World’s No.1 Matchmaker: How To FIND And KEEP Real Love!: Paul Brunson

Paul Brunson is the host of Married At First Sight, and a world-renowned expert on relationships and human connection. Paul spent many years wondering how to get people to love and accept each other, before realising he had to get them to love and accept themselves. In the conversation Paul really unlocks that it’s connection to each other’s values that makes a last relationship. To be at peace with other peoples values, you have to have your own figured out first. One of the most illuminating, original and surprising experts on relationships who’s ever shared his wisdom with us, Paul is just one of a number of world-leading black thought leaders and celebrities were sharing with you this Black History Month. Follow Paul: Instagram - https://bit.ly/3D2kyBA Twitter - https://bit.ly/3SbRfkl Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I think most of us do the first date completely wrong. We set ourselves up to fail. And the reason why is because...

• 0:07Steven Bartlett?

  It's so true. I can't believe how true this is.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Paul Brunson.

• 0:13Steven Bartlett?

  The world's most influential matchmaker. He's got a hit show on Oprah's network. Right at first dot UK.

• 0:19Speaker 00

  This you may never have heard before. My expertise is relationship science. And the beauty of science is that if you can change the formula, you change the result. So if you are someone who is in a relationship and you're unsure how to communicate, there's certain things that you could change.

• 0:38Steven Bartlett?

  Tell me what it is.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  It seems so simple, but it literally changed my marriage. So we're terrible when it comes to making any type of rational decision around our love life. And if you can't have emotional intimacy, you just simply can't have a relationship. You have acquaintances. You have situationships, but you don't have relationships.

• 1:03Steven Bartlett?

  Let's talk about sex. Can you be physically attracted to somebody, but then not have sexual attraction?

• 1:10Speaker 00

  There are different languages, sexual languages. You have to understand how your partner, the language that they speak sex in. Men, we need to know this. Seventy to eighty percent of women need...

• 1:25Steven Bartlett?

  Without further ado, I'm Stephen Butler, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 1:44Steven Bartlett?

  Give me your context. What do I need to know about you from your earliest years, from those first sort of fifteen, sixteen years of your life? That would give me the context I need to understand the person you are today.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  So I was born in Jamaica, Queens.

• 1:59Steven Bartlett?

  Oh wow.

• 1:59Speaker 00

  You know, and our claim to fame is Curtis Jackson 50 Cent, right? Being shot nine times in our neighborhood, that's our claim to fame. But everyone was like, okay, I get it. That's where it was. So grew up there. It was a heavy Caribbean Jamaican first and second generation neighborhood. But my father was, he was the first in his family to go to college. He focused in computer science.

• 2:29Steven Bartlett?

  Oh wow.

• 2:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so he, you know, hustled and my mother hustled and was, we were able to buy a home in Long Island. And that was the, like, you've made it. You've moved out the city and you've moved to Long Island. We were the first black family to live in this neighborhood. The first, and I'm talking about a hundred homes. We were the first black family. Because of that, when I moved to that neighborhood, I was the underdog. I was the outsider and I was treated as such. I remember being on the bus and just like smashed up against the glass, punched, kicked.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  You know, it's one of these where, I mean, for no reason, like for no reason other than the color of my skin.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  So that was, that was growing up.

• 3:19Steven Bartlett?

  And how has that manifested in your adult life?

• 3:22Speaker 00

  I'm a fighter. You know, I think that's really what, you know, it's interesting. I even, I notice when I walk into a room, I seek out the underdog and I try to champion them. So if I walk into a room, I'll look for the person who's hugging the wall, the person who's in the corner by themselves. And I will intentionally walk over to them, you know, try to befriend them. So this is, this has been this through line of my life is trying to champion people who I feel were the ones who were, you know, like me. You know, smashed up against the bus window.

• 3:56Steven Bartlett?

  And you eventually went off to university, college?

• 3:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:00Steven Bartlett?

  What career did you go into immediately after college?

• 4:03Speaker 00

  Investment banking.

• 4:04Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, interesting.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  Ended up hating it for the passion.

• 4:09Steven Bartlett?

  Explain.

• 4:10Speaker 00

  Oh my God. I mean, talk about.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  Eat you up spit you out culture, you know, like here's the best here. Here here's how here's how I reminisce about investment banking. My boss at the time was thirty three years old, right? Multi millionaire. He was considered one of the top. So the division I was in was was banks. We covered banks. So he was one of the top investment bankers, you know, covering banks, but top investment banker. Right? His wife was pregnant at the time that we were working on a huge deal. It was the at that time was the largest secondary offering in the history, right? Of history.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  But so it's a major deal. His wife is pregnant, first child. She's starting to give birth. He decides to come into work and he sends her to the hospital and he comes into work. And I'll never forget it. He's he's he's walking down the aisle. I'm like in a cubicle. He's got the office in front of me. He's walking down the aisle and people are standing up like this. Like, yeah, this is that's right. You come here. This is the most important thing. Yeah, she let her go off and do that. Right? That was the moment where I said, this place is this is like, this is crazy. You know, it's crazy. It's ridiculous.

• 5:43Speaker 00

  And so that was when I started thinking, OK, I need to I need to get out of here.

• 5:47Steven Bartlett?

  And then you went and worked for Enver?

• 5:49Speaker 00

  No, I didn't. I didn't go to Enver yet.

• 5:51Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, OK.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  I went off to I did what everybody does. I went to business school.

• 5:55Steven Bartlett?

  Ah, OK.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  And so went to business school while I was so while I was at business school, I met Enver Ujja. I didn't start working for him, but I met him.

• 6:06Steven Bartlett?

  Who is he?

• 6:07Speaker 00

  So he at that time, multi millionaire, but he owned a massive company in Turkey. He was trying to extend his business in the United States. And when I met him, it was a professional relationship. And it was more so, hey, Paul, whenever I come to the United States, I'd love for you to help me to schedule meetings or help for you, uh, help me to get booked into people. Cause I lived in Washington DC at the time and Capitol Hill was there. Lots of senators and congresspeople. And so it was easy for me to pick up the phone, work the, the, the network to get a meeting with. It could be Senator Hillary Clinton.

• 6:49Speaker 00

  And so I was helping him at the time. Then I came up with a concept to start a nonprofit organization. And I needed to raise funding or I wanted to raise funding for it. And I decided that I would ask Enver to help me on this. So that's when I started working for Enver Ujalo.

• 7:11Steven Bartlett?

  How old are you at that age?

• 7:12Speaker 00

  I don't know, that's, uh, I'm 30. I'm in the, in the 30 zone.

• 7:19Steven Bartlett?

  In your early, in your early 30s, you start your, your matchmaking company. What was it about matchmaking that just connected with you inside and made you? Because in order to be, to get obsessed with anything, to go and study it, to, to then pursue it for all these years. It has to be connecting with you because of your experiences, your biases, your, in a, in a very particular way. Because I'm somewhat interested in it, but I wouldn't dedicate my, I wouldn't dedicate that kind of attention to it. So what was it about you that resonated so much about bringing people together in such a way?

• 7:53Speaker 00

  Fair. You, you know, thinking about this for the first time is I'm actually connecting it to what you asked me with regard to how I grew up, right? Cause to me, nearly every person who comes to a matchmaker, cause keep in mind, you're probably spending 10 to $20,000, you know, for, for matchmaking services. You're probably allocating six to 12 months of your life to walk through that process. It, it is, it's a lot, right? And to me, every, the kernel of every client is there, there's, there's a, there's, there's a feeling of hopelessness.

• 8:33Speaker 00

  There's a feeling of this is my last shot. You know, there's a feeling of I am alone, you know, in this. And that's where I resonated. You know, I always talk about, you know, in business, you know, we talk about this fifth why, right? The why that makes you cry, the why that when you're thinking about a customer, what are they thinking about at night? What's keeping them up right at night? And if you, as an entrepreneur or a business owner, if you can help to solve that problem that's keeping them up at night, the why that's making them cry, well, that's the secret sauce. But the key is that you have to be passionate about that, right?

• 9:17Speaker 00

  Because it's going to take you a lot of, you know, innovations and a lot of time, a lot of energy to figure out what the formula is. But for me, that was what it was. It was, there was like this level of like, I'm giving up hope. You know, I'm just, I'm just done. And also, it was for a particular avatar, which I think is also important, for a particular customer. So, you know, what I've always learned in business is that you can't serve everyone, right? So it's important to find a particular customer, a specific demographic, a customer avatar, right? And look for the deepest pain point within that particular avatar.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  Now, when I got into the matchmaking space, I was the first, or what the Matchmaking Institute says, I was the first full-time black matchmaker in the United States. Okay? In matchmaking, what a lot of people don't like to talk about what was happening is there was significant segregation happening in the matchmaking space. And what was happening is that in particular, black women were not being serviced by matchmakers for a variety of reasons, but they were not being serviced at all.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  So my first customer, my first avatar were black women, in particular in the, we call it the DMV, DC, Maryland, Virginia area. And so there was a very particular pain point within the avatar, right? And so it was hopelessness, but it wasn't just hopelessness. Now that I've described, you know, the avatar, right? This is someone who most likely, she's highly educated, she's making great money. She has a child, you know? She is incredible match for someone. So she became my first, she became my first client. And I was passionate, you know why?

• 11:24Speaker 00

  Because she was my sister-in-law, she was my auntie, you know, she was my cousin. I know her, I live with her, I've grown up with her. That was why I was so, you know, so passionate about her.

• 11:35Steven Bartlett?

  What is, what is the relationship your, your parents had? And how has that influenced your work?

• 11:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, great, great one. They have had an incredibly loving relationship, you know? And, and, and not just my parents, but my grandparents.

• 11:54Steven Bartlett?

  It's no surprise, is it? Because then you've had this, you know, staggering, long relationship with Jill. It's funny how that, you know, those generational cycles play out over and over again, right?

• 12:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, and that's it. That's it. It's like, let's break the cycle, you know? We, we can break the cycle. That, that was, that was part of it playing out. You know, with my wife Jill, her parents, incredibly strong, right? Her grandparents on both sides, incredibly strong, incredibly loving.

• 12:25Steven Bartlett?

  It's an interesting question for anybody listening to this now, which is like, how much does your relationship currently, if you're in one, mirror that of your parents? And I think about, you know, even the, in my team here, the people that have the best relationships in my team. Their parents have the best relationships and their partners' parents have the best relationships. Like just that solid best friend type vibes, multi-decade best friend vibes in their parents.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 12:54Steven Bartlett?

  That's interesting.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so I agree. I think if we did that, we did a longitudinal study around that. We would find that to be precise. But part of what I think is driving it is, I mean, you could go back and look at attachment styles. But I think largely what's driving that is seeing what love looks like modeled before you, right? And know that it's not always what we consider to be lovey dovey. It can be contentious. A matter of fact, disagreements and arguments are important, are critical, right?

• 13:34Speaker 00

  Because you need to almost break down the relationship in order to gain the skills to bring it back up, right? And that's what makes it stronger. And so I think the modeling is key.

• 13:48Steven Bartlett?

