 All right. I'm so excited to have this chat with Michael and Johnny today for our Breakup Survival Toolbox episode because this is actually one of the reasons that a lot of our coaching clients participate in our X Factor Accelerator or Joint Bootcamp. Breakup and of relationship divorce is a tragic event in many of our lives. When you invest time, energy, and hopes and dreams into a relationship romantically and that relationship fails, whether it's your fault or their fault, you can feel lost. You can feel adrift and you can even feel withdrawal symptoms. Right, Michael? There is a really interesting and somewhat scary study that I dug up in preparation for this episode. There is one particular study or paper out there. It's called Reward Addiction and Emotion Regulation Systems associated with rejection in love. That's a mouthful. That came out in the Journal of Neurophysiology in 2010 by Helen Fischer and her team. And what they found is that the withdrawal symptoms that come from rejection in romantic love is actually equivalent to that of cocaine withdrawal. So they put participants into an fMRI scanner and then asked them to look at photographs of the person that rejected them and with whom they're still in love and those same areas in the brain lit up. And they concluded that the fMRI results of the study show that looking at a romantic rejecter and cocaine cravings have several neural correlates in common. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that romantic rejection is a specific form of addiction. A lot of people turn to our podcast because they want to get better at dating and so they want to put themselves out there and they want to date a lot. Of course, in our culture today, we have this thing called hookup culture, right? Go out there and taste the rainbow and be dating and when we were living in LA, they had a big push in the messaging of all these online dating apps about swipe life, get involved, go out with a new person every night, all in an attempt to get you to use their app more. And they did this by advertising and promoting this lifestyle. The issue here, and what Michael has just said, that when you pair bond and you connect with somebody, when you lose that person, it's almost like losing a part of you, that you sustain damage. You're missing something. And of course, the data that Michael was talking about is that it almost feels like withdrawal from a drug, right? When there is a withdrawal or something is taken from you like that, you sustain, you take on damage, trauma that you have to process in order to become whole again because you are missing something that you have learned to depend upon. When you get into a relationship and you make a commitment to the other person, you're giving up a part of yourself to bring on this other person. You don't think in terms of I anymore, in a committed relationship, you think in the terms of we, because you want to be respectful and thoughtful and conscientious of your partner and their feelings and have them included in your life and vice versa. I always hear from the young guys who go out there and they adopt this lifestyle and tasting the rainbow and getting involved in swipe life and they want to get involved with many different people and try to have this honest conversation of dating around but you do get attached to people and I always get the question of how do I make this breakup easy or how can I just go through this breakup and not have to worry about it? Well, I'm sorry. That's just not how relationships work. You are going to be upset. You are going to be missing somebody and and you're going to be hurting somebody else. After a relationship, there are two people that sustain damage and need to heal. First of all, the damage that you sustain from the breakup subsides and then there's the processing of that damage and then working to feel whole again and to be ready to go out there and start dating again. Because if you go out and date too soon, you're pulling somebody in to the mess that you're living in. Now, that may feel good for you because at least in a selfish way you're thinking, I don't have to go through this by myself. I have somebody that I can lean on. The issue with that is that other person becomes a vector for for your pain, how you feel, how you're trying to get over this. And what happens is we tend to try to make other people that person that we're missing. So most importantly, give yourself space so that you can begin this process. I feel like there's two frustrations that occur here with this withdrawal symptom. So the first is I'm in withdrawal. I need to feel love again. So running back into the dating pool without actually healing yourself and trying to fill that hole with someone new. And that leads to the swipe life, the emptiness. And it's very hard when you're in withdrawal to make reasonable decisions for yourself, for that next partner. The other side of the coin is often in that withdrawal, we're going to still chase the person that just left us. We're going to follow them on social media obsessively. We're going to try to win them back by gifts or changing ourselves in some big way externally focused on becoming a better version of ourselves to win them back. And both of those roads lead to further heartbreak when we're feeling this withdrawal internally. And we have to be cognizant that the science shows we're in withdrawal. And if you are in withdrawal in a drug treatment program, they wouldn't swap cocaine for heroin. They wouldn't say, oh, great. We got you off this drug. Let's hop on another drug. Let's go chase that love drug in another way. And they also wouldn't say, okay, well, you've been clean for a month now. Okay, you can go back to experimenting with that drug. There's a rule in recovery that you're not supposed to be dating for. I believe it is a whole year while you go through this process because you're just bringing somebody in to the mess that you're going through. And that puts damage on the other person. The other thing is if you were the one that had gotten broken up with, or you have done that and you begin to miss the person that you had broke up with, you begin to turn inward and get angry. And dating angry is no way of going about that because you go out with the sole intention of getting even. And that will result and manifest itself in many different