Ever feel like no matter how much you accomplish, love still feels out of reach? In this episode of the Love U Podcast, I sit down with Francesca Hogi—former lawyer turned matchmaker, TED speaker, and author of How to Find True Love—to talk about what it really takes to attract the relationship you deserve. We unpack the difference between falling in love and co-creating love, why dating apps have rewired our expectations, and how self-worth, flirting, and emotional safety are non-negotiables in healthy relationships. If you’re tired of transactional dating and ready to experience real partnership, this inspiring, down-to-earth conversation is for you.

About Today’s Guest:
Francesca Hogi helps people find true love inside and out. A former corporate lawyer turned matchmaker turned love coach, Francesca is a TED speaker, host of Dear Franny Podcast, and internationally recognized expert on dating and relationships. She’s been featured in media outlets such as The Today Show, Marie Claire, The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar and Forbes. She coaches individuals and groups, and is the founder of The True Love Society, a community for people seeking deeper self and romantic love. Her first book, How to Find True Love: Unlock Your Romantic Flow and Create Lasting Relationships, was recently released by Grand Central Publishing. Prior to her love career, Francesca competed on two seasons of the iconic reality show Survivor.

Where you can find Francesca:
Instagram: @dearfranny
LinkedIN: @dearfranny
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@truelovesociety

Website: https://francescahogi.com/
https://linktr.ee/howtofindtruelove

What You’ll Hear

• Francesca Hogi and Evan explore the power of presence and how being genuinely open in the world can create unexpected romantic opportunities.
• A real-life example of Francesca meeting her ex on the corner of Sunset and Doheny—and what made her stop and engage with a stranger.
• Why connection doesn’t require apps, effort, or strategy—but instead a “cute mindset” and willingness to be in the moment.
• The small but powerful act of giving compliments to strangers—and why it’s one of the easiest, most effective ways to create connection.
• Evan shares a personal story about complimenting a woman’s stockings… and how that small gesture had nothing to do with flirting—and everything to do with being genuine.
• A breakdown of why most women miss romantic moments not because they’re unavailable, but because they’re closed off or too self-conscious to act.
• The concept of being a “catalyst for light in the world” and how that mindset shifts dating from stressful to joyful.
• Francesca’s favorite client assignment: how many men can you make smile this week? And the life-changing results it creates.
• A powerful reframe that turns random interactions into low-stakes, high-reward dating opportunities.
• Encouragement to stop waiting for dating apps to do the work—and start bringing your full, magnetic self into everyday life.

Full Episode Transcript:

Hey, this is Evan Marc Katz, a dating and relationship coach for Smart, Strong, Successful Women. Welcome back to the Love U podcast.

This is a place you can learn everything you need to know about dating and relationships, sex, and men from a man’s point of view. I am excited today because I’ve got a very special guest. Before I get to my special guest, because we’re gonna have plenty of time with her, if you’ve been listening, please subscribe on Apple, subscribe on Spotify, leave us a positive review, say something nice.

I read those comments. It gets us into the algorithm. I think we’ve got 536 positive stuff.

Well, actually, we’ll say about 500-something positive and then 36, not so much. So, really, really appreciate you saying nice things. It does make a difference.

If you’ve been listening for a while and you haven’t already subscribed to the Extraordinary Love series, go to extraordinaryloveseries.com. It’s a free lecture series, live Q&A that I do every single month on a specific topic. And did I mention that it’s free? So, if you need some coaching and you don’t know where to get it from because the internet is filled with loudmouth charlatans, you can really talk to me and it costs nothing. You can’t beat the value.

Now I want to begin the real conversation. My guest today, I’m going to read her official bio and then I’m going to speak extemporaneously, but we’ll start with the official. Francesca Hoge helps people find true love inside and out.

Former corporate lawyer turned matchmaker turned love coach, Francesca is a TED speaker, host of the Dear Franny podcast, internationally recognized expert on dating and relationships. She’s been featured in the Today Show, Marie Claire, New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, and Forbes. She coaches individuals and groups, is the founder of the True Love Society, a community for people seeking deeper love, deeper self, and romantic love.

Her first book, How to Find True Love, Unlock Your Romantic Flow and Create Lasting Relationships, was recently released by Grand Central Publishing. Prior to her love career, Francesca competed on two seasons of Survivor. No one else in the world has that bio.

Let’s be really, really clear. I can read a hundred dating relationship coach matchmaker bios. No one’s got that one.

Welcome to the Love U podcast, Franny. Thank you so much for having me. You’re right.

That’s a unique one. It’s my pleasure. I just had the privilege of seeing you at the Global Love Conference where you gave a speech.

I came up to you afterwards because I like the cut of your jib. I really liked what you had to say. I got your book in the mail.

It’s dense. There’s so much in it. I don’t want to scare people off of it because the length of the book is only a couple hundred pages, but there’s so much in there.

That’s really kind of what I want to unpack and hit some of the highlights and the stuff that’s going to inspire people to take action and end up reading this. From my perspective, there’s nothing more important than how to try and find true love. If I were to write a book again, I might have to come up with a different title, but this is a really good one.

What inspired you to write this book? First of all, that whole introduction was so incredible. This is already a great conversation. You mentioned the Global Love Institute Conference.