  It's so true, so true. And it took me until I was 25 years old to figure this out, that modeling point. That the first model you've been given of love is your parents. So you believe that to be the truth about any person you then meet in your lives. And so I can remember like, almost in high definition in my mind, this image of looking over at my dad sat on the sofa and my mom just screaming at him and thinking, I'd fucking hate to be this guy. And then I go into life and I just avoid.

• 14:19Speaker 00

  Avoid, yes.

• 14:19Steven Bartlett?

  Avoid every, I'm obsessed about having control.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 14:24Steven Bartlett?

  I've heard you talk about this before.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah, I'm gonna say, yes. I mean, this is, that is prototype avoidant.

• 14:30Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, that's me.

• 14:31Speaker 00

  Attachment style.

• 14:32Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  Right? And what was so interesting to me about attachment style, which by the way, it's Levine. Dr. Levine wrote a phenomenal book called Attached, right, on this, that I recommend for everyone is, you know, there are primarily three categories of attachment. You have secure. You have anxious and then you have avoidant, right? And when you think about this, it's precisely what you just said, Stephen, is that when you think of how you first saw love and you saw it modeled and you saw it relate to you, right? Was it one of which was secure in that you felt like you would be, you know, if you were hurt, you could go to a place for safety, right?

• 15:17Speaker 00

  You would be caressed, right? You'd be, you'd be cared for, you know? That's secure. But then you move to the avoidant, right? Where it was you almost having to self-soothe yourself, right? Which then pushes you away from wanting to have, have anything to do with that. And you become, you know what's interesting? The top, and this is just me guessing and observing. The top entrepreneurs are avoidants. Because they've had to develop the skills to self-sustain themselves, right? They've had to rely on themselves.

• 16:01Speaker 00

  People who are avoidant don't trust easily, but you trust yourself, right? So you look at that and you say, oh my God, like this came from me as a child. Like it's incredible. And then with the anxious, the anxious is really interesting because the anxious was typically a lot of parents, like my situation where your parents worked all the time. So when they were home, they would be there to give you the love, but they couldn't be home all the time because they had to be, they had to work. So then you had to self-soothe a little bit. So then you became anxious about their love. Needy? Needy. And this is the person who's like texting you all the time. Like I know in the past, you must have had the girlfriend was like, Stephen, where are you? Stephen, where are you?

• 16:46Speaker 00

  No comment. Stephen, where are you? Where are you? Where are you? Right? All of that shows up as adults. Right? And also, this is, but, but I guess, long story short is, to the point of when we've recognized that, this is why being in a relationship with someone who is secure is so important, because you can shift your style as an adult. You can be avoidant, be in a relationship with someone who's secure, and adapt to a secure attachment.

• 17:17Steven Bartlett?

  Do you notice that? Do you notice that people who are avoidant tend to go for people that are more secure?

• 17:23Speaker 00

  No, they go for the anxious.

• 17:26Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 17:28Steven Bartlett?

  So they go for needy people?

• 17:30Speaker 00

  Right, because, because, yeah, because, I mean, becomes a bit of a, you know, they're, they're chasing them and they're, they're, because, you know, you think about this. If you're avoidant, you're pretty much self-sustained, right? But if someone is anxious, they're aggressively courting you, right? So they're pushing to be in your space, right? So the secure, unfortunately, becomes boring for so many people. Safe, vanilla.

• 18:02Steven Bartlett?

  It's so true. I can't believe how true this is.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  You know, but, but, but secure is where it's at, you know, is where it's at.

• 18:10Steven Bartlett?

  You want two secure people?

• 18:12Speaker 00

  You want a secure in anyone else. A strong secure can help bring, could, could help bring anyone over too. But also, you know, an avoidant and anxious can also, you know, work. It's ultimately, to me, it's, it's about that effort.

• 18:29Steven Bartlett?

  Is there such a way, so if I'm an avoidant, for example, or I'm an anxious, is there work I can do myself to become a secure without having to meet a secure and have them bring me over?

• 18:39Speaker 00

  Yes, absolutely. One of the top things someone who is avoidant can work on is their emotional intimacy.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  And that begins with simply recognizing their emotions, your emotions, and articulating them. It's it seem it actually seems easy, but it's incredibly challenging.

• 19:02Steven Bartlett?

  So uncomfortable.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  So uncomfortable.

• 19:04Steven Bartlett?

  Especially for a man.

• 19:04Speaker 00

  Yes. So for example, I could say, Stephen, how do you truly, how do you feel right now in this moment?

• 19:13Steven Bartlett?

  Now, in this moment, very inspired and very keen to learn.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 19:18Steven Bartlett?

  More, but very, yeah.

• 19:20Speaker 00

  Okay. Well, I mean, you did that effortlessly, right? But but but now the next challenge would be, okay, well, do that with your, you know, with your romantic partner, right? And do it in spaces where you feel vulnerable. It becomes very, very challenging to say how you feel, how someone makes you feel.

• 19:39Steven Bartlett?

  It makes perfect sense because there was a void in my childhood of parenting, which I've always said has made me an entrepreneur. But in that void as well, there's a void of like learning affection. So I, you know, I still call my parents by their first names. I've never called them mom and dad. I we we weren't like, there was no like, I love you or like hugging or stuff, stuff like that, especially in my childhood. So learning later in life to them to be emotional and to express how I'm feeling and to if your girlfriend says, what's wrong or, you know, how do you feel about this? I would, you know, I'd often just lie about how I was feeling just for keep things nice and calm.

• 20:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 20:19Steven Bartlett?

  But I definitely, you know, it's definitely something I've had to learn.

• 20:22Speaker 00

  Right. But I can see that that so, I mean, you're a life learner, like you're a student of life. So I can see that you have not even begun, you've you've done the work, right? But for so many avoidance.

• 20:37Steven Bartlett?

  I'd say begun.

• 20:37Speaker 00

  Begun. Okay. So but for so many avoidance, that work has not yet begun. And being able to identify. The emotion, right? And the feeling too, because you know, and even distinguish between the emotion and the feeling, right? But to be able to distinguish that and then to be able to articulate that is so incredibly important because without that, you cannot have the emotional intimacy. And if you can't have emotional intimacy, you just simply can't have a relationship. You just can't. You have acquaintances, you know? You have coworkers, you know? You have situation ships, you know? But you don't have relationships.

• 21:22Steven Bartlett?

  That is a amazing soundbite.

• 21:26Steven Bartlett?

  Please cut that into a reel for TikTok team listening. So there's gender differences here as well because of my friends, both women and men, I know for a fact that my male friends usually just push for like an easy life.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:42Steven Bartlett?

  They just want, you know, if their partner's expressing emotional feelings or is expressing their emotions towards them, most of my male friends will see that as an attack, you know? And like, they just don't want to go there. It's this energy that men just don't like. So I was watching this funny Twitter video before I came down here. And it's this woman, she's cooked dinner for her husband and she's proving that men just won't tell you the truth. She puts loads of salt in it to make it taste awful. And she walks into the front room while he's watching the game. And she goes, try this hun, tell me what you think. And you see his face just whine and it's fucking disgusting. And he goes, yeah, good.

• 22:24Steven Bartlett?

  And for me, it summed up, man, it's like, we just want to avoid the heat.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  Literally, literally. You know, so I have a theory on this, right? So I'm testing this one out, right? But I call it the feedback loop theory. So my wife was in HR before she joined me in the matchmaking space. And one of the things that they would do in their company, she worked in this law firm, is that they would, you know, extensive feedback during the review period, extensive feedback. So, you know, how was your year? How did you perform? All of these, these KPIs, right? And that feedback would translate into higher performance. I mean, just. Bottom line. And what I've noticed with women typically typically with women is

• 23:14Speaker 00

  that whenever there's a romantic experience, that romantic experience is then shared with like 10 of their friends. You know, it's like, go out on a date, the WhatsApp group knows everything that's happening in on the date. And then there's a debrief of the date. There's an analysis of the date. Here's what he did. Here's what I wore, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This happens for three days, constant feedback. And that feedback ends up making women, I think, on average, better daters, right? Better equipped to deal and manage in relationships. Now, Stephen, when you were single, tell me this, if you were going on a date, right? Who did you talk to about the date?

• 24:01Steven Bartlett?

  Nobody.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  See, yeah. It's all it's all in your head. It's like, okay.

• 24:08Steven Bartlett?

  I might tell one of my friends, I might say, oh, I saw this person the other night, you know, when I was single, I would have gone, you know, I saw Ruby like three days ago and she was that was it was fun. Yeah.

• 24:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was like, all right, cool.

• 24:18Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  And that's it. There's there's no feedback. And think about this, think about not that just happening on one date, but that happening month after month, year after year, 10, 15 years of no feedback. We're all in our head. We have no idea like how to perform, how to up our performance. And that impacts what happens when we eventually get into the relationship. So I think the feedback loop, there's really something to it. And I've noticed it's primarily a gender difference.

• 24:50Steven Bartlett?

  So are you saying also that because women are have a community where they're discussing stuff, they're discussing feelings and what happened and da, da, da, da, da, da. They try and bring that same energy to a man who's just not used to it. And he goes, fucking hell, like, I don't know, like, I, you know what I mean? And he's just like, trying to avoid going there because he's never really had to go there before.

• 25:11Speaker 00

  Never had to, never had to. When you dig into the data, and this is what I love about love, like, in particular, I always say that my expertise is relationship science, right? I like to look at the science of love and look at how that impacts how we show up and why we show up. And the beauty of science is that if you can change. The formula, not necessarily formula, you change the equation, right? You change the result. And that's the beautiful thing. So if you are someone who is in a relationship and you're unsure how to communicate, there's certain things that you could change to make the communication stronger, make the relationship better.

• 25:53Steven Bartlett?

  Tell me what those are.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, there's so many.

• 25:56Steven Bartlett?

  What are the foundational things that have worked for you and your clients in terms of like communication, conflict resolution?

• 26:02Speaker 00

  OK, great, great question. Uh, OK, so a couple of things. And even with, not only with my clients, but with my wife, you know? So this seems so basic. I think it's talked about, but not even talked about enough, is Gary Chapman's Five Love Languages. It seems so simple, but it literally changed my marriage. So by, you know, there's something called the five-year itch and the seven-year itch, typically in marriages, not committed relationships, but marriages, where you literally see separation rates and divorce rates increase at that five and seven-year mark, right? You also see it happen when they become, when marriages become,

• 26:47Speaker 00

  you become empty nesters, your, you know, kids go off to school. But right around that five and seven-year mark, I was sleeping on the couch at my house. Like, it was not good, you know, in our household. And this was so small, but so significant is I bought Dr. Gary Chapman's Five Love Languages, right? Which outlines, right, five ways that we recognize and see love. But here was the power of it. The power of it was that my wife, I thought she was spoiled, because all she wanted was gifts. Like, she was like, buy me this, buy me that, it's my birthday, buy me this. It's Christmas, buy me this, it's Monday, buy me this, right?

