 Welcome back to the 21 convention. I hope everybody enjoyed their quick little break. Our next speaker is head of live training at the social man. He's been in the industry for approximately five years and it's his third time speaking at the 21 convention. Welcome Nick Sparks. Yeah, give it up for me. Oh no. How's everybody doing today? Yeah? Pretty amazing convention that Anthony puts on year after year. Round of applause for Anthony. This is cheesy. This is just but I'm gonna do it anyway. So I had about like 15 or 20 minutes or so prepared where I was just gonna talk about myself. Give you a little intro, talk about my past, let you really get to know me for a while, right? Then I realized that you probably really didn't give a shit about that so I decided to cut that portion unless somebody does. Would anybody like to hear about my history, my past? All right, I appreciate that guys. You're very sweet. Thank you. Or would you rather I just kind of just cut into advice, things that might actually be beneficial or helpful for you? Yes? Show of hands for for the intro. Show of hands. Thank you. I appreciate it for the actual content. Show of hands. All right. Thanks guys. I appreciate it. Try not to take that too personally. I'm out of here. Whatever. I don't need this conference. Okay, so what I wanted to talk to you guys about today aside from myself is approaching. Approaching women. That's it. Other times I've been all over the place today. I just want to talk about this one thing in particular right here. And why am I going to do that? This is a good question. You might say, why wouldn't you want to talk about that? But this is a good question. Why am I going to spend my time up here talking about approaching? It's not necessary. You don't need it. It's completely superfluous to you finding a mate, to you dating, to you having happy, successful lives when it comes to women, when it comes to everything. Don't need approaching. What's true? Don't need it whatsoever. The vast majority of people think about it. Think about all of the people you know in your life right now. Friends, family, acquaintances. How many of these people actually on a regular, consistent basis are stepping outside of their personal bubble of friends and just walking up and talking to random strangers? Not only just talking to random strangers, but getting positive jovial reactions. Not only getting these positive jovial reactions, but with the women. Getting attraction within five to 10 to 20 minutes and getting phone numbers and going further. How many people do you know that actually do that? You can probably count them on one hand. Two if you know a lot of people, but that's really stretching it even then. My point being is that this whole being this social superman, this whole like going out and talking to anyone and lighting people up, it's a rarity in our society, in our world. A lot of people, most people, the vast majority of people don't possess this ability. Very, very rare when you find someone that's just so naturally outgoing they light up everywhere. Most people go through their entire lives every once in a while having a couple cocktails and talking to a stranger at a party or a friend's thing, but usually they date people through social circles. They take a class and they meet somebody through there. Online dating is becoming huge right now. You can date couple new girls every single week and never do a single approach. You don't have to learn this. Most guys will be happily married and never even worry about approaching, approaching, approaching. So why do we care so much about it? Why am I going to spend my entire time up on the stage talking about it if it's such a big waste of time? Well, obviously it's not. Obviously there's something there that's so valuable that we want it, right? Yeah, there's only a few rare people that have that ability that do this all the time, but why can't we be that person, right? Why the hell can't we be in that 1% of individuals? Certainly a noble goal to try to live up to. Why not? Good question. And how many times we've all been in that situation at the grocery store, at the coffee shop, at the park, walking down the street, at the party, at the bar, saw that girl. Oh my God, heart skips a beat. She goes walking out of our life forever. We wonder what could have been. Some variation. You've all been there. You've all understood it. And you didn't say hi. You didn't approach. You didn't say anything. Why? Oh, if I just knew what to say, if I just had the right thing to say, or I couldn't move, I couldn't think fast enough, I froze. You don't want to freeze. You want to know what to say. You want to be able, when life throws that person that you've been dreaming about, that person that gets you exciting, you don't want to miss those opportunities. You want that person to be in your life. If there is a chance of it happening whatsoever, you don't want to miss that chance. Two ways you can go about living life. One dictating what happens, what you get. And the other just whatever life hands to me. Most people go by doing the same old same old and they're fine. But very, very few people step outside of that box and say, No, I want something else. I want something different. I want to take this into my own hands. And that's why you're here. That's why we actually care about approaching. Because we're sick of just taking whatever is handed to us, we want to change our cards. We want to turn in, get a new hand every once in a while. And this skill, this this noble social ability that very, very few people have gives us that opportunity. And yeah, I know you guys have all talked to girls, you guys have all done approaches, you guys have all like put in reps and everything. And I'm sure some of you very well might be able to how many guys be honest? Is there anyone in this room right now who when you see that girl in any situation that just makes you melt, you will not even hesitate before walking up to her and saying something anywhere within if she's like within a, you know, a block radius of you, how many guys can honestly put their hand up and say, I would never hesitate in that situation. I can't do it. Sure as hell can't do it. And so yes, even though you guys have done it before, you're not satisfied. Very, very few of you are satisfied. How do I know this? Because I've been coaching guys for five years. And if there's one thing I hear more than anything else, yes, I help guys have better conversations with girls. Yes, I help guys get more sexual and escalate things of course. But if there's one thing I hear more than anything else, I want more opportunities and I'm sick and tired of letting