you know went on a teen tour on a, on a bus around the United States, which, with a bunch of other overprivileged kids took my freshman year in college that I realized, oh, the thing that is holding me back in high school is actually an asset in other places. Right? Because I actually had confidence in myself, it didn't translate in this. And so I just needed, as you said, sort of more reps in different places to say, to iterate and say, Oh, this is what works. And I remember going to college and seeing a guy who was really great with women. I was like, what does this guy have that I don't? And I figured something out in college, right? Watching my friend go through the fraternity system. He was the mayor. This is the guy who's like, welcome to the fraternity. I am your host. Have you seen our ping pong table? Can I get you a drink? Have you met this guy? Isn't this an amazing 80s mix? And men wanted to be him and women wanted to be with him. And why? Because he wasn't laser focused on impressing a woman. He just had this really positive energy, right? Where I was like, I like her and I would like be on her like white on rice. I was like, Oh, this guy brings people to him. That was a shift that I saw in high school. So that's

Robin: 18:00

the biggest, yeah, would you say that was the biggest thing you added that brought you to dating hundreds of women as you became the mayor?

Evan: 18:06

I don't, it all sounds more self centered and braggy, dating 300 women wasn't an accomplishment. It wasn't a goal.

Robin: 18:16

But you, you shifted something that you went from the friend zone to the people wanted to be more than a friend with you zone.

Evan: 18:23

But that, that was, that was just. I think there's a, a, a, just a trial and error that, that probably comes with someone who says, Hey, how did you climb the corporate ladder? How did you go from the mailroom? How did you figure out how to succeed in this world? And I never succeeded corporate, right? So it was trial and error, and I had a miserable 20, the thing that's also getting lost here, right? I was penniless. I was writing screenplays that nobody was reading. I was living with a roommate who was kind of a screw up at the time. I, I didn't have many close friends because I was a New York transplant in Los Angeles. It was a really, really tough time. And despite this, the engine inside of me is, you want love, you want love, you want love. And I had women go out with me. I just wrote about this yesterday. I had women tell me I didn't need a girlfriend, I needed a shrink. I had women tell me they would never go out with a writer because they're all crazy narcissists. I had women saying you need to be more financially stable before I'll give you the time of day. I had women telling me that I was too sexually aggressive. I had women telling me I was too cheap. And here's the thing. When you get unsolicited fees, Back from hundreds of people, you learn a lot about yourself. And you learn what works and you learn what doesn't. And instead of blanking that out and telling everybody that they were wrong, I was like, okay, I'm going to make these adjustments. And eventually I reached a point of, I don't know if it's mastery, where I could confidently go on a date and Assume people would like me and that I always had an opportunity at a second date. And that mindset, which in my love you course, which is for women, I basically tell women, and I would tell men, if I coach men, you are the CEO of your love life. The person you're dating is the intern applying for a job and go in with that mindset. And you're going to have a lot more success. And that's what I didn't feel in high school. I felt like the needy intern. Please hire me. Right. Right. Which is not a powerful mindset and people don't want to do business with that person if you value yourself so little. So the more we could adopt an air of confidence and abundance, we could see this in business as well. The more we could adopt an air of confidence and abundance that, hey, if. I don't like the way you're treating me. You're gone. If women had the courage to say this to men who were just trying to get laid on the first date, who only communicated by text, who refused to take down their dating profile. That's all my job is right now is teaching women. to value themselves more, to say no to men who treat them poorly. I'm largely a betrayer of my gender.

Robin: 21:06

I'm curious, what was, You think the most challenging thing that you overcame out of all the, the, I won't call it a horrendous feedback, all the, all the honest feedback you're getting from all these instances, what do you think was the most challenging one for you to reach that hurdle and get over?