• 27:31Speaker 00

  It was buy me, buy me, buy me, right? And I thought to myself, Jesus, she's spoiled. Like, this is crazy. So what do I do? Stephen, I bet you would do the same thing. You know what I did? Well. I said, I'm not gonna buy you anything. You know, cuz you're spoiled. I'm gonna change this behavior, you know? I'm not gonna buy you a thing. So what happens when it's her birthday? It's Christmas. It's the anniversary. It's Monday and I'm not buying her anything? Oh, man, like hell. It becomes hell. But it was Dr. Gary Chapman's book that helped me understand that the way that my wife grew up, the way that she saw love through her parents were through gifts. Her father spoiled her to death, right?

• 28:16Speaker 00

  And her father loved her and showed his love, showered his love through gift, through gift giving. So she, as a little girl, is growing up thinking, okay, you know, I get the doll. I get this. I get this, right? This is love. This is love. This is love. Her love language is legitimately gifts.

• 28:35Speaker 00

  I had to understand that fundamentally, to understand that this is how she will see that I love her. It's not just simply through maybe what's, you know, you know, acts of service, which is, which is my love language. And mine. Right? Do something on my behalf. Yeah. Right? So I would do something on her behalf, right? But no, it was, it's gifts. And then for her to know, okay, for me, it's acts of service. So if she, you know, she was big on gifts, giving me gifts. And I was like, I don't, I don't resonate with this. You know, I don't, I don't get this. And so the understanding, truly understanding your partner's love language

• 29:20Speaker 00

  and then giving them love in that language is a game changer. And a quick way to determine someone's love language is just observe how they show love to the people they love. Right? What do they do? Right? That's, that's a quick way. So, so, so love language is game changer.

• 29:42Speaker 00

  Game changer, right? So that's one. Secondly, is to, I think, to understand that you need to argue, right? But great relationships are bids. You're putting in bids. It's a constant tennis match. That's a great relationship, constant tennis match. So what that means is that you are showing through your action, through your love language, through your words, et cetera. But you're showing that you love your partner and you're doing that consistently over and over and over and over and over again. And what your partner is going to be doing is they're going to hit that ball back to you. And you're going to hit that ball back to them. But you have to remember this one thing.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  Sometimes you have to hit the ball five times over, right? The net before they return the ball to you. And ultimately, what that means is that you have to consistently remind your partner. So you could be, I'm 21 years into my marriage. People think, all right, you're 21, you're good. You don't have to do anything now, right? It's smooth sailing. No, when I get home today, I am still showing up, recognizing that I have to continually put those bids in. You know, I always say it's like Janet Jackson, what have you done for me lately? That's truly what a relationship is, is that it's constantly, it's this constant, constant, right? And then part of that, that constant too, and maybe this is just a third concept,

• 31:08Speaker 00

  super simple, but intentional time, intentional time. So what, what I find really interesting is you look at how much time we spend with our partners or our spouse. It's one to two hours a day. On, on average, the average married couple spends one to two hours per day. So you think about that, you're probably spending more time with the bus driver than you are with, with your spouse. And then in the one to two hours, what are you actually doing? It's like ships passing in the night. You know, no real conversation. One's watching TV in this side. One's on the computer over here. No real communication.

• 31:51Speaker 00

  And what ends up happening is you're not able to exchange ideas. You're not able to talk about, you know, dreams. You're not able to talk about hopes. You're not able to talk about your feelings. You know, you're not able to connect intentional time spent. I always say that, you know, effort always equals interest. But whatever is important to you in life, you have to be intentional about spending time on it. You know? And that includes the relationship. That includes it. And so intentional time. So that may mean, okay, every Friday, we're having dinner together. Or every night, we're having dinner. In my household, it's every night we have dinner together as a family.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  I help, I try to rearrange my schedule so that I'm at home with my family having dinner. And if I get home too late to have dinner with my boys, my wife and I are having dinner at 11:00 PM, 12:00, midnight. But we are communing together, right? This is very important. Uh, you know, we talk about, you know, weekly dates. But the whole bottom line is spending time. This Saturday, my wife and I, we have a date, right? Yeah, 21 years into our marriage, still planning dates, still excited about the dates. It's intentional time spent, intentional time spent. So, I mean, there's, there's so many concepts, but I would say that if you just do those,

• 33:20Speaker 00

  if you just think about that, those basics. Love language, right? Understanding that relationships are always a bid. It's always a bid back and forth, always. And sometimes you have to bid five, six times before you get the ball back, right? But it's always bid. And then it's intentional time spent. You, you know, you typically, you typically, you typically grow together opposed to growing apart.

• 33:46Steven Bartlett?

  You're on the couch five years in, right?

• 33:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 33:50Steven Bartlett?

  The the only way off that couch with all of those things said is like communication. You have to, at some point, you're gonna have to have a tough conversation about something.

• 33:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 34:00Steven Bartlett?

  In business and life and in everything, what I've noticed is most of the issues I have in my life

• 34:07Steven Bartlett?

  have become big issues because I didn't have an honest conversation about something sooner. When I knew it was a problem, so I deferred, I knocked it back, whatever. The art of having a good, healthy conversation with someone, with a partner, with someone you love, when there's a lot of emotion and tension, is something that I don't think we've talked about enough in in society. Specifically, men really struggle, I think, with that. How does how does one have a a good conflict resolution orientated conversation without, you know, fucking screaming or running out or whatever, or blame, you know?

• 34:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, no, I hear you and and I agree. And I I hear this this term passed around a lot, and I agree with it is is that the more challenging conversations you have in life, the higher quality your life is. Because most of us try to run away, as you're saying, right? So I think there are a couple of things that we could do. One is sometimes you won't be equipped to have that conversation, or your partner won't be equipped to have that conversation. That's the importance of having a third party, right? This is the reason why, you know, therapy is so incredibly important. And I and I really try to preach this because I feel like the UK is a little bit behind the US. You know, when it comes to that is therapy is sexy.

• 35:27Speaker 00

  You know, having a counselor is sexy, you know what I mean? So having a third party, a professional, one, that's very important. Secondly, is is is context. Picking the right moments to have these challenging conversations, picking the right environments to have these conversations are incredibly important, right? You could you could, we could decide that we can have this argument in the kitchen when we know that the boys have to be in bed in five minutes. And I know it's been a long day for you, and I haven't slept last night. We could have this conversation right now if you want to. It's probably not going to go in the direction we wanted to. Or we could wait.

• 36:10Speaker 00

  And hold on until Saturday when we're both taking that walk back from dropping the boys off at their at their at their class and we have 10 minutes to sit in the park and talk about this. So to have the right context is incredibly, incredibly important. Third, I think if I'm given top three is to actually set rules and boundaries. And this does not happen enough in relationships. And I always say that if you don't set boundaries, you will take even well-intentioned partners and turn them into bullies if you don't set your boundaries. So you have to set your boundaries from the beginning of the relationship,

• 36:51Speaker 00

  but in particular, when you're having these tough conversations and boundaries could be as simple as we're going to focus on one topic. When you're having a discussion, the discussion should be about the topic at hand, right? But setting what those boundaries are ahead of time, because typically what ends up happening is fights become unfair, right? It's healthy to fight, but it's unhealthy to fight in an unfair manner. So I think those are those are three, three techniques that I know that, you know, Jill and myself that we use when we are having our discussions.

• 37:31Steven Bartlett?

  At some point, you started a YouTube channel and Oprah got in touch.

• 37:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 37:37Steven Bartlett?

  That's crazy.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  It's crazy. It's, it's crazy. But it is, you know, so when I decided to launch my matchmaking business after I'd spent a year prepping, I didn't know how to launch it. And it was my wife and my best friend at the time who said, you know, you should focus on the marketing aspect of this. You should start a YouTube channel. Now, this is 2009.

• 38:11Speaker 00

  So like

• 38:13Steven Bartlett?

  Early.

• 38:13Speaker 00

  Early. Were you born in 2009?

• 38:16Steven Bartlett?

  Just about.

• 38:18Speaker 00

  So, you know, so 2009, so YouTube isn't a big, it's a thing. It's not as big a thing as it is right now. It's not known as the go to place to market your new company. But I decided to create a YouTube series called The Modern Day Matchmaker. And what I decided is I would pump all of my money into this thing. And I, I mean, when I look around the studio, this is an impressive studio. I had like one out of 10 of these cameras. I had like one camera, you know? But it was me spending a thousand to $4,000 per production minute. Right? So we had a team. Yeah, I know, it's crazy. It's ridiculous.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  But the reason why is because I thought I had a unique point of view. And if I can just push that out into the marketplace, I could distinguish myself from the competitors. And I would put out this video every week, man, and nobody would watch it. Nobody. And, and I say this, and this is not even a joke, is every week it would get like 11 or 12 views, this video. And my mother was watching nine of those, you know? And so it was, no one was watching this thing. But I thought this was a way for me to, you know, for, for, for me to at least create my brand within the space.

• 39:42Speaker 00

  Now, it turns out that one of those 11 views was Oprah.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  But people say like, okay, how, how did Oprah find you? You know? The reason why Oprah was able to find me is because a year prior, I was doing pro bono matchmaking services.

• 40:04Steven Bartlett?

  Free work.

• 40:05Speaker 00

  Free work. One of my clients, and I had no idea, but one of my clients was a writer for O Magazine. Year later, she's on Oprah's jet. Oprah says, I have a concept for a new TV show. I'm looking for a fresh voice. My client in the jet says, have you heard of Paul Brunson? Oprah says, no, but let me see.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  YouTube search, Paul Brunson, save, let me start watching. So Oprah was watching this YouTube series. And, and you know, when I always look at it, I say, gosh, to me, it is a powerful story because she ends up offering me a job to co-host a television show with her on her brand new network off of this YouTube series that no one was watching but Oprah, my mother, and like two other people. And I say, it's a powerful story about quality over quantity. You know, I think we live in a day and age where, you know, vanity metrics in particular are, are, are everything. You know, it's like, I need to have this number of followers, this number of views.

• 41:19Speaker 00

  And I get it, to a certain extent, it is important when you're monetizing. But ultimately, the who that's watching is more important. And it was, it was through that, that, you know, that, that YouTube series that I, I got the job and, and working with Oprah changed my life.

• 41:36Steven Bartlett?

  There's this thing called like lagging metrics in KPIs in business and analytics where there, there are metrics that show up later, once you've done the input, once you've done the work. And I was thinking about that as you were speaking because you were doing, you were doing, focusing on quality now. The lagging metric was that you were going to become on Oprah Winfrey's show and she was going to watch. But you were just planting the seeds of quality. And, and like, I'm sure that if you'd carried on doing that channel for 15 years, it would have probably had 15 million subscribers. But, but it's, it's, I always think about it like seeds, even with, even with what we've done here.

• 42:18Steven Bartlett?

  If I showed you the graph of the growth of the Diary of a CEO, it's literally, this is no exaggeration, I posted on my Twitter the other day, it's two years. Flat.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  Right.

• 42:29Steven Bartlett?

  Now, what happens next is it goes like a, like a vertical lineup.

• 42:36Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 42:37Steven Bartlett?

  And you never know when or how or whatever, but those first two years when it was flat was when all of those seeds were being planted. And really where you're, you're learning your craft. And I think so many people, um, it's important for so many people because the big metrics always lag behind. And things go fast, then things go slow then fast.

• 42:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 42:58Steven Bartlett?

