Lessons - Why Most Self-Improvement Advice Keeps You Stuck | Michael Sartain - Dating & Success Coach

Summary

Podcast Summary: Success Story with Scott D. Clary

Episode: Lessons - Why Most Self-Improvement Advice Keeps You Stuck | Michael Sartain - Dating & Success Coach
Release Date: June 22, 2025
Host: Scott D. Clary
Guest: Michael Sartain (Dating & Success Coach)

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of the Success Story Podcast, host Scott D. Clary engages in a deep and candid conversation with Michael Sartain, a renowned dating and success coach. The discussion delves into the pitfalls of conventional self-improvement advice and explores actionable strategies to overcome stagnation in personal and professional growth.

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Challenging Conventional Self-Improvement Advice

Michael Sartain opens the conversation by critiquing mainstream self-improvement philosophies. He argues that much of the advice available online often leads individuals to remain stuck rather than facilitating genuine progress.

"Most of the self-improvement advice out there is filled with platitudes that make you feel good but don't drive real change."
— Michael Sartain [00:48]

Key Points:

• Provocative Content vs. Safe Messages: Sartain emphasizes the importance of creating content that stands out by being bold and opinionated rather than adhering to generic, safe messages.

  "If you just keep spouting platitudes like 'trust yourself,' you're not going to attract anyone. You need to be disruptive."
  — Michael Sartain [09:05]

• Inaction as the Real Enemy: He posits that inaction, rather than fear or failure, is the primary barrier to success. Taking decisive action is crucial for progress.

  "Inaction is the true enemy of progress, not fear or failure."
  — Gary Vaynerchuk [00:00]

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The Power of a Spiky Point of View

Scott D. Clary and Michael Sartain discuss the concept of having a "spiky point of view"—a strong, sometimes controversial stance that sets one apart in a crowded marketplace.

"You have to have spiky points of view, you have to have an opinion on. Because, like, if not, who are you? You're vanilla. You're not going to attract anybody."
— Michael Sartain [09:26]

Key Points:

• Standing Out on Social Media: In the vast and competitive landscape of social media, having a distinct and provocative opinion helps in gaining attention and building a loyal audience.

  "You need to do something to separate yourself very quickly, which goes back to my original point. You have to give yourself permission to try different things."
  — Michael Sartain [03:15]

• Ethics and Authenticity: Sartain clarifies that being bold doesn't equate to being unethical. Successful figures like Grant Cardone are cited as examples of individuals who are provocative without crossing ethical boundaries.

  "What the Paul brothers do, what Grant Cardone does, they're not like evil people. Being on social media is very different than building a business illegally."
  — Scott D. Clary [00:35]

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Overcoming Fear of Judgment

The conversation shifts to the fear of judgment from others, which often hinders individuals from taking bold actions online.

"You're worried about a meme you were going to post or an Instagram account you were going to make because you cared so much about what the people at work thought about you."
— Michael Sartain [01:30]

Key Points:

• Permission to Act: Sartain encourages listeners to give themselves permission to act despite the fear of judgment or backlash.

  "Are you giving yourself permission or are you listening to the same platitudes over and over again?"
  — Michael Sartain [04:45]

• Embracing Controversy for Growth: He suggests that embracing controversy can lead to increased visibility and opportunities, contrasting it with the stagnation that comes from playing it safe.

  "If you're not disruptive, the world will pass you by and they will forget you."
  — Michael Sartain [05:20]

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The Importance of Action Over Platitudes

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the detrimental effects of relying solely on motivational sayings without accompanying action.

"Most of you watching this should stop trusting your intuition. It has not led you down the right path."
— Michael Sartain [10:18]

Key Points:

• Action-Oriented Approach: Sartain emphasizes that true improvement comes from actionable steps rather than passive belief in oneself.

  "The disease is inaction. It's not procrastination."
  — Michael Sartain [12:30]

• Behavioral Activation Therapy: Drawing from psychological principles, he advocates for behavioral activation—taking specific actions to combat feelings of stagnation or depression.

  "When you feel depressed, you go to the gym. When you feel depressed, you take an action."
  — Michael Sartain [05:50]

• Solution-Focused Mindset: Sartain highlights the importance of making problems disappear for others as a pathway to success, rather than focusing on one's own vague passions.

  "If you can just make problems go away for other people, give away as much free stuff as you can, and ask for 1% of your audience to buy your product, you will become outrageously wealthy."
  — Michael Sartain [13:03]

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Addressing Modern Challenges in Entrepreneurship

The dialogue transitions to contemporary challenges faced by entrepreneurs, especially in leveraging platforms like YouTube.