those opportunities pass me by. The one thing I hear more than anyone else, it's still the biggest thing that for whatever reason, doing this for how many years, people are just not satisfied. That's why I'm talking about this today. So what gives me the right to talk about it? Why should I even be the one to speak to you about it? Well, our coaching programs at The Social Man, this isn't a plug, I swear I didn't mean it to be this way, but our coaching programs at The Social Man, they're not perfect, we're working on improving them every single day. But one thing that we do nail is there's not a single guy that walks through our program who spends a weekend with us that has any problem approaching like a machine afterwards. Some guys' conversation we still need to brush up with, some guys' flirtation, escalation still needs a little bit of work. But if there's one thing I can always guarantee is you will not walk away from that weekend having any problem approaching whatsoever. Bold guarantee, how can I make something like that? Good question. The reason why guys walk out of our programs without having any problem in this area whatsoever is because after one of our programs, the guy is no longer making the two big mistakes that the vast majority of men make who are struggling with this stuff when it comes to approaching women. The vast majority of people make it. If you're still struggling with consistency, you're making at least one of these two mistakes. Maybe not all the time, but enough of the time that your consistency isn't where you want it to be. And that's what I'm going to be sharing with you right now, what those two are. And let me make it clear, after listening to me speak, you're not going to I'm not doing some magic stuff to rewire your brain chemistry as I'm talking to you. You're not going to be able to walk out of here and not have your whole feelings about approaching change. I wish I could do that. I can't. You're going to be able to understand what I'm talking about from an intellectual standpoint. It's very simple. I promise it won't go over anyone's head. And it's probably stuff you've thought of before. It's probably stuff you've heard before. It's probably stuff you were already doing when you were on and you didn't even think about it and you were having a great time and talking to everyone. So this won't be any big secret and it probably won't be anything that 99% of you haven't done but the problem is in some situations you revert back, you make these mistakes, and when it counts most in front of the people you care most about in front of the women you're most attracted to, you fall. Consistency sucks and that's why you actually care about what I'm going to be saying next. There. So what are these two mistakes? Number one and before I start the important thing about these two mistakes is that they are universal. There's not a human being who has not felt one of these symptoms, one of these things I'm about to talk about. It's in each one of us from the time we're children. It's completely intertwined with our human DNA, with our human who we are, what we want, what it means to be us. There's no running away from it. There's no escaping it. All we can possibly do is try to to live with it and control ourselves and control like what our actions as best we can despite of it. You'll see what I mean in just a second. The number one mistake that just about everybody makes, completely natural, we're doing it from the time we're children, is that for whatever strange reason we always just want to believe that the world revolves around us, right? When you're a child you believe that you're the center of everything and everything revolves around you. In fact as a child you learn how to relate with the world in terms of how it affects you. This is a integral part of a child's development. I learn what this water is based on what it does to me. I don't care what it is outside of me but I care about how it feels to me, how it tastes in my mouth, how it feels when I jump in the swimming pool. Water couldn't even exist outside of that to me when I'm a child. And in our adult lives we usually grow out of these tendencies. We usually move past it in most parts of our life. However, in those times that we actually care, in those times that we get nervous, in the times that we put value on a situation we have a tendency of reverting back to some less than glamorous tendencies and one of those tendencies being to interpret things, to exterior things, especially things that we value simply in terms of how they relate to us interpreting everything through that lens. What do I mean? If you're speaking to a woman who you do not find that attractive, right? You don't value her she's let's just say in your own worldview she is unattractive, right? And you go to talk to this person and she's cold, she's distant, she's unresponsive. What do you say to yourself? You say, well she's not a very nice person, maybe she wasn't so ugly she probably wouldn't be so mean all the time. Some variation, right? Oh, why is she such a bitch? Now let's take that girl only transform her to the most beautiful woman you've ever seen in your life or the most beautiful woman you've ever seen that night. Standing there, hair's perfect, makeup's perfect, outfit sexy, whatever your dream girl happens to look like and you go to talk to her she's unresponsive, she's cold, she's distant. What's the first message that goes through your head now? She didn't like me, I didn't say the right thing, my line wasn't good enough, I wasn't funny enough. What could I have said in order to get a better reaction out of her? What should I have said right there? What am I doing wrong? Why can't I figure this out? Why am I struggling? The second that value comes into play everything we know about things just operating at a rational level goes out the window and we become that child again. It all becomes about us. How does that relate to me? What does that say about me? What does that say about who I am, my value? We just give it away in that moment. Why? What makes her so special? Ask yourself that question. Here's the key. There's something that I teach. I call it the 6040 principle. It's really, really, really simple. This one kind of helps you remember not to get caught in this trap. And what the 6040 principle says is that anytime you ever get any sort of reaction out of another human being, any point in your life 60% of it has nothing whatsoever to do with you. The vast majority of it has to do with her. Where she's at. What her upbringing was like. How outgoing she is. How social she is. How great she is able to come up to with a witty comeback when some stranger approaches her. If some gorgeous girl came up to you and said hey how's it going? Are you going to be there with like some funny comeback? Are you going to stutter and maybe get a little nervous sometimes? Why is she any different? Maybe she's just having a bad week. Maybe her boss was being a dick that day. Maybe she just got broken up with. Maybe she didn't have the best relationship with her father. Maybe that dress she's wearing makes her feel fat. Maybe she is ovulating. Maybe she is menstruating. That's probably going to be the biggest determinant of whether you get a positive or a negative response. 