There Is No Ozempic for Dating!

The Love U Podcast with Evan Marc Katz

What You’ll Hear:

• Evan explains why there is no shortcut to finding lasting love, despite the appeal of quick fixes like dating apps or matchmaking services.

• The powerful metaphor comparing winning the lottery to how most people approach love—and why that strategy rarely works.

• Why dating is a skill set that, like any other, requires time, effort, and learning to master.

• The hard truth: Many people keep repeating the same dating patterns while hoping for different results.

• The story of a woman who overcame fear from an abusive marriage, learned how to date effectively, and is now thriving in the online dating world.

• The common mistake of assuming the right app or more dates will magically solve your love life.

• The dangers of “interviewing” men on first dates instead of having fun and building connection.

• Why it’s essential to develop self-awareness to avoid inadvertently turning men off or sabotaging your chances.

• The importance of enjoying dating—if you hate dating, you’re unlikely to succeed at it.

• How shifting your mindset about dating from a temporary fix to a sustainable, joyful habit can completely change your results.

• A crucial reminder that you are the common denominator in your love life, and you have the power to improve your dating outcomes.

• Encouragement to stop chasing shortcuts and start focusing on becoming the best version of yourself to attract better men.

Full Episode Transcript:
Hey, this is Evan Marc Katz, dating and relationship coach for smart, strong, successful women. You’re a personal trainer for love.

Welcome back to the Love U podcast. I’m very excited for today’s episode. We’re not literally talking about ozempic.

We are talking about shortcuts and why everybody wants a shortcut to love when there in fact is no shortcut to love any more than there’s a shortcut in any other aspect of your life. I will liberally use metaphors and examples that will illustrate my point in a more powerful way than I could if I were a smarter person. But I want you to stick around to hear why this is so important.

Part of the biggest problem people have when it comes to love is that they’re hoping for the shortcut and are perpetually surprised that the shortcut doesn’t lead them to better outcomes. And that is not unique to women. And that is a man thing as well.

If you are a regular Love U podcast listener, thank you for listening. I’m very, very grateful. I could not do this if it were not for you to be able to do this every single week, sometimes multiple times a week.

So thank you. Thank you for your kind reviews. Thank you for subscribing on various channels.

I appreciate it. Um, quick reminder, next installment of the Extraordinary Love Series is coming up. A lecture, live Q&A on the topic: The Power of Feminine Energy: How to Inspire a Man to Pursue You

That is coming up in a couple of weeks. Go to extraordinaryloveseries.com and register. Join now probably over 400 people for that blessed event.

Now we’ll start off with the big, most obvious metaphor. Do you want to be a millionaire? I think most people would like to be a millionaire. And so if you’re going to try to become a millionaire and you, that dawns upon you at a young age, that that is one of your goals in life.

Well, there are multiple paths to achieving that goal, which is pretty exciting. And there’s not just one way to do it. You could save money from the time you’re a little kid and start putting $5 away every single month from the time that you’re five years old and compound interest and a little wise saving over the years.

You could well be a millionaire just by saving regularly at an extraordinary young age. You could find a passion when you’re really young and do a deep dive and become really great at something when you’re young and be very, very specialized because you know what you want to do. You could start in the mail room.

I started in the mail room of a talent agency, pushing a mail cart wearing a suit when I was 23 years old or something like that. You could work your way up the corporate ladder that way in an industry and keep starting at the bottom and eating humble pie. And the next thing you know, you could be one of the top brass at the company.

You can choose some competitive high upside field, field venture capital, law, medicine, finance, et cetera. There’s, you know, there’s high burnout and failure rate, but there’s definitely a path to wealth if you take that route. You could take a risk.

You could start your own thing. You can be an entrepreneur, right? When I failed at screenwriting my high risk, high reward career, I hung out a shingle as a dating coach 22 years ago and got lucky and cultivated and turned it into something. So what’s not on the list of how to become a millionaire? Playing the lottery.

That’s not on the list of how to become a millionaire. Why not? It’s faster than any of the things I was talking about and things that you built over decades. The problem is there’s a really, really low chance of winning the lottery and that’s, I can’t think of a better parallel for a conversation about love.

Most women I know, and again, I’m only talking about women because I’m a dating coach for women. I could have the same conversation about men. Most women want to win the love lottery and I do not blame you buying a $1 ticket to get a massive payoff and being set for life is far easier than doing 2000 billable hours at a law firm over the course of 25 years.