ways, usually harm to the new person that's walking into your life or to yourself. And it's very easy to get caught up and wanting to numb yourself of all the pain that you're feeling. And misery loves company. So if we're dating angry, we're going to attract a partner who's also in that emotional state, who is also probably raw and not a good fit for us. So we have to create space in our life to heal. And the first thing we need to do to start to heal is we need to focus on our physical health. Moving your body in exercise is what is recommended in drug withdrawal situations. Healing your body is also recommended in a love withdrawal situation. Not only is it going to make you feel more confident, you're going to become that better version of yourself physically, but it's going to release the neurotransmitters that we need to get through the pain and the withdrawal symptoms that we're feeling having lost this person. Now, a pro tip here is, and it's very common for a lot of our podcast listeners or even our X Factor Accelerator members to go into lone wolf mode and go, okay, AJ, I'm going to get physically fit. I'm going to ride a bike 100 miles on my own. I'm going to go hike a mountain on my own. I'm going to go hit the gym with my headphones in on my own. But a pro tip that's actually going to be the most successful for you is to engage in group physical fitness activities. So one of our X Factor members, Brian, when he joined us coming out of a divorce, he wanted to lose some weight. He had gained some weight and he realized that he wanted to be a better version of himself in the dating pool. And he started cycling. He had bought a Peloton that he hadn't really used during the pandemic, so he hopped on it and he lost 30 pounds. And he was doing great, but he was cycling alone. So the Peloton is great when you're in your own house, but it didn't really provide much opportunity for him to inspire his social life, to meet like-minded people and potentially welcome some new dating options in. So I encouraged him to check out Orange Theory, group physical fitness activities. And I know that we've talked about Barry's Bootcamp and we're avid fitness class members and participants. And just going to one class a week, he was able to start to build a tribe of like-minded people who are focused on growth, which physical fitness is a big part of growth activity. And he started to work his social muscle in a more fun, relaxed environment than just throwing himself back out into the bar or throwing himself out socializing without a game plan or anything in common, which can be the most scary. So when we look at this withdrawal science, so we look at what's going on having lost love in our life, it's easy to fall into the trap of just throwing yourself back in the dating life. Fill that hole with someone new, which is empty and doesn't heal you, or the opposite, which is buying after the person you just lost and focus on how to win them back, which they might not be a good fit for you if you went through a breakup originally. So path three that we encourage our X Factor Accelerate members to take and a lot of our clients have found a ton of success with is actually focusing on physical health, healing your body, getting your confidence back physically and engaging in social group activities that involve physical fitness to start to rebuild yourself. And for a lot of our audience, you guys are busy. You have careers. So figuring out how to get somebody else in your life or it's spending a lot of time going out there and chasing other people. It's not fair to yourself. And it's certainly not fair to anyone that you're going to bring into your life. When I was younger, before I got involved in self development, I was working in the bar industry. I was a bartender, bar manager, talent buyer, doing all that and playing in bands and touring. And anytime that I had gotten myself out of a relationship because I was out, because I was in a bar scenario, my plan was, well, I could just drink my way through it or just start dating somebody else. And it always ended in disaster. The one way of trying to numb myself through it only prolonged that process and hurt myself along the way. And then, of course, dating other people, it was always a disaster. I was looking for somebody who was like the other person or trying to change the person that I was dating to be more like the other person. We're just being critical of this person because I was just so attached to the other person that I was dating. That's why this processing phase is incredibly important because you're going to need to learn and grow through this process and come out on the other side better, faster, smarter about who you are and what you want. So this next relationship will be more fruitful. And we have to be honest here. If you've been in a long-term relationship, you've gotten really comfortable with your partner, you haven't been in the dating game or the dating market for a while, the scariest next step is facing rejection. We know that a relationship is safety and comfort. Ideally, you're not with a partner who's rejecting you on a daily basis, a weekly basis, or even a monthly basis. That's not a healthy relationship. So a challenge after you start working on your physical health is how do I start to deal with the rejection in dating? And I know, Michael, you have some great science here on what is actually going on with rejection and our version to it. And then we're going to talk about how you can get over that rejection so you can put yourself out there. Yeah, so when it comes to rejection, there are two things that you kind of need to prepare yourself for. One is the curious fact that getting rejected feels just the same as physical pain. That's weird to think that way, but there was a really interesting study done by Ethan Cross on his team, and it's called the Social Rejection Shares, Somatosensory Representations with Physical Pain. And the same thing as Helen Fisher's team, they put participants into an fMRI scanner and they had them look at a headshot of their formal partner and then think through what caused the rejection and what that was like. Then they compared that to a second experiment where, again, they had them in the fMRI scanner and they called this the Hot Trials. They exposed their left forearm to a noxious thermal stimulation. You can think