Evan: 21:27

There were, there were minor tweaks, right? I mean, like, as I said, I'm very, very fortunate that I grew up with resources. I grew up with self esteem. I grew up with respect, like, like, It wasn't a big teardown, right? It was a bunch of minor tweaks and the main thing, and I hate to say this because it sounds, I don't even know how it sounds because I haven't said it before, when I finally got my career together, everything fell into place, right? And that is such a huge thing because it's so part of the male identity. Right? So tied to work, so tied to accomplishment, so tied to money, right? That when I was struggling as a screenwriter, I always felt like I was drowning. So it didn't matter how much I valued myself or liked myself, I still felt like a loser. And that permeated everything to some degree. So once I wrote a book about dating and was on the Today Show and started to make a little bit of money and became an entrepreneur in my early 30s, everything came together because now I felt like my confidence was backed up by something. Rather than just in my head, something my parents told me. So once I got my career together in my early thirties, dating became a lot easier because otherwise you kind of feel like a hypocrite or like you're living a lie. Right. All

Robin: 22:54

right. So that brings us up to where we're at. So we're struggling as a screenwriter and doing that life. What was, what was the transition that caused you to? Let go of one and then move on to the other.

Evan: 23:12

That's a, that's, that's, I told the story yesterday. Well, there are two things. Number one, it was it was with that experience in Project Greenlight with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck where, you know, we had this script that was. That was a really good script that the producers said that they loved, that they said they would make. They said it was worthy of a bigger budget than they were willing to give it on HBO. And then everybody stopped returning our calls. It was more like they did this for the PR benefit. Right? And it was, and it's normal, like, hey, Matt Damon, you're, you're, that year you're going to be in the legend of Bagger Vance, that's a bigger priority to you than helping some penniless screenwriter make his name. So I just realized it was part of the system and nothing means anything and promises are not real until the contract is signed. So that was very, that was very cynical. And then I went to UCLA Film School. Figuring I was gonna teach, I knew how to do one thing, I spent my 20s writing, maybe I could get an MFA and teach somewhere, this thing that I was really passionate about, which is not a bad career. And I met a reader for DreamWorks. Now, readers in Hollywood are people who read two hour screenplays, write what's called coverage, which is like a couple page book report, and give that book report to their bosses. So the boss bosses don't have to read the script. And I found out from this reader that their mandate was to pass on all original screenplays, all of them. He was, he got in trouble cause he was recommending like three out of a hundred. He said that you're recommending too many. Pass on all of them. Because if it has, and this is a bit of a thinker, if it has negative coverage, if the book report tells me it's a stinker of a screenplay, we could still make an offer on it, right? But my ass is covered if it turns into the next Forrest Gump, right? So it was all about covering their ass. If it's, if they get bad coverage, their ass is covered if it turns into a hit for another studio. So basically, blanket pass on everything. And so I was like, what's the point of writing an original screenplay? If the mandate from the studio is to pass on everything, unless someone else makes an offer on it. It just, it sapped my will to write an original screenplay. And I'd written a dozen original screenplays at that time. So I said, I have to find something where I have more control over my own destiny. And while I was in film school and I was. paying my way through film school by answering phones in an online dating company just an accidental job it wasn't because i was like interested in dating it was literally in the building where i was temping right and i'm 31 and i'm you know magna cum laude and i'm working for 30 grand a year getting yelled at by strangers who lost their password and i turned that into like A book and a business called eSerener, writing people's dating profiles. And for once in my life, I was in the right place at the right time. So I don't blame anybody else for my failures. I don't, I don't know, no real bitterness about it. It's more, I had to create something that I didn't see. And so I created an online dating consultancy called eSerener, writing people's dating profiles. When my first book came out in 2003. And unlike anything in my Hollywood career, the book did well and, and I was, you know, I, I never looked back. I just forged ahead every year and now it's 20 years into it. And now there's, again, thousands of people who are doing some version of what I do, which is wonderful proof of concept to know that people. People see the value in helping others. This is another specialty like being an IT person or a plumber. If you're struggling with dating and relationships, there are people who've studied this, who develop systems that if your love life is not where you want it to be, we can help you get from point A to point C. So with the first book you