I first went to that conference 12 years ago. It was when I first discovered that there were people whose job it was to help people find romantic love. I was like, what could be more rewarding than that? That was the start of my love career.

Over the last 12 years, I’ve obviously learned a lot of things, had a lot of highs, had a lot of lows, ran up against a lot of different challenges in helping people find love where I was like, okay, I really got fixated on how do I crack this nut?

hat’s really going on here? That’s something that I’ve just been obsessed with for years. I just got to a point where I was like, okay, I think I’ve learned enough. I’ve consistently been able to apply this to enough people successfully that I think it’s time for me to share this with the world.

You developed your own system. I’m always leery of people who start with writing the book and then they’re looking for the PR first instead of I’m established in coaching people for 10 years and I’m taking everything I’ve learned and now putting it into a book. I think you got the order right.

Thank you. I appreciate you saying that because I’ve always, for this whole career, I’m like, wow, you’re releasing a book? Do you really need to write a book? What do you have to say on this topic? I definitely did not want to be one of those people. I wanted to wait until I felt like, okay, I have something to say that is really going to help people and it’s different than what other people are saying.

Now is the time. The rich irony, of course, is that I’m the first kind of guy who wrote two books when I was 31 and 32 and didn’t know anything about anything. That’s also true and I have to own that.

But they helped people. They were funny. They were not dating coach books.

They were funny self-help books and that’s a very different genre. He’s just not that into you type book. Again, I could talk about the difference between me when I started this and 22 years later.

Anyway, you make a distinction in here about what you call true love. How do we distinguish true love from love or in love or the other terminology that surrounds this? Yeah, I know. All the terms are very nebulous, which is why I do have a very specific definition of true love, which is about a type of relationship.

Relationships, they have their own values. They have their own dynamics. When you come together with another person, you’re forming something that’s never existed before.

Your relationship is unique. As a foundation, I really see the foundational elements that make this relationship what I would qualify as a true love relationship. It’s unconditional love and respect.

It doesn’t mean that you unconditionally feel love. It means that you unconditionally treat each other with love and respect, emotional and physical intimacy, emotional and physical safety, adoration, commitment, and joy. I believe, and I would love to hear your opinion on this, Evan, that if you’re able to co-create a relationship with another person that has that as a foundation, that is going to feel like true.

That is true love. That’s how I see it. I’m taking notes because I don’t want to forget all the great things you’re saying.

The word that just struck me with that is co-create. Not a sexy word, but it feels like- It’s a true one. It feels like the appropriate word.

I think most people associate love with the feelings we have towards someone else. I like him so much. I’m so attracted to him.

I’m in love with him. That usually seems to be the thing that leads and often crashes and burns because it is about the initial feeling rather than the thing that you’re creating that’s bigger than the both of you. I think Eric Fromm in The Art of Loving, 1972, love is not a feeling.

It’s a series of loving actions over time. Does that dovetail with your definition? A hundred percent. There are many facets to love.

It’s amazing. It’s why you and I have dedicated our careers to it. There is the feeling of love.

That’s that emotional feeling, which is really exciting and really wonderful. Sometimes we actually go down the wrong road in a relationship because like you said, it’s like, oh, I like this person so much. I love them.

I feel all this love for them. Then love is also a verb. What is the behavior? Somebody can say that they’re in love with you, but if they’re not treating you in a loving way, if they don’t have an ability to be loving towards themselves, then these are all signs that you might not be signing up for what you think you are.

I like the emphasis on the behavior part. Lots of people, there’s not a married couple in the world who when they got married didn’t claim to love each other, but are they happy relationships? It’s an entirely different story. In your materials, which I’m working off of today, you talked about relationships defined by values.

I was having a conversation with a client the other day who values is like another one of those words that’s sort of thrown around a lot. Everybody thinks they have the right values that someone else has to reflect back to them and share their values. How do you use the word values? We talked about true love.

Values seems to be sort of like this parallel thing. How do you incorporate values into a relationship and how can someone know that someone shares values in a relationship because people want to know that right away? I don’t even know if that’s possible to know right away. It’s not possible to know right away because what someone says their values are, these are just the things that you find the most important in life.

That’s the most generic definition of values, but we can say anything. Actually, I started doing this once I started matchmaking was that part of my initial questionnaire was like, what are your values? People would tell me all of the wonderful values that they have, but then once we start talking about, okay, well, how does this actually play out in your life? What is the behavior that you do that is actually showing that this is the thing that you see is that you really believe is the most important? There was often a really big gap because like you said, people don’t understand that this is not just an idea. You can’t just think like, oh yeah, I value family.

That’s a common one. People say family first, I value family, but then you look at where are they spending their time? How are they treating their family? How much are they actually giving their family what they need? That begs the question, when people talk about their own values, is it largely aspirational? It’s who I want to be. It may not be who I am, but it’s how I want to be.

It’s how I want other people to see me. Yes. Yes.

Oftentimes. And that’s why having conversations, I mean, look, you have to just take time. And I think what you said is really, really touches on a big problem with dating, which is that people want to have this sense of certainty.