  And we sometimes can get super impatient about, why hasn't Oprah called me yet? Or why don't I have a big podcast with 10, 15 million downloads? Why don't I have that yet? But you're doing the work now to have that in that quiet period. And I loved what you said there about like the quality, like if you just focus on quality, which is something you know you can control, just making whatever you're doing now, like the best.

• 43:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 43:22Steven Bartlett?

  You have nothing to worry about. You don't need to worry. You just need patience.

• 43:25Speaker 00

  Yes. Yes.

• 43:26Steven Bartlett?

  And, and I love that when I hear that, that story, cause 11 views and one of them fucking Oprah is just.

• 43:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's a mind blow. It's a, it's a mind blow. And, and I think too, to, to even add to what you're saying is I think that that's the key of having the passion. Because that's, I mean, that's the reason why you like.

• 43:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, you keep on keeping on.

• 43:46Speaker 00

  You keep on keeping on. Cause, cause, cause otherwise the first hurdle you hit, you give up, right?

• 43:50Steven Bartlett?

  And you should, because 11 views, you're fucking stupid. Go get a job, Paul. Do you know what I mean?

• 43:56Speaker 00

  That's what my father would say. Yeah. Can you imagine? He was like, what are you doing? You just came from investment banking. Like, I mean, honestly, Stephen, the amount of people who thought I was crazy. Like, commit this guy. He left investment banking and he's doing YouTube videos out of his bedroom. And he's not paying for his mortgage, right? His wife, my wife liquidated her retirement fund. So, so we had burned through our money. She liquidates her retirement fund. And we start using that as capital for the business and the capital is being used for a YouTube series that 11 people are watching. Like people thought I was nuts.

• 44:41Steven Bartlett?

  That's it. I think Steve Jobs said it. He said, you know, there's going to become a day when you're doing what you're doing, where any sane person would give up and they should give up, but faced with the facts and numbers that you'll see before you. But those that keep going are those that are doing it for that really deep internal reason. And like, one of the things I know for sure is that no matter what business you start, unless you're very, very lucky, exceptionally lucky, you're going to have those days. And there's not going to be one of them. It's going to be, for most people, a week, months, sometimes multiple years, where everything is saying, you're an idiot, you should stop. And the only way you grace those hurdles is because, sometimes because you don't have a plan B, that's a very good way to just keep on keeping on. But

• 45:23Steven Bartlett?

  because it's a challenge that you must pursue, regardless of remuneration or outcome, it's for you. And so when I bet on entrepreneurs, especially when I'm investing in them, I'm looking for that. I'm like, I, because I don't, I don't know always a ton about the industries, but what I do know is a ton about the nature of business. And I know your hard days are coming. How will you respond for that three years where everything is going bad?

• 45:45Speaker 00

  Right.

• 45:45Steven Bartlett?

  Resilience, you know, purpose, all of those sort of key indicators. So Oprah, you end up working with Oprah on her show. I guess I've got two questions. First one is, what did you learn from Oprah, working so closely with her?

• 46:00Speaker 00

  Well, the first thing I learned was not to call her Oprah.

• 46:03Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, really?

• 46:05Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no. No, no, you could call, if you were working for her, she's Miss Winfrey. That was the first thing I learned. Someone corrected me very quickly. I was like, Oprah? No, they said, no, Miss Winfrey, you know. So that was the first thing. But she is everything you can imagine that she is, times a hundred. But also too, what was interesting to me about, about Miss Winfrey, about Oprah, is that when she would speak, You never knew if she was talking about the event in the immediate, or if she's giving you some, you know, life advice. Like, I remember the very first scene I shot with her was, we were in Georgia.

• 46:50Speaker 00

  So, we shot a show called Love Town USA. I actually did two shows with Oprah, but the first one was Love Town USA. And there is 10,000 people in this audience. They're all there to see Oprah. There's this massive light kit on stage. It's big. It's my first big event ever. I've never spoken in front of 10,000, like, I've never spoken in front of 10 people, you know? 10,000 people. And the director comes over and he was like, "All right, Paul, get up on stage, hit your mark and introduce Oprah." I was thinking, "Hit my mark? What is a mark? Like, what does that mean?" And I'm freaking out, I'm sweating. And Oprah comes over to me, real calm, cool, puts her hand on my, on my shoulders. She's like, "All right, baby, look, this is, it's real simple.

• 47:34Speaker 00

  You just walk on that stage, keep walking till you feel the light hit you the brightest. That's where you stay, right?" And I was thinking to myself, "Is she talking about the stage? Is she talking about life?" Like, "What?" Because that's deep, you know? But that's how she would speak. And she was, uh, she, she, just, just amazing. Just, just amazing, amazing, amazing person.

• 48:00Steven Bartlett?

  Why is she successful in your assessment? Why is she Oprah? What is it about her?

• 48:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, so I, I studied her. You know, I'm a people watcher, you know? And I worked for, so I worked for Oprah after I worked for Enver. And the similarity to me is that when I started working for Enver, he went from multimillionaire to billionaire. And that, to me, was, was really interesting because of how few billionaires, you know, there are in, in, in the world. So, I started to journal what I learned from Enver. Then I start working for Oprah and I noticed similarities. And what was wild to me is here are two people who are completely different. You know, one woman, one man, one from the US, one Turkey, one married, one not. One Christian, one Muslim.

• 48:50Speaker 00

  It's like completely different, but yet they had these same characteristics. And for Oprah in particular, you know, I noticed we used to go on these road shows for the show to sell the show to advertisers. And before the road show, she would also, she would always host a dinner. And these dinners, there would be, you know, 20, 30 people at the dinner. You'd have all types of athletes and politicians and, you know, she would have her, she would bring her, some of her girls from her school in South Africa would also be at the table. It would be this potpourri, this eclectic buffet of various people. And she would sit and she would conduct these, these amazing dinners.

• 49:34Speaker 00

  And I realized that at these dinners, that was her education, was the dinner. Like she was being educated on what was happening in the world, what's going to happen tomorrow. Right? Because she had a lot of the playmakers at the table. She was learning about different perspectives. She was teasing out her own ideas and debating them before she would take them on screen. She would do this in these intimate dinner settings. I noticed Enver would do the same thing. Massive dinners, 20, 30 people every night. He would have these massive dinners and he would do the same thing. They, they, they would, they would, you know, they, the concept is never eat alone. You know, Keith Farazzi has a book called Never Eat Alone, which I think is a phenomenal book.

• 50:18Speaker 00

  But it's about the power of socializing and the power that you get from, from essentially strengthening your, the weak ties in your network.

• 50:31Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting. I think I'm quite bad at socializing.

• 50:34Speaker 00

  You know.

• 50:36Steven Bartlett?

  So I was gonna say, I'm wondering if there's like a digital equivalent, or if like, I'm doing it right now.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  Yes. See, I think this is your extension. But so, okay, so let's even tease this out a little bit. So Mark Granovetter, who was a Stanford professor, came up with this theory of weak ties, right? So if you take Robin Dunbar, right? Who has the Dunbar Rule, we have roughly 150 friends, essentially, right? You could debate it out, but on average, right?

• 51:09Speaker 00

  If you think about your 150th friend, the weakest friends, right? The 140th friend, right?

• 51:16Steven Bartlett?

  Acquaintance.

• 51:17Speaker 00

  Acquaintance. Those are where our biggest opportunities in life come. That's where deals come for our business. That's where we get introduced to spouses, right? That's where, you know, tickets to the football game. It comes from the weakest ties, opposed to our nearest and dearest. Which you think about, you think, God, is that even logical? But it is. Our weakest ties drive the most opportunity in our life. But what do we do, most of us? We spend all of our time where? With the people closest to us.

• 52:00Speaker 00

  But what Oprah and Enver do, and what Mark Granovetter talks about with this theory, is that the key is to constantly be strengthening our weak ties, investing in those weak ties, adding new people in to our weak ties, kicking other people out. And that's what they're doing. Those people at that table, those were not her besties. Those were not her top five, right? Those were her 120th, 130th. And that's where enormous opportunity comes in.

• 52:33Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting. So your matchmaking business becomes, from what I read, one of the largest matchmaking companies in the United States.

• 52:40Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 52:40Steven Bartlett?

  How long did that take? The Paul C. Brunson Agency?

• 52:44Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, that was 2000, so it was 2008 to 2016. So eight years.

• 52:52Steven Bartlett?

  Who of all the avatars of the sort of personas do you find struggles with being alone the most?

• 53:04Speaker 00

  Oh my, you know what? Men.

• 53:07Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 53:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I would even say, you know, I mean, you know, there's a whole incel movement.

• 53:14Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 53:14Speaker 00

  Right? But, but, and you know, there's lots of articles now about the rise of the lonely man, you know? But quite honestly, or at least from experience, remember this is 2016, slightly, you know, slightly different time, but successful men. And when I say financially successful, so those who were the investment bankers who 45 years old, retired from investment banking, thinking about their next career, divorced twice, sitting at home alone. Right? That's where the struggle, that's where it hits you, you know, when you realize, oh

• 53:58Speaker 00

  my God, I'm 45, I'm, I've only lived half my life, you know, and here I am alone and I'm a dick on top of it. Right? So that's, that was, that was the demo that was, there was a struggle.

• 54:17Steven Bartlett?

  I gotta be honest, when I asked you that question about which group of people would struggle the most with loneliness, my head bounced around. I thought, I think he's gonna say potentially younger men because of this whole incel thing where, you know, I don't want to get into the mass shootings and stuff, but kid, you know, young men who have, I had a guest on this podcast, Scott Galloway, who talked about how like 90% of the female attention, even when you think about things like Bumble, goes to like the top five, 10% of men.

• 54:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 54:53Steven Bartlett?

  And then you've got this kind of, the other 40% do okay, then you've got the bottom 50% of men that are totally just not getting, that haven't been laid for more than a year. I think that's what he said. So I thought maybe you'd go for them. Then I thought he's gonna say.

• 55:08Steven Bartlett?

  Thirty plus women.

• 55:09Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 55:10Steven Bartlett?

  Because of things like biological clocks and stuff like that.

• 55:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 55:15Steven Bartlett?

  And this sort of social pressure, which I've heard from guests here, that some women can feel because of society's expectations and timelines to like, to hurry up and be married. So I thought you would say one of those two groups. So to hear you say a completely different group.

• 55:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:31Steven Bartlett?

  Was quite surprising.

• 55:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I hear you. And what you said, that's a logical, it's a logical breakout.

• 55:36Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 55:37Speaker 00

  But for me, and this is my experience is dealing with those who are seeking matchmaking, you know, is that the thought is my time is over. You know, my, the heyday is gone, you know? It's kind of like the athlete that is now retired, but want, but still desires to play, but realizes that they don't have, you know, they don't have it anymore.

• 56:04Steven Bartlett?

  But a rich forty, forty year old man.

• 56:07Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 56:07Steven Bartlett?

  Has got options.

• 56:09Speaker 00

  Has, you know what, a rich forty, yeah, has options. But, but we're talking about loneliness, though.

• 56:14Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 56:14Speaker 00

  Right?

• 56:15Steven Bartlett?

  Loneliness, yeah.