Robin: 27:11

wrote, you uncovered a system that people were struggling to find on their own. What were some of the things that you shared in that one that kind of gave you that, that. that said, Hey, I, I can actually do this because this is your life reps that you're now taking that subjective art form that you'd spent your lifetime doing in making an actionable to do list for people. What were some of those things that were the first impetus

Evan: 27:38

for that? The first book was called, I Can't Believe I'm Buying This Book, A Common Sense Guide to Successful Internet Dating. And it was a funny how to guide. I literally, I didn't know how to write a book. I went on Amazon. I said, has anybody written a book about this before? Not too many people. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna just You know, I literally just made it up. Usually these, I mean, as, as a, now an author of multiple books, usually you, you write an outline and you pitch it to the publisher and you sell the book, this one, I wrote the full 200 page book and then found an agent afterwards because I didn't know the order of things, no idea what I was doing. And. I wrote it from a comedic perspective, an inside perspective, as a guy who dated online and worked at an online dating company. Somehow, this passed as expertise in a world where there were no experts. I declared myself an expert because there was no such thing as an online dating expert. And so, it became just like a marketing challenge. The big central metaphor of that book was, online dating is like job hunting, and your profile is your resume, and most people's resumes suck. And then they wonder why they're not getting the job. So what was next? So what was next from that? Well, yeah. This business writing people's dating profiles, I would write people's profiles for eSurnow. And there was enough demand that I hired other people to write profiles, right? So the, the press USA Today and Time Magazine led to me being able to hire freelancers to write profiles in the format that I learned was an effective format to get people attention, to differentiate themselves from other people. And now you'd write a dating profile for someone. They say, Oh my God, this is so great. I'm getting all this attention. What do I do now? And 32 year old me was like, what do you mean? What do you do? You, you flirt. I don't know how to flirt. Okay. So let's log into match. com together and let's look up people of the opposite sex and let's compose some emails. And so it was just this very filling the gaps of what I didn't even know. came naturally to me were blind spots for other folks. So it was one of those rare blessed events where I could take whatever natural talents I'd accrued over the past 10 years as an early adopter of online dating. Right? And just apply that and refine that to become a system to choose a dating site, take photos, put up a profile, do a search, initiate contact, lead people from dating site to phone call to real life date. So I basically just developed systems for things that for most people felt really chaotic.

Robin: 30:17

Yeah. Like me, it's totally blown my mind. I got married before the internet was probably even invented. God bless you. I'm curious how, like, what makes a great profile? So you got hired to create profiles or when they're logging on? I mean, how'd that all work? I mean, how do you create a great profile that says, look at me?

Evan: 30:39

That's, I mean, I it's funny. I've been, I've been having this conversation now for 20 years. So I don't, and I'm curious, old hat to me, here's, here's a formula. Here's what we would use on East Cyrano, right? For my writers that I still employ all these years later. Think of yourself, Robin. Think of the five adjectives you would use to describe yourself. Let's just start there. And you can write, you can write them down on the post. Well,

Robin: 31:04

what if they're not kind?

Evan: 31:07

We probably might want to leave that out of our marketing. Right. But we want to think of the five adjectives you would use to describe yourself. And these are your core characteristics. Huh. Okay, so take those core characteristics and say we're not going to use any of these words. Why? Because when left to our own devices, most people say the same things. If anybody's ever dated online who's listening to this, nice, smart, kind, warm, funny, honest, successful, ambitious, family oriented, hiking, biking, movies, music, travel, best friend, lover, partner in crime. So it's just a series of lists. Adjectives, cliches, and hobbies. And it doesn't make for a good profile, even if it's true. Even if it's sincere, even if it's spell checked. If it sounds like something everybody else in the world would say, it has no value. It has no currency. Right. So I said, all right, let's throw out that formula that everybody else is using, and replace it with something that accomplishes the same goal more effectively. So every single person is So if we take your five core adjectives, and one of your your core adjectives is curious, right? That's what I know about you. Curious. Good word. I love it. Thank you. How does your wife in this instance? Give me one example in which she has benefited from your intellectual curiosity because who's reading the profile a woman? So your curiosity is usually if it's I read 70 books a year Useless to the woman who's reading the profile. How does a woman, how has a woman benefited from your curiosity? That's what she wants to hear. Because we're marketing to an audience.