of this as the equivalent of spilling hot coffee over your arm. It's hurtful, but it doesn't really do damage. So let me applaud the participants of this experiment. I hope they got paid well for having to go through this. But what they found out in the scanner is that, again, the same brain region lit up in both situations when they were thinking about the rejection experience and when they had this pain induced on their forearm. So you kind of need to prepare yourself, like Johnny said earlier, that rejection hurts. This is part of the game. You probably, if you find yourself in social situations, rejection is just a part of that. You can get a lot better at this by working on your social skills, working on your conversation skills, working on your body language. But in the end, there's always rejection that's going to get in the way there every once in a while. So prepare yourself for that air quote pain because it's going to come your way. It's actually a sign that you're out there, that you're doing something because otherwise you wouldn't find yourself getting rejected. But to add yet another downfall when it comes to rejection, and this is Roy Baumeister and his team in a study from 2002 called Effects of Social Exclusion on Cognitive Processes, Anticipated Unlownness, reduces intelligent thought. What they found out, so they did again, like these poor participants in these studies, so they had two experiments that they ran. In one, they let people get to know each other and then they split the groups and they said, okay, please tell me with which of the, like pick two people with whom you talked that you would like to work with, just write down their names. And then that poor participant was told, I'm sorry, no one picked you. And in another study, they were asked to fill out a questionnaire and then they were either told that they're going to live a great life with family and friends because they have the skills, or they were told, well, according to the survey and the way you filled this out, you're most likely going to die alone in misery. And then they again checked, like what happened to those participants? And it turned out that they had an immediate drop in reasoning after hearing this, after hearing this, after getting rejected like this, they had an immediate drop in reasoning by 30% and their IQ dropped by 25%. And what Roy Baumeister concluded in this paper is that we found that randomly assigning students to rejection experiences can lower their IQ scores and make them aggressive. So prepare yourself for those feelings that are going to come your way. It's just going to happen. This totally makes sense and it is why people will try to do everything to avoid rejection. And this is why dating apps had become so popular because now I don't have to worry about going out to the bar and approaching this woman that I find attractive and putting myself out there. I can just join Swipe Life and see if I get some matches. But the reality of this is that people, and I hear it all the time, if they don't have their profile set up properly, they don't have good pictures, they're not going to get matches. So many people come to us saying that they are over online dating, they're giving up on it. In fact, they're giving up on dating in total due to being demoralized throughout this process. And it is easy to become like that. Yeah, so there's something really interesting about how rejection affects us. And this is something that we go into in the unstoppable course where we talk about what's called a social threat response. And this goes all the way back in human psychology, back to when we were hunters and gatherers. Why are we so afraid of rejection? Why does rejection have such painful effects on us? Because back in the day, when you were living in a hunter and gatherer society, getting rejected pretty much meant you're going to die. Because if you're ostracized from the tribe, you're out there in the jungle all by yourself, you are going to die. That's just what's going to happen. So we had our genes evolve in a way that said, do anything possible so you don't get rejected. Even if I have to throw pain in the mix. Even if I have to make you more aggressive. Even if I have you to dumb you down for a little bit afterwards. Like your genes will do whatever it takes to have you avoid getting rejected. Now, all of that is of course no longer relevant in the 21st century. There's now thousands of people out there in your town, in your city alone. But our brain, our genes still work like that. They say rejection that's dangerous. Avoid this at all costs. Whether it means you're obsessing about this person, whether you're obsessively following them on social media. You're scared to talk to new people. That's all your 200,000 year old genes trying to protect you. And it makes complete sense looking at the study. A lot of our clients are highly analytical, highly skilled. And when you go on an app and you go on that first date and that person doesn't want to see you a second time or you work up the courage, you walk over there, you try your best to approach and strike up a conversation. And it doesn't go well. It's easy to feel angry. Science shows, aggression goes up. And it's also easy to feel dumb, to feel like why is this not working? What's going on here? I know I'm a great person. I have all this awesome stuff going on. Why is this approach not working? And as Johnny highlighted, well, your strategy online needs some work. Probably need a profile audit and redo. You need better pictures. And your conversation skills on that approach and nonverbal skills need work and improvement to not only allow yourself to be more effective and to strike up a conversation and generate attraction, but also realize that in these moments of repeated rejection, your anger is going up and you're feeling less in control because scientifically speaking, we're lowering our IQ when we're facing this rejection repeatedly. So it can feel overwhelming and you can feel lost coming out of a relationship and not having been in the dating game for a while and start facing rejection either out on the street or out at the bar or online. And in that lost sensation, it's easy then to just give up and say, I'm writing off online dating. I'm screw dating in general. And we saw this study that 66% of men are not in committed relationships while