• 56:15Speaker 00

  And there's an emptiness that does come over you when you realize, you know, so a large part of loneliness unfortunately is through comparison. Cause you know, this whole idea when we compare, we despair, we despair upon ourself. So a large part of that is, is that you look across your peers and you say, look at this now. Stephen's married, you know, he has two children, you know, and I'm, yeah, I'm out here. I have my Ferrari, you know, but I come home to myself.

• 56:46Steven Bartlett?

  In my big house.

• 56:47Speaker 00

  In my big, in my massive house. And there's, and there's no one here with me. And you're astute enough to know that all of those people who you thought were loyal to you were actually not loyal to you, but they were just loyal to their circumstances with you.

• 57:03Steven Bartlett?

  And the job and stuff, yeah, yeah.

• 57:05Speaker 00

  The job, right, exactly. So you, so you begin to understand, oh my God, they are not my friends. I have, I have no one. And so when you have someone to go to a matchmaker, typically they have reached the end of their line when it comes to their hope.

• 57:27Speaker 00

  You know, and I think that from my peers who are of that age, or I'll say of that vintage, right?

• 57:37Speaker 00

  That it is, you know, it's incredibly sad. It's just incredibly sad. Now, I think what women do tremendously well, or should I say better than men of that age, is they understand how to build community. And that's something that goes back to what we were talking about before. We talked about, you know, the feedback loop. We talked about, you know, challenges around being emotionally available, especially at an early age, understanding how to build emotional intimacy. These things all play themselves out,

• 58:21Speaker 00

  not only in our romantic relationships, but in our platonic relationships. And what we have to understand is that the stronger platonic relationships we have, the more health we have, the longer we live, the more money, you know, we make. You know, I have, so I have a, it's my wife's aunt. She is 111 years old. So she's one of the oldest human beings right now on the planet. She's 111, incredibly astute. And when I sit down, I just sit down and I'm just, I absorb everything that she says.

• 59:04Speaker 00

  And what I realize is she still has friends. Like at 111, she's friends that she talks to every day. You know, that's how you stay alive. You know, we focus, and I get it, you know, gut health is so important and low cholesterol is so important. Yeah, I get it, right? Exercise is so important, right? I get all those things are so important. But I would argue that our social connections are even more important. And we have to understand how to build the skills. And you do that before. Like I always say, the best time to work on your marriage is before you get married. You know, the best time to work on your friendships,

• 59:48Speaker 00

  before you have your friend, right? We need to develop these skills early on.

• 59:53Steven Bartlett?

  Someone said to me, in fact, yesterday, so it rings so true to what you're saying, that we were talking about resilience and they said, we used to think of resilience as like being tough yourself, but when we look at different people, the resilience comes from being surrounded by a supportive community. And that in fact, makes a person, an individual resilient, psychologically resilient. So when I think about that investment banker that's forty five years old and alone, he doesn't have a community to help keep his psychological resilience in place. And there's this thing, there's this really interesting study that I, that I read about, and this goes back to our sort of ancestral backgrounds where we lived together in these tight knit communities where if someone, the reason why when people

• 1:00:38Steven Bartlett?

  are lonely, they, they live less long and they're more susceptible to illness, disease, and all of these other things is because scientists have seen that the brain literally goes into a state called self preservation, where you're sleep, so think about it, if you left your tribe and you're out on the, I don't know, the Serengeti, when we were, I don't know, tens of thousands of years ago, whatever, everything's, everything changes in terms of your, your keeping yourself alive. You can't sleep the same. So they observed the brain of someone who's lonely and they struggle with sleep because we've been programmed to fucking stay up because the lion might be coming. And this is really interesting, there's all these dots are connecting in my brain now because I started learning about this thing called chronotypes where all of us, in a group of twenty, thirty people,

• 1:01:22Steven Bartlett?

  what you'll find is they all have completely different sleeping rhythms when they get hungry, when they're most creative, when they have the most power. So I'm an owl. My, my partner was, was the opposite. And the reason why we have these different chronotypes, again, it goes back to the tribal days where like, we didn't all want to sleep at the same time, or be alert at the same time. So we created a community where we're basically one shield of the tribe to survive. And thinking about that guy who's forty five years old, he's got the bag, but he's lonely as fuck, he's in self preservation.

• 1:01:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a great point.

• 1:01:54Steven Bartlett?

  You know, physiologically, your brain is completely different.

• 1:01:59Steven Bartlett?

  When you fall into a state of loneliness and because your body's trying to help you survive in this danger, potentially dangerous world from the lions out there.

• 1:02:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:07Steven Bartlett?

  The other thing they noticed was when someone was lonely is their levels of resentment, like the snappiness, the like anger, the all of that went up as well. And that links to what you said about they don't learn the skills to to form connections because they've got so used to self defense, like psychological self defense.

• 1:02:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And I can see that if you're in that state, then you just delve deeper into that as each year go, like you become a curmudgeon, like you become.

• 1:02:33Steven Bartlett?

  A recluse, yeah.

• 1:02:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, recluse, it's just, it's that, that to me is sad because you have someone who you you perceive them to have it all.

• 1:02:44Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:44Speaker 00

  But they really have nothing.

• 1:02:46Steven Bartlett?

  And it makes sense because if I was, if I got used to being alone, say I was on the, in the, I don't know, I don't even know where prehistoric humans used to live, just in the savanna of Africa, just put us there because we're all from Africa.

• 1:02:58Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:02:58Steven Bartlett?

  And I've got so used to living alone, when I see someone else or a tribe, I'm not going to run off like, hey, I'm going to think these fuckers are going to kill me.

• 1:03:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm going to hide.

• 1:03:08Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, trust goes down, you're apprehensive.

• 1:03:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:03:12Steven Bartlett?

  You know, all of those things that you actually described early on, that happens and that makes perfect sense.

• 1:03:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:18Steven Bartlett?

  What do you do though? So in that case of that investment banker, what is step one to get them from that point where they're on the couch, they've got all that money in that mansion, they're alone? How to get them out there and find someone to love them?

• 1:03:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, therapy, you know, with, so with matchmaking, one of the things that we introduced, we, we were pioneers in many ways. One way is that you would come to us and we wouldn't just simply find dates for you. You would come to us and then we would assign you to a therapist that you'd work with for three to six months before you went on your date, right? So there's this rehabilitation, you know, that takes place. And what I always say about therapy too, is it's not you go to a therapist and you're fixed, you know, it's you begin to build the muscle. And you continue that, right? So that would be a place to begin. Secondly is to begin friendships is where I would go.

• 1:04:10Speaker 00

  So it's not like, okay, how can I place you in a community of 10 people? But how can I find one person that you could begin to build a relationship with? And start with building rapport, you know, very basic, very, you know, very, very basic, very slow. But that's how I would begin. You know, also talking about that particular client, because you know, it's been some while since I've been matchmaking, but now he's coming back to me.

• 1:04:37Speaker 00

  Very, you know, what I found with men of that particular vintage, right? And the dating scene is, is that the, a lot of the, the body movements were, were, I would call odd, right? The, there was a social ineptness, you know, that needed to be worked out, you know? Body language, we, we say more with our body than, than we do with our words. And there was a uncomfortableness, you know, that took months to, to tease out. And this is especially if you are coming from a career where you are the authority, you are the boss, you're, you're, you're the top dog.

• 1:05:19Speaker 00

  So you don't have a level of, no one is critiquing your body language, right? But now you move to a social situation where your entire interaction is largely based on your body language. It's, it's, it's a different situation. So it takes, it takes months, right? Or it could take years, but it takes a while of work before, you know, before we, we begin the matchmaking.

• 1:05:50Steven Bartlett?

  I'm like slowly developing a theory on awkward huggers. Do you know what I mean? Those people that are like, ah, they look away when they come in to hug you. They kind of give you a tap on the back.

• 1:06:00Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:06:01Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:02Speaker 00

  Can I, okay, can we talk about hugging for a second?

• 1:06:04Steven Bartlett?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:06:04Speaker 00

  I noticed that men do this. So, so I have a buddy named Tom Reed Wilson, who's on one of the shows with me. And he taught me something that I now pay close attention to. So most men, I notice hug and tap the back.

• 1:06:20Steven Bartlett?

  Get the fuck off me.

• 1:06:25Speaker 00

  Right? But what Tom taught me is the hold and embrace. And hold and embrace for thirty seconds, which is a long freaking time to embrace someone. And what he taught me was that in that embrace, to notice how uncomfortable the person is with you. There's a, okay, you're gonna let me go, this is odd. Now, this is not to a stranger, but this is, this is someone who you would hug. Opposed to the pat is, is, is the hug. That to me is wild, but here's, here's another wild one that men do. This, I learned this from Robin Dunbar also in his book Friendship.

• 1:07:05Speaker 00

  Is, and, and if you see two men talking to each other at a party out on the street, they normally stand at, at like a hundred and twenty degree angle. Rarely do they stand like this. Never would they stare like this because going back to us on the Serengeti, right? This is very confrontational, right? This means we're about to kill each other, you know? But like this, we're safe, you know? If we cheat our bodies like this, a hundred twenty degree. And, and if you notice that, men do that all the time. Now ladies, walk right up.

• 1:07:41Speaker 00

  How you doing, girl? You know, but men, it's like, okay, I'm gonna talk.

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, don't hug me. Yeah, so, but, but, but these, see, these are all things that we, we laugh and we joke about. But it suggests why we could have challenges in our intimate relationships.

• 1:08:01Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things I've been curious about that I have a lot of question marks around is this idea of compatibility and who, who we're compatible with. Are we just, you know, cause when we think about dating, we often think about it like we're trying to find this perfect individual that we could kind of draw on a piece of paper that has all of these particular qualities. We think we know who we're looking for. Is that true? What do I need to know about like what truly makes someone compatible? Cause I think once upon a time, for sure, for sure, I would have said, I want my partner to be probably like me.

• 1:08:40Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:08:40Steven Bartlett?

  I would have said, okay, if I can run a huge business and we can talk about it in bedtime and.

• 1:08:44Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:08:46Steven Bartlett?

  I don't think that's the case anymore.

• 1:08:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, my joke is that most men who came to us, right? They want themselves with a vagina. That's pretty much, that's pretty much what they're looking for, right? So this is a topic that's, you know, I've been studying forever. And there's a lot of different thoughts around it. Like if you just think about dating apps, they spend an enormous amount of money trying to perfect the algorithm to, you know, the matching algorithm. It's all about that. And if you look at the success rate, so the percentage of people who are using dating apps and then end up in a committed or committed relationship or marriage, and then stay in that for a fixed amount of time, like 10 years, it's like less than 2%.

• 1:09:33Speaker 00

  So you think, okay, so they haven't gotten it right. There's certain matchmakers that profess to have almost near 100% success rates. You say, what do they do? You know, I have some friends who just say, I can just look at you and tell. And you're like, whatever, like, you know. But over time, there are certain areas that I firmly believe, firmly believe, determine whether or not you have strong compatibility, right? So one, we've already talked about attachment style.