Robin: 32:37

Let's do this. I love this. So my curiosity spurred my wife to take adventures that she wouldn't have otherwise have taken.

Evan: 32:45

And then I would say, we'll be more specific. What's one great story from one of those adventures? What's the best story from the best adventure that she would have done if it weren't for you? We

Robin: 32:57

We got married after only knowing each other for three weeks.

Evan: 33:01

And don't, don't recommend that as a professional.

Robin: 33:06

We grew up together though in the same town, went to the same high school, same friends. So we knew each other and and we, we started a life together and moved, moved her out of state.

Evan: 33:17

Can I, can I be a pain in the ass with you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is fun. What, what, what you just shared with me doesn't function as a story. Right. Even if it's true, it's articulate, it's heartfelt. A story is a punchline, right? It's what is the funny, interesting, memorable thing that we did on one of our adventures? Right? We went to Paris without bags and nearly got kidnapped by a rogue cab driver until I threw 200 francs in the front seat and begged to be let out. Again, I'm not saying that's a real story, but you have a real adventure story. That's what I want to know. Yeah.

Robin: 34:00

I have to think I, every day, every day was an adventure, but she'd become a Marine Corps wife. Probably, probably dragging her along and getting her to run the Marine Corps marathon with me at Paris Island. Great.

Evan: 34:11

Okay. So we've gone from. I'm a, I'm a curious person to when you're with me, you'll do things you never would expect like running the Marine Corps marathon. So the story replaces the adjective. And now there's hundreds of men who might call themselves curious, but there's only one person who has that story. And these little one line stories become fish hooks that capture readers. And if you have. 15, 20 of these little fish hooks in your profile, you will have something that no one else in the world could possibly write. And it's a formula that produces different results for every single person.

Robin: 34:50

Ah, that's awesome. That is a great example. I love that. All right. So we did that for, for dating apps. I guess that's dating profiles back then, what was the transition then to move on from kind of being unisex and doing this for everyone, a dating coach for everyone, to really specifically for women?

Evan: 35:10

That's a, that's a great question and the answer will probably appall you. Maybe men need more help. Women ask for more help. So Without hanging out a shingle and saying, I am a dating coach for X gender. I just called myself a dating coach. 80 percent of the people who turned to me were women. So do men need help desperately at marketing themselves online, understanding women, knowing how to flirt. Knowing how to be the nice guy with balls that women value and respect and are attracted to da da da da. Sure, I could help men like that. They don't ask and I'm a businessman and so there's no point in running a business that nobody wants. So I focused my energies after five years of being unisex, I focused my energies on women starting in around 2009, 2010. And my business took off when I decided to do that. That's, that's

Robin: 36:09

amazing. So what do you think it is about? From your experience, that inspires women to ask more than men.

Evan: 36:15

Look, I don't even know where we can, I mean, we can get into some really, really interesting stuff. Right? You're a big reader. I don't know if you read Robert Sapolsky's Behave. It's like a thousand page behavioral psychology book. It's, from what I understand, it's about 50 percent nature and it's about 50 percent nurture in everything. So I'm not going to say why. I will say that our stereotypes and observations are true. Men don't like to be directed or corrected or told what to do. They won't stop and ask for directions. If things go wrong in a relationship, women will be like, what did I do wrong? Men will be like, she's crazy. Right? I hate that. It's simplistic. And there's a good, there's a good amount of evidence that that's true. Women will beat themselves up about what went wrong in relationships, and men will just plow ahead and not really ask questions and won't be as introspective, nor beat themselves up nearly enough about their role in what went wrong. So is it any surprise that the self help section Right? Not business books, but self help is nominated by women, or that women go to psychologists or take anti anxiety or anti depression drugs at a, you know, 10 to 1 ratio. It's, it's so disproportionate. So there's something to be said for male stoicism, and then there's something to being a camel who buries his head in the sand. No