"Do you know how hard it is to get leverage on YouTube right now? Very hard. To start from scratch, you have to do something with an incredible cover photo and an incredible title to even get any traction whatsoever."
— Michael Sartain [10:30]

Key Points:

• Navigating Algorithms: Sartain explains the necessity of creating compelling content that can cut through the noise and engage audiences effectively.

• Consistency and Quality: Emphasizing the importance of consistent posting and high-quality content to build and maintain an audience.

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Final Thoughts and Takeaways

Michael Sartain wraps up his insights by reiterating the importance of action, authenticity, and boldness in the realm of personal and professional development.

"If you're the first entrepreneur to tell you that other people are out to get you, I've got bad news for you. People are going to come after every single part of your life."
— Michael Sartain [07:50]

Key Takeaways:

• Be Bold and Distinctive: Don't shy away from having strong opinions or being provocative if it helps differentiate you from the competition.

• Prioritize Action Over Words: Move beyond motivational sayings by taking tangible steps towards your goals.

• Understand the Realities of Success: Recognize that with increased visibility comes scrutiny, and be prepared to handle it constructively.

• Focus on Solving Others' Problems: Shift your focus from personal passions to addressing and solving the real problems of others, which is a proven path to success.

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Conclusion

This enlightening episode of the Success Story Podcast offers valuable insights into why traditional self-improvement advice may be inadequate and how adopting a more action-oriented and bold approach can lead to substantial personal and professional growth. Michael Sartain provides a refreshing perspective that challenges listeners to break free from complacency and strive for meaningful progress.

For those looking to delve deeper, visit the Success Story Podcast to explore more episodes and resources.

Transcript

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

In this lessons episode, discover why taking bold action beats playing it safe online. Learn how having a strong opinion helps you stand out in a crowded market. Learn why seeking attention is not unethical if you are solving real problems. And learn how inaction is the true enemy of progress, not fear or failure.

[Scott]

Yeah, but you're you. So I actually think you're not giving yourself enough credit, because what you're talking about is. Is really just creating provocative content that.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, no, no, yeah.

[Scott]

Spiky point of view. No, no, no. But I want to tell you, hear out my idea, and then I know you'll have an answer. But, yeah, my point is what the Paul brothers do, what Grant Cardone does, they're not like evil people.

[Unknown Speaker]

Some people, I'm sure, think they're not.

[Scott]

Great, but they're not evil people. Being an on social media is very different than being a. Like. Like doing illegal and building a business that way. So I think there is still a line between good and evil. There's. There's shades of.

[Unknown Speaker]

Of course. Good. Of course.

[Scott]

Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

That's what I know. Of course, what you're saying is correct. I'm not telling you to be evil. What I'm telling you is to give yourself permission. That's all I'm saying. It's like so many people don't want to take action on social media because they're afraid to give themselves permission. Yet we just put a man in office who. A porn star while his wife was pregnant, and we elected him twice. Okay? And I'm not criticizing him because I voted for him, too. My point is, you're worried about a meme you were going to post or an Instagram account you were going to make or a YouTube video because you were. You cared so much about what the people at work thought about you and your fat aunt that you go see at Thanksgiving every year. By the way, just in case you're wondering, you join my program, this is how you get spoken to every day. Okay. I'm a. I'm a former u. I'm a U.S. air Force captain. I. I worked in counterintelligence for two years, and I flew spec ops for five. This is. You will get spoken to. This is how we talk every day. But, like, we. We. You watch this over and over again, and I just hear these excuses about. I just care so much about what other people think about you when I say all this stuff. Of course I don't want you to do any of these things. I don't want you to start a shill Coin. I don't want you to sit. Sit there and start a. What is the other one? That. That's just complete forex. Oh, forex.

[Scott]

Yeah, yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

100% of retail forex is a scam. There you go. I'll say it. You can come after me. I'd be more than willing to debate you. 100% not forex. Forex is not a scam because actually are sovereign wealth funds that need to use it. But 104, retail forex is a scam. I say this and people get pissed at me, but it's still true.

[Scott]

But now I'll tell you something, dude. By the. With the amount of money my friends have lost in retail forex, I'm not disagreeing with you. Yeah, I'm not disagreeing with you.

