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Chad - Trust and Authenticity
94 Plays1 year ago
My guest this episode is Chad Phillips. Check out his stuff at lifetolive.one! We go all over the place in this talk - but mostly I just really enjoyed speaking openly and vulnerably with another dude. Enjoy!
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Yeah.
Introduction to Vulnerability in Modern Dating
00:00:16
Speaker
best professional podcast about modern dating. I'm Scott Simmons, your host. Thank you for tuning in. I'll be real quick here. This is a long one. My guest Chad Phillips for this episode. Thank you to Chad through a friend. He had listened to a few episodes of the podcast and had some ideas, had a lot of thoughts. He's given this whole thing a lot of thought, mostly what I'm really proud of in this episode.
00:00:48
Speaker
A lot of what I do with this podcast is trying to encourage men to have these vulnerable conversations.
Chad's Intuition and Self-Context in Dating
00:00:55
Speaker
I know when I have these conversations, I often don't feel like I have a template or I don't have examples or at least on a lot of examples in my life for how to have these conversations. And sometimes it's just a matter of like clumsily jumping in and going for it.
00:01:09
Speaker
And I'm sure that's true for everyone, but I think for men, for some men, that's particularly the case. So I'm really proud that I got to hop on a call with Chad and sort of jumped into it. I will say one of the things that I think I was most struck by when talking with Chad, and you'll hear us talk about this a little bit in the conversation, but I was really struck by his intuition, his faith in his own gut.
00:01:35
Speaker
I found that really inspiring. It gave me the opportunity to kind of look at myself about how much I trust my own insight with this stuff. It's really important with dating, with friendship relationships in general, but certainly for dating.
00:01:53
Speaker
So yeah, Chad really gave me a lot to think about there and I really appreciated that. So you'll hear us kind of go all over the place in this episode. I think, you know, I am an amateur podcaster. My podcast hosting skills are still, I'm still building those. So, you know, so I don't think it's like the best shapes
00:02:14
Speaker
conversation ever but I almost don't care I had so much fun talking with him and conversation kind of goes all over the place and I personally really enjoyed it so yeah let's get into it here's my conversation
00:02:34
Speaker
Hi, Chad. Hello. Hello, sir. Welcome to wish you all the best. Yeah, let's get into it, man. So you reached out to a mutual friend, and I kind of want to start from, if it's okay with you, this place of challenge. I'm so curious.
Off-Grid Living and Vitality
00:02:54
Speaker
It sounds like from what you've written to me, our experiences and our approaches to modern dating are a little different, which I think is great.
00:03:04
Speaker
Um, but yeah, I'd love to, um, well, let me back up a little bit first. Can I give you a chance to say hello? Tell us a little bit about yourself. Um, but yeah, let's get into it differently. I would love to set just a little self context or something. So yeah, please do. Please do. Like who I am as a person. So I was actually thinking about how, what the best way to attack this
00:03:23
Speaker
was and I came upon this idea of like sort of three different areas that I'd have it like maybe roles or personalities that come out of me. The first one is a geek personality.
00:03:35
Speaker
So the way I make money, I own a small business. It's a telecom business. It's very geeky. I do programming and systems architecture. Since AI broke, like chat GPT in particular, I've kind of gone real deep on that. So just to tag that we may want to play with AI and dating, like what we think about.
00:03:57
Speaker
The impact on dating that could be, because I've got a lot to say about AI. I haven't specifically thought about AI and dating, but I'm pretty sure if we just dig into it, there could be some cool stuff there.
00:04:07
Speaker
So that's, yeah, that's like the geek side of me. Then there's the artist part of me, which is like totally different than the geek part of me. And that's like, I played, played music for a long time. And recently in about the last two and a half years, I've sort of taken out what I would call a life as art project where in, in January of 2021, I was living in a like comfy little condo community in Portland, Oregon. And I just decided like, I want to do something different. And so I bought a piece of raw land in Western Maine.
00:04:37
Speaker
I arrived in May of 2021. And when I say raw land, I mean, there was nothing on, there's no power. There's no water. There's no driveway woods, right? And then woods. And so, um, as a couple examples is, um, I slept in my car for the first five and a half months while I was like building a driveway and getting my first place up, you know, I mean, I still, I use a composting toilet system, which to put it blankly means like I poop in a bucket and cover it with sawdust.
00:05:07
Speaker
Wow. I haul my all my own water in there, you know, for power. I basically either burn oil lamps or just haul in battery powered stuff for my tools. And and I say it's life as art because because I produce a bunch of YouTube videos and Instagram content around it. And I'm kind of coming at it from a specific angle, which I'm actually I'm actually I'm actually curious because I haven't given this much introspection. But like how much this piece of my life, you know, this sort of personal challenge I've taken on with homesteading
00:05:37
Speaker
has impacted me in terms of how I see intimacy. But what I can say briefly is my working premise when I got there was I wanted to strip down to my ability. I wanted to strip myself down to as close to basic survival as I could. And since I'm not survivor man, you wouldn't put me naked in the woods with a knife like I'd die.
00:05:59
Speaker
within my skill set right i just got close i could to basic survival and that was like my initial premise and what's come from that is the sort of.
00:06:09
Speaker
I'd call it a hypothesis that similar to the way salt sugar and fat used to be this like genetic thing we craved and now we can have as much of it as we want and it kind of screws us up. I kind of think comfort and convenience is a similar where way back in the day when it was really, really hard, seeking comfort and convenience was like a literal like biological survival key that you would key into that because it would help your survival. But now we can kind of have as much as we want.
00:06:38
Speaker
And I personally think we've sort of peaked. Like if you look at like amount of comfort and convenience and then vitality would be my sort of like my XY axis. And at some point we got a certain amount of comfort and convenience and any more and we were actually going to lose vitality. And I, in my opinion, I can say personally, but I had headed down the other side, you know, and by actually removing comfort and convenience from my life, I've recovered a certain kind of vitality.
00:07:07
Speaker
So just to give you a really hilariously perfect example, I shower outside in Maine year round, which means in January. It gets cold in Maine. The coldest day I've showered outside is six degrees.
00:07:23
Speaker
So now I'm not out there for a half hour, but I mean, it's a Navy shower, but I'm out there with, you know, room temperature water and, and under 20 degree weather all the time. And it's, uh, it's intense. But when I'm done, I just feel so lit up. I feel so alive. And that's like a perfect example of, of a way. Like when I started doing that, it was super hard.
00:07:43
Speaker
And now it's just more like it's a sensation instead of the suffering. And because I've been able to change that in my experience, I just experienced massive amounts of vitality. And I could give half a dozen examples like that. But that's the overarching concept is I'm selectively finding ways to remove comfort and convenience with the goal of actually increasing my vitality. And it's an experiment, right? Sometimes I overshoot. And I'm still trying to calibrate in different areas. But yes, it's been pretty, pretty rewarding.
00:08:13
Speaker
I love that. I want to get this in early and
Personal Growth and Online Dating Experiences
00:08:17
Speaker
often. So life is art, the way you're doing this, your home setting thing. You've got a YouTube channel. Yes. Folks can go to lifetolive.one, O-N-E. Yes. Spell it out, O-N-E. Okay. And what's in the YouTube channel? It's called Life to Live. If you go to lifetolive.one and click on follow, there's all my social media links there. So that's probably the easiest way to do it. Yeah.
00:08:38
Speaker
Awesome. Okay. I'm really interested in this vitality versus comfort and convenience dynamic. Let's put a pin in that as well. I could talk for a long time about that. Let me introduce this last area of my personality. The third. Yeah. The third one is just growth. I've just been addicted to personal growth my entire life. I've done countless ... I don't know if I could say you name it. I've done it, but I've done a lot of
00:09:01
Speaker
a lot of stuff. I've taken a lot of workshops. I've done a lot of trainings. I've got a lot of certifications. I've done various kinds of therapy. I've tried mind-altering drugs for growth, like a lot of different things. And I kind of always am looking to find new ways to be able to get more potent in that way, to get more awareness, to get more capacity to hold emotional intensity or whatever it might be. And that definitely
00:09:30
Speaker
Like if we get into my specific journey around intimacy and like the baggage I brought and how I've kind of been able to shed it over time, the personal growth piece is a key for sure. Yeah. I mean, I would love to hear that story if you're willing to share, brother. Absolutely. Cool. Yeah. So that's what I would say for intro. I'm happy to answer any other questions too, or we can dive into some of the other
00:09:57
Speaker
dating topics that you're like, oh, I should, I'm sorry, I did miss one thing, just specifically in terms of like the, like the context of your podcasts, which I think of as online dating, I think you might, you might have framed it like modern dating. And I kind of thought about as online dating. And one of the reasons I contacted you as I listened to like, I probably listened to six or seven total of your podcast.
00:10:19
Speaker
Thank you so much. Yeah, of course. Right away, when I say after I listened to the first one, I'm like, I just started thinking about my own dating experience. I'm like, my God, the first time I did online dating was 2000. So I've been
00:10:32
Speaker
in the online dating community in one way or another for 23 years. I mean, it's like kind of hard to find somebody that's been doing it longer than me, you know? And I've messaged hundreds of women, you know, had messaged hundreds of women, probably had, I don't know, 30 to 35 dates. I mean, I didn't, a lot of them didn't turn into dates, but probably at least 30 to 50 dates, several girlfriends,
00:10:56
Speaker
Many of those who have turned into lifelong friends, things like that. I haven't tried tons and tons of apps, but I've had some experience with different ones. Certainly, I can talk about maybe how things have changed too since way back in the beginning. There's probably lots of good stuff in there. I'll stop because I think that's enough context.