But we also have to acknowledge there are a lot more and we’re talking probably hundreds of thousands of successful lawyers, right? As opposed to lottery winners. And so I’m laying out both of these paths parallel so you could see upfront that this actually overlays really neatly onto people’s path to love. Everybody wants to find a partner and live happily ever after.

Nobody, nobody wants to put any time, energy, or God forbid, money into this. Fascinating, right? We’ll spend a dollar on a lottery ticket or we’ll spend six figures on a law school education, business school education. That will theoretically make you more money and pay itself back.

We’re willing to invest in that when it comes to dating and relationships. All we want is the lottery ticket, right? So you swipe, you get on, you download a free app, you swipe, you send a couple texts, you go on a bunch of shitty blind dates and determine, and this is everybody, that the only reason you’re still single is that you haven’t met the right person, right? It’s just a numbers game. Just haven’t met the right person.

So I’m going to keep on doing the thing that I’ve been doing that hasn’t been working. Maybe it’s a different app. Maybe Hinge isn’t the right app.

Maybe I should go on Bumble. No, Bumble’s not the right app. Maybe I should try Tinder.

No, Tinder’s not right. Maybe I should try Match. Match isn’t right.

Maybe I should try a Matchmaker. And all we’re doing is looking for someone to hand you the right person. That’s rarely how it works.

Let’s flip it around. Think of a guy. It’s not about you now, because I know when I talk about it, it makes people feel defensive.

So it’s not about you now. Now it’s about a guy and it’s a good guy. It’s a guy who really wants to be a good husband, wants to be a good partner, has a ton to offer.

Now let’s say that guy goes on a first date and doesn’t pick up the check. Do you think if he goes on a hundred more Tinder dates that he’s going to have more success? No, he’s going to be the same guy who inadvertently alienates women by not picking up the check and a hundred more dates. It’s not going to solve this problem.

If there’s a guy who dresses like a 13 year old boy or an 80 year old man, he’s not going to inspire much attraction with women. It doesn’t matter if he hires the world’s greatest matchmaker to hand him a partner. His presentation is getting in the way of making a connection with someone, whether that’s fair or not.

That’s on him to realize that he’s the common denominator and that a matchmaker can’t solve his problems if he’s sabotaging himself. If there’s a guy who talks about himself incessantly, and I know there are plenty of guys who talk about themselves incessantly and he never asks you any questions on a date, do you think that the only reason he’s single is that he just hasn’t met the right woman? Or is it possible that every woman who comes in contact with him is going to leave the date feeling this soul sucking energy of a guy who, whether it’s due to arrogance or insecurity, shows no curiosity about someone else’s inner life. So notice if we’re talking about guys, it’s really obvious that these guys need coaching, that someone needs to help them with this wardrobe.

Someone needs to help them understand how women actually operate and what’s important to them. The importance of generosity, the importance of making someone feel important for lack of a better word, right? But he’s going to go about it thinking, if I just go to the right app, if I get right, if I just go out with enough people, something’s going to change. Now, these are egregious examples.

They’re designed to make a point. But in Rachel Greenwald’s seminal book, Have Him At Hello, she interviewed a thousand guys, right? I try to speak for all men, right? I don’t have to interview a thousand guys. I’m a guy.

But she interviewed a thousand guys to her credit. And she discovered that in 85% of instances, when a guy didn’t call at the end of a first date, there was a reason. There was something she did.

It wasn’t just, Oh, there’s no chemistry. There was an actual reason that if you, you know, if you cornered the guy and ask him to tell you, he would tell you exactly what it is. That stands to reason that there’s a lot of things that are going on on a date that most people just don’t know about.

That if a guy is not asking you out, following up, taking down his profile, choosing to commit to you, it might be something that you’re doing inadvertently, not unlike these guys. And that for most people is a hard pill to swallow. That despite all your charms and your charms are considerable, most of my clients are delightful human beings.

We all have blind spots. I got blind spots. I think they’re obvious when I talk to you every week.