So they are like, okay, first date, tell me everything, right? I need, I got this list of questions. I want to hug you. I’m sending out a newsletter this week about that very conversation that I had with someone who, whose idea of it’s someone who should know better, whose idea of dating is dropping on the table, all the things that he wants in someone, right? Like this, you know, I got an hour to interview you.

Oh, we’re clearly misaligned. I guess this isn’t going to work. Yeah.

And it’s not a recipe for true love, but it seems so antithetical to the best way to connect with someone. Their version of events is, well, if we don’t have these things aligned, what’s the point of even having the conversation? Yeah. Yeah.

And that’s a big problem in modern dating. I think, you know, I think the apps have really fostered this idea and this illusion that you have infinite choice. And so you do not have to actually invest and take the time to get to know someone.

You can just tell right away based on some photos and a few things that they say, I know exactly who this person is. Right. And that’s obviously like, we know intellectually, that’s not the way to make connection, but it doesn’t matter because behaviorally, right.

So there’s, again, there’s a gap behaviorally, you know, so many people are going about dating in a way that is so, as you said, antithetical to actually the love and the connection that they’re seeking. But there’s also people, and tell me what you think about this, who are just more transactional and they’re not the idea of, you know, what I just described, they might be like, I don’t want a relationship like that. Like that’s too much work.

Maybe you just want somebody to, you know, go places with, or to have sex with, or to hang out with, or to check a box, you know, and I don’t judge anybody, but I do want the people who really want that deep love to make sure that they’re proceeding accordingly. Right. I’m going to go so far as to both end this one.

No, no, you brought up something really great. There are people who are transactional, right? He trades his wealth for her beauty, right? That’s a really common thing, right? I get one thing, right? The thing I value the most, she gets her financial security, he gets to be with someone he’s wildly attracted to, because for him, love is attraction based first. And it seems to me like there’s a model for people doing that.

Yeah. But it also has a ceiling. Meaning, there’s nothing we don’t, you and I don’t have to judge the people who do that.

I just think every single person, not every single person, but millions of people have done that and discovered, oh, I’ve got a guy who provides me this life, but I’m really lonely and disconnected and miserable. Oh, I’m with someone who’s really hot, but I’m walking on eggshells apologizing all the time, having to manage her moods. It just seems that the thing you’re talking about is where everybody ultimately ought to be.

It’s not that you’re not allowed to go through the world being transactional. Here’s what I want in exchange for what I offer. But unless you’re doing this, you’re ultimately setting yourself up to fail.

I mean, I agree with you, but I think this is why, as you said, there’s so many… If you have a transactional approach to relationships, there is a lot of guidance out there. You know what to do, right? You know, hey, if I think the thing that makes me most valuable is that I have a lot of money, I know to lead with that. I know to make sure that everybody knows that I have money.

I know that I need to take this person on date to an expensive place and spend money without thinking twice about it, right? You understand that. But if you are somebody who’s like, okay, I want to go beyond that, I have hit the ceiling of the checking boxes, transactional approach to love, and now I’m ready to actually feel the fulfillment in a relationship, then there’s not that much guidance for people. Can I play our clients right now? Please.

Can I play devil’s advocate a little bit? Yeah. Because you haven’t said one word I disagree with, which makes for a boring podcast. So I want to be a listener, I want to be a client right now, because we tend to all be, you know, binary thinkers.
It’s normal for people to say this or that. Yeah, Franny, I understand I’m looking for a deeper, truer love, right? But I’m a smart, successful woman. I carried this guy who couldn’t get his act together.

He had employment problems, addiction problems, follow-through honesty problems. I need a man at my level, right? So it’s not like I’m just a gold digger, but I need a guy who can at least meet me where I’m at. Is that so wrong? So it is not so wrong, but we have to clarify what you mean by level, right? Because what you just described, right, okay, so somebody who can’t get his act together, you’re financially supporting him.

Sure, somebody with more money might meet you at that level, right? Maybe, because there are also a lot of people who make a lot of money and they’re terrible with money, right? I didn’t bank that into this question, but you’re right. Okay, so you think that being with somebody who has a lot of money is going to mean you have all this financial security, but you might find yourself more financially insecure than you ever had been, and now the stakes are a lot higher, right? So there’s that. So you have to get underneath it.

Well, what do I actually want? Because what I find, because I hear this from women all the time, because like you, I work with high-achieving professional women. They’ve done well for themselves, and many of them have been in that situation. They’ve dated the guy who’s taken advantage of them.

They’re like, I’m funding his lifestyle. What’s he bringing to the table? Blah, blah, blah. But when you just say, well, I just want somebody who has more money, you are ignoring what you actually want, which is to feel that you have a partner, and that there’s balance, and that there’s support, right? And that you have shared values around how you want to live your lives.

Like, yeah, you want to be productive. You want to contribute something. Like, that’s what you really want.

And so when you go for, I need a guy with X amount of money, then you’re getting into a scarcity game, because there are only going to be so many people who meet that thing, and we can insert whatever money looks, height, weight, age, education, religion, all the things, right? We can insert anything. But the more you get stuck on that thing, and you’re not paying attention to what’s underneath it, you are just actually creating false scarcity for yourself. And now you’re wasting your energy, and your time, and your emotion, chasing after something that ultimately may not even give you the joy that you’re seeking.

I’m having fun here. Could I keep on having fun? All right. Yes.