00:11:17
Speaker
No, I love it. Thank you. Thank you so much for all of that. Yeah, okay. So I'm making a note. I've got a pin in AI and dating, which could be interesting. The apps how it's changed over the years. I've been on them for a long time too. I think it would be great to sync up and like talk about that and like how like
00:11:33
Speaker
thinking back on what they were like before, that could be a great conversation as well. But I do want to get back to the thing that we were talking about as we were kicking off. It's alive for me now, so I'm happy to go into it. Yeah, you seem really excited about this. And so it sounds to me like we see a lot of the dating apps or modern dating a little bit differently. So I'm curious to know
00:11:55
Speaker
I guess you've listened to a few pods so you have my experience from that. I'm interested to know where we're different, how the lens you see this through, how are we seeing it differently? I'm super curious. Okay, so I believe the first episode I listened to was your solo episode. It was kind of a complete walkthrough of how you do the dating apps.
00:12:16
Speaker
You know what I'm talking about? It's kind of like an hour long, you just really like, you know, here's how I do messaging. Here's how I, you know, here's how you take pictures, like the whole sort of soup to nuts, lots of strategy, I guess I would say, right? Yeah. And I'm listening to it. And like, okay, a couple of things about it. One was, like, I enjoy the amount of detail and strategy you bring. I'm gonna have more to say about strategy, but I just want to say like, I want to
00:12:40
Speaker
I want to acknowledge that you're very thoughtful about it. That was cool to see. Also, one of the main things I noticed and one of the other main things that I noticed was you just seem to have had
00:12:57
Speaker
I'm not sure if I would have called it a bad experience or like you just kind of hate dating apps. Like it's sort of my, if I'm going to bottom line and it's like, he really doesn't like these things. Like he's had not had, he kind of forces himself to do it, but it's like a crappy experience. But it seems like the only way to do it. So that am I, am I painting that at all accurately? I mean, I, that's a great question.
Challenges and Strategies in Using Dating Apps
00:13:20
Speaker
That's a really good question. I think
00:13:23
Speaker
I think I see them as kind of, I don't want to say a necessary evil. The sort of too cute thing I say about the dating apps is that like the good news is you can meet a thousand people that you would otherwise never meet. The bad news is you can meet a thousand people that you would otherwise never meet, right? And the devil's kind of in the details.
00:13:49
Speaker
Well, so a lot of that episode and a lot of the podcast, I think, comes from my experience dating in a very different city than where I am now. And a lot of the past six months has been very interesting for me because shifting my location, whether it was because of shift in mindset or whether it was just like luck or whether it was like
00:14:14
Speaker
Like who knows? But that has moved for me. It's very different now, which I could really dig into. But I do not mean to do it. Let's put a pin in that too, because I'm very curious about how it's changed for you. Because of course, I have this snapshot in my head of that when you did that podcast. I'm like, this is how Scott sees it. It's pretty fucking dark. But you're not wrong. I don't mean to invalidate that take. I do think the things that I don't like about the dating apps
00:14:43
Speaker
I think for a lot of people, and you're a very handsome dude, and I do okay, right? But in my experience, I think the dating apps make it so that digital marketing is now a required skill for modern dating.
00:15:06
Speaker
I don't think I love that. I think that that might just be getting old and cranky, but I kind of don't like that shift. And I think there are a lot of people out there who
00:15:18
Speaker
you know, digital marketing or those skills being online, having a social media presence, you know, knowing how to take pictures, knowing how to be funny in text when someone has no context. Like I don't know that those skills are things. I think those are things that I've learned because I've told myself like, okay, well, if I want to do this, I'm going to do this. Um, but I think I'm not sure that those are things. I'm not sure that those skills that I've learned are things that are going to help me.
00:15:48
Speaker
be in a healthy, awesome, growing connection, whatever kind of relationship it ends up being. Sure, okay. I won't disagree. I do. I think I'm a little bitter about that. In general, I'm mad at the universe that everyone's had to learn online marketing in order to like... Well, I think... The only thing I'm gonna maybe say, I disagree. I'm just gonna add a piece in which is... Hit me with it. You and I are of an age where we
00:16:18
Speaker
we had experiences before the internet. I was 25 and a pretty early adopter when the internet came around. And of course it was like five more years before I started dating. And so I know what it's like to use a rotary phone and all of those things that old people talk about. But I suspect that people that were born and raised in the internet probably don't have that same kind of grumpiness about it because there's just no other way. You know what I mean? That's very fair. It just is, yeah.
00:16:45
Speaker
They were born in it and molded by it. Yeah. Yeah. Correct. However, there are still people alive who are, you know, such as ourselves. And so I think it's a fair topic to talk about. Okay. So I feel like I got a, I did get a general sense of how your dating experience was. And I'm curious to know, like maybe in a little bit we can go into how it is now. Sure.
00:17:08
Speaker
But what I'll say is, it literally was the thing that motivated me to contact you. I'm listening and I'm like, there's this internal part of me almost screaming. That is not my experience. I have not had massive amounts of bad experiences. I have not felt giant amounts of resistance to every single part of the process.
00:17:30
Speaker
I will concede that there are things about that. I have had some bad experiences and there are things about the online dating system that, you know, they're not my favorite, but it doesn't equate to God, I have to do this. This sucks. I'm going to make myself do it because I have to, you know, it's more like so if I if I just just break, like just think of it like a pie chart of the dates I've had. There's a lot more talk about besides data, just the pie chart of the dates I've had.
00:17:58
Speaker
I've had a handful of just mind-blowingly spectacular, let's just even talk about first dates, handful of mind-blowingly spectacular first dates, a slightly larger group of good first dates.
00:18:11
Speaker
So those are kind of small in the pie chart, a very big piece of the pie chart, which is like, that was fine, right? It wasn't bad. It was just like the person, they're a nice person. There was no energetic connection. I have, I don't even, for any draw to them as a friend or more, if I'm honest with myself, but it was fine. Like, you know, it was, it's a waste of time. If I have a goal, it's not a waste of time. If I'm just being present, enjoying myself like that, you know, totally. Okay. Okay. So that's the biggest part of the pie chart. And then there's a small part where,
00:18:41
Speaker
I've never had a stalker or anything, but I've had a couple of people that were pretty weird. But that's also small. I'd say the size of the spectacular and the really weird are about the same. And a major part of that pie chart is fine. And so I guess there's different ways to feel about that. To me, I feel like, well, that's not a bad experience. It's just a bunch of fine experiences. There's a lot of just fine experiences in life.
00:19:09
Speaker
So yeah, that's a lot of life, right? Yes, totally. And and and, you know, every once in a while I'm hitting a home run. Like I have people that in my life that are friends, they'll be friends for the rest of my life. And I'm like, I never would have met them had I not gone on a date with them. And some of them were like, we go on our first date and it's just, nope, this is not a match, but you're really cool. Like, let's hang out. I got into a band that way. I played like a kind of a cover band for five years because I met the lead singer and they were the bass player.
00:19:35
Speaker
And instantaneously we were like, not a dating match, but then we could talk and we're like, you're just so cool. And so that's even that, like, even if I never found anybody romantic, the fact that I have met these great friends is a positive outcome. So that from that angle, just the dates and the outcomes of the dates have been
00:19:54
Speaker
fine with some home runs, maybe if I'm going to put it. And then I could talk equally about some of the other components, the profile preparation, the messaging. There's ways I kind of hold it that aren't horrible and stressful. They're mostly fine, and some of it's great. That's awesome. And I definitely want to dig into all that, because I like that a lot. And I got to tell you off the top of my head, what I want for the three listeners I have or whatever, what I
00:20:23
Speaker
Don't let me let you get out of here without getting out of you, like your approach, because because what I'm feeling from you right now is like you've got kind of like a positive energy and a positive approach to this that lets you think about dating in terms of like the dates that you actually go on. Yeah, I love and I want to steal that from you because I would say I would say ballpark, the actual dates that I've gone on. I think my pie chart is probably from a pencil.
00:20:50
Speaker
My pie chart is probably similar, I think. I don't know. I'd have to sit down and really chew on it. But for right now, let's say ballpark's similar. I mean, look, I met my ex-wife on OKCupid, and she's an absolutely wonderful human being. My favorite dating app, by the way. That's been my favorite for my long shot. Not even close. A thousand percent, yes. A thousand percent, yes. The questions are just the best. You could write a book. It's just the best. Yeah.
00:21:13
Speaker
a thousand percent. Yes. Let's get into that when we talk about apps over the years, if we get to that. But I suspect we agree. I think for me, the part that I, and I think this is what you were getting at, but I think this is where I want to go. The part that for me that I've really found testing, where I really need someone to just sort of buck me up and where I thought to myself,
00:21:36
Speaker
man, I wish somebody was out there like making content or writing a book or like doing something being like, hey, I know like the getting to the date part really sucks. I find that are really difficult because it's
00:21:49
Speaker
It's the swiping and the messaging and the creating profiles and the feeling for me. I don't know if you feel this way, but like I feel like the dating apps are addictive. I feel my hand pick the phone up and when I've got them installed, my thumb will just go. We'll just go click on the app. I want to see who's saying hi to me. Like the pull of like, well, I just want to see who's out there. Like the possibility of that match for me, if I'm honest, is like it's a lot. And I really
00:22:19
Speaker
I wanna say resent, maybe resent is the word. I really don't enjoy feeling that out of control. And so I just nuke him. I get him off my phone and I set really strong rules for myself around like,
00:22:32
Speaker
This is my strategy is about like, like you heard on that episode, I like for two weeks, I go, okay, this is when I think I can go on dates. I'm going to work backwards from there. I'm going to swipe for two weeks. I'm going to message for one week and like, and I, and I shut them off at a certain point. Like once I get one or two folks who wants to maybe go who, who, who want to maybe chat off, off of the app and text or whatever.