It’s clear everybody’s got a blind spot and you can’t be loved by an everybody. But is there something that one can do other than just go on more dates with more people, assuming the right person is going to swoop into your life? So just the other day a woman was telling me, and it was a, it was a, it was a nurturing conversation, but I held back a little bit. And she was telling me that on the first date she’s trying to figure out if they’re compatible, right? Like that’s, of course that’s what she’s trying to do.

This is what the dates for, in her opinion, is to figure out if they’re compatible. So she wants to find out if they share the same longterm values, if he is marriage oriented, right? And she’s just, that’s her agenda for the first date is to figure out, you know, is there something here in the first 90 minutes of meeting? And it’s not that these questions don’t matter. Of course these questions matter.

They’re ultimately of the utmost importance. But if you interview men on the first date to see if they are worthy of being your husband, you’re not going to get many second dates. And you might draw the false conclusion that all the men who are going out with you are just players, users, not looking for love, not looking for marriage, not looking for family, right? Because they don’t like to be interrogated on the first date about their longterm intentions and their values because it’s not really much fun.

So she’s mistaken in that case, right? It’s not that all men are players and users who don’t want commitment. It’s that she’s taken the fun out of dating. It’s not fun.

It’s not playful, right? It’s random. It’s that little light swinging and the investigator talking to the criminal and trying to crack the case. It is no longer the most effective way of dating, right? To be grilled and have someone trying to find what’s wrong with you, right? And if you’ve ever had a guy who’s done that with you on a date, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

I got another client who says she fails to ignite the spark with men, right? So she’s having a hard time getting a longterm commitment because she doesn’t create enough of the spark. Another client talks a lot about her career and wonders why she doesn’t connect with men because she’s not acting warm or vulnerable. It’s very up here.

It’s very cerebral. So these are all things without changing anybody’s personality. These are all things that can be learned.

This is the whole point of coaching is to create a level of self-awareness so you can bring the best you to dating and bring out the best in men. So we can go on. I can run down examples like forever.

I’ve been doing this for 22 years, but I firmly believe, and I’ve mentioned before, dating is a skill set. Sales is a skill set. Woodworking is a skill set.

Playing guitar, being in HR, hiring a good team. These are all skill sets. You don’t come out of the womb knowing it.

That’s the crazy part when it comes to love. We all think we should have this highly developed skill set when you’ve been spending, you know, 2000 hours a year practicing law or medicine or marketing. Like this isn’t where you’ve put your time and attention, but we all expect to be really, really good at this.

So my guess is you’re great, right? You’re certainly great at your job. You’ve done your Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours, right? So you got that one really strong muscle, right? You’re consciously competent at whatever your chosen profession is. And then this other thing we sort of just hope works itself out and we’re looking for the quick fix.

We’re looking for the miracle. So if you’re of the belief that there’s nothing you can do better, I’ve got news for you. We can all stand to do better.

Right. And you know, sometimes I feel like Hamilton because I’ve been told when I’ve gotten feedback on my work, that part of the thing I can do better like Hamilton is to talk less, smile more. I love that because it’s accurate.

I’m a guy who talks a lot and I should get better at listening. And sometimes I’m a little serious and intense and sometimes I need to lighten up. Those things are actually true in life and in love.

That’s feedback that I’ve gotten over the years that I’ve tried to internalize and hopefully you don’t see too many hints of that. Of course, in my podcast, I’m going to do a lot of talking. That’s all the podcast is.

But in coaching, I’ve tried to get better at being a better listener and being more warm and more nurturing and less tough love. And that’s an acquired skillset that I’ve been working on for two decades. Of course, that makes sense.

And that’s what happens when you’re open to feedback and you’re open to growth and then you realize you can even be more effective at what you’re doing. I’m more effective at my job because women more than ever feel with me, wait for it, safe, heard and understood. I try to embody the characteristics that I tell women to look for in men.

That makes sense, doesn’t it? So doesn’t it stand to reason that there’s possibly something you can do better that would allow men to connect with you better? If a dating coach still has issues around that, I would assume that you do too. So what spurred this entire podcast was a coaching call I did with a client who was petrified, petrified of online dating because she was in a long abusive marriage and online dating is a thing that it didn’t exist when she got married. And now that it’s ubiquitous, it’s facing her and it’s scaring the hell out of her.

But after three months, maybe four of working with me, she got enough confidence and heard enough success stories from the people around her to dip her toe into the waters, created her a brand new profile, right? And now she’s been doing it for a few weeks. She’s having a blast. She’s got a guy that she already kind of wants to be her boyfriend, but she’s taking it slow.