Robin: 37:42

kidding. Wow. So that kind of brings up the question when I was looking at your website and, you know, here you are a male coaching females in dating. That requires a certain, I would imagine, but I could be wrong, so the question is, you know, amount of trust. So what is it that you're doing that inspires women to trust you with coaching them in dating,

Evan: 38:07

do you think? When I started this thing, I had a blog called Advice from a Single Dating Expert. Who knows more about dating than a guy who's still dating? And I answered reader questions like, Dear Abby. And my blog in 2016, which rolled into something else, EvanMarkCatz. com, had 12 million unique readers that year. Google loved me because I was the guy who didn't do any SEO tricks. I just answered reader questions with integrity, somewhat entertaining. And developed a worldview by listening to women, by listening to men and being fundamentally neutral. I was not like a partisan about it. I'm fundamentally a moderate temperament. And so, I don't know. I, I, I, I feel like I developed a worldview and an authority by not putting myself on a pedestal, by admitting my flaws like I have here today. I've not tried to look good here today. And by walking the walk, by realizing that I was a hypocrite, by realizing I was practicing, wasn't practicing what I was preaching. I was preaching I was preaching character and I was still going out with, you know, sassy, sexy train wreck actresses in LA. Why can't I find a good woman to settle down with? So I had to come to terms with my own hypocrisy. And when I finally put all that together, right, this is after my second book in 2006, I met my wife in 2007. I had enough reps. I had enough coaching experience to see my own blind spots and course correct. And then meeting my wife became my North star. So it imbued me with a different level of authority. I was given largely the same advice, but now that I was the happily married man who was walking the walk, it became a lot easier to buy into what I was selling the same way we don't want a fat person giving us diet advice, even if the advice is good, right? The guy who can't meet his own wife, it doesn't play as well.

Robin: 40:17

So out of the thousands at this point, if not even more poaching clients you've had that are women, what do you, are you seeing a trend? Like what's some of the greatest pain points they deal with?

Evan: 40:29

There's, there's many. I mean, people don't, people don't solicit help unless there's something really wrong. Otherwise people think they could solve it themselves. So I only get people when they're kind of at the bottom and whatever they're doing isn't working. And that's a number of things, right? Online dating has gotten more challenging. Thanks to the rise of dating apps, they've taken conventional online dating, Match. com, OkCupid, profiles, emails, and they've stripped out the profiles and they've stripped out the emails, so it's basically a looks based site. Right? It's the gamification of dating, so it tends to favor shallow. It favors youth, it favors beauty, and my, I don't get women in their 20s reaching out to me, I get women in their 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s reaching out to me. And so it's just been more competitive to get people's attention in a ADD swipe right world. Coupled by the fact that there are demographic changes that have made things more challenging. My clients are smart, strong, successful, high achieving women. These are women with college educations who make six figures. And we know the numbers. If you're reading your, your Richard Reeves, right? Men are graduating college at a one third Lower rate. Women out earn men in, in 40 percent of marriages. And so if you're a woman who has it all together, right? It's harder to find a guy that you see on your level. And that just narrows the dating pool by like 90 percent to start. And that's before we get into whether that guy who is your equal is kind or relationship oriented or has good character or good communication skills. The dating pool shrinks for my clients. So we're starting with less than 10 percent of men. So it's just a really, really tricky thing for a woman to go online and realize that the men they value the most don't necessarily want them because they're looking for women who are younger, whether that's fair or not. Right. And the pool of men that they find. Is relatively shallow and coupled by the fact that compliments. And now, now we get into dating and relationship coaching. Complimentary energy makes for good partnership. So if you are a smart, strong, successful career business woman, your ideal partner might be the man who's the partner at the law firm, right? But he might not want to date the female version of himself. He might be okay dating the first grade teacher. She's not okay dating the first grade teacher. Right? So it gets really tricky. When we're trying to find what we're attracted to and what we're compatible with, and they don't completely overlap. So there's a lot there,