00:22:53
Speaker
I'll nuke the apps, just talk to those folks, see where it goes. Because if I just leave the apps on my phone, they just keep nudging me. They keep pulling me in. I guess I'm
Understanding Behavioral Blind Spots and Addiction
00:23:04
Speaker
curious to know. Yeah. I'm going to try a reframe. We'll see if you agree with me or not. Let's do it. Are you familiar with Tristan Harris? Do you know who that is? He's like, okay. Center for Humane Technology. Exactly. It's the social dilemma of that stuff.
00:23:18
Speaker
like one of his framings that I really like is like when you when you anywhere you go to Google apps, whatever, when you connect, it's like you human with massive cognitive biases and blind spots connecting to a supercomputer. You're completely outmatched, right? And so yeah, so I like your framing like the dating apps are addictive. I'm I my frame is wider. It's just like,
00:23:42
Speaker
there's all kinds of different experiences out there and social media, any kind of social media is definitely that way, but probably Amazon and like on and on and on where they're hacking your brain because you're a limited human and they have supercomputers and AI going at it, you know, tricking you into, bathing you into these feelings that you're talking about because what they care about is attention in order that you spend money. Right. And so in a way it's,
00:24:09
Speaker
It's kind of like there's something about, there's something like, I don't want to blame the dating apps. I think it's a larger problem. It's just, it's really like, yeah, it's really, it's at least a social media problem and the dating apps live inside of that, you know?
00:24:26
Speaker
1000% agree. Yeah, then there's, then there's, you know, we can talk about. So in, in my mind, the strategy should be more why it should be wider. So for example, I post on YouTube, I post on Instagram for my homesteading stuff, I have zero subscribed, I have, I'm sorry, I have subscribers, people subscribe to me, I have subscribed to no one on Instagram.
00:24:47
Speaker
I don't use Facebook. I mean, the only thing I can say I'm addicted to somewhat is YouTube. That one's got me a little bit because it recommends good videos. But I just, I kind of, I mean, it's a similar strategy. Yours is the delete, you know, delete it is I just don't go there. I don't give the supercomputer the opportunity, right? So that's part of it. But I think the other part of it is just accepting if you're going to interact with it, a bit of that's going to happen.
00:25:15
Speaker
So that's where, and I think that might be where the difference in the approaches we have might. I'm very curious, you know, cause I'm happy to talk about how I see it and how it's different. And I'm also like, I'm not sure if you're going to be satisfied with my answer, but I can, I can take a crack at it, right? Yeah, please. No, no, I mean, I'm just happy to have the conversation. I'm definitely not, uh, yeah.
00:25:43
Speaker
All right, so it's gonna seem, come from kind of out of left field, but I'll bring it back into what we're talking about now. So I would love to tell you a little short story, but then I think I can kind of package this sort of like,
00:25:57
Speaker
a main framing of mine for this whole online dating experience. So in 2016, I house sat for a friend. And part of the condition of me getting to stay in their house for free was they had a dog and I needed to take care of the dog. The dog's name was Ruby.
00:26:14
Speaker
Ruby is a little tiny little, like whatever, like a big cat sized dog. Right. And she was kind of like a miracle dog because I kid you not, she literally got run over by a UPS truck, like completely over by the back wheel and made a full recovery. No, like limping, no injuring, no, you know, no lingering injuries. It was literally a miracle. Right. Okay. And this was so all that all of my interacting with her was post post miracle.
00:26:39
Speaker
So, you know, part of that part of me taking care of is going to take her to do her business, right? So we have this little trail that we had going on. I was kind of this sort of routine to go down the trail, get to this little open area and I'm holding their leash and she's like, she's like walking and sniffing in like a three foot circle. Right. And it wasn't like one lap. She would do a while, you know, she would go, she was just lap and lap and lap. And at first it was just weird. And then after a while I'm like,
00:27:07
Speaker
go like just go like you're gonna you're gonna go to the bathroom right there we do it every day what what's with the and then you know probably on time number 20 I'm watching her I'm feeling that impatience and a light bulb goes off and the light bulb the thought was literally oh I totally do that
00:27:27
Speaker
not like walk in a circle and sniff before I poop, but I mean like I do things in my life. I have strategies where I can't see the larger context and I just behave inside of them.
00:27:40
Speaker
And it's literally the impatience from me and her completely went away. It's like, oh, we're on the same team. It's just I can now see that I do the same thing that you do. So we're cool. So the frame that that creates for me is I think of like,
00:27:57
Speaker
that behaving or that thinking about what you have to do is like that's like you can you can consider that strategy and then this larger context that you're not aware of is like blind spots you know yeah it's like literally something that you are subject to
00:28:14
Speaker
that you cannot hold in your awareness as an object, right? Yeah. Okay. And so, and this may not be, I mean, when I listened to your podcast, it felt like a huge difference and maybe it's not, but so I will just state flat out like I'm not anti-strategy, right? Yeah.
00:28:32
Speaker
I mean, having a good strategy is better than having a bad one. But having a great strategy when you are completely controlled by your unconscious mind is pointless. So I'm much more focused on and interested in
00:28:49
Speaker
using my awareness to find those things that are behind my vision that I'm subject to and bringing them out in front of me so that I can see them. Therapy is an example of that. I've done tons of personal growth work and those kinds of things are part of what produces that for me. To just loop back, because I'm saying all that to say,
00:29:14
Speaker
I think because I see things that way, I don't spend a ton of time on strategy. I don't spend zero time on strategy, but I'm kind of like the 80-20, like, let me take 20% of the behaviors that'll give me 80% of the result. And that's enough. That's enough thinking about strategy. Beyond that, any fine tuning I'm doing, that time would be better spent just looking for my own blind spots.
00:29:38
Speaker
Sure. Does that make sense? It does. That's my overall approach. When I've listened to your podcast, I'm like, there is so much strategy here. Eighty percent of this I wouldn't use because I wouldn't spend my time on that. I would spend my time trying to figure out where I'm missing something in my awareness. They're all good pieces of strategy. I can't even say this is a bad strategy. It's just a lot. It is a lot.
00:30:07
Speaker
That's fair. I think that's a good question. Okay, so I think a lot of the reason that I sort of sat down and put pen to paper metaphorically and figured out an approach for using the apps was because I found myself
00:30:31
Speaker
When I just used them the way that they were encouraging me to use them, it was kind of addictive. I found that I was getting into a state where just the experience of using the apps
00:30:49
Speaker
was that.
00:31:03
Speaker
open to a human connection meeting someone new. And I'm sure a lot of that is built. A lot of that comes from personal stuff that I'm working on. Can I ask? Just curious. Correct me if I'm wrong, but some of the strategies of the ones you've employed are meant to act as a counterweight to this fallible human versus supercomputer problem that we were just talking about. Is that right?
00:31:31
Speaker
Yes. I don't want to be an attention monkey for these people. So I'm going to put these strategies in place too. So I don't fall into that trap. Is that a fair assessment? I think that's fair. So yeah, I think that is fair. And like, also I think, I do think, so I think the apps can be very difficult. It can be, maybe you're proving me wrong here, but I think it can be difficult for men and for women.
00:31:56
Speaker
in very different ways. And I think a part of, I guess in using the apps I found myself having empathy
00:32:05
Speaker
for not only myself, but for other men using the apps, as I was having these curiosities around like, how does this thing work? Like, how is this supercomputer manipulating me? Like, what is the landscape for how I'm meeting people? And when I started talking to people about the apps, mostly it was women, because mostly women are the ones who want to talk to you about like dating. But even then, just like learning
00:32:28
Speaker
the different women's experiences on the apps, I sort of began to realize that like, oh, like, there's a lot of things about this that I sort of wish that someone had told me earlier. And I guess some of the to get back to the strategy, some of the strategies that I that I talk about or that I try to use.
00:32:46
Speaker
are things that I'm just cobbling together based on this continually evolving understanding of how the system works. Because I guess I felt like when I first got back on the apps after I had sort of gone through my divorce and was ready to get back out there,
00:33:09
Speaker
I had used the apps a bunch before, okay, Cupid, back in the day, but sort of the apps during and after COVID lockdown, I feel like changed.
00:33:24
Speaker
And this gets back to my move, but in my experience, it was a lot different. It was a lot faster, a lot higher numbers, a lot more rejection, a lot more, I felt, a lot more... It just felt like more of a grind, if that makes sense. I just realized what might be a key difference between the two of us. Sure.
00:33:49
Speaker
I have almost never used, like if we're going to save the word app and it's in its sort of definitional context, it's like an application on your phone, right? Sure. Oh yeah. I don't, I generally don't use those. I hadn't thought as much of a strategy, it's just like a preference. I just use their web version.
00:34:08
Speaker
Oh, it's just and the my the thing I hinge was the last thing I tried. And the main thing I hated about it was they don't have a web app. You have to use like the app. Yeah. And that is different. I would agree, because now you're you know, you either have alerts on or off. And if you have them on, then you're you're you're you become the attention monkey. But if when I stuck to just using the web version, it's just a very different experience I could get if I got alerts, they were an email.