• 1:10:02Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:02Speaker 00

  I think attachment style incredibly important. We've talked about values. Values incredibly important. That's the rulebook to life, right? Another part of it is your ability to communicate. So there's this theory called decide versus slide, right? It's a theory that a lot of, you know, you have, you have people like John Kotman's behind this. But you have people in the States who. Have looked at when you're with your partner, can you make a decision together on anything? Let's say you're with your partner and you decide, okay, we're going on vacation. Can you actually make decisions on where you're going without killing each other? Like, can you decide what you're going to eat without killing each other?

• 1:10:46Speaker 00

  Like, can you actually make collaborative decisions? That is deciding versus sliding. What a lot of relationships, what a lot of couples do is they say, okay, you decide that. You pick where we're going to go. I'll decide where we're going to do. Right, it's a slide. It's not a collaborative. So when you were dating, when you're engaged, it's very important to begin to look at, are you making decisions together? Do you have the ability to make decisions together? Right, deciding versus sliding. Very important. Another one that's touchy for a lot of people, but it is what it is, is, you know, do you have physical attraction?

• 1:11:31Speaker 00

  There's a massive debate. I don't understand why there's still a debate over this. Is that every bit of science suggests to us that if you have zero, I'm talking about zero physical attraction, it's going nowhere. Like, it's going nowhere. But if you have minimal physical attraction, it doesn't mean rip the clothes off energy, but if you have minimal physical attraction, then that could build. Because you could be, you know, you could be sapiosexual, where it's the intellect that drives you. But you still have to have a minimal level of physical attraction. And then what we see is that over time, attraction can definitely grow,

• 1:12:15Speaker 00

  but it needs to start somewhere. So you think about physical attraction. You think about the ability to make decisions, compatibility in values, also attachment style. These become, I think, the foundational pieces to having. A compatible relationship. But then there's this small little piece that I want to throw out. And this is some studies that have been done in the US that I find to be fascinating is the marriage rate, you know, in the UK as well, it hovers, you know, between, let's say, thirty five and fifty percent, depending on who you're talking to. Or should I say the divorce rate does thirty five to fifty percent. So the idea is there that almost half of people who get together end up getting a divorce

• 1:13:00Speaker 00

  on average. Now, if you were to just take out couples who have been engaged for two years, what do you think that does to the divorce rate? So they've been engaged for two years and then they get married.

• 1:13:19Steven Bartlett?

  I think the divorce rate goes down.

• 1:13:22Speaker 00

  Exactly. It goes down dramatically. Some people say it goes down to twenty, twenty, twenty two percent, right?

• 1:13:29Steven Bartlett?

  Chance of getting divorced if you've been, if you had a long engagement.

• 1:13:32Speaker 00

  Yes. Now, why would that be? The reason why is because you're able to test out all of these theories. You're able to see your partner in the most adverse circumstance and see, do they still show up as?

• 1:13:46Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, so true.

• 1:13:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, can they still make a decision with me, you know? Or do they emotionally shut down and they go away? So then, when you look at why, or the couples where you see divorce being prevalent, it's in couples in one of two categories. One, they've known each other for a year or less, right? It's quick. Or when I say know each other, they've been in a committed relationship for a year or less, or they've been in a committed relationship for like ten years. And it's like, basically, you know, it was an ultimatum. And that's the reason why, why they were married. So the two years of engagement, I think, is incredibly important because it allows you to test out these compatibility metrics.

• 1:14:32Steven Bartlett?

  Two things there. So the first one I wanted to just jump back to because I found it really interesting. And it's something I've thought about. A lot because of some of my friends in my circle is can you be, because you talked about physical attraction, can you be physically attracted to somebody but then not have sexual attraction?

• 1:14:51Speaker 00

  Ah, okay.

• 1:14:52Steven Bartlett?

  I say this because I remember in a past relationship, I was physically attracted to her, but sexually, I just, it just didn't work. And that's why that relationship ended. She was this beautiful, beautiful girl. Her, her, like, her mind, her intellect, she was super smart, she was super funny, she was just everything. I think there's a point before we went to have sex, that I thought, this is it, this is the one. We then went to have sex and I, I've never said this before, I remember getting up and

• 1:15:33Steven Bartlett?

  going over to my phone and like afterwards, like, and saying to one of my best mates, I'd go, I don't think I can ever see her again.

• 1:15:40Speaker 00

  See, I, I wonder how much of this, though, plays into, to, to, to foreplay, really, because have you, have you heard about erotic blueprint?

• 1:15:49Steven Bartlett?

  I've heard about it. I think I heard it on that Goop show.

• 1:15:52Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah, yeah, it was, it was on Goop too.

• 1:15:54Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, really? Yeah, I watched that, yeah.

• 1:15:56Speaker 00

  So, you know, so, and, and I, I buy into that theory, which, you know, the overall premise is, is that, you know, we all, um, we, we all become sexually stimulated in different ways.

• 1:16:09Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:10Speaker 00

  Right? And the, the thought is that men are just ready all the time, like, you know?

• 1:16:16Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:17Speaker 00

  It's like, we're, like, we're just ready, you know, like, come on in the room, like, we're just ready. But that's not the case. You know, some of us, it's about, you know, contextual, you know, some of us, and this is men and women, right? It's some of it, it's, it's, it's, it's romantic, you know? Some is, you, you need something that to people would call bizarre, you know, going on.

• 1:16:40Steven Bartlett?

  Kink.

• 1:16:41Speaker 00

  Kink, yeah, some BDSM, you know, going on. So, so. That's why I wonder how much of that was about sexual stimulation in that situation versus you not being sexually attracted to the person. So I wish we could almost go back and I could be your sexual surrogate.

• 1:17:02Steven Bartlett?

  Unfortunately, yeah, she's got a baby now. She's got a husband.

• 1:17:07Speaker 00

  And your wisdom was.

• 1:17:07Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it just, it made me pivot. But I think you're actually spot on because what I came to learn a couple of years later was that I had this one sort of one dimensional view of what sex was. And then, as I've said on this podcast once before, when I started viewing sex as potentially a different set of languages.

• 1:17:26Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:17:26Steven Bartlett?

  I thought, fuck, I'm speaking English. Maybe she's speaking Spanish.

• 1:17:29Speaker 00

  Yes, there you go.

• 1:17:31Steven Bartlett?

  You know, and I need to learn a new language in order to have an effective sexual conversation. Everything changed.

• 1:17:39Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:17:39Steven Bartlett?

  And it changed for one of my best friends too, because he was having a similar issue with his sex life. And I said, what if you just saw it as like, your girlfriend speaks a different sex language? You're speaking one and you're like, ah, I'm unsatisfied because she's speaking Spanish and she's going, ah, I'm unsatisfied. She wants touch. She wants the 30 minute non penetrative buildup.

• 1:17:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:17:59Steven Bartlett?

  You want to tie her up. You want to gag it, gag her and with it and all that kind of kinky BDSM stuff.

• 1:18:07Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:18:08Steven Bartlett?

  You need to talk.

• 1:18:09Speaker 00

  You need to talk.

• 1:18:10Steven Bartlett?

  And learn the language.

• 1:18:11Speaker 00

  Another language. And then also too, because you dropped penetration in there.

• 1:18:14Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:14Speaker 00

  This is something that most men, I mean, men, we need to know this, is that the vast majority, 70 to 80% of women need clitoral stimulation, not just penetrative. And I, and, and see, I mean, this is, see, this is, this is where the feedback, once again, we have no feedback loop, you know, porn.

• 1:18:39Speaker 00

  That is our teacher.

• 1:18:40Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:41Speaker 00

  You know, that's our teacher. And what we have to understand is, is no, there are, I love what you're saying, there are different languages, sexual languages. You have to understand how your partner, the language that they speak sex in, and you have to deliver it. And that's also why communication is the bedrock of all relationships. It really is.

• 1:19:02Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, that's so true. Thinking about how I could have fixed that situation. But because I, you're right, I totally dismissed it and I didn't do any work. That was the very much characteristic of my younger self, which was if something, and this is relationship, sex, whatever it was. If something isn't perfect now, go, just run. Don't do any work to like to have the conversation, to fix it, to have empathy for someone else might have a different opinion or a different bias or a different attachment style. If it's not perfect, I would dash. I'll go in search of perfect, which doesn't exist.

• 1:19:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. But this is, I mean, you know, this is all of us. This is immaturity. And that's the beauty of learning, you know, as you grow older.

• 1:19:44Steven Bartlett?

  On that point of seeking perfection, and I asked it a second ago, but we got, we went off on the sex thing. That sounds weird. Please don't click that.

• 1:19:56Steven Bartlett?

  Do we know what we're looking for? Are people good at saying, this is what I want?

• 1:20:03Speaker 00

  Hells no. We are terrible. We're all biased when it comes to love, you know? I've done a lot of research around biases and when it comes to love, it's like we're wearing the foggiest glasses known to, you know, known to, known to human beings. We're terrible when it comes to making any type of rational decision around our love life. You know, normally we are looking for ourselves, like we literally are looking for ourselves. It's funny to me when you see someone, when you ask someone, well, what is your type? Which I hate that phrase, but you say, well, what is your type?

• 1:20:46Speaker 00

  And typically people will describe someone who's very much like themselves, very much like themselves in so many of these categories. And so we are horrendously bad at not only identifying what works well with us, but then making the selection. And on top of that, most women don't make the selection. It's typically the man who makes the selection. And this is where I say, That what I like, what I'm seeing now is more women are consciously choosing who and what they want in their relationship, opposed to being the ones who are always selected.

• 1:21:28Steven Bartlett?

  Why does that happen? Why are women not choosing? Is it because?

• 1:21:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's because of, you know, the craziness of the world and how we've evolved. You know, if you think about, it was the pill that was one of the first liberation points for women when it came to dating. I mean, and you think about, that's not that long ago. We're talking about the 60s, we're talking about the 70s, really when the pill became in vogue, you know, if you will, at least in the United States. And what that allowed was for women to finally have a little bit of choice when it came to dating.

• 1:22:11Speaker 00

  Before that, it was virtually men making the selection, making the choice. You're mine, or you're pregnant, so you're definitely mine, and that was it. And then you saw a little bit of liberation come from the pill, which was incredible. But then also, what's great now is the dating apps. I know the dating apps get a lot of stick, for whatever reasons. And yes, we should always hold dating apps accountable. But what's beautiful is that you do have dating apps where you have given women a lot more choice and control in the dating experience, which is important. And even when you look at the studies and you look at the dating app ecosystems that

• 1:22:56Speaker 00

  are led by women, they're safer, they're less crude, you know, the list goes on and on.

• 1:23:06Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting. So are you saying that we, contrast is, tends to be better for compatibility than finding someone who's a replication of yourself?

• 1:23:14Speaker 00

  All right, that's a good one. So, a bit of contrast, right, a bit of it. It's almost like going back to the weak tie theory. You know, you want someone, I think... Well, let me say this. The best matches I've seen are based on that blueprint that I outlined, from attachment style all the way down to physical attraction. But then, context also plays a large role. You know, if I were to place you on a desolate island with someone, I guarantee that person's gonna be the love of your life after a while.

• 1:23:50Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, we're gonna have babies.