[Unknown Speaker]

But my point is, do you see what I've done though? Like, by doing though, I've. I've taken aside and now I've become a little bit scandalous in here, even though what I'm saying is objectively true. You want to know another place where I get like huge hate and I could get like hundreds and hundreds of comments? I've debated flat earthers before. One something that's objectively true. I studied astronomy in college. I know the earth is round and I can prove it. And I sit there and I have a debate with them and I just completely dunk on these guys for like three hours and I get all these views and. And comments and all this kind of stuff, and people are like, I don't know why you did this. And I'm like, well, look at the algorithm. I just got a hundred thousand views for this video that I just made. But most people don't want to take any chances like that. Well, my point of. Of everything that I just said about good guy status and bad guy status is are you giving yourself permission or are you listening to the same platitudes over and over again? It's like every time you fall down, you got to get back up. Have you ever seen some of the stuff that Gary Vaynerchuk writes? Some of his tweets? Like, I like Gary Vaynerchuk. I'm sure we all do. He's an inspiration to all of us. But his tweets are very much. If you believe in yourself and you do what you think is right and you stay the course, eventually you'll be successful. And I'm just thinking if I said some like that, nobody would listen. And if you said some like that, it would get. No one would care no. Can you imagine being so famous that all you have to do, all you have to do is like be Alex or Mosey and just tweet, work harder and then you just get like 5, 000 retweets. Can you imagine me? But you know what? We're not, we're not that famous, Scott. We're not. And so for the rest of us, we are going to have to be disruptive. And if we're not disruptive, the world will pass us by and they will forget us. And because of the way the fractal nature, you know, Pareto's principle, because of the fractal nature of the way social media works now and the way marketing works, that you start to come to this realization very quickly is that you have to do something to separate yourself very quickly, which goes back to my original point. You have to give yourself permission to try different things. And when you do, then you come to, you can start to figure out ways to get a leg up on your competition. But if you don't, and it's just like, I'm going to be the ethical salesperson and I'm just going to say platitudes over and over again and feel good about myself and tell myself that I'm good enough. Yo, here's the thing. Internally, all of you are watching this. You are enough. Internally, externally, someone will take your partner and someone will take your girl. Someone will take your money and someone will take your clients if you don't do anything about it. Sorry, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this. If I'm the first entrepreneur to tell you that other people are out to get you, I have. Especially if successful, if you're not successful, you're just starting up. Forget everything I'm saying. You got a while to go. But for those of you who get like a couple million impressions on social media every week, I've got bad news for you. People are going to come after every single part of your life. They will, they're going, they're going to make reaction videos about you doing normal life stuff. And when they do so how are you going to deal with it? Are you going to sit there and deny it? Are you going to block them all? Or are you going to take that, that Newfoundland status, that new stat, found infamy, and transmute that into a way to get more clients in a way to get more business and a way to improve your business, because that's what you're going, going to have to do. And if you just want to ignore it and just say everything that I'm saying is wrong. That's fine. You can keep your head in the sand as long as you want. But there's some of you out there, I'm sure, that are watching this right now, that deep down you know that what I'm saying is true. You know that the guys who, who make the. We have a personal injury attorney here in Vegas and the guy drives around in a $4.3 million Bugatti and puts like hot girls in the passenger seat. And he's crushing it. He's crushing. Well, wait a second. I need a personal injury attorney. I don't need a guy with a Bugatti who has a bunch of hot girls in his car. But why does everyone call him. Because he's famous and I don't know what he gets attention. That's it. That's, that's the main thing. The other part that I'm going to tell you, as far as entrepreneurship is concerned is the biggest disease you can catch. We call it procrastination, but it's actually something else. It's inaction. It's not. Procrastination is giving a word, another word to something else. The disease is in action. My course is called Men of Action because I watch too many people take other self improvement courses and then they would, they would cry, oh my God, this life changing, thank you so much. The giant within, like whatever. And we take Tony Robbins. It's not Tony Robbins fault because he teaches a really great program, but a lot of people will take his program, feel free, incredible about themselves, and then just go right back to living in their mom's basement, being overweight. They won't take any action. And the scary part of my course is I force you to take action. There's a thing in science we know, we know about in psychology. It's called cognitive cog. Cognitive behavioral therapy. We use CBT or dbt, dialectical behavioral therapy for, for people who have like borderline personality disorder. We've seen it being a very effective treatment. I think for men, the most effective treatment is called behavioral activation therapy, which is basically when you feel depressed, you go to the gym. When you feel depressed, you go take an action. And that action then creates dopamine release and you start having rewards in your mind. I think the male brain and the female brain are different. And so the way that we treat some of these symptoms for depression or sadness or melancholy is different. I think for men, the, one of the main things you have to do is go and Take action. Rather than read a book, do a breathing exercise and look in the mirror and tell yourself that you're enough. I think you need to go hit a personal record on the bench press and go talk to a beautiful woman that have been afraid to talk to before. I think you do that you're going to feel a level of happiness that you've never recognized before because that's what your ancestors did in order to survive. And when you do the same thing, you're also going to have that same feeling.