00:34:38
Speaker
I check them when I check my email. They're not like nagging me, right? So it's funny that you say it because it really wasn't a strategy. It was just a preference. I was just sort of a natural preference for me. I'd much rather be on my computer typing on a keyboard than I would putzing with my thumbs on a phone. But that probably would make a difference, honestly, you know? Yeah. I mean, so that's interesting. That's awesome. I used
00:35:08
Speaker
Back when I was on Hooky Cupid, they didn't have the phone app. It was just the website. This is back in the day. And that definitely was different. I guess I feel like when I'm trying to match with people and when I'm trying to get to figuring out as best as I can if we should meet up, basically the app to text message transition, if you will.
00:35:38
Speaker
I think I tend to do that on a phone. I tend to think that my best chance of getting a chat with someone is being able to respond back to them pretty quickly when they chat at me. Okay. I want to pause this right here and say that's a perfect example of something. I just don't think about that at all. In terms of strategy, I have zero. Yeah.
00:36:09
Speaker
I'm not sure I'm not sure we want to go from there, but it's just I definitely want to flag that because I absolutely I'm assuming I do think that there's quite a few things that well, okay, let me just I'm gonna kind of paint this little picture and see if it kind of helps our course direction here. So I do think
00:36:29
Speaker
I mean, I agree mostly with your assessment that it's digital marketing. And I will say some more things about that that I think might make it a lot more fun. Sure. Not so onerous. Uh oh, I may have lost my train of thought. What were we talking about? So I do actually, I would love to dig into like the chatting right away thing. That's a very like tactical short term thing, but I think it's something that a lot of men, um,
00:36:58
Speaker
uh, uh, wrestle with or curious about like your, and it is very tactical and it is very strategy, but like, you know, if somebody, because in my experience, what happens a lot is you message somebody on an app and they just never get back to you. You just get left on red and you just never hear that response, which is okay. I understand the numbers and that's happened to me too. I just don't put any, I don't put any weight into it. You just let it go. Yep. I don't try to improve that.
00:37:29
Speaker
I don't. Yep. I love it. That's awesome. I love that you have that. Yeah, I think I've recovered myself. Apologies. So so I do. I do. I do hold it like like we're playing a game. I mean, I kind of like life is to me, life is a series of games, but I I don't like the word being used like I'm playing games and somebody like I'm purposely manipulating them for some evil intent. I think of a game is more like baseball is a game.
00:37:59
Speaker
You know, you have, you play cause it's fun and you have rules. You don't hit the, you don't rush the pitcher and hit them over the head with the bat. There's others, but it is a game. And so, you know, that there, I, and I can hold dating as a game too. And I, I play a game, but, and here, this is the thing that I think is the difference is I play a very specific and conscious game that is, I suspect is very different than the one most people play. Okay.
00:38:29
Speaker
And it's quite simply that my game is trust and authenticity. That's the game I'm playing. How do I bring my authentic self and how do I build trust in an authentic way? Not manipulatively, but legitimately, how can I figure out ways to build trust with this person?
00:38:55
Speaker
I love that. And that's it. I'm consciously aware that that is the game that I'm playing. And this is the key for me. It's like, because that's the game that I'm playing, most optimization strategies feel irrelevant to me. Not all of them. I mean, I'm not saying that they're completely pointless, but they largely feel irrelevant. So like as an example, somebody messages me. When should I message them back? When my intuition tells me when I want to.
00:39:24
Speaker
Like when it feels authentic to do so. That's it. That's the end of my thinking about that particular optimization. Do I ask somebody out on a second date if it feels like they want to and it feels like I want to? When? How long do I wait? I don't care. If I want to do it right away, I'll do it right away. If I don't feel moved to and then I feel moved to a week later, I do. One of the nice things about that is,
00:39:53
Speaker
I mean, I guess not, you know, for people that aren't in touch with their intuition, that might be kind of a rough ride. Maybe they need like a battle plan. But if you're in touch with your intuition, it just becomes so much easier. You can just let go of a lot of the
00:40:08
Speaker
of optimization and strategy and thinking about how to do something right. It's a little trite to say, be yourself, but just listen to my intuition. I would say the other piece of that that's cool is then I get practice listening to my intuition.
00:40:27
Speaker
because I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel like I'm listening to my intuition, but really I was doing it because I was afraid. If I'm oriented towards I'm going to behave with authenticity, I'm going to build trust in an authentic way, and I'm going to act intuitively, then I get to practice all the time when I fuck that up.
Authenticity and Connection in Dating
00:40:48
Speaker
I'm practicing getting better at it, and then I'm practicing getting better at shit that I care about, you know what I mean? Because I care about being a trustworthy, authentic person, right? And so I actually get, because I play that game, I'm practicing things that actually matter to me, like fine-tuning my intuition in life, you know?
00:41:10
Speaker
That's where I'm, you know, it's, I'm not sure if that's the answer to me. I fear that it feels a bit vague, but it also feels really like solid in me and very important. And I can probably to like, to many things we would talk about strategy wise, I would just say, it doesn't matter. I just use my intuition, which is okay. Yeah. In a way it could be framed as the cop out, but also it's just sort of like the way I operate, you know? No, no, no. I love it. I don't think it's a cop out and, and,
00:41:38
Speaker
If I may just pursue that with a little bit of curiosity, trusted authenticity, from the instant you started talking about that, that is a big deep value for me. My lens or the way I see that is if I am looking for a partner, I often see it like,
00:42:01
Speaker
I want somebody who sees me and who I can see them. And I think that task is so joyful and it's so complex and I just, I find it, I don't know, I find that aspect of human connection, especially romantic human connection, really, really amazing. So I mean, yes, yes, yes. Like finding a way to- So you want this, like if you could just bake it down to like Scott wants, he wants an authentic connection. He wants a person who trusts him and he can trust.
00:42:30
Speaker
I mean, honestly, I'm very fortunate, a lot of, and this maybe gets to comfort and convenience, but like most things in my life, I'm very fortunate, very lucky in a lot of ways. I'm not like a super famous or rich or whatever, but like my basic needs, food, shelter, family, to an extent community, I think community is a struggle for all of us, but like to a large extent, those things, I'm very fortunate. I have those,
00:42:59
Speaker
strongly taken care of, right? For me, I find that connection with another human, I sort of feel like I have so much time on this earth, what am I going to do with it? And connecting with people is, I kind of think the most valuable thing. And for me anyway,
00:43:19
Speaker
you know, a romantic connection is in my experience has been just, just the best experience has been the most, has let me be, has let me lead a fulfilling life. Um, yeah, in a way that I just, I really appreciate. And I don't know, it's, it's just kind of what I want to do with the time that I have. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I'm gonna, can I just pause? I just want to slow things down for a second. So like, yeah. And I'm, I'm gonna, I'm,
00:43:46
Speaker
In some of the relational intelligence training I've done, I'm going to do something which is referred to as offering impact. I was paying very close attention to what you were saying, not just with my head and the content, but with my whole
00:44:01
Speaker
system, right? And, and that what you said impacted me and it impacted me in a very, a couple of very specific ways. And one is like, I feel like I know you better, right? Like I, I feel the earnestness in that desire that you're communicating, you know, um, and that helped, that it was me feel like in a way it's like safer with you or closer to you. Cause like, I want that too. And I can feel like, Oh, he honestly, once that night was like a tribal, like,
00:44:26
Speaker
we're kind of in the same tribe there, you know? And that feels really good. So that's one impact. Yeah. And the other one is just noticing like, what's the right word? It's like this space that you're inhabiting is so much more, oh my God, I can't believe it. This space that you're inhabiting is so much more attractive than disgusting strategy. Like if I just,
00:44:55
Speaker
like feel like like a platonic kind of you know attract like male platonic attraction friendship kind of attraction like I feel more like I'm more drawn to be present with you when you're talking about those things than when you're talking about strategy yeah and I kind of I really wanted to point at that because I I want like I I wonder
00:45:21
Speaker
I guess I just, one of the lingering questions for me is, if this is what you want and I'm, here we are vibing about it right now and it feels really good to me, then why not just lead with that? It's like, I guess it's my simple question. Why not just come from that place and forget about most of the rest of it? You see what I'm saying? I guess that's one of my main challenges for you. It's just like, just, you could probably forget about a lot of that shit. Yeah. Well, that's fair.
00:45:50
Speaker
I mean, I don't know. I like to think, and thank you, first of all. Thank you for seeing that. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for being vulnerable and letting me be vulnerable. That's awesome. We just met, and I really appreciate that, too. I don't know. I think in terms of what I'm doing with the pod or what I'm talking about here,
00:46:13
Speaker
It's a fair point. I'm not sure that like the me that I bring to this podcast is always kind of the same me that I bring to first meeting someone on a dating app or not on a dating app. I hope, and this is a thing I work on in therapy, I hope that I bring that sort of vulnerable, real like get to what's important, like get to what drives me conversation.
00:46:42
Speaker
And I don't like to talk about the specifics of dating life on you too, too much. So I moved six months ago. And again, for whatever reason, I think, I don't know why, but I have pet theories, but no hard data. Things have been going a little better. Things have been feeling more optimistic. Things have been feeling less of a grind, less like a grind.
00:47:08
Speaker
And yeah, I can think of times when I've been on dates with people where, yeah, I am able to sort of bring that trust and authenticity, that genuine desire. And I think you're right. What do I want to put this? I would advise anyone to be as vulnerable as you can, to express yourself as genuinely as you can,
00:47:39
Speaker
in any medium where you're trying to meet someone new. But I think, I don't know, I think it's good to acknowledge that I think that can be difficult on social media, on dating apps, right? I think there's a lot sort of pushing us to curate ourselves, pushing us to edit, to be not vulnerable, to like censor those kinds of things maybe.
00:48:07
Speaker
I don't know. Anyway, I hope I do that. I guess I don't do that as much on the podcast. I try to make this a space of less speaking passionately about specifically what I'm looking for and more about trying to...