Robin: 43:10

but yeah. I never knew what a challenge this was. What do you, what do you do? I mean, what's what I can't imagine. I imagine there's a lot of really frustrated people out there that are facing situations like that. You as a coach, what do you

Evan: 43:25

do? You and I talked about this, this wonderful book that I just read called Master of Change by Brad Spielberg. It takes a reality based approach to things. What we have to do is stop blowing smoke to people and let people know the truth about what to expect from dating, online dating, right? People's expectations are out of line with reality. People think they could sign up for match. com and find their husband in a month. And if they don't find them in a month, they quit. That's like. Saying, I'm going to go on a job hunt for a month. If I don't find a job, I'm just going to be unemployed forever. Because it's really short term thinking. So you have to gird yourself for the long haul and treat this like, if you deem love important, we need to integrate dating into one's life the way one integrates eating and sleeping and showering and going to the gym. If you put in a half hour of dating a day, it'll produce returns. If you don't, you're not going to have a love life, right? So we need to have the discipline to make dating a part of your life because love is that important. It's the best predictor of your future happiness. More than education, more than money, more than anything is, are you loved? Right? So, valuing love, prioritizing love, and then dialing in what to expect from dating. And so I will validate women's experience. I'm not going to deny their experience. I'm not going to gaslight them. Hey, your experience on these apps is that it's loserville. If that's your experience, I'm not going to argue with you. So let's say 90 percent of men are not right for you. That means 10 percent of men have husband potential. Do you need to date all 10%? No, you need one. So how can we focus on the 10%? And choose one. And if that involves a half hour of online dating a day and one date a week and dialing in the systems here to produce that like lead generation in a business, I could safely predict you're going to find a guy you like in the next six months of working with me and love you because the system works, right? No matter how flawed society is, dating apps, your city, men, the system will produce results. Because it's inevitable. There's always some good person out there who has no idea you exist, but if you take yourself off the market, he'll never find you at home, he just won't.

Robin: 45:43

I can easily see the value of bringing you into someone's life. There is no doubt. I'm curious, before someone. Pulls the trigger and brings you into their life to find that perfect match. What's maybe a couple of things they can do to help prepare themselves and kind of get the course going in the right

Evan: 46:03

direction. I mentioned earlier, and again, I usually don't talk about this on these kind of interviews. I'm usually talking about the focus of my work, which is helping women understand men, make healthy dating and relationship choices. I'm usually not talking about me. But I think there's something to that. I said, I might've wanted love and sincerely was pursuing love, but because I didn't have my act together, all of my efforts were for naught. So, the time to prioritize love is when you have everything together, not when you're in crisis. Solve your crisis. If it's a health crisis, if it's a work crisis, if your mom's going through a home, if you're, get your stuff together, get to stable ground, get happy with yourself, your life, your friends, your family, your work, your hobbies, find structure, find meaning, and then say, okay, now I'm ready. To invite someone in and I have something to give. I don't need someone to save me. So if you're in a good place in your life and you say, I would rather not be alone until I'm 90. Life is too short to, to write off the second half of my life because the first half of my life I made some questionable dating choices. There's no reason you should have to give up. You could reinvent yourself. Your future does not have to resemble your past. If you grow up in a broken home or if you had two bad marriages, we have the capacity to make different choices in the future. So my job is just to help people make different choices, and the sneak preview is the choices are pretty predictable, right? Instead of overvaluing height, weight, age, education, income, religion, politics, the external stuff you see, learn to value, and you have to, character, kindness, consistency, communication, and commitment. Because you could have all the things, you could date a Top Chef Supermodel Rhodes Scholar, whether you're a man or a woman, but if that Top Chef Supermodel Rhodes Scholar, who's the most impressive person in the world, can't have a relationship discussion without blowing up, it doesn't matter how attractive, how impressive they are. So we need to have, how does this person treat me, how do I feel with this person, is far more important than who this person is on paper. Who this person is on paper is a bonus in addition to those core values. So we, we, we shift the value from how does it look on paper to how does this person make me feel? And that usually results in great relationships.