So you called it false scarcity, and I love that. You’re basically creating your own scarcity with these metrics that you have in your mind. But again, being the client, why is it false? Finding a man who is six feet tall, 14% of men, $200,000, 5% of men.

What if I want both of those? Isn’t that indeed scarce? So it is scarce if you are focusing… Yes. Well, there’s a difference. Something being rare and scarce is different, right? Because even anybody that you are going to connect with and fall in love with is rare.

Because of all the people that you’re going to meet in your life, it doesn’t matter how much money you have, how beautiful you are, how many romantic options you have, you’re only going to fall in love with so many people. So it’s always rare. False scarcity was now when you say, I’m going to decide, I’m going to try to control and predict what’s going to make me love someone.

Meaning I can’t or won’t fall in love with someone who doesn’t meet these specific parameters. Yes. And then we’ve created an arbitrary rule and live as if that rule is a fact.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Like I gave an example in the book of a woman who… I didn’t actually work with her because I couldn’t work with her because she had this list. And I mean, this is a perfect example of somebody creating false scarcity for themselves. So she admittedly hadn’t, you know, she didn’t have a lot of dating experience.

She’d never been in a relationship. She was in her 40s and she decided now that she wanted to be with a man who was at least six foot three. He had to have blonde hair and green eyes.

Oh, wow. Okay. Did you just run the numbers for her? Yes.

He had said blonde hair. 98th, 99th percentile, green eyes. I’m a green eyed person.

That’s less than 5% too. I mean. It’s tiny.

It’s a tiny percent. And I said to her, I said, I know a lot of people. I can think of one person who has blonde hair and green eyes and he’s 5’10”, by the way.

Right. So she’s created this avatar of the perfect guy that she’s suffered so long with the wrong guys. At this point, I’m going big.

I’m not going to settle for less. Yes. And he needed to have $250,000 in cash savings.

He had to own his home. There was a salary requirement. It was just, it was the layers of scarcity that she was creating, that she was manufacturing and telling herself, I can’t meet anyone.

I can’t have the love that I want. There’s nobody. There is.

I said, at this point, you need a social security number, right? Because there’s one person, maybe. And who’s to say he’s available, that he’s interested in you. There’s so many things, right? I love listening to you and I love playing the role because I’m on your side of this argument all the time.

And it’s really hard to get people into the idea that no, no, no, no. Once you let go of this list, no one’s telling you to settle. In fact, we’re telling you to have a better relationship than you’ve ever had before.

Anyway, this is your show. I don’t mean to hijack it with my own theories. I want to get back to your methodology because again, it’s not just a book about love.

It’s a book about relationships. It’s a book about dating. It’s a book about confidence.

All of these things are necessary to achieve true love. Do you think because of apps, people have different ideas about how they’re supposed to meet these days? How has it broken us? How could we fix it? What’s the workaround given that it is ubiquitous? I think that apps have definitely broken modern dating. Tell me what you think because you’ve been doing this longer than I have.

Everybody who’s listened to my podcast knows every fucking thing that I think. I’m sure they’re all bored with me. That’s why I try to bring on other people who say the exact same thing as me.

Just so they can know just how right you are. I do find people who are aligned, but I’m sure you have a different take on it. I think that the dating app industry has robbed many people of their romantic agency.

Meaning that for many people, and I hear this all the time, people saying to me, well, I want to date, but I just don’t want to be on a dating app or I hate the apps. They’re equating dating with being on a dating app. That’s a big problem.

Just the fact that people think that they have to be on the apps and most of them resent it. It’s you are so unlikely to be successful on an app if you’re like, oh, this sucks. You’re hating every moment of it.

People tell me they’re like, oh, I’ve been on, and I’m just forcing myself. I’m like, okay, stop. We need a reset because this is not, you’re just torturing yourself at this point and creating more of this story of I can’t meet anyone.

I think the workaround is, look, you’re going to stay on the apps, most people are going about them terribly. Do better in how you’re actually showing up on the apps. That’s a whole other conversation.

I do talk about that a bit in the book, even though the book is not a pro dating app book. Again, I think it’s understanding that it exists. For certainly my clients, middle-aged divorced women in the suburbs, most of whose friends are married, work from home, work in small offices.

It’s a broken technology that we have to figure out how to make the best of. We could opt out entirely, but I don’t know about you as a dating coach, I don’t want to just work on someone’s past and emotional health and overcoming their blockages. We need to get them dating.

It’s really, really hard to generate opportunity. How do you tell people to generate opportunity outside of apps? First of all, I have what I call the meet cute mindset, which is just the belief that every time you leave your house, you have the potential to meet someone special, which is true. It is a state of mind and it changes how you show up in the world and your openness to serendipity, your openness to flirting, your openness to saying hello, to noticing someone, to notice that you’re being noticed.

Even just that mindset shift is the first step. I want to just pause and acknowledge how often you talk about flirting in your book. I think it is a highly underrated skill.

I think very few people do any sort of deep dive on how to do it and the virtues of doing it. It is very much a mindset. If you’re a flirt, guilty, you flirt with old men and dogs and little kids.

It’s like a whole way of being in the world. I feel like anybody could access it. Anyone can access it.