00:48:21
Speaker
Yeah, make it a space to talk about the process. It's not my intention to denigrate strategy or being intellectual about it, because I'm not anti those things. Yeah. And there's just a simple observation. There's like, there's this, there's sort of the Scott that that has that I'm listening to talk about strategy. And there's a certain way that feels. And there's the Scott that talks about what he really wants. And there's a certain way that feels and those are those are very different, you know, and then I kind of map that on to
00:48:50
Speaker
And again, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's this like, that seems like it kind of loosely maps to like, you're more like this kind of Scott when you're pre meeting them in person. It's all like, I got to get through all this bullshit to meet them in person. And then when you meet them in person, like finally, I got to the place where I can like, just sit down with them and be myself. You know? And that's a great observation. Yeah.
00:49:14
Speaker
And I wonder if you can bring more of that, the thing that happens after the finally, if more of that can be in the whole experience.
00:49:24
Speaker
You know? Yeah. Okay. Okay. I love this. So, so, but, but, but let me, but let me kind of transfer, cause cause what, let me, let me tell you what I'm hearing through that though. So I do mostly meet new people through the dating apps. I try to do, I go to like Dungeons and Dragons meetups and like meet people who do the things I like to do. Yeah. It's fun. Um, but honestly, mostly again, you can meet a thousand people that you wouldn't otherwise meet. So I do mostly when I'm meeting someone new, it's, it's cause I met them on a dating app. Um,
00:49:54
Speaker
I find it very challenging, and I could be wrong, but I would guess a lot of people find it very challenging to bring that trust and authenticity to a dating app profile or to those first few messages where you're trying to get someone to trust you enough to text you or talk to you on the phone. I have little ideas and things that I try to do to bring that, but it sounds to me like, I don't know, it sounds to me like you're able to do that in a way
00:50:25
Speaker
I find it really admirable. How do you do that on a dating app? How do you bring that trust and authenticity to the process earlier? Does that make sense?
00:50:37
Speaker
Kind of. Okay, let me sit back. There's a number of different ways I could take this. I'm going to make a request. Weirdly enough, even though we're at this place, I actually think it might be useful to talk about what minimal strategies I do use. Okay, for sure. Oh, totally. That can inform your question. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. I'm so curious.
00:51:06
Speaker
80-20, right? Let me take 20% of the actions that create 80% of those without close enough. That's my framing. Okay. I would say in many ways, the strategies that you'd offered are close or similar to the things I've done. I just don't do all of the ones I've heard.
00:51:29
Speaker
Are you familiar with Stephen Covey's work? Maybe I can create a little better frame around this. Stephen Covey is the guy, the seven habits of highly effective people, was like his famous books. But one of his other big books was called First Things First. And I'm just contexting it that way because kind of the bottom line of his whole philosophy of first things first is, if you've got a jar and you're going to put as many rocks in it as possible, you put the big ones in first, right? So that's his whole deal is to put the big rocks in first.
00:51:58
Speaker
I was, I've actually been excited to talk to you about like, okay, like we've got, we can, we can talk about 8 million strategies, but like, let's bake it down to like, what are the big rocks? Like, what are the things that you, what are the really essential things that you need to get right in a dating profile or in like, in like your digital marketing, if you will, where you can kind of forget about the rest because they're not nearly as important. Right. And I, I definitely have very strong opinions about this and we can start with mine or yours, or we can just kind of go back and forth. So how do you want to do it?
00:52:27
Speaker
I'm easy. Okay, so when you're early on in the process and making a dating app profile, what does putting the big rocks in first mean for you? There's two big ones.
00:52:41
Speaker
and they're both pretty simple for me. The first one is around pictures and the second one's around writing. Duh, right? Like these are the two, these are the two things, right? You show yourself and you kind of reveal your insight from writing. So the main sort of strategy I would advise anybody to do, it's sort of, it's almost an, I could go at it from either angle, but let's just say it this way. Have somebody take pictures of you. Preferably have somebody who has some artistic sense take pictures of you.
00:53:12
Speaker
do not take selfies. Huge mistake. Like they look awful. This where you're like holding out your, you can see your arm. It also like, it really like.
00:53:24
Speaker
I am going to rant about this a little bit because this is one of the few things about dating apps or people doing online profiles where I'm like, what are you doing? I have that kind of reaction. But you take a selfie, not only does the angle terrible, but it's almost like the subconscious like, don't you have any friends that could take a picture for you? It's just weird. So have somebody who can competently take good pictures of you.
00:53:50
Speaker
Yeah. And I don't think I even need to give much more detail than that. I heard you say at some point you have to have at least one full body shot in there. I would tend to agree with that. I can, I can honestly say that if I run into a woman's dating profile where there's not at least one picture of them, they're like full body.
00:54:07
Speaker
That's like a red flag or something. It's like a point against. And I think the same for men. I think you should have one full body shot. But that's not even the big rock. The big rock is seriously, have somebody take your pictures for you and make sure that they're competent. And I think if you just get that right, then the picture thing is going to be totally good.
00:54:29
Speaker
There's probably a million more things you could say to fine tune it, but that's the essence of nailing the visual part of it.
00:54:38
Speaker
Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. That's the big picture rock. Yes. Okay. The picture big rock. Okay. I like that. That's the visual. Now the writing one is, I'm not sure if you're a writer, but I would consider myself a writer, although I haven't published a book, but I write a lot and I have to do writing type stuff for the content that I produce and I write blog posts.
00:55:03
Speaker
I even wrote the first draft of a book, which is bad, but I did produce a hundred thousand words. I got to give myself some credit for that. That's what first drafts are for. Right. That's the first draft. Exactly. So at any rate, and my heart, I feel like a writer. Let's put it that way. And, and I, and so in terms of writing, I think like one of the cornerstone pieces of good writing applies when you're writing a dating profile and that is show don't tell. And I, I swear if you can just do that one thing,
00:55:34
Speaker
it pretty much takes care of a lot of the dumb shit you would do in the writing portion of your profile. There's more I could say about authenticity, but show, don't tell is the thing. There's nothing worse than a laundry list of qualities. I might as well be reading the ingredients on a milk carton, right? So you cannot say you're funny. You cannot say almost anything. You cannot directly say anything about yourself. You have to show it. I mean, imagine you pick up your book from your favorite author and they're like,
00:56:04
Speaker
The hero was brave. That's not how they do it. They show it through action, right? And so you have to get away from stating things and get towards how do I write in such a way that what's the right word impunes? That's not the right word, but there's a word like it communicates through the writing.
00:56:27
Speaker
Right. The essence of who you are without you trying to state it in the exact language that if, yeah, that's, that's what separates the good profiles from the bad 100%. You know, and I mean, I've read profiles of all different kinds. Like I've read profiles where I'm laughing my ass off because they're so funny. I've read profiles where I'm almost crying because it's so touching and they're so vulnerable. But the thing that makes the difference is they're not doing the laundry list thing. They are, they're, they're literally showing themselves through their writing.
00:56:57
Speaker
Yeah. So that's it. If you could do that, you're like 90% of the way there to the written portion. Well, so I think this is why maybe we both liked OkCupid because that platform really let you bring your writing to bear. It really let you kind of use words to sort of describe whatever you wanted to, which I did. I did like that a lot.
00:57:21
Speaker
Did you find it more attractive when you ran across somebody who wrote a really long thought? You come across the profile of a woman, and she had written a very long, thoughtful, well-written piece. That was way more attractive, right? Yeah. Well, for exactly the reason that you're talking about it. I think that is a way to begin to build trust and authenticity, which I really love that.
00:57:51
Speaker
I do think there is a challenge with, I mean, I think it takes a really skilled writer to show not tell in like a Tinder profile or like a hinge profile when you're responding to those little prompts, right? Like I think that can be tricky. Let me bounce something off of you. Let me give you like my strategy for trying to get at trust and authenticity on some of these apps. And I'm interested to hear your take because I don't know, maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree.
00:58:23
Speaker
I will always do my best to use voice and video. Whenever I can on one of these apps, I'll try to do something where I'm able to respond to a prompt with me saying something that I think is funny. As you say, hopefully I'm not saying, hey, I'm funny. Hopefully I'm making a joke that actually lands.
00:58:49
Speaker
I think on hinge for a while. Oh, I forget. I had some, there was some joke or something, but I just did a little video thing and like where they let you use voice prompts. I would always encourage someone to use a voice prompt. I think we are, I think human beings, I think we're wired to glean information from voices.
00:59:10
Speaker
at a much higher fidelity. I think we learned so much more just hearing someone's voice than you do reading those words. And then when you get to actually chatting,
00:59:23
Speaker
I, if I match with somebody and we start chatting, if it's one of the apps that lets you send voice notes or lets you send video notes, I will come in with one of those, like sometimes the second message, probably never the first message, but like sometimes the second or third message I'll come in with like a, Hey, I hope it's okay for me to send you one of these little voice notes or a little video message, whatever it is.
00:59:43
Speaker
You know, I just kind of think this is a nice way to get to know somebody. You were asking about the pick in the profile where I was upside down in a bar. This is actually what happened there. I don't actually drink that much or whatever. And then I would start talking about myself. Right. Just because I think, but again, I guess as you're framing this, I think those are the things that I do to try and build trust and authenticity. The lens that I kind of see that through is like,
01:00:10
Speaker
And again, this is interesting because we do have a different approach on this. I do that stuff. There's a part of my brain that's like, look, if someone's going to think I'm not a match because of the way that I talk or something about me, I want to know that as early as possible. Yeah.