• 1:23:50Speaker 00

  You're gonna have lots of babies. They're gonna be, you know, you're gonna think they're your soulmate, right? So context plays a large, large, large role, which is why it's interesting to see how politics plays a role in dating. You know, just 20 years ago, politics was insignificant in dating. It was not a topic that was brought up, definitely not brought up on a first date. But, you know, if your partner was on, was, has an opposing political view, it's completely fine. Today, it's one of the top metrics behind whether or not you want to match someone. This is politics. There've been some really interesting studies that showed that,

• 1:24:33Speaker 00

  I mean, even how sexually obsessed men are, right? We still would turn that, well, it depends on who you're talking to, but there's a significant percentage of men, but a vast majority of women, who would not have sex with someone that they find physically attractive, but yet have opposing political beliefs. I mean, that, but that's the context. That's the day and age that we live in. So, so context, I think, plays a role as well.

• 1:25:06Steven Bartlett?

  Do we have to work hard to find someone? Because I think there's, there's kind of a prevailing narrative that serendipity will solve it for us. The world has changed tremendously. We don't have, we don't go to church like we used to. We don't have these pubs or that sort of institutions of community in our lives. So we're like predominantly more lonely than ever, living in full white walls in big old cities alone.

• 1:25:31Steven Bartlett?

  Do we have to work hard to find that person? Do we have to put in work?

• 1:25:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a great question. I think we should. I think we should put in the work. I think that we should put effort towards anything that we have interest in. So if a romantic interest is something that you want to have, you should put the work in. But I don't necessarily think it's about putting the work into someone else. It's about putting the work into you, right? And just elevating you, optimizing you, making you the best you can be, upping your communication, right? Understanding how to build emotional ties, right? Understanding how to make great decisions. Understanding how to be a great listener, a critical thinker, right?

• 1:26:17Speaker 00

  All of these things are going to help you in all aspects of life and definitely in your romantic life. So that's where the hard work needs to go in. But we're in an interesting place because every generation believes their generation had it the hardest when it comes to finding a spouse. This is throughout time. Talked to my grandfather. My grandfather, oh man, you won't believe how hard I had it, you know? And my grandfather had three options. Three options. Three options, right? Small village in Jamaica, three options, three people. But what I find interesting is there's a book, Paradox of Choice,

• 1:27:00Speaker 00

  by Barry Swartz, and he's the less is more, right? And what's interesting is that we have more options today than say my grandfather had in his day. But it's we have less satisfaction in the choices we make because we believe we have endless choice. That's the real problem that we have. So you think about, you go onto a dating app, right? How many people can you swipe through in a dating app? Endless, it's endless. You could literally 10,000 if you want to. And the thought is that you have an option, all 10,000 are an option. So because you have 10,000 options and you pick one,

• 1:27:43Speaker 00

  there's less value that you have in the one. But if I flipped it around, maybe this is the idea. See, I should pitch you on this idea right now. All right, dating app.

• 1:27:51Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:51Speaker 00

  This is my pitch. Dating app, but you only get three options a week.

• 1:28:02Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 1:28:02Speaker 00

  What do you think? What do you think? Because here, so here's my thought. Oh, so here's my thought, right? The thought is that you place more value in the option you choose, right? And that's ultimately, I think, what the challenge is in this day and age. It's about, we think, you know, we're placing less value because we believe that we have endless option.

• 1:28:30Steven Bartlett?

  So true. The issue with the idea is in a world where there are other apps, like if that app existed and it was the only app, then it would be the conversion rate from first date to marriage, I think, would be considerably harder and higher. However, in a world where I can also use Tinder or Hinge, when they're going to give me 10,000 options, I think people will always choose option. So I think we'd have a problem getting users. Because they'd go, well, I'd rather have a thousand guys to choose from or a thousand women to choose from. But your point is so spot on that a lack of options means we can, we'll invest more and work harder on the ones we do have to make them work. Whereas if I, if I meet you on a date and I don't feel like it's perfection, I'm gonna fuck this.

• 1:29:16Steven Bartlett?

  I've got 37 men in my Tinder DMs that wanted to meet me as well. So I'll go try one of them.

• 1:29:22Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:29:23Steven Bartlett?

  And there's always, we're always contending with the false highlight reel reality of those 36 other men.

• 1:29:31Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:29:31Steven Bartlett?

  Because they looked perfect.

• 1:29:32Speaker 00

  They did.

• 1:29:33Steven Bartlett?

  They chose their best three selfies.

• 1:29:35Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:29:35Steven Bartlett?

  And they had, he had a Rolex on and he, you know. So, and then you meet him and you go, fuck.

• 1:29:41Speaker 00

  But I'm gonna go to the thirty six others.

• 1:29:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's a horrific spiral.

• 1:29:50Steven Bartlett?

  Another question I had was about honesty from the jump. You go on a first date, you meet someone. How honest should I be? Should I tell them about my childhood trauma on the first day? Is that being authentic or is that offloading?

• 1:30:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, Chris Rock said it best, you know, when you meet someone, especially on a date, you're not meeting them, you're meeting their representative. You know, so from that standpoint, we have to understand that there is a boundary negotiation that happens, especially on these first dates. And it is that tennis game again, right? So what you're trying to do ultimately is you're trying to, and let me even back up. Can I say this about the first? One is that I think we, I think most of us would do the first date completely wrong, entirely wrong. We set ourselves up from the jump to fail miserably

• 1:30:44Speaker 00

  and be disappointed. And the reason why is because it, the first date is too intricate. It's too big, you know, it's dinner, but to prepare for dinner, I'm gonna buy a new whatever, you know, I'm gonna get my hair done, you know, I'm gonna get this, I'm gonna buy this new thing, I'm gonna get the car washed, I'm gonna do all this stuff. We've spent, we've invested so much that we've set ourselves up for failure. Also, a first date, quite honestly, over dinner is an interview. It always turns into an interview. And then the culture I've noticed in the UK is fascinating is that this is not everyone, but typically I notice is we're gonna get completely pissed

• 1:31:25Speaker 00

  before the date, like, so we can talk to each other. So we're just gonna drink, drink, drink, drink, drink, drink. Okay, now let's talk to each other. And so it becomes, we set ourselves up for having a very costly date in time, effort, all resources. Instead, it sounds so simple. I like meetups. Let's not, let's even take the pressure off of the date situation. Let's call it a meetup, thirty minutes, let's have coffee, right? The reason why I love that, or a walk, sounds stupid, right? No, a walk for thirty minutes, let's just go walk at lunch, let's go, go take a walk. The reason why I love that is because.

• 1:32:07Speaker 00

  The expectation is so much lower in that situation, so much lower. The cost, so much lower, right? So the investment, right? So much lower. So therefore, that return on investment, potentially so much higher. But then also psychologically, what I love is happening is if it's coffee, caffeine, if it's a walk, it's endorphins going, right? Those help us to bond, right? Opposed to alcohol, that's a depressant, right? It's doing, it's doing the opposite. So in terms of elucidating ourselves for great conversation and preparing ourselves for success, a walk or a coffee is great.

• 1:32:51Speaker 00

  The other part of that is I've had, like, not millions, I've had, let's say, thousands of clients who I've said, okay, in particular, this is for ladies telling men, tell the guy that you want to meet him for coffee in the day.

• 1:33:06Speaker 00

  A lot of guys are like, I'm not doing that.

• 1:33:08Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, because they want to get laid.

• 1:33:11Speaker 00

  They're like, I'm not doing that, right? So right away.

• 1:33:14Steven Bartlett?

  It's a good filter.

• 1:33:15Speaker 00

  It's a great filter. It's an easy filter for you, you know? So that's part of that. And then if it works well, and when I say if it works well is you just need two things on that meetup. Are you physically attracted to them minimally? And then did they listen to you? So if you have the ability to communicate, they listened critically, you listened critically, and you're physically attracted, that is chemistry. Because we have a hard time defining what is chemistry. You say, what is chemistry? What's the buzz? What does that mean? And everyone's like, I don't know, I don't know. It is, I think, one part, physical attraction, mutual physical attraction, another part, critical listening, listening.

• 1:33:58Speaker 00

  If you have that, you have enough to move forward and then see each other in another environment, you know?

• 1:34:04Steven Bartlett?

  It's so true, because I'm just reflecting on how many of my friends, both men and women, will come back from a date that didn't work out and just resentfully talk about how much they've spent. And how and how much it cost, like how how long it cost them and and how much money it cost them and the preparation and the facial and the hair and the nails and and they sit there resentfully. And so you you you're right, bringing that level of expectation to a to a first encounter, you know, Mogad outside here and said, we're happy when our expectations of how life is supposed to be going go are met and we're unhappy when our expectations of how life is supposed to be going go unmet. I'm coming in with one hell of an expectation that you're going to be my husband.

• 1:34:46Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:34:47Steven Bartlett?

  I've put in all the work, all the investment, the time, three hours. And then if you fall anywhere below that, for whatever reason, I'm probably looking for, you know, oh, God, it's not, you're almost setting yourself up to fail by by doing such a huge initial upfront investment.

• 1:35:02Speaker 00

  Yes. And you know what? You you were making, I think, a brilliant, brilliant point there is that when you've made that investment, what you end up doing is you're looking for reasons to weed them out.

• 1:35:14Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:15Speaker 00

  Because you're like, I mean, I did all this.

• 1:35:17Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. And his trainers. What what trainers is this guy wearing?

• 1:35:22Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. You see those trainers? Those are last year's trainers.

• 1:35:26Steven Bartlett?

  I bought new shoes for this year.

• 1:35:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:35:28Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. It's crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. What what are you struggling with in your relationship?

• 1:35:34Speaker 00

  Oh, man. You know, it is time.

• 1:35:37Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 1:35:39Speaker 00

  Time.

• 1:35:39Steven Bartlett?

  Quality time?

• 1:35:40Speaker 00

  It is. It is. It is. I would say time, but quality time, because I am, you know, right now, I'm predominantly doing television work. And and I've been in TV now, you know, for since Oprah, you know, so 12, 13 years. So it's been a while. And one thing I've noticed about the television space is that there are moments when you're hot and there are moments when you're not. And when you're hot, it's that's the time to leverage. So you have to, you're already working your ass off, but you better work it off even even more. And so I'm in that zone right now. I mean, I'm blessed. I'm co-hosting two shows.

• 1:36:24Speaker 00

  I'm contributing to three shows, one in the States, two here in the UK. So it's one of these where I'm constantly work every day, every day in work, every day in working. So that time with my wife, that time with my children, that's the time that I wish I can get some back.

• 1:36:43Steven Bartlett?

  How are you negotiating that? How are you serving the ball over the net in terms of the tennis analogy to make sure things aren't, you know, she still feels like a priority and your family still feel like a priority?

• 1:36:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a great one. I mean, finding those moments and making sure that we're in, or should I say, making sure that we're intentional about the moments that we do have, right? So this morning, for example, before I came over here, we had breakfast together, went out, had breakfast together, sat, talked with the dog, right? Those moments are immeasurable, right? Those moments, right, to have those moments together. I drop my boys off at school, right? Walk, you walk them 10 minutes to school, 10 minutes together to the to the bus. Those moments, immeasurable, you know? When I was, you know, getting, helping them dress, tying their ties, those moments, and making sure that I'm fully in those moments.