She’s seen other guys really show up and respond to what she’s written and act thoughtful and interested and chivalrous. So she knows good guys exist. She knows that they exist online, right? And she believes that now it’s not if she’s going to find someone, and this is a woman who was in an abusive longterm marriage.

It’s not if she finds someone, it’s when she finds someone. And it’s because she learned over the course of a few months how to date more effectively. And she said to me, this is why I’m doing this podcast.

She said to me on a coaching call after being on one of the Love U live group calls on Tuesday, she said, I’m going to quote, women who do well in dating are women who think going on a date is better than being at home, curled on the couch, watching Netflix. And that sounds really simple, but I think it’s really profound. Obviously if you prefer to be at home watching Netflix and I watch plenty of Netflix, no, no judge, but if you prefer to be at home, then it’s going to show up.

And if you enjoy the company of men, if you enjoy flirting, if you enjoy connecting with another human being, you’re probably going to be better at dating. It’s hard to be good at dating if you hate dating. Once again, you’ve met men who are not good at dating and you’ve met men who hate dating, who complain about the dating app, who complain about their exes, who have the worst to say about women and their experience.

That doesn’t engender a real authentic connection, I wouldn’t think. So really reframing dating and realizing if you could have more fun with it, the way a good personal trainer helps you have more fun with your workout so you could see progress, so it’s not so painful and torturous. And if you could have fun losing weight, you’re more incentivized to keep doing it.

If it’s a slog and you hate it, really hard to keep doing it. So we’re really trying to incorporate best practices and healthy habits into your love life, right? So there’s a difference between going on that crash diet for a few weeks so you can get into bikini shape for the summer, right? This is a temporary thing versus incorporating health and wellness into your lifestyle, eating, sleeping, hydrating, motion, weightlifting, right? How do we make healthy a part of who you are instead of this thing that you do temporarily to achieve a goal? So that’s all I’m trying to do for you is to make dating integrated into your life so that it is like eating and sleeping and showering and going to the gym. It’s not onerous.

It’s a reflection of who you are and how you connect with people out in the world. And if you enjoy the process of flirting, connecting with other human beings, kissing, learning about yourself, developing confidence, learning boundaries, becoming the best version of you and getting clear on what you come to expect for men. If you could focus on all those short term goals that are developmental goals, the byproduct of that is that you’re very, very likely to find a person who loves you unconditionally.

Why? Because you’ve become a better version of you and bring out a better side of men. So you know, as well as I do, you can lose weight through Ozempic. I do not judge anybody who does it.

It’s a miracle. And I think it’s wonderful if it works and it saves people who struggled with diet and weight loss a ton of difficulty and frustration. The issue is that there is no Ozempic in dating, right? There’s no shortcut to your person.

And we all, myself included, have to become better people, more confident, more compassionate, more self-aware when it comes to love. And just as importantly, learn to choose better people to love you and raise your standards for what you come to expect from relationships. This is within your power.

Don’t look for the shortcut, right? My job is to give you a direct path from point A to point Z that through all of your machinations, you haven’t been able to find that path yourself. It’s not that hard. It’s not that long.

It’s very, very achievable. And I believe that you could have it, but it is up to you. If that excites you, if that inspires you, go to evanmarckatz.com/now to book a free discovery call with me and explore the possibility of getting you the love that you deserve.

There isn’t a shortcut. That’s why I told you, I work with people for six months, right? Even though everybody wants to get there quicker, it’s generally not just about going on more dates or meeting better men through a better app. It’s about you as the common denominator in your life.

And if you can embrace that, we can do wonders together. Before we go, don’t forget to register for the Extraordinary Love Series, extraordinaryloveseries.com. Next topic is on feminine energy. I look forward to answering your questions there.

If you enjoyed today’s podcast, please give us five stars. Give us a positive review on whatever platform you’re on. And most importantly, my name is Evan Marc Katz.

This is the Love U podcast. I thank you so much for indulging me. I know I talk so very much and I talk so very fast.

I appreciate you putting up with me. It is no small thing. I’m so glad to have this relationship with you and hopefully you’ve got a couple nuggets today that are going to inspire you to new heights in love.

I look forward to connecting with you soon. Take care. Bye bye.

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