3 Things I learned from Kevin Samuels

Sean Key
5 min readJun 11, 2021

Kevin Samuels is a dating/image consultant who recently gained popularity from a viral clip called “You’re Average at Best”

Kevin Samuels wants to help. Yes, at first glance you might not like him — especially if you’re one of the women that call during his nightly online broadcasts on YouTube and Instagram. He’s trying to help women be happy and based on his background (divorced twice but willing to marry again), he has a few good points.

How you speak matters, but read the environment.

Most people that don’t like Kevin are the ones that agree with what he says, but hate the way he says it. Kevin’s broadcasts consist of free consultation sessions that span 5–10 mins, where there’s little room to be cordial during this short period of time. You have to get to the point and that’s what Kevin does best. He cuts through the noise and gets to the point — as a viewer, I appreciate that very much but as the women who call up, it‘s a different story.

People have various styles of communication, these can change depending on the environment or person you’re talking to. Working with all styles will make you successful in the long run and understanding their uniqueness will put you in a separate lane all together.

The callers don’t understand this concept fully as they haven’t seen the show nor understand what it’s about. Most call to get attention and rarely for a solution to their relationship issues. An important thing to note is the world doesn’t work this way, it’s a give and take, not take, take and take. As a viewer I don’t have time to listen to all your issues — I need a quick dose of the situation and actionable advice from Kevin to sit and learn from. What Kevin does is juggle between giving advice and keeping the viewers entertained, at the same time within a ten min timeframe.

His challenge becomes:

  • fighting against the time crunch
  • deciding between cordial or overt communication

Kevin’s overt communication style fits very well with who he is and it solves two issues at once — get fast information from his callers and be direct enough to make an everlasting impression. The former makes his viewers happy and the latter makes the strongest impact to potentially change a person’s life.

This concept has helped me tremendously in my career as a Consulting Director in the advertising industry. By understanding your environment and who you are talking to, you get better at negotiations, sourcing information and communicating across the business, from the ground floor up to the C-Suite.

A person’s backstory matters, it tells you the most about them.

I trust people who have been through it. With two divorces, I trust Kevin’s judgment on relationships. Sure, they failed — but does that nullify his understanding of them? No. That’s like saying a fat person doesn’t know anything about losing weight — oftentimes they know the most. Also, since he’s willing to marry again, it makes me trust him even more.

Why? It tells me Kevin is not speaking from a place of hurt. You should be skeptical taking advice from people that lean too much in one direction because they could take 75% of the truth and spin the other 25% into their own agenda that’s built on pain.

It’s easy to get lost in the sauce without realizing what you’re doing — people do it every time. For example, if I told you to think about the number 7 for the entire day — you would find it odd how many times you’ll see and notice it, it would feel like a conspiracy to you. People do the same with ideas without realizing what they are doing. This is why debate is so powerful, it’s a boxing match between two ideas supported by logical reasoning and evidence and a multitude of other factors that decide the victor.

Kevin debates every night and he’s got hundreds of hours to prove it. His logic remains consistent and some of his points are infallible to this day. This proves that he is willing to put himself up for criticism, to argue and debate his points, to make his ideas stronger and grow as a person. I respect that and you should too.

It’s important to understand a person’s backstory because it helps you understand their motivations — you can apply this to friendships or hiring candidates within your team, picking the right people saves everyone a big headache and pushes your leadership to another level.

Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

If you want to be successful, learn to adapt.

It was precisely 84 months or 7 years ago that I graduated from college and was dropped into job market still recovering from the 2008 recession. I had a finance degree and no internship experience, getting a viable job was so difficult that it pushed me into an $11/hour accounting job at a sleazy grocery chain — this was after I sent over 1,000+ applications.

How did I get over this slump? I improved my resume and interview skills but it still wasn’t enough. I was competing with people with Master’s degree and years of experience for menial low paying jobs. I was forced to accept reality and adapt and decide maybe the finance industry wasn’t for me.

If I hadn’t made the decision to get out of finance that day, I would be years behind what I’m doing now in advertising. Oftentimes the best thing you can do is face reality and make the right adjustments to move forward. This can be applied to everything, including relationships.

This lesson is what Kevin Samuels preaches to his clientele every night, learn to adapt to the dating market as you get older or risk dying alone.

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Sean Key

Solopreneur, advertiser, copywriter and avid chess player. Born in India, now a native New Yorker.