I’m so with you. I’m the biggest flirting evangelist. I love teaching people how to flirt.

I have an entire chapter on flirting with the eight different styles of flirting that I’ve described. No, I love that. There’s more, I’m sure, but the point is that I think of flirting in two ways.

Number one, I think of it as just a human connection tool because at its foundation, flirting is taking actions or saying words to make another person feel seen, special, and acknowledged. That’s the foundation. That’s why you can flirt with the old man and that’s why you can flirt with the dog because you’re not trying to pick them up, you’re just trying to have a moment of connection.

Let’s pinpoint that definition. I feel like our language is very important. A lot of people associate flirting with, I’m hitting on you, therefore I want to have sex with you, and that makes me uncomfortable to even hint at that.

How do we get people past that mental block? Yes. The way we get past that is also explaining that just as there are many different styles of different purposes of flirting and different styles of flirting are appropriate for different purposes. Like you said, most people think flirting means I’m attracted to you, I want you to know that I’m attracted to you because I want something to happen.

That’s one purpose of flirting and that’s going to have its own appropriate styles, but there’s also the purpose of just seeing if we can create a connection. Having a moment of connection without attachment to it. Learning to be more vulnerable and just getting yourself out of the friend zone and courting romantic possibility and serendipity.

It’s like being an active co-creator, literally showing up in the world in the way that’s telling yourself, the universe, like, okay, this person is actually open and able to receive that connection with other people. If you’re just going through your life heads down, always looking at your phone, never making eye contact, never speaking to anyone. And then you also say like, I really, really want to meet someone.

I just really wish, like, what are you doing? Right. I mean, I have a little section of Love U 26 week course. I got one week on flirting and it’s not a complicated thing.

It’s literally, if you go out, put down your phone, look around, you see someone cute, smile and make eye contact, that’s it. Yeah. It’ll come over to you.

Right. You didn’t even have to do anything. You didn’t have to put yourself out there.

You didn’t have to embarrass yourself. And if you smiled, somebody who doesn’t come over to you, makes that person feel good, cost nothing. So like we get it all in our heads about what flirting means and it doesn’t have to be anything more than being friendly.

Yeah. That’s really what it is. And you never know.

And when you can start to just normalize moving through the world that way, because another problem people have is that they’re very closed off. And then the one time a month they see somebody who they’re instantly attracted to. And now they want to try to flirt with this person.

And now it’s all of this pressure. And now it’s all of the story in their head. And now it’s all of this, you know, and it’s like, but if you would just move the world that way, you would just approach that person just as you would approach anyone else.

Right. Oh my God. So, so validating.

Anybody who listens to this would be like, oh God, he just brought on his clone. They look nothing alike. He says the same thing.

And we did not coordinate. We really had. Oh, I had a tangent that I wanted to go on.

I forgot what the tangent was. I was all excited for a second. I know.

Well, flirting is, it’s a great topic, but, but maybe it was, was it related to your original question, which is about, well, what do you do as a the apps, you know, I wasn’t going to go back to that. I could go back to that. It was, it was very specific about what we were talking about.

Just the idea that people have the capacity wherever they go to have people gravitate towards us at no cost. And it brings light to the world. Like everybody knows you meet someone who just, it doesn’t mean that they’re the most charismatic person in the world.

It doesn’t mean they’re the most sexual person or the most good looking person. But again, I met you at a thing and you lit up the room. And I was like, I wanna be around that.

Like that was like, that was easy. And I don’t think you were trying too hard. It’s who you are.

It’s why you’re successful. Yeah, yeah. And it’s why I, I mean, when I think about, you know, you’ve been married for ages.

I haven’t, you know, but my last, my relationship that I’m in now and my last relationship that I was in for many years, I met them in the most random ways. I met my ex walking down the street in LA. I met him on the corner of Sunset and Doheny in the most random moment in interaction, right? But I was this person who had this cute mindset.

And so, or some people would be like, oh, I just met this guy, whatever. Like I met him on the street, like, and they wouldn’t have capitalized on that moment. I was listening to my intuition, which was saying, there’s something about this guy.

I just feel like I’m supposed to keep talking to him. And so I’m open to that, right? So, yeah, let’s bring it to something tangible because people want those things, not just the philosophy. What’s something proactive that someone can do that’s within their comfort zone that is outside the world of dating apps that is gonna empower them to make connection? I would love for people to give compliments to strangers.

It’s a really great way, especially if you’re in passing, because sometimes, you know, because sometimes when you meet somebody, you know, you’re in a situation where you have a little bit more time to get to know each other, to, you know, have a deeper conversation, like there’s a little bit more time. But sometimes it’s like, this is a moment, right? And so what can you do to capitalize on that moment? You can say, I really love your shoes, or that color looks great on you, or like, you have such a great smile, or just anything. It literally doesn’t actually matter what you say, as long as it’s sincere and it’s not creepy, right? Like, you don’t need to say, oh, you’re hot.

Like, that’s not, like, women don’t- You become a little bit more specific than that. And it’s funny, I never thought of it like as a technique. It’s like an extension of my personality.

I’ve never had a thought that I kept to myself, and that includes complimenting people. My wife, I go up to women, I was like, hey, where’d you get those fishnet stockings? I think my wife would look great in those. And she’s like, why is this guy talking to me about my fishnets? I was like, no, I’m genuinely, those look great.