01:00:26
Speaker
If I'm not it for somebody, totally okay. But I want to know that as early as possible, mostly before I invest the kind of emotional bandwidth into letting this person in, being vulnerable with this person. Because for me, that process is very... That's a real part of the process for me. But anyway. Do you feel like you're a good judge of character? That's a great question.
01:00:56
Speaker
I don't know. I think I give people the benefit of the doubt a lot. And especially in dating, a matchmaker that I was working with kind of early on after my divorce, she encouraged me to like always go on a second date. Like if I go on a first date and it doesn't feel like, I mean, I guess it depends on what you judge a character, but if I went on a first date and it felt like
01:01:27
Speaker
They were okay. There were no clearly incompatible things. And we were able to have a conversation. And I can kind of talk to anybody. I can actually hold a conversation. I don't mean it that way. I don't mean, are you a judge of compatibility? To me, that's judge of compatibility. I'm talking about judge of character. Is this a good person? Or is this a crazy person? That was really more the intent of my question.
01:01:52
Speaker
Oh, okay. I think so. I think I've definitely matched with people who... In general, not on the dating apps. I think I'm a pretty decent judge of character. On the dating apps, I'm trying to think of a time when I've gone out with somebody who I just felt like, oh, you're... Not a good person, yeah. Yeah, not a person with integrity or not a...
01:02:23
Speaker
I do give people a lot of benefit of the doubt. I think that's true about me. What I'm hearing is generally you would say you're a good judge of character and there's this quality where you want to give people the benefit of the doubt. Does that sound like a decent bottom line? I think that's a very generous way to describe me, yeah. Part of the reason I ask is because
01:02:45
Speaker
I see myself as being a good judge of character in that same way that I'm framing it. Like I generally have a good bullshit detector. Somebody's like not a low integrity person. I can usually figure that out pretty quickly. And I think one of the reasons I was asking is because I'm realizing like if I hang a lot of how I do things in life, honestly, but especially the dating apps too, as part of it,
01:03:12
Speaker
on the fact that I am a good judge of character. Because I am, I can be in a certain way. I can let go of a lot of protection maybe, I might say. I can be a little more loosey goosey with how I decide to interact with people because I just trust that I'm going to get the signal what's going to ping me if there's something that feels off and then I can
01:03:35
Speaker
you know, I can write contact or whatever I need to do in that situation. So maybe I'm trying to say for those, for anybody who's a really, who knows that really bad judge of character, I don't know if I have any advice because I kind of, that's like a grounding for me and like everything kind of comes from that, you know? Yeah. It feels to me like you're really able to like trust your intuition.
01:03:59
Speaker
Yes. I admire that. I practice it. Like I said, because I've chosen to play authenticity and trust with authenticity as my game, then I'm practicing it all the time. I screw up, but that just helps me do it better next time. Yeah.
01:04:21
Speaker
I have so many questions. So we're at an hour. Are you OK to go a little longer? Oh, yeah. I mean, I kind of was thinking more like an hour and a half or whatever. OK, cool. Yeah, I'm good for a bit. So before you go, there's one other thing I wanted to say you were talking about. You asked me if it was. We've got pins and things all over the place, man. We can talk for another hour if you want to. I'll get one. I'll get one, which was the voice memo. Is it more authentic to do voice memos and stuff? And so my specific framing on that is,
01:04:49
Speaker
There's a, it's a little bit of apples and oranges. It's like, uh, text has, you know, there's like a, like, think about number of channels that are online is what I think. So text is like, you know, maybe one channel and then you add voice and you've got sort of somebody's insides and the sound of the voice and you add video and you've got another channel and then you got in person and it's like all the channels. And so more channels equals more context, right?
01:05:15
Speaker
And I actually think it's not quite that more channels equals more authenticity. I think you can be very authentic in writing. I mean, haven't you ever read something where you're like, it just cracks you open because you can feel the person's vulnerability?
01:05:27
Speaker
You never met them. You don't know what their voice sounds like. And so I do think there's a difference there. So I want to acknowledge that having more channels online does give you a more full experience. But I think you can fine tune and get more in touch with your own authenticity, no matter the number of channels that are available.
01:05:51
Speaker
Yeah. I've had, I've had lots of experiences that kind of prove that to me, that I can, I can read something and be moved or have a text exchange and be moved. And it's, it's, it's not the number of channels alone that makes the difference. And so I, the only voice memo before done was on hinge. It was kind of like, cause they force you to do one. So I don't, I don't have a strong opinion on it. Um, it's nice to hear people's voices. I mean, I liked it. So I, I guess I would.
01:06:22
Speaker
It doesn't feel like it fits into my strategy. Interesting. That's interesting. Again, focus much more on the authenticity. If writing is the only thing that's available, then that's where I'm going to bring it and in the pictures too. What are the available channels? Whatever they are, my goal is to be authentic.
01:06:48
Speaker
OK, I love that. OK, man, there are threads all over the place that I want to pull on with you. We'll never get them all, but yeah, let's just. We won't. So there's two things that I want to kind of go back to if we can. Yep. I think I cut you off. I would love to hear about like your and I get that like mostly your thing is like getting away from strategy 80 20, like put the big rocks in first. I'm interested to hear just like like over you've been on these things for years and years and years. I'm sure on and off you've been in relationships. Yep.
01:07:19
Speaker
If you are looking to meet someone on the dating apps, I would love to hear just like over a month or two what it looks like you using the app. And then once whatever you got on that, but I don't want to let you go without talking about this intuition. I really admire the strong sense of intuition that you have. And I'm wondering if you like
01:07:45
Speaker
Is there a practice you have that helps you find your intuition? I know you talked a little bit or you wrote to me a little bit about authentic relating and circling. You've done a lot of growth work around this. I want to know if someone's listening and they're like, man, this Chad guy is rock solid with his intuition, what can someone who wants to walk down that pathway, where might their next step be? So yeah, dating app process and then the big important thing, intuition.
01:08:12
Speaker
Yes. And the one pin I have too is because it feels like it's lingering is about like how you had kind of asked, how do I bring more authenticity? Like, like even specifically, and we could just talk about in the writing, you know, it would be so those I can see those are totally three topics we could dig into. So the intuition piece.
Intuition and Embodiment Techniques
01:08:32
Speaker
So similar to being like feeling like I've been a good judge of character.
01:08:39
Speaker
Well, actually that's not true. I'm going to, I'm going to correct myself before I get too far down that road. So when I was younger, I need to give a little bit of context so I can answer your question. I'll be brief. I lived in my head. It's the easiest way to say it. Like I was, I was a smart, you know, bookish, get straight A's disembodied person. Right. And in that sense, and, and my ability to sense things in terms of intimate relationship was a wreck, like really bad, you know,
01:09:09
Speaker
I spent a long time talking about all the dysfunction I had to overcome. But let's just start with the fact that I was ahead with no body kind of, right? And a lot of the really almost all of the most important work that I've done has been becoming more embodied.
01:09:25
Speaker
So for, for folks that are stuck in their head, that would be my biggest piece of advice is find ways to, to, to, to live more, to, to move into your more fully embodied experience. Yeah. So, so as a, as a really simple example, I don't know if we actually need to like, as an authentic relating game, but I'm not sure we actually want to play one, but like I could, I could describe one.
01:09:49
Speaker
that gives you a sense of a tool set that develops that. There's the most simple introductory game in authentic relating games. It's called the noticing game. And it really is just like, I say something I'm noticing. Maybe it might be a body sensation or an emotion I'm having or whatever. And then that may or may not have some impact on you. And then you say what you're noticing. And you just kind of go back and forth that way for a few minutes.
01:10:16
Speaker
And so you're doing that sensing with another person. So you're literally doing it in relationship and almost inevitably some of what you're feeling is sensations that are in the relational context. So you're beginning to develop like a tuning fork or an attunement for how your body gives you information
01:10:42
Speaker
when you're in a relationship connection. Does that make sense? And so out of head into body, there's probably tons of ways to do it. Circling and authentic relating are two of my favorites. I always called them like personal development rocket fuel. As I mentioned before, I'm kind of a personal development junkie and I just haven't found anything more effective at like overall that piece where like you're subject to something and then you can become aware of it.
01:11:12
Speaker
I don't think I've ever found anything more effective for just having that process happen over and over again. And of course, if you care about relationships and intimate relationships,
01:11:22
Speaker
developing your relational awareness is a pretty big deal. I mean, it's certainly a practice I could recommend, but I do think at a more fundamental level, it's just maybe one way to say it is your deepest, I believe, I'll keep it personal, I believe my deepest intuition lives in my full embodied experience.
01:11:45
Speaker
I cannot access my intuition by thinking about shit. I have to feel everything, including my thinking. I'm not saying shut out your mind, but there's this way it all can operate together if you allow it, if you include it. And that's where I think most of the intelligence of intuition shows up.
01:12:06
Speaker
I would honestly, I would agree. Like the work I've been doing, I'm not sure that I've done as much work as you have done, but some of the work that I've done in personal growth, a lot of it for me that feels very productive and useful is yeah, just learning to listen to like my physical body. Like sometimes it's like my quads are sore or something and it's like, well, because I went to the gym or whatever, but like,
01:12:28
Speaker
No, like in this moment, as I'm talking to somebody or as I'm thinking about something, there's this thing in my body and for whatever stupid reason, it's in my legs. And like the act of, I don't know, just to echo what you said, I definitely, yeah, the act of just listening to your body is something.