[Scott]

So then what is the issue with all of the, the self help advice that's, that's out on the Internet right now and I know you probably have a thousand issues with most of it but I just want to tie a knot in the status thing. I think that's important. So. And then we'll talk about sort of self help. We can talk about what men should do. I and by the way, in terms of mental health, if I ever get a stressful call, a stressful email, I do go to the gym and I'll go deadlift. I'll go bench, I'll go squat, I'll go kick my own ass. And they're all hung up.

[Unknown Speaker]

That sounds, that sounds like a very traditional masculine answer. You're going to get canceled. If you say that too loud. You better be careful, Scott. You take.

[Scott]

This is a thing. I mean this is. But this has always been how I, how I decompress because that gives me the room to think through the problem. Problem. It, it removes the emotion out of the situation too. Your response is just going to be in that positive.

[Unknown Speaker]

When you. Wait a second. You, you removes the emotion. You mean you come up with logical answers dispassionately. You better be careful saying this stuff on the Internet, Scott. You are going to get cancelled. You better be careful saying stuff like this, bro. You. The American Psychological association if they get a hold of you, they're going to get you canceled, buddy. Watch out.

[Scott]

I think, I think we're in an era of non cancellation. I think, I think we've gone through dude.

[Unknown Speaker]

I hope so. I hope so. I really do, man. When he said there made those promises about you will no longer have your account taken down for in and you're going to get a right to a speedy appeal. I was like I, I voted for the right person. As soon as I saw that. As soon as I saw that I was like, you mean I can tell the truth and I'm not going to get ratioed because of it? That's incredible.

[Scott]

No no, the whole point I was going to make was like, whatever. Whatever you're building, whatever attention you're trying to find, you have to have spiky points of view you have to have an opinion on. And listen, you're not going to get canceled if you're not being a complete fucking asshole. Like, I know you're. You take it to an extreme, to a degree where you're saying you can still build an audience that way, but where you're. Where you are right now and where 99% of people are building audiences, it's so far even, like, a small amount of opinion is uncomfortable for most people. They take a fucking baby step. Like, put out an opinion on anything in your life, in your world, relevant to what's happening in Paul. Like, just have a opinion. Because, like, if not, who are you? You're vanilla. You're not going to attract anybody.

[Unknown Speaker]

Do you know how hard it is to get leverage on YouTube right now? Very. To start from scratch, like, you have to do something with an incredible cover photo and an incredible title to even get any traction whatsoever. And you have to post consistently. And I just keep reminding people, it's like when you use platitudes like, trust yourself. Feel better? Trust your intuition. Yo, I don't believe. Ready? Here, you can make a clip out of this. 95% of you watching this should stop fucking trusting your intuition. It has not led you down the right path. If you are a pilot and you've done 2,000 landings, then you get to trust your intuition. Look up the definition of what intuition is. It has to do with domain expertise and lots of experience. If you're a cardiologist and you've cracked open 100, like 500 people's chest and actually looked at the heart and be like, oh, there's something wrong here. You get to trust your intuition. If you're a psychologist and you are a psychiatrist and you've dealt with maybe 500 people that have had schizophrenia, you get to trust your intuition. The rest of us who have no domain expertise are like, my intuition tells me that I need to start a. A restaurant that makes pink tacos that are vegan. And like, no, you're doing that for you. That's not your intuition, bro. That's your ego. That's what's going on. Most of you have no right. You have. How dare you? You do have the right to trust your intuition because you don't have the domain exper. Expertise to do so. You do have the right to study. You do have the right to become a subject matter expert. You do have that right. Which then will lead you to proper intuition. But what, what happens instead is people who have no clue what they're talking about are just like, follow your passion. Do you think that Wayne Huinga won't. Woke up one day when he. When he. When he had Waste Management open? You know, Waste Management, the company, and he's like, you know what?

[Scott]

I know he was. He's from. He's from here. He's from Miami.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Do you think that. Do you think that Wayne Huizenga was like, you know what my passion is, Scott? I just want to tell you. Porta Potties. I've just been wanting to clean out of Porta Potties my whole life. To clean diapers and feces. I've been so excited about creating dump trucks. Do you think that Wayne Huizenga's passion was waste management, or do you think he solved someone else's problem and made billions of dollars because of it? Again, I want you to think about the attorney, Harvey Specter on this. On the show Suits. I don't know if you guys, some of you guys watch the show Suits, but what made him so great is not that he's a great litigator, it's that he makes problems go away. If those of you are watching this, if all you do is make problems go away for other people, and you can't do that with platitudes, you can only do that with action. If you can just make problems go away from other people, give away as much free stuff as you can, and ask for 1% of your audience to buy your product, you will become outrageously wealthy.

Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.