Where could I get them? So I take notes in my phone, and I’ve been doing that forever. Like, why is my husband going up to some strange hot woman? Because he’s shopping for me. Right, I love that.

Yeah, but see, but that’s a technique. You see how easily that creates connection, right? And so I love giving my clients that assignment. Like, my clients who are women, who are, you know, they date men, and I’m like, okay, so this week, I just want you to see how many men can you make smile.

Right. Just in a moment, just like in a moment. And they always, always report back.

They’re like, oh my God, I saw this guy. I told him I liked his glasses. And then I kept on walking, and he’s like, wait, wait.

Right, and that’s the other part. It almost doesn’t matter if something happens, right? It’s like a catalyst to being warm and positive in the world. And you shine that light on everybody, something comes back to you.

And even if nothing comes back to you, it’s so easy to do. But I think we’re all insecure. I think we’re all self-conscious.

We’re all afraid of judgment. I think it’s normal for people to be that way. And my opinion is most people are really nice.

Most people are really nice. And also, if we take it away from being about ourselves and we look at it as like, I have an opportunity to make someone else’s day, it costs me nothing, right? And especially, I mean, I’m sure you can vouch for this.

Men don’t get a lot of compliments from random women.

That’s not a thing that happens that often for most men. So when they get it, they’re like, they light up. They’re so excited that someone just gave them a compliment.

So just experience that, make someone’s day. Don’t make it about you. It’s really about a larger, I mean, I really have a larger philosophy about love and true love that is very spiritual.

And I really believe that if you have in your heart the desire to have that type of relationship, it is available to you. Like, I don’t believe that we have that desire and then it can’t happen because dating apps suck. Like, I’m like, love is so much bigger than that.

Right. Well, love exists outside of it everywhere. It is available.

It’s not an infinite supply. Exactly. And part of the reason I haven’t hooked on it is because I’m not a spiritual person.

So I’m emphasizing the tactical, right? As opposed to spirituality. But I did notice a healthy dose of that in your book. So for those listeners who are spiritually inclined, I think this is a really great exercise in getting in touch with that side of you that believes in love and carries oneself like you believe in love.

Can I use some of your stuff in this podcast? Because I really want to make sure I’m hitting the highlights of your book on your terms. So- Please, go for it. You talked about the five steps, right, of a self-love formula.

In my work, the first month of my LoveU course is confidence. We don’t talk about dating until we talk about confidence. Anybody who’s worth their salt in this space understands that confidence is the umbrella under which everything else falls.

What are your five steps to helping people develop self-love to make them more confident and dateable? Yeah, so, yeah, first of all, absolutely. Anyone who’s listening, any coach who starts with dating tactics and doesn’t talk about confidence and beliefs and all of that, don’t work with them. But self-love, so I broke it down into these five elements.

And I’m not saying it’s only five things, but this is just a very actionable way for people to put a practice of self-love into practice. Because love is not set and forget it. It’s what we do.

It’s how we show up. For ourselves, for other people. So the number one is self-compassion.

Self-compassion is just that ability to give yourself a break, to release judgment. This is not like an umbrella, like, okay, I’m gonna be compassionate towards myself and you’re never gonna beat yourself up again. But it is something to check in, and particularly when you’re dating.

I mean, I think that dating is actually a really great opportunity to really deepen your self-love. I mean, I think that dating skills are love skills and love skills are relationship skills. And so dating has a lot of value inherently.

That’s a bit of a tangent, but I believe that it does. I think it’s a privilege to get to date. I know, and for people who feel, and I understand why they feel, that it’s so soul-sucking, right? It’s such an awful experience.

How do they reframe the, what a neat opportunity to meet other people, connect, not connect, learn about myself, fine-tune what I like, fine-tune my people’s skills. How do you give them, I mean, I was kind of just doing it, but how do you give them the glass-half-full version of dating? You know, I would go even further than that, because again, this is a spirituality thing, right? Which is that I think, first of all, we are all on a lifelong love journey. It starts when you’re born and it’s, you know, who knows what happens after we die? Maybe the journey continues, but at least for as long as we are alive, we are on this journey.

And I believe the purpose of this journey is for us to learn how to be more loving towards other people and also towards ourselves, like to give and receive more love. So I think that dating is just a phase in that journey. So it’s not just about meeting someone immediately, it’s also about becoming better at being loving.

So the process of dating, all of the things that you’re learning, whether it’s communication, vulnerability, compromise, intimacy, you know, giving people grace, you know, allowing to, you know, giving yourself the chance to receive healthy boundaries, like all of these skills that you actually get to practice while dating, discernment. I mean, the number of people who, you know, tell me about this terrible date they had, and then we reverse engineer and it’s like, why did you ever think that was gonna be a good date? Right? Like that person showed you a million ways before you ever went on that date, how they were flaky and not excited about you and not interested in you, like, you know. So there’s all these things that you learn through the process, like how open are you? How judgmental? How well can you receive? All of these things.

I’m gonna be the client again. I think for people, and I agree with every single word, so this is not full devil’s advocacy. I think for most of the people listening, nobody wants to be good at dating.