01:12:44
Speaker
definitely a game changer for me. Yeah. So I can actually offer another really simple example. Yeah. And this was, my mom actually gave this one to me and I love its simplicity and she, so her framing is whatever I'm trying to make a decision on something, you know, I've got A or B I'm trying to decide, it doesn't even matter the thing you're trying to decide, right? You're trying to decide A or B and she'll close my eyes and I'll just focus on A.
01:13:08
Speaker
And I'll feel what that feels like in my body. And then I'll stop and I'll focus on B and I'll feel what that feels like in my body. And almost every time, not every time, because there's, there's, you know, there's some skill and attunement if A and B are very close or whatever.
01:13:22
Speaker
or you have conflicting needs, if there's conflicting needs, maybe it will be, but like almost all the time, one of those will feel kind of like more like some kind of version of like expansive opening, moving towards heart opening. And the other one will feel like closing up, shrinking, fearful, right? And just by doing that simple like pause and like focus on one and feel and then focus on the other and feel.
01:13:49
Speaker
not only I think most of the time it just makes the decision obvious, which is nice, right? But that process itself begins to further attune you to be able to feel the subtleties even more when there's even harder decisions that are closer together, right? So that's kind of another example, really simple, but very effective example of like developing intuition. And I mean, it sounds like you are much further down this journey than I am, but
01:14:20
Speaker
something I might ask about is when someone is early in that journey. Let's say someone is listening and they're like, I haven't done any of this kind of work at all. And for a lot of people, when you sit at a screen all day,
01:14:31
Speaker
doing the job that you do to make ends meet, which is like a lot of folks have to do, I think it's very easy to be a person who does get stuck in your head, right? I think there are a lot of things for a lot of people that tell us like the thinking that you do in your head and the typing you do on your keyboard, that is what literally makes you valuable, right? And I think that can really pull us away from- So you're getting those cultural signals or whatever, right? Yeah, and so that's what we do, right? And so I guess my question is like, can you remember back in the beginning of your journey or like,
01:15:01
Speaker
If you deal with folks who are early on in that journey, I think early on, as you say, like the more you do this, the more nuance you can maybe feel. And I think that's been, I think that's been my experience. Like the more you do this, the more you learn to trust it, the more it will like tell you when you're like, Hey, what is this thing bouncing around like in the cavity in my chest right now? That's something, let me listen to that. But I think is it fair to say like, or I guess I just want to ask your experience in the beginning.
01:15:30
Speaker
when you first try to do that listening to your body, when you first try to be more embodied. I think it can be frustrating because a lot of times you stumble, you're not there yet, your body isn't used to doing that.
01:15:41
Speaker
And if the answer is no, that's okay, but do you have any advice? Give me wisdom. Yes, I think I do, actually. That's what I want. And this is where, because I've not just taken courses in things like Circling, but I've done trainings, and so I've worked with people who are, and it's almost like it's easier for me.
01:16:03
Speaker
to be able to draw answers to those questions by thinking about how I've showed up in my trainings then personally. There's a certain point where I almost forget how.
01:16:15
Speaker
how disembodied I was. Like I've been living in my body so long. It's like, it becomes harder and harder to relate to it. But if I do, if I'm like leading in a training or assisting in a training, I'm seeing people who are in that place, right? And I'm with them in that struggle to like move into a more embodied place. And like one of the most common examples is somebody will like tune in and they'll just be like, I just don't feel anything. Like what are you talking about?
01:16:44
Speaker
You want me to feel my body? What does that mean? I'm stuck. I don't know what I'm feeling. It really sounds almost like a dumb trick.
01:16:58
Speaker
But it actually is a really classically meditative move to just say, first thing is to not invalidate, to not say, of course you feel something. That's only going to make somebody run away. So yeah, you can't feel anything.
01:17:15
Speaker
And what's that like for you? I'm asking you to send something. What is the nothing like for you? Because the thing that you need to do is not feel something. It's to bring your attention to the feeling space. Do you understand the difference? I think so. If somebody says, I don't feel anything,
01:17:43
Speaker
That's fine. I'm just going to ask them to bring their attention to the feeling space again. Oh, you don't feel anything. Like what's that like for you? You know what? Yeah. What, what is the quality of that? Nothing, which honestly, like, again, it seems like a weird dumb trick, but like it's, it's only because it literally is a meditative move. You're just pointing the person back to pay attention
01:18:08
Speaker
to the felt sense, and they are feeling something. They're feeling the sense of nothing. Do you see what I'm saying? Sure. Then usually, everybody's journey is different, but usually then a few rounds of that and then nothing starts to feel different. Even if it's like, yeah, it still feels like nothing, but now I notice I'm not as scared as I was when you asked me the question.
01:18:34
Speaker
And that's a little shift, right? And so it really is a lot of it, it's called, it can be referred to as relational meditation because of that, because you're continually bringing your awareness to the quality of the connection in this moment or to the quality of your own internal experience at this moment.
01:18:54
Speaker
And the development comes from you just like when you're, if you're doing Zen meditation and you're like, I'm focusing on my breath. And then you're thinking about your car payment and you're like, I'm not focusing on my breath. And what do you do? You bring your attention back to your breath, right? And so in a similar way with intuition and relational intelligence, you notice when you've fallen asleep, if you will, and you bring your attention back to the object of the meditation. So if the object of the meditation is my felt sense in my body, it can,
01:19:24
Speaker
It can be anything as long as you're bringing your attention to it. That's the movement that matters. Does that make sense? It does, it does, it does. Okay, I love that. I hope I didn't over describe that, but it really feels just so important. It's such a big key.
01:19:39
Speaker
Sure. To me, that sounds like a technique. And what I want someone listening to sort of maybe get is one technique that they can maybe lean on as they're maybe first exploring. Like, how do I get embodied? If I feel like I don't have a strong sense of intuition that's helping me in this journey, this quest for finding intimacy, things I can do, little things I can do to help me
01:20:02
Speaker
build an intuition in myself that I can trust. And then, so from that, I want to segue because it seems like you have a strong sense of that how, and it doesn't have to be like specifically about that.
01:20:12
Speaker
authentic relating or whatever. But how do you, this person with the strong intuition seeking to bring trust and authenticity, how do you do that when you're actually using, let's say, something like hinge and use it on a web app? But what does that look like? Because that to me, I'm curious about that. Yeah, totally. So I don't have a canned answer, which I'm actually, I like that. And so I'm going to need to meditate for a bit on it.
01:20:40
Speaker
I mean, the visual presentation, I don't worry about it beyond the thing I already advised, right? Have somebody who has some artistic sense take pictures of you.
01:20:48
Speaker
The writing is more important for me. The authenticity of the visual is, am I portraying myself accurately? That's all the complexity I need of it or from it. The writing is a little more important and more challenging, I think, in some ways. Because you can have a competent photographer take pictures of you. You can't really
01:21:13
Speaker
You can have a writer help you, but you can't really have somebody reveal in writing who you are, right? Like that's your thing to do. So, you know, and you might be bad at it. Some people aren't as good at writers. And so you just have to practice to get better. Right. And I really do feel like the guiding principle is this whole show don't tell thing.
01:21:34
Speaker
But beyond the show don't tell thing, I think your question is more like, well, okay, how do I show my authenticity? How do I show my true self in my writing? That might be a more pointed question. And especially add on, you don't have O.K. Cupid's 25 paragraphs or unlimited length to do it, you have a couple sentences.
01:21:58
Speaker
Yes, but I guess let me explain my curiosity a little more. Yes, we don't have Okcupid anymore because the other thing that Cupid really did well is let you filter. Let's say I've done some work and I know that I value certain things about myself and I feel pretty confident that I'm looking for a romantic partner who values X, Y, and Z.
01:22:18
Speaker
Doubles in the details in there, you can certainly go overboard with that. But if I have a decent sense of generally who I'm looking for, that's going to let me focus in on the people who are showing those values in their writing or just literally answering the OKCupid questions that way. But even without that, if we're just looking at the apps with the pictures and the blurbs and maybe a voice note,
01:22:44
Speaker
If you're spending, let's say, two or three months on apps, exploring, putting yourself out there, trying to meet somebody, the tools you have are typing messages, maybe sending a voice note, maybe sending a video, looking at pictures, swiping, sending likes, sending super likes, whatever. How do you go through a couple months of that process?
01:23:12
Speaker
in a way that, because it sounds to me like you don't get burnt out on this. Do you use them for a while and then hang them up for a few weeks, then go back to them? Or are you able to just like- The turnaround's not quite like that. Usually in my online, again, more the web app thing than apps. I think that helps me. Yeah, that's fair, that's right. One of the things I've realized, but at any rate, I would say,
01:23:36
Speaker
how I'm on them or not is more driven just by like what's going on in my life. So for example, when I first got here to do my homesteading thing, I'm sleeping in my car. I'm busting my ass to build a house. Like I'm not on the app. So I'm fucking busy, you know, you're busy building a house. Exactly. So, so it's more like that. You know, I don't, I don't know if I've ever had like just burnout from the app, from just using the app, you know, I've got enough going on in my life.
01:24:02
Speaker
that it's more, actually this is probably helpful for me too. It's like I have a very, like my life is full and really the struggle is more often how do I fit in looking at the dating app with all of the engaging things that I have going on. So I'm not sitting around with hours every day available. So they're not sucking, they're not, I have no attention to command. I've got it assigned everywhere. So I have to bring some of it in to do the dating app. So it doesn't really get to the point where I'm burned out.
01:24:30
Speaker
if you will, because I just, yeah, it's more of like, yeah. So there's that. I think, okay, so this might be something that your listeners can reference because it's from a fairly famous movie called The Big Short. You've seen that one, right?