• 1:37:38Speaker 00

  Not I'm in that moment, but I'm on my phone at the same time. I'm in that moment, oh, I've got to post this on Instagram. No, phone goes away, right? Phone goes away. And so making sure that the moments that we have, that I'm fully, I'm fully in them. And then also, I think gratitude is something that is is very important. And I've been practicing this for, I don't know, six, seven years. But being appreciative of those moments and then reflecting upon those. You know, so every morning, the first thing I do in the morning is I I consciously think about the moments yesterday that I'm appreciative of.

• 1:38:19Speaker 00

  And what I find myself doing is I'm rarely thinking about, oh, I'm so happy this happened at work, or I'm so happy about the ratings of this. It's always. Man, I'm so happy that my son, who's 11, held my hand, walking to the bus. He's 11, but he still held my hand, you know? I'm so happy that my son came over and he asked me to tie his tie. He gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, thank you, Dad. Like, those are the moments that really get to me. And that's what I wake up thinking about. And I'm able to think about it because I was in the moment, fully.

• 1:38:55Steven Bartlett?

  And what's, talk to me about the near term then. What are you working on in the near term? I know you've got, we don't even talk about it today, but you've got multiple revenue streams all over the place. You're an entrepreneur. You've got two, two or three TV shows that you're working on simultaneously, which is absurd.

• 1:39:08Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:39:09Steven Bartlett?

  All of these things going on in your life. What am I, what, give me a picture of your full, your professional portfolio, per se.

• 1:39:16Speaker 00

  Okay, so, so there are a lot of things happening and they're all in different categories. So, so on the television side, I am co-hosting Married at First Sight UK. And I'm also co-hosting Celebs Go Dating. We're in our 11th series of Celebs Go Dating and our seventh of Married at First Sight. So, so, so those are, those are big entities. I contribute to The Lorraine Show.

• 1:39:42Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:39:42Speaker 00

  And also to Steph's Pack Lunch.

• 1:39:44Steven Bartlett?

  Yep.

• 1:39:45Speaker 00

  Here. And then in the United States, I'm a contributor to Good Morning America. Right? So that by itself, or those are a couple of full times, right? But that's, that's kind of like the TV side.

• 1:39:56Steven Bartlett?

  Do you have a podcast?

• 1:39:57Speaker 00

  I don't. I, I did, like, years ago, I, I did, but, I mean, quite honestly, looking at this. And, you know, you are, and, and this is me not trying to, trying to gas you up, is that you are incredibly inspiring. Incredibly inspiring. And I, and you know, it's interesting is I, I, I look at you and I think, okay, God, this guy's younger than me. You know, how is this, he's, he's so much younger than me and he's inspiring me, right? And what it is, is that you pursue excellence to a degree I don't know if I've ever witnessed. I'm talking about, I've worked with some of the top billionaires in the world.

• 1:40:39Speaker 00

  I've interviewed, I was a business columnist for USA Today and I interviewed some of the most successful entrepreneurs. Like, period. And your level of pursuit of excellence surpasses.

• 1:40:53Speaker 00

  Them.

• 1:40:54Steven Bartlett?

  Where's my billion?

• 1:40:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. But see, it's not about the, it's not about that.

• 1:40:58Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:59Speaker 00

  You know, you're, and, and, and, and so all I say is that, so you are incredibly inspiring to me and to, to, to many people. And to the question on the podcast is part of that inspiration is like, this is a great space, you know, to, to get into. So that's something that is in the back of my mind, but I'm not actively pursuing it.

• 1:41:18Steven Bartlett?

  That's very kind. It makes me feel really uncomfortable. That's why I cracked that billion joke. I didn't know what to do with my face the whole time I was like.

• 1:41:24Speaker 00

  How do you feel? How do you feel?

• 1:41:25Steven Bartlett?

  It's a huge, it's a huge compliment and I, I, I receive the compliment and I, I, I believe what you're saying. It just, you know, makes you feel uncomfortable because I, you know, I don't know why it just makes me feel uncomfortable when I, when I.

• 1:41:38Steven Bartlett?

  I really appreciate it and I believe every word you said. Um, I believe you meant every word you said.

• 1:41:45Steven Bartlett?

  And I know that we are, I think the reason why our team will be successful in pretty much anything we do is because of what you said. So it's because I think we care more about the small stuff.

• 1:41:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:41:54Steven Bartlett?

  And that's where for me excellence begins. We can all make the big decisions. To start a podcast is a big decision. It doesn't guarantee success.

• 1:42:01Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:42:01Steven Bartlett?

  It's all the tiny things that people that are easy to do, but also easy not to do, that end up defining your trajectory. And over the last, I think, two years in particular, actually because of this podcast and actually because it's so data centric. And I look at lines and charts and how one decision that like the team and I make or that Jack makes can just tilt the direction of the line.

• 1:42:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:42:22Steven Bartlett?

  And I go, and it's been this reinforcer to me that in fact, the, the most important things and, and the biggest opportunity is the smallest things everyone else, nobody, nobody else cares about.

• 1:42:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:42:32Steven Bartlett?

  They'll be thinking about, let's get a bigger guest or like, you know, let's get, you know, the big stuff, but it's the small stuff where we have our opportunity.

• 1:42:39Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:42:40Steven Bartlett?

  So you've identified something that I hold very true and I consider to be, but being my professional religion.

• 1:42:46Steven Bartlett?

  And I appreciate the compliment. It means a lot.

• 1:42:48Speaker 00

  No, no, definitely. And, and, and you just, I think, destroyed a myth that exists as well. And that is that we should be sweating the small stuff.

• 1:42:56Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, a hundred percent.

• 1:42:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. You know, the whole, oh, don't sweat, no, sweat the small stuff because that's where greatest change comes. The same thing with your romantic relationships. People are like, don't sweat the small stuff. No. That one missed hug, you know, that one missed, I love you.

• 1:43:10Steven Bartlett?

  Let's correct it now.

• 1:43:11Speaker 00

  Correct it now.

• 1:43:12Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:14Steven Bartlett?

  So, so, so powerful. I, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest. They don't know who they're leaving it for.

• 1:43:23Speaker 00

  Okay, okay.

• 1:43:24Steven Bartlett?

  So it's kind of a through line, all the guests having a conversation with each other. And I don't get to read the question until I open the book.

• 1:43:34Steven Bartlett?

  When was the last time you cried of happiness?

• 1:43:39Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh, cried of happiness. Oh my gosh. I know, I mean, I've cried tears of sadness recently.

• 1:43:50Steven Bartlett?

  You've cried tears of sadness recently?

• 1:43:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, man. I mean, my sister-in-law passed away two weeks ago. And my, I've, I've had, I mean, I've had a string of passings in my family that is just devastating, devastating. First funeral, I had to plan, you know, my wife and I planned.

• 1:44:14Speaker 00

  Just, I mean, just, yeah, one of those. So, so, you know, I think, I think of tears of sadness.

• 1:44:24Steven Bartlett?

  What did that teach you about life?

• 1:44:26Speaker 00

  Oh, this.

• 1:44:27Steven Bartlett?

  Someone young and.

• 1:44:28Speaker 00

  It's short, goes like this. I've, I've, I've been at two deathbeds. One of someone who I would call incredibly young and another one, someone who's lived a full life. They both said the same thing and it haunts me. They both said, this thing goes by quick.

• 1:44:55Speaker 00

  Life goes by quick. That's all we get. And it gives me chills because I think about them looking at me. And that's part of why I think I have lived the life or lived life the way I live it and why I focus so much in the moment and why I try to express how I feel about people in the moment, because we may never get the moment again, you know?

• 1:45:23Speaker 00

  So, so, yeah, it's, it's taught me, I mean, to write a eulogy.

• 1:45:29Speaker 00

  To have to write a eulogy, you know, for someone so young. It did, I will say some practical things, though it taught me. It taught me, we all need wills. We all need a will. I think that we all should be consciously aware of how we want to be laid to rest. It's a major debate that happens in the family and, you know, to have that consciously thought out so that we, so that people can, your loved ones can honor you in the way that you want to be honored, I think is incredibly important. So to have a will and to have pre-thought some of this, it's not morbid. I think we have to understand this is part of our humanity is that we will not be here, you know, forever.

• 1:46:14Speaker 00

  So those are thoughts that are practical thoughts that I've taken. And now I have a will. Now I've written, you know, where I want to be buried, how I want to be buried. These are incredibly important. I cried like I cried for, it could be thirty, forty minutes straight at my wedding. I just cried. I cried the entire wedding. I just cried and cried and cried and cried. All the pictures of me crying. So those are, probably, that's the last tears of, tears of happiness. But I'm incredibly happy. But more than that, I'm appreciative.

• 1:46:59Speaker 00

  You know, I'm appreciative of life and it's actually the tears of sadness that's allowed me to be appreciative.

• 1:47:07Steven Bartlett?

  Well, Paul, thank you. My team met you a couple of weeks ago and they are obsessed with you. And it's funny because it's not necessarily, it's because of who you were as a person to all of them, how you treated them, how wonderful you were, how, you know, it's all the small stuff. It's kind of the stuff you said at the start about that underdog and reaching out to the person that might be stood up against the wall. It's all of that stuff where everyone in this building, I wasn't here, I think I was out of the country, if I remember correctly. But when you came to this building, they were just, you converted them into raving fans. And I don't know how long you were here or how much you paid them.

• 1:47:45Speaker 00

  I paid them a lot.

• 1:47:47Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, that explains it. They were just all absolute super fans of yours. And your whole philosophy, you said something. You said something to someone, I'm not entirely sure who it was, you know, because we'd ask, we'd essentially asked you to come and help us with something with a project we're working on, which I'm very excited about. And you said something almost about like karma, where you, you do, you do things for people because you kind of believe in planting that seed. Like, you don't know when it will flourish, or when it will, you know, come to fruition, but you just do good with the belief that like karma.

• 1:48:20Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:48:21Steven Bartlett?

  And such an important way to live. And you actually helped me to realise that because the impact you had on all these people here, you turned all of them into disciples. And they're like fairly influential people that, that, you know, they're well connected. We've got a lot of interesting people coming here, you know, several days a week. Amazing. And then today, having had a chance to sit with you and ask you some questions that really a lot of the questions I ask for my own selfish pursuit of trying to figure shit out, you've, you've changed a lot in me and you're going to change a lot in my relationships. I'm partly sat here, you know, winding this podcast up so I can go fix some shit.

• 1:49:00Steven Bartlett?

  And I think a lot of people that have listened to this conversation will be feeling the same way. Tremendous value, tremendously kind man. Even when the cameras are off, you're just a class, class act. And I have no doubt that you're going to get everything you deserve. But we talked about that sort of like long tail lagging and value. You're going, it's going to be, your future is going to be immense.

• 1:49:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm honoured, I'm appreciative. I love you. I love your team, right? I really do. And it's an honour to be here. So thank you so much for having me.

• 1:49:31Steven Bartlett?

  I and all of my team love you too. I can speak on behalf of all of them. Thank you, Paul.

• 1:49:36Speaker 00

  Thank you. Thank you.