They just want their person, right? No one wants to go to the gym and diet. We just wanna lose weight. We just want the result.

Could someone spare me from texting with these random guys, from listening to some other guy go on a two-hour tangent about his ex-wife? Could someone spare me from this? Can I just get to the end? I think that’s the thing is everything you say about the virtues and values of dating are 100% correct, and you’ll be better in a relationship. You’ll be a better person. Certainly, if you went on a long journey, my journey was really, really long.

I don’t know I would recommend someone else go out with 300 people, but not only did it give me a career, it gave me a lot of perspective. So when I did make a choice to marry someone, felt really good about my choice. Yeah, yeah.

Well, so I would say that it’s not about you’re being, you’re getting better at dating, so you’re good at dating so you can date forever. That’s not the point. The point is that if you actually want to be in a relationship that is able to thrive over time, then you should understand that what you’re going through right now is actually giving you the skill to do that, right? So the idea that, and most people date terribly because even those examples you just gave, oh, I’ve got to listen to another guy talk for two hours about his ex-wife.

No, you don’t. No, you don’t. Why do you have to do that? Yeah, you can redirect the conversation.

You can pivot that conversation. Why would you sit there for two hours talking about something you don’t want to talk about? I don’t like, I don’t understand that, right? And then you say dating stuff. And so that’s the thing is it’s very easy when you’re dating to feel, right? And a loaded word, feel like a victim, right? If you’re a woman and you’re dating men, men are the problem.

If you’re a man dating women, women are the problem, right? And we’re all a victim of everybody else’s trauma and baggage and belief systems. And I just think most people are insecure, lonely, don’t trust their judgment, looking for someone to love them and accept them, don’t always know the best way to go about doing it. So you used the word giving people grace.

I really love that as a philosophy is leave someone in a better place that you found them. You don’t need, it doesn’t have to be a love connection. It can still be a pleasant experience.

Yeah, yeah. And so actually that brings me back to, I’m gonna finish just for anybody. Thank you, sorry, my fault.

No, it’s not your fault. That was totally relevant, right? Because once you start to even like, take a very basic example of someone dating someone who puts them down, who puts them down. And when you say, oh, I have this dream, they’re like, oh, you can’t do that.

Like, that’s so hard or you know, right? So the only way that you would actually continue to date someone and be attracted to that person is if you talk to yourself that way, right? It has to feel internally familiar. So the more that you start to notice how you speak to yourself and interrupt the shaming, the criticism and just say, okay, even if I did mess up, if I wanna do better, then beating myself up is not gonna help because the beating ourselves up actually helped. We would have nothing left to change, literally.

We would have shamed everything out of ourselves. It doesn’t work, it actually just blocks you. So self-compassion is just that practice of like, okay, I’m gonna give myself a break and I’m gonna figure out like, okay, how do I move forward? And then the next step is self-worth.

And this is really what it’s all about. Just really the belief that you are inherently deserving of good things, including love, including intimacy, including respect, including thriving in your life and all of those things. But it’s very difficult to feel that way.

Certainly feel it all the time because we live in a world that’s told us in so many ways that we need to jump through many, many endless hoops in order to actually be good enough. So this is an active practice of recognizing that, okay, if I think of a newborn baby born into the world, mine or anyone else’s, what does that baby have to do to be worthy of love, of respect, of kindness, of health, of like what? Probably nothing unless you’re a sociopath, right? I love that thought experiment. So why are we so cruel to ourselves when we all started as babies worthy of love? Exactly.

So if you can agree that a newborn baby is worthy of love inherently, then perhaps you can accept the possibility that that applies to you as well, because it does. And then going back to love as a verb, you’re not gonna just feel worthy all of a sudden because you’re, or not endlessly, it’s not set it and forget it, but you can start to train yourself to take a high self-worth action. So you can say, well, if I did truly believe that I was worthy of having the love that I wanted, if I did truly believe that I was deserving of connection and people who respect me and value me, then what might I do next? Yes, yes.

I love, love, love that. If I were in the business of making little Lance Armstrong style bracelets, it would be, what would a confident woman do? Let’s work backwards from what, right? Same exact thing. If I had high self-worth, if I were confident, how would she handle this interaction? How would she handle this text? And if we just operate, that’s why my metaphor is you’re the CEO of your love life and men are the interns applying for a job.

If you just start from you’re worthy, is this bringing me joy? Is this making me happy? Do I feel safe? And anything that violates that, get rid of it. Yeah, it’s a no, it’s a no. Yes, exactly.

So then, and then once you make that inquiry, you take that high self-worth action, then the next step is you validate yourself. There are so many people who are doing hard, hard, hard things all the time and robbing themselves of any confidence because they don’t give themselves any credit, right? So we build confidence by doing something that’s hard, that’s challenging, that pushes us. And then also we have to be able to acknowledge that we did it, right? Otherwise it’s just a treadmill of endlessly doing, doing.

Right, and that’s what happens to independent single women, right? They don’t have anybody who’s the cheerleader in their corner, right? My metaphor is they’ve got one strong muscle, it’s the one at work where they’re very resilient and have learned to navigate and climb and succeed. And when it comes to love, because they haven’t had success in love, it’s so much more fragile and they lose their belief in themselves. One guy rejects them and I’m gonna take the next year off of dating.