most women in the study, 30 and under, are in relationships and men are getting more and more frustrated. So the science is working against us. Our strategies are not aligning to help us be more effective and more attractive version of ourselves. And what we don't want to see is you get in a downward spiral and just completely remove yourself from the dating pool because that's not an effective strategy. Well, how many times can you put yourself out there and get rejected and keep your head up? After a while, you slowly start to feel defeated, frustrated, and that's when you're frustrated, you become tired. When you're frustrated and tired, that's when your inner critic has free reign to beat the hell out of you. And it will because now you're working with a data set that doesn't look very good, that shows rejection. It is beating you up. And now, as I mentioned, your inner critic is going to town. And think about what it takes to leave a relationship. Especially if it's been a marriage that has been going on for a decade plus or even a long-term relationship that has been going on for a few years. By the time you get to a point that you have to pull the plug and end the relationship, a lot of damage in the relationship has already taken place. And for the guys out there, your first thought is, do I still have it? Or the one thing that can make me feel better in this moment is to share it and to be with somebody else. So I know that no matter what, everything is going to be okay. And we've already discussed in the earlier part that the worst thing you can do is immediately go out there and start dating again. That is working against you. That's why taking space, creating some space and taking some time to process is so important. And then, while you're getting physically fit and processing the trauma that you have just left, this is a great time to then start looking at that profile and at what skills that you can be developing to make yourself a better person because you're going to need it when you dive back into the dating pool and being out there and dating. And I hear from the young folks all the time they're like, it's hard out there dating with everything that is going on and how culture has changed. And I've been watching some of the younger Gen Z dating shows just to see what the kids are going through and what they're talking about. At this point, I'm 49. I'm Gen X. I didn't have to deal with any of what this younger generation has to deal with in the dating market due to the technology and how it has warped everyone's perceptions of reality and what healthy relationships look like. You're going to have to toughen yourself up before you go back out there because Michael has already dropped the science that that rejection comes in the form of pain and it drops your IQ and it makes you angry. Right? So you need to be able to inoculate yourself and toughen yourself up so you can maneuver through that damage. And let's be honest, the dating market has shifted and there are now more options available for each and every one of us than ever before. Not to date you, Johnny, but online dating was not a thing when you were in your 20s. There was no online. No, it wasn't. You had to go out in the neighborhood. You had to rely on friends and family to introduce you to people. You had to go out on your own. But with the number of options that are available to us, we can't just rely on one strategy to find that mate any longer. You can't say I'm only going to online date or I'm only going to do it in person. You have to be working on both of those areas. You have to be working on your conversation skills. You have to be working on your online dating profile to supplement your dating efforts in an environment where everyone is at the cheesecake factory and the menu is 7,000 pages long and there's options right around the corner. It's one swipe away. It's one more opportunity to meet someone. How do you stand out when everyone has more optionality than ever before? You have to be working on your charisma and you have to be working on your online dating profile to give yourself an advantage, to give yourself a chance to succeed in this new dating world. So when we look at the profile and it's one of the first things Heather or Coach does when you join X Factor Accelerator, we look at, well, what are you putting on your profile? How are you explaining yourself? What is that version of you that you're putting online? Do you have great photos? Are they engaging? Do they draw interest in? But if you just rely on your online dating profile, well, what happens on the first date? How does that conversation go? How do you lead? How do you escalate? What happens at the end of that date? How do you get the second date? How do you get to see that person again? If you don't have the charisma and you don't have the confidence of working with Michael and unstoppable in X Factor, you're not going to survive the rejection that goes along with going on dates and going after and chasing options in your dating life. So we need to be working on ourself. We need to be working on our skills and we need to be working on our online dating profile to be successful in today's dating market. You have to be able to talk about this stuff as well. I mean, working through it, talking with somebody is going to help you go through all the bumps and bruises that you're... Well, I'm glad you mentioned that because Elon, when he joined the program here in LA, he was going on dates, but he wasn't really happy with his options and he was struggling in online dating. And one of the things that he was most frustrated by was that his friends were in committed relationships and they were married. And they couldn't really commiserate with him. They couldn't really relate to what he was going through in the online and in-person dating market currently because they were in relationships. And how often is that happening to you as you listen to this? You come out of a breakup, but your friends are in relationships. Well, they're not going to help you in approaching that person that you're interested in. They're not going to take a look at your online dating profile and give you valid feedback. They're happy in a committed relationship. So often we find X-Factor members joining because they just feel not only lost but unsupported in their current social circle because