Robin: 48:31

Oh, I love that guidance. Evan, what's something that I should have asked you because I went down a course and a path you don't typically go down that you wanted to make sure you did share before we go that I didn't

Evan: 48:42

ask? It's, it's not so much about me Robin. I mean, that's the thing is I love your curiosity and getting into the origin story. And I know when Andrew Sullivan interviews people on his dish cast, he always goes to the, their background. How did you become you? I think my story is relatively mundane. I think the thing that I do professionally is anything but mundane. This is the most universal core thing in the world. Everybody, the reason this topic is so juicy is that it doesn't matter where you grew up, what your education is, whether you're a man or a woman, or what you do for a living, we all want to be loved. And if you're experiencing a loss of love, a lack of connection, And you don't have that thing that you're fortunate to have, that I'm fortunate to have, don't give up on it. There's nothing more worth pursuing than finding someone to love you unconditionally until your dying days. And so for your readers, I created just a gift. Your listeners. Go to EvanMarCatz. com E V A N M A R C K A T Z dot com forward slash, I think I put Robin, I hope I put Robin. It'll be in the show notes. But we'll make sure we have the right link, but I think it's EvanMarCatz. com forward slash Robin, and they can get a free special report called The 7 Massive Mistakes You're Making in Dating. My mailing list is is very specific to women. It's not that men couldn't benefit from it because 90 percent of dating advice is the same, but my target audience, the people who are my paid clients are women. So just to let people know that otherwise, if you're just interested in this topic, whether you are a man or you're in a relationship, I have a podcast called the love you podcast. I have a sub stack called lovesplaining. This topic is. A bottomless well where you and I, over a bottle of wine, could go at this one thing for hours and hours and hours because it touches everybody.

Robin: 50:41

Totally does. Evan, thank you so much for opening my eyes to an area I've been blind to for 30 years because I've been married for so long. But man, I, I'm so grateful for you and what you do and sharing it with the world and the audience. So I can't thank you enough for coming on and inspiring people to have the courage to forge forward and create these good, healthy relationships and bring the kind of love that we all deserve into their lives.

Evan: 51:10

I think you're amazing. I love talking to you and I have a correction to what I just said. It is evanmarkats. com forward slash trust.

Robin: 51:18

There you go. Trust

Evan: 51:19

even better. So I forgive me for misspeaking. I hope you didn't turn it off before that, but it is evanmarkats. com forward slash trust. We'll give you a free 25 page special report on what you're doing wrong in dating, send your free dating and relationship advice until you no longer need advice.

Robin: 51:35

Awesome. Everyone check it out. Check out Evan's work. It's phenomenal. Whether you need it in your life or think you need it or not, it can bring some great value because it all comes down to great healthy relationships. Evan, thanks so much for coming on and

Evan: 51:47

sharing. Thank you so much for having me.

Robin: 51:49

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Forged by Trust. Remember, if you want to forge trust, it's not how you make people We feel about you that matters. It's how you make them feel about themselves. If you're interested in more information about how I can help you forge your own trust building, communication, and Personal strategies for yourself or your company as a speaker, your coach, or as a trusted adviser, please reach out to me on my website at robindreeke.Com. See you next time on Forged by Trust.