You’d never take the next year off of work if you had a bad day at work. Yes, yeah, yeah, that’s a good line, it’s very true. And that happens all the time.

But this validation, because whether it’s, I mean, look, and even if you’re single, you know, it’s not like, or even if you’re in a relationship, if your partner is the only person who validates you, are you gonna actually feel like, like you need to do it too. You need to be able to receive it, right? Like, can you receive a compliment? Because if you can’t receive a compliment, then you’re probably not as open to receiving love as you think you are. Can I ask a question? This is off of our written materials.

Did you get that kind of unconditioned love from your parents growing up? Is this why you’re this way or did you develop this yourself? Because I also had that same thing because it comes more naturally to me. I could kind of reverse engineer people and tell them what to do. But if you were not given that constant love and reinforcement that you are great and you could do anything as a kid, it’s hard to convince yourself as an adult.

It’s hard, it’s hard. And I, yes, like you, I was so blessed. And I mean, and I, you know, in the acknowledges of my book, I say like, this is my parents.

Like I was born into the greatest of fortunes, which is a loving family. I had two parents who loved each other. They showed each other, they showed us in action every day what that really meant in my house.

We always treated each other with respect. Like you can be mad, you can have a disagreement, but you can’t name call. You can’t like, you know, like there was always this very basic level of like, we love each other and we show each other that we love each other.

And so that is a blessing. And I feel like, you know, I don’t know how you feel, but I feel like I have a responsibility because I did have that. And so it’s not that I had not struggled my own journey of, you know, in romantically and feeling good enough and like all of those things, but I have had this really strong foundation of just knowing that like, yeah, I am loved and I am lovable and I do deserve love.

And I also was lucky to have a father who would talk to me about relationships and would actually say like, you know, you really need to pay attention to people’s character. How do they treat, you know, how do they treat the people in their lives? How do they treat their mother? How do they speak to the waiter? Like my father really, he pointed those things out to me repeatedly growing up, which yeah, I feel really lucky. Yeah.

I think certainly the clients I’m proudest of are the ones who did not have that and overcame that later in life. When you see someone who, you know, divorce abuse and comes out on the other side and then finds someone to validate her belief in herself and they live happily ever after, there’s nothing more gratifying. What should people do now that they’ve listened to you? Would you like them to go buy your book? Would you like them to go to your website for coaching? What’s the action that they should take? How should they go and find you? I mean, I would love for them to buy my book if this resonates.

I really do take the reader through a process that starts with mindset and then gets into what I call heartset about your beliefs and then gets into soul set, which is about this higher connection to this like deeper, higher love journey that we’re on and intention and gratitude and courting serendipity and all of those good things. I love it. And then skillset, which is what are the foundational dating skills that you can actually go out in the world and meet someone on an app, but also off an app, right? Let’s reclaim our agency.

So if that resonates with your listeners, viewers, please, I would love for you to check out the book. It’s also, I wanna add, if anybody has Spotify premium, it’s included the audio book. I just recently discovered that.

So you don’t even have to pay for it if you have Spotify premium and you like audio books. And I did read it. So if you like my voice, then you get to hear it for hours.

Super cool. You can find Frannie on all social media channels at Dear Frannie. You could find her everything except for YouTube where it’s a true love society, but she’s also very Google-able and very unique website.

And these will be linked in the show notes, https://francescahogi.com/. I just followed her before I got here. I had the pleasure of meeting her in real life, but I just followed her online. So now I’m gonna be exposed to all of her content.
And I would really encourage you, especially if you’re listening and you’re like, heaven just doesn’t go deep enough. I need something that’s a little more spiritual and less tactical and to connect with something larger. That’s what she does so uniquely well that I don’t even claim to touch.

So I’m always looking to share resources who I could differentiate, who have good philosophies, but bring something unique to the table. So I was thrilled to have an opportunity to talk about you and your work here today. Anything else you’d like to share before we go? One last piece of advice.

This was just so amazing. And my goal for everyone is to feel empowered to have the love that they want. And if it’s not happening, to get curious about, okay, what is love actually calling me to learn right now? And maybe it’s being more open, maybe it’s being more vulnerable, maybe it’s more boundaries, maybe it’s more courage, but there’s something there.

And the more that you can understand that assignment, then the sooner you’ll have the love that you want. I’d say it’s all of the above. All the things that you mentioned, more vulnerability, more courage, more openness.

I can’t think of anybody who wouldn’t stand to benefit from all of those things. So thank you, Frannie. Thank you for being here on the Love U Podcast.

I appreciate you. Thank you, Evan. This was so great.

My pleasure. Hey, my name is Evan Marc Katz. This is the Love U Podcast.

Thank you so much for listening and sticking around till the very end. If you enjoyed today’s podcast, leave us a positive review, subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube. Don’t forget to sign up for the Extraordinary Love series, links in the show notes, free lecture series, and live Q&A on a different topic every month.

And if you’re serious about finding love and want someone to hold your hand through the process, go to evanmarckatz.com/now, book a time to talk with me, and I’ll get you the love that you deserve. That’s my mandate. Thank you, I appreciate you, and I’ll talk to you soon.

Bye-bye.