everyone around them is not going through that same breakup or loss that they're experiencing. And those who had been in the dating market, well, that was 10 years ago. Lots changed after a divorce. So even if your friends are trying to give you advice, it's dated. It's not helpful. They haven't encountered the apps. They haven't been on any of it. And what Elon found in joining not only improving his online dating profile but was most exciting is he actually made friends within X-Factor Accelerator to go out with and socialize with and the newfound conversation skills he brought to his work and it advanced his film career. So when you start working on yourself, and I know it's easy listening to this to be like, Oh, I don't need to work on these skills. I'm doing okay in the dating realm. It has a spillover effect. You grow your social circle. You actually move ahead in your career because you're more confident. You're not beat down from the rejection in the pain that you're feeling in your dating life that follows you into work on Monday. That follows you that is that hangover effect. So when you actually start getting successful in your dating life, you start to walk into work more confidently. You start to find yourself being more social and more open to building and fostering new relationships outside of just romance. I just I want to add to that as well. Here's a scenario that isn't going to happen. And this is what I mean, it can, but let's the reality of this is going to be a very slim chance that this is going to happen. So you exit your relationship. You start to look around for people who are going out who are dating that you can talk to about this stuff. You realize that your friends, they're in committed relationships. They're married. They don't want to hear about your dating woes. In fact, that's the last thing. And what what inevitably happens as you start to look at your your friend who's in a great relationship and you start to look at his partner and you're like, I wonder if she's got some friends that she can hook me up with. And so you start poking around and that is like, Hey, you know, Sarah, you know, I've always thought you're really cool. You know, you guys have such a good relationship. Don't you have any single friends? And I will tell you her response upstairs in her mind is, the hell am I introducing you to any of my friends after what you what I just heard you go through? Oh, hell no. And so and we've well, we're going to be discussing weak ties and how these things play a role in you creating options. My last point in all of this is it's easy in the face of that rejection to see your IQ being lowered to see the aggression going up to feel lost and confused and frustrated and not understand why after that first date where you were feeling so great, the other person doesn't want to see you again. That spark that interest that attraction was not there. And I just had this conversation with Jason in X Factor Accelerator Session where he had a great first date and they had built all this rapport and he messaged her after the date was excited to see her again and she said I didn't feel the spark. And as we talked about building attraction in the three step process in X Factor Accelerator to create that spark where you having fun were you challenging and was their sexual tension created on that date. He started realizing that well, I had fun and he over indexed on fun and in over indexing on fun he became very agreeable and then there was no sexual tension by the end of the date. They actually became friends by having a lot in common. So when you don't actually understand the science of sparking attraction you don't understand how on that first date you can actually create the spark of interest that you need. It's easy in the face of this rejection to feel lost and overwhelmed. And as Johnny said then only try to rely on your network and your social connections for dating. And that is going to lead to even more frustration. Imagine the frustration I'm going to feel is once you're not willing to put yourself out there anymore and then you're going to lean on your network but yet you're still burning through leads, right? There's only so many times that your buddy's wife is going to hook you up with a friend and she's like, wow, that's the last time I do that for your for your buddy Mark. It's like I dig the guy I want to help him out but not to the detriment of my relationships with my friends. This is why it is so important to have this handled on your end. But here's the other point to this. When you have a working mindset that allows you to throw yourself out there and take those lumps and be entertained by it and have fun with it you become invincible to that rejection. When you develop mindsets and a knowledge for understanding how to communicate and connect with people you're not hoping that your interactions go well. You're not hoping that the date goes well. You're going to enjoy yourself and to be your best and to have a great time. So rather than being perplexed when you come back like AJ was saying about Jason, you get home going. I totally nailed that date. That was rad. Hope she's interested in going again. We'll see what happens while she makes up her mind. I have another date later this week. Exactly. And that's really the three-prong approach. When you get more comfortable approaching attractive people in your daily life when you improve your online dating profile and create options there and you have a healthy social life you're getting options there. Rejection becomes a lot less painful because you have options. When there's only one date you've been on in the last two weeks and that doesn't go well the thought of going on another date the thought of sending another message online is daunting, is painful. You feel dumb. You feel angry scientifically from that rejection. And when there's no other options on the horizon it's easy to give up. And what we want to talk about last is something that we see a lot of our X Factor Accelerator members bootcamp participants facing after a breakup. And Johnny you touched on this earlier. When you've been in a committed relationship with someone you start the we and your friends become shared. You have a social circle that includes your significant other and their friends and sometimes you may even stop spending as much time with