01:24:52
Speaker
I actually haven't seen it, but I'm familiar. All about the 2008 financial crisis. One of the crazy characters in there, one of his lines was like, I met my wife on a dating app. I forget the phrase exactly. It's like, I'm a medical student with $145,000 in debt, weak social skills and a glass eye. His future wife wrote back and said, you're just what I'm looking for.
01:25:21
Speaker
and she meant honest, right? So first thing I would say is that's not the approach I would take exactly, but like the spirit of it should communicate something, you know? That he let it rip and there was somebody out there who was called to that, you know? And this is part of what
01:25:44
Speaker
Okay, so I go back to where you were talking about what you wanted. And I think to myself, yeah, that's what I want too. And people that I want to be with, I think they want that too. And so then it's almost like I begin to ask this obvious question of like, well, then what's going to be attractive about
01:26:07
Speaker
my presentation. It's going to be, one of the most attractive things is going to be they feel that for me. They feel that authenticity, you know? Does that make sense? It does. It does. It does. I guess, so it's like, you know, it's like clever or whatever, all that stuff. It kind of, it's like not the prize, you know, the prize is can I communicate my authentic self? And so like in my hinge profile, one of the things I said was,
01:26:34
Speaker
I basically live in a tent in the woods. If that scares you, you probably shouldn't write me. I'm communicating information. I'm painting my world, but it also says something about me that I would say that. To me, there's a lot of show. I did tell my living situation, but the show is like, I've made these choices in my life that are a little different.
01:26:58
Speaker
Absolutely. You need to be able to hang with that if you want to hang with me. It's not like there's a zero vulnerability in me revealing that because some people are going to look at that and go, ugh. But the truth is those are not the people. This is my life situation and I did choose it. I really do have to filter out those folks. When you talk about filters, I think one of the most effective filters is
01:27:25
Speaker
But if I can communicate my authenticity well enough, everybody that's like, eh, not for me, that's an awesome filter, right? Absolutely. If I've really done a good job of communicating my essence, and they're like, eh, not for me, they've pre-filtered. They're never even going to contact me. We're not going to waste each other's time. They've filtered themselves out for you. I agree. I really agree with that. That's a big deal.
01:27:51
Speaker
And there's, I would say there's also like, if we go back into the strategy piece a little bit, there is, there is a, it's very difficult to talk about, but there's like, there's a balance between, you know, vulnerability is I think also something most people are attracted to when it's, when it's authentic, you know, when it's not like vulnerability, like poor me vulnerability, but like legitimately somebody's like opening themselves up to be, to be seen.
01:28:16
Speaker
And I really kind of feel like that is an art and a skill. To be able to reveal myself in a way that is authentic but also is objectively impactful for people is really kind of an art. And so one of the ways I've framed it is authenticity is not hooking your brain up to a microphone.
01:28:42
Speaker
Every thought that comes through your head is not your authentic self. That's just the noise of consciousness. To me authenticity is more like it's the things that you have chosen as like who you want to be as a person. It's much more like it's not thought driven, it's value driven I would say more so.
01:29:05
Speaker
Yeah, I hear you. I often say that I think the truth is a very difficult thing to tell. I'm very interested in telling people my truth, but it takes, and I mean, anyone listening to this knows that I just babble forever. But it is hard. I do find it hard sometimes when you're talking about really
01:29:25
Speaker
deep inner vulnerable things, like it takes practice and it takes mistakes and learning ways to think about these things and just like terminology and phrasing, like ways to put into words when you're communicating with someone else, like this is my inner self, this is my vulnerability. I mean, I think we're just kind of close to what you're saying, like it takes
01:29:50
Speaker
that that part does take work and practice, which, you know, thank you so much for taking the time to practice that with me. I wanted to so okay, you were talking about, or you mentioned like vulnerability, like being vulnerable in a way that is impactful to someone else. And that kind of Yeah, I hadn't framed it that way before. But I think I think there's, there's a big truth in that.
01:30:13
Speaker
There's an inner and an outer experience to it. I'm feeling vulnerable, but there's still an impact. If we're communicating and I share something vulnerable with you, I'm feeling vulnerable and you're feeling the impact of my vulnerability. There's actually more than one thing going on there.
01:30:36
Speaker
I'm not sure if I'd call it authentic vulnerability, but it sounds weird to say it this way, but effective vulnerability, true vulnerability. I'm not sure what the right qualifier is. I think it does, first of all, it feels a little scary for the person being vulnerable, but for the person being impacted, it feels impactful.
01:31:00
Speaker
get a little more strategic, I would say if you're not saying something in your writing that feels a little scary to say, to reveal, you're probably not being vulnerable enough, right? I love that.
01:31:13
Speaker
where people are like, TMI, and ask me if that's the right way to frame it. If you're saying something where you don't feel safe, like you're like, I just said something that doesn't, then you're probably taking things a little too far, right? Everybody's place is individual in that. I think it's more of a subjective experience, but I believe I can say with a pretty high degree of confidence, if you care about communicating
01:31:37
Speaker
authentically, you have to feel a little vulnerable in your, in what you've written, at least a little. I would agree. Right. And that's not, you're not talking about the weather. You're not talking about your job. None of that's bad or wrong, but that's not vulnerable. You know,
01:31:53
Speaker
Yeah, I say, you know, and this is one of the ways, and we should we should wrap it up here. But I, you know, one of the things to kind of get back to dating apps as sort of a subset of social media, I think that can be one of the pitfalls that a lot of people and just men and women alike, I think, and obviously, cishet, you know, but like, I think
01:32:14
Speaker
social media. On social media, we are often encouraged to post things and express things that as many people as possible will appreciate.
AI's Role in Future Dating Interactions
01:32:22
Speaker
The mechanism there is to get that little number in the red dot as high as possible to get as many likes. You want to say something that is appealing to as wide an audience as possible. But what you're saying, which I think is really wise, is in a dating app,
01:32:36
Speaker
if you're looking to connect with, you know, if you're looking for something, you know what you're looking for, you really want to appeal to just those folks who you're looking for, right? It's scaring away the folks that are not what you're looking for. I think that can feel very weird, but it's what you want to do. It's probably what you want to do. I mean, you said it, something to this effect in one of the other podcasts, or maybe one of your, you know, the consultants you did said it, or worked with said it, which was like,
01:33:03
Speaker
You're only, you're only looking for one person. There might be 10,000 people you could meet, but if you, if what you want as a partner, you're only looking for one person. If you scare away everybody else with that one person, you win. Yeah. That's success. Right. And so I would lean more because that's the truth of it because there's so many people out there and you're, and most, you know, if you, if you, if monogamy is your deal or partnership is your deal, you're really looking for one then lean towards.
01:33:32
Speaker
lean towards talking to that one person, right? Maybe that's a really great orientation. It's like, I'm not writing this profile for 10,000 people. I'm writing this profile for one person. I don't know who that one person is, but I'm writing for that one person. I think that might focus people's writing a little more if they thought of it that way.
01:33:52
Speaker
I would agree. Chad, brother, unless there's anything else that you're just like burning, you got to say, I feel like I could talk to you for hours here, man. Thank you so much for taking the time. We didn't even get to AI and dating or polyamory. We didn't get into that, which if you ever want to come back on, happy to have those chats. AI is going to wreck dating and many other things. Yeah, there's a whole can of words. Within the next two years, we won't be able to tell who's real and who's not. That's my two sentence on AI.
01:34:21
Speaker
and dating. I can't say you're wrong. Yeah, that's going to be fascinating. Not good news. Yeah, but listen, the good news here, I appreciate you reaching out. We know each other through a mutual friend and bringing vulnerability and honesty to this man. I really appreciate it. I really, really do. So thank you for reaching out. Yeah. And yeah, if you ever want to come back on and talk some more
01:34:46
Speaker
Just let me know. It seems like we have threads of hanging, so we probably could, and I'd be open to that. It was really fun, very energizing for me, so I'm glad you could do it. Anybody still listening, thank you so much for sticking with us. LifeToLive.one, go check out chat there. There's all kinds of social media stuff.
01:35:09
Speaker
And yeah, maybe next time we can even dig in more on homesteading and how that balance between vitality and comfort and convenience. I would love to hear more about it. Yeah, a lot of nice to stay there. Thanks, man. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Yes, of course. Yeah. Thanks, everybody, for listening. And yeah, we'll talk again soon.
01:35:34
Speaker
My little chat with Chad. Little, I say little. It's an hour and a half. If you made it this far, thank you so much for hanging in there. I hope you enjoyed it. Big, big thanks to Chad Phillips for hopping on, for chatting with me. I do hope that we get the chance to talk some more. I got a lot out of it. And yeah, I think having folks on here more than once, for me anyway, is a lot of fun. I don't know for you folks out there if you like it, but I certainly do. So hopefully it'll happen.
01:36:04
Speaker
So yeah, Chad, thank you, man. Thank you for joining. Thank you for your honesty and your vulnerability and for hopping on and talking shop about important stuff. I really appreciate it, man. And of course, thank you to a person who will remain anonymous, but our mutual friend who connected us. Thank you so much. I appreciate you listening and for having the thoughts to connect us. That was really
01:36:32
Speaker
And it's been really awesome. Okay, for everybody, thank you so much for listening. This is a passion project thing. And if you're still, you've still got this in your ears, I really do appreciate it. You can reach out at, at wish you all the best pod on Instagram. And that's it. If you've got any ideas or thoughts, or if you want to come on the show and talk to me about modern dating, I am all ears. Thank you so much for, for, for
01:36:58
Speaker
for listening. And yeah, we'll come back again with something hopefully soon. Thanks so much. Bye.