your friends and distance grows. You become disconnected. Maybe your friends are single and now you're in this committed relationship and you're putting all of your effort and energy and time spent together to foster this relationship and you come out of a breakup realizing you don't have a great social circle. You don't have a wolf pack to go out with and meet new people. You don't have people that you can talk about your dating life with. You are in a situation where it's work and it was the significant other. And now you're in a situation where you don't have that vibrant social life and this is a huge pitfall because even if that first date goes amazing and they want to see you again you are not going to be an attractive option if you don't have a social life. If you've put everything into your career and then you've solely focused on finding the one but you don't have that group of friends. You don't have those events, those people to introduce this partner to. You don't have an active social life that keeps those boundaries up from you over committing and only spending time with this one person you just met. You're going to again struggle in the dating life and science shows that having a healthy social life actually improves your dating life, right Michael? Well that's what the national survey of health and social life found. This is also known as the Chicago Sex Survey by the way just to get your attention here. And what they did was they interviewed three and a half thousand people between 18 and 59 years old and this is considered one of the most accurate and complete studies about the romantic and sexual behavior in the United States. So it's an interesting read. What they found in this study is what they were really interested in, among other things, is how people met their partners. Whether we're talking about a marriage or whether we're talking about a one night stand. 68% of romantic encounters happened because the two love birds got introduced by someone they both knew. 68%. So in most cases they were introduced by a friend or a family member. They were introduced by coworkers, by classmates, by neighbors. And only 32% of those encounters happened through someone introducing themselves. 68%. That's a lot. And it makes sense that your friends, your social circle introduces you because these romantic encounters that you're meeting there, these romantic interests that you get introduced to, they're known as weak ties. You're not directly connected to them, but you're connected to them through someone else. It's probably safe to assume that your friend, someone who's close to you, someone who's in your life, has a lot with you in common. Maybe just like you, they love the outdoors. Maybe just like you, they love board games. They love going to the movies. They love going and working out. So there's a good chance that the friend of your friend has those same interests. And boom, you got something in common to do, to talk about, to laugh about. And also the other thing that comes in here with those weak ties is if your friend thinks that this could be a good fit, there's a really good chance that this is a good fit because your friend knows you. That's the difference between talking to someone randomly at a bar or at a concert. I mean, yes, you have something in common. You're at the same bar. You're at the same concert. But your friend, your buddy is saying, hey, this person, I think I should introduce you. Like you would be a good fit, right? That is a five star recommendation that you're starting this contact, the stating, this relationship off with. Earlier, we were discussing to not rely on your married friends for these introductions. And what you're talking about, Michael, is a lot of these relationships come from loose ties from those very relationships. Exactly. So what I want to frame here is an understanding that those loose ties are opportunities that you have created for yourself, being a high value person who is contributing and participating in a community where other people see you as somebody, they want to introduce you to other people, right? They see you as a high value people. They know that you're a high value person. They know the work that you do. You are dependable. They can trust you that you have to create that community and those opportunities. And you do that through what we talk about here at the Art of Charm, which is called the social sales funnel that basically puts you at the center of your community. And there's a key takeaway from the study that it has to be highlighted here. These weak ties create opportunities, not only for marriage, but even casual dating and even one night stands. So even if you're coming out of a breakup, you're like, hey, AJ, Michael, Johnny, I'm not ready to get married. Like I just got out of a divorce. I'm just looking to casually date. I'm just looking for some opportunities to put myself back out there. Weak ties provide that. So I know when we hear matchmaker, we think, oh, I don't want to go on that date with a friend of a friend because I'm not sure where I'm at. I've had healthy, casual encounters and opportunities in my friend group without spoiling anything by, as Johnny said, being a high value person and being honest about what I want. And that other person might be going through a breakup and might also just want to be putting themselves out there and looking for some fun. So don't write off your network and your weak ties as, oh, the matchmaker's trying to set us up for life and I'm not ready for marriage. I'm not ready for a committed relationship. The science actually shows when you're honest, when you're authentic, these weak ties create relationship opportunities on all ends of the spectrum. And that's huge because so many of our clients go, okay, AJ, I don't want to burn my friends and I really just want to work on online dating because I want to avoid rejection. By skipping your health and by skipping your social life, you're actually setting yourself up for more failure. So if you're finding yourself lost, coming out of a relationship, your weak ties have been obliterated. They're all connected to your significant other, your ex-spouse. And now you're starting over, you're starting fresh. We want to walk you through a simple strategy that's going to enliven your social life, that's going to renew your social life and create more weak ties. But I know, Johnny, there are a couple of things we need to keep in mind. Most importantly, you have a career. You have a life. You can't be going out every night and trying to make things happen because that's going to take you off of your path, your career path. So what we want to do is create the social sales funnel to get the most effort, we'll get the most out of the effort and energy that you're going to put into it. But also to be intentional. This is the part that is important. If you're intentional when you're going out and what you are doing and what you are looking for, then your effort and energy won't be wasted. If you don't have intention, if there's no mission tied behind it, going out, putting in all this work is going to feel like you're spinning your wheels. And if you're taking some hits along the way, putting yourself out there, getting rejection, it is only going to speed up that process to where you're tired and frustrated and your inner critic has free reign to beat you up. Yeah, when Chris joined the X Factor Accelerator, he is in a committed relationship as a financial advisor, but he had moved to a new town. His biggest frustration was he was just going out on a nightly basis, trying to find connections, trying to meet new people. And he wasn't into the sports teams in that new town. He really didn't like drinking. It was not big on his list, but he felt, well, that's the only place to meet people is to go out, go out randomly and try to just work towards meeting as many people as possible. And he was hoping to build a social circle, but also help his career prospects and get some business. And one simple change that he made was actually focusing on events that had a shared experience that he enjoyed. So being physically fit, drinking really wasn't high on his list, so going to bars isn't really a great strategy for someone like Chris. So what did we do? We got him to join a run club. And just a simple act of meeting the run club on a weekly basis and using propinquity, which is familiarity, seeing the same people over and over again and having some fun together and physical activity, which is bonding, after the run, they would go have a beer at the local micro brew. And he got a non-alcoholic beer, but now instead of going out at night and chasing people who just want to drink, he was actually hanging around people who were focused on their physical fitness, who knew how to just have one drink and call it a day or to go out to lunch after. And he enlivened his social circle, moving in a married couple to a new town, neither party, the spouse or him, having much of a social circle. So the strategy we're about to share, even if you're not coming out of a breakup, is so powerful and it's worked for so many of our clients. So this is why the first thing that we have our clients go through is a very introspective part of the X factor to understand what our core values are and what it is that we have as our North Star that we're going to focus on as we build this new community, which you will be the center of, creating a high value persona of somebody who is a connector, who is knowledgeable and who can support the people within that community. So if you think about a funnel, right, a funnel is wide at the top, collects a lot of options, opportunities, and it actually gets narrow at the bottom so that it creates a steady stream. So from randomized droplets at the top of the funnel to a steady stream at the bottom, how can we use this in our social life to start to build a social circle? Well, we have to commit to going out and meeting new people, right? We're not going to build a social circle by sitting on our couch, by watching Netflix, by binging the Art of Charm podcast. As much as I wish that would be effective for you, we know it's not. So we have to commit to going out and socializing, but we want to make sure that we're setting ourselves up for success. And as Michael said, just going out and meeting a random selection of people each and every night, facing that rejection from strangers, you're not highly likely to find a lot of people that are a great connection for you, that have similarities and interests and are actually going about life on their own mission that you could be a part of. So as Johnny said, we have to identify what our core values are. What's really meaningful to us? What's guiding us? Is it physical health and maybe it's fitness? Is it entrepreneurship? Then maybe it's a networking event. Can you find a hobby or a passion or pursuit that has a social activity tied to it? Maybe it's golf for me or hiking or joining a run club, as we talked about. These opportunities to meet new, like-minded people who share a common interest is the top of the funnel step. I like the two-to-one rule where we commit to one social activity a week for every two dates that we go on. So as you're getting your dating life back in order, you can't tip the balance only to romance. You have to commit to at least going out and socializing once a week. That could be after work, that could be on the weekend, but in that top of the funnel activity, we're meeting and connecting with new people. Now, here's where we start to qualify and we narrow our focus with that funnel and we start to filter in the right high value people for us. We commit to hosting once a month an activity that we can invite people to. And this activity can be a hike together. It could be a run. It could be a mountain bike excursion. It could be a dinner party. It could be a poker night. But you are the host. You are the connector. You are inviting people into an activity that you enjoy. And what that does is it creates a filtering step. So you're not spinning your wheels, spending a lot of time chasing after social options and social connections with people who aren't like-minded, who don't enjoy the same things, who you're probably not going to share a great connection with. So if I invite 10 people to poker night and six of them pass on that poker night, I have four people who enjoy poker who I got together. I have an opportunity now with a limited amount of time, that one poker night, to start to spark real connections with people that I met at a run club, that I met on the golf course, that I met at the meet-up event. And in that opportunity of inviting people in, I've provided an opportunity for them to get a better sense who I am, but not doing it one-on-one, not spinning my wheels chasing people for a beer or for a dinner or for a coffee in a one-on-one setting, which is not a very efficient use of my time. So that hosting is the second step of the funnel. We're committing to one social activity to find like-minded people. We're inviting them to one group activity a month in your life or your hosting. And what comes out of that event, the bottom of the funnel, is an opportunity for the right people to be filtered into your life, to go to dinner with, to invite on that trip, to actually spend more quality time alone with. So we're meeting tons of people, creating options in our life at the top of the funnel. We're hosting events to start to filter in the right people for ourselves. And then at the bottom of the funnel, the people who had a great time at the event, the people who we felt a natural inclination and connection for, we then commit to inviting to dinner, hanging out with on our boat, taking out in a one-on-one fashion. That's how you start to foster and build a real social circle in a new area, coming out of a breakup, not knowing very many people. So you're basically making rejection work for you, because if you invite 10 people to poker night that you brought in through the first stage in the funnel, and six of them don't reply or they don't show up or they flake out or whatever, rejection works for you because you don't want to invest more time into those that didn't reply, didn't invite you back to another event or whatever. You're bringing in a lot of people and then you bring in rejection. And you let rejection sort out those that should not go on a one-on-one event, occasion, doing something together, whatever it may be. You don't want them there because you only have a limited amount of time. And why not spend that limited amount of time with high value people that like you for being you and that like to help you out and that like to spend time with you? And that won't work with every single person you bring into that funnel because there's so many of them. You need rejection. Rejection is like a high five. Okay, great. I know I can probably like take those names off of my list. That's a great thing. In that rejection, there's a really incredible moment that happens. It's called the power of the invite. When you get comfortable inviting people into your life, you unlock reciprocity. And what happens is even if of the six people who said no to the poker night, they didn't, they rejected you in that moment. They didn't come to your event. You're now top of mind for them to invite you to something going on in their life, the baseball game, the mountain bike trip, the new restaurant opening down the street. So even in that rejection, you've planted the seed of I want to connect with you. I want to foster a relationship with you that bumps you up the top of their list to invite in the future. And I found this reciprocity to be so powerful even in the face of rejection. Those people now see me as someone who's trying to connect, who wants a relationship, who's looking to grow my social circle, and they're going to think of me when they have an opportunity to invite someone somewhere. So three points before we go into the summary of everything that we went through today that this takes care of. Number one, it creates a space for you to get well, to get physically fit, and to heal yourself from the trauma of getting out of one relationship. This allows you to get active, be social again, get back out there and be meeting people. And then lastly, creating options in your life so that you have the power in the dating market. And it can feel daunting, especially if you feel like your interests or your passions or hobbies are unique. So when Eric joined the X Factor Accelerator, he was coming out of a relationship and he had let his social ties wane and they festered and he didn't know how to reconnect with them. In the process, he also quit drinking. So he had changed a lot of his personal life and his habits and things that he enjoyed. And he was very nervous around, how do I reconnect to these friends who only knew me as the social drinker, who only knew me in the bar setting. And we worked together to understand Eric's mission. And Eric has a powerful draw and propensity and interest in sustainability. It's something that he had woven into his career and it's something that even in his hobbies and his passions and his pursuit and volunteering in his local area was top of mind and very important to him. And this cause became a rallying cry and a mission for him. So his social sales funnel event actually involved inviting people he was meeting outside of the bar to go do some volunteer work and sustainability and environmental work in his local area. And what that did was that created a dynamic where he was meeting people. He was inviting them to something that was really important to him and they felt connected to that shared mission. And then he was spending time going to dinner with them or going on walks or going on a canoe trip after inviting them to that social connection opportunity that involves sustainability. So even if you feel like, AJ, I only really like this random video game or I'm not really into running or I don't like sports or I hate drinking, we can work together with you to define that mission for you, create an opportunity to invite people to share in that mission in your life and filter in the right people. It's not to say that Eric didn't face rejection from some of the people he invited to his sustainability charity work, but in the face of that rejection, he actually got invited to do some pretty cool non-sustainability stuff outside of what he had thought was possible in his social life. And that's really the power when we start to heal ourselves physically, we get neurotransmitters working to our advantage to overcome the pain that we're feeling from that loss. We set ourselves up for success with creating space in our life to get in the online dating world. We work through the rejection of approaching new people and we start to build a social circle that creates those weak ties. We have a three-legged stool to be successful in this new dating environment where options are endless, where attention is scarce. How are you standing out from the crowd to find the one for you?