60% the vast majority of it has nothing to do with you whatsoever. Yeah 40% there's still stuff under your control. There's still stuff you can do to influence that situation. But why is it when you get that negative response from a woman that you actually care about that you actually value is your first impression what did I do wrong? What's wrong with me instead of what's wrong with her? Why? Does it make any sense whatsoever? Logically. Like I said it's one thing to understand it intellectually. Actually understand it right here requires action in situations in which you normally wouldn't want to take action. What does this all mean? What does this whole 60-40 thing mean in terms of approaching women? And you know what in terms of approaching I say 60-40 for all parts of an interaction. For approaching I'd say it's way less than that. I would put it at 80, 20, 90, 10. What I'm saying is that when you approach a woman yes there are some things that under your control. However the vast majority of her response has nothing to do with you whatsoever. And you know this too when you're talking to a girl you don't care about you've been there before she doesn't respond as you like her to you're like yeah whatever I'm having a great time. But yet you all know that there's been times when a woman that you actually value has not been social has shown that she lacks social intelligence or social abilities so that she's not in a very friendly mood shows that she's not outgoing shows that she can't hold a conversation and you feel dejected you feel like you did something wrong you feel like she's rejecting you she can't reject you especially if she gets to know you after a while and you just screw things up left and right then she can reject you in those first five to ten seconds all she can do is tell you a little bit about herself it's the first biggest mistake that guys make they take it personally it's about me when it has nothing to do with you whatsoever it's always about you right when I when you do wrong oh is me I said the wrong thing she doesn't like me I mean it works well in opposite right she responds positively you can't wait to pump yourself up man she loved me I look so good I said the right thing like I was so smooth how could she not want me are you joking I hate to tell you 60 40 kind of works there too no she was probably just ovulating or I mean yeah she liked you but don't give yourself so much credit it was more to do with the fact that she was in the mood and you just happen to be a man who she was attracted to but she has a say in this too it's not all you that deserves all the credit here maybe she ran a little game on you as well first biggest mistake second biggest mistake that the vast majority of us make especially when times are hard especially when we get put in situations that test our patients that test our nerves also incredibly human also incredibly born in us from geez from the time we could crawl essentially this mistake is is that oh man this is this is this is common amongst all kinds of anxiety think about anytime you've ever been nervous about anything or in general when human beings get anxious or nervous about things in their life this is one of the first responses that human beings have to it is that when they find something that they don't like that doesn't make them feel good that they can't explain that just that they just don't enjoy something they don't understand something that makes them feel anxious something they fear one of the first most common human reactions is they want to control that thing they feel that if they can exert more control over that situation then that will alleviate their fear if they can somehow just if it wasn't so out in the air if it wasn't so random if it wasn't so scary if it wasn't so unknown then that would alleviate their fear then they would be able to control the situation then they would be able to approach all the women that they want you've told yourself this if I just had that line if I just knew what to say so that I could minimize rejection then I could approach them if I could just whittle rejection down to maybe like nine like ten percent then I would have no problem no fear approaching any woman anytime anywhere here's the big difference between when you've told yourself that between a guy who doesn't have any fear approaching that rare one percent who doesn't have any fear approaching whatsoever okay you're like well if I could minimize rejection then I could go approach whenever the natural says rejection is just part of the game I know I'm going to get rejected I'm going to get rejected a lot it's a numbers game they don't try to control well maybe if I can just try to get this positive no 60 40 principle they know without even thinking about it they know sometimes they're going to get good reactions sometimes girls are going to be in good moods sometimes girls are going to be having a good day sometimes girls are going to be ovulating and sometimes girls are going to be in not so good of a mood sometimes girls are going to be having a bad day sometimes girls are going to be menstruating they're not sitting there trying to wreck their brain over how they can increase their odds no they know that the vast majority has nothing to do with them whatsoever so instead of wasting their trying trying to figure out some perfect thing to say They're just throwing out as many opportunities as they possibly can. And you look at this entire industry, not this entire industry, excuse me, so much of this industry is predicated on that promise. You're like, I don't try to control everything. This industry is predicated on the promise. I'm gonna give you what to say. Sign up for this, take that, and I'll give you that line so that you never get rejected. It's been playing off men's insecurities. It's been telling us it's more complicated than it actually is. Is it, do you really have to win her over with some complex thing? No, she knows in the first five to 10 seconds whether she wants to sleep with you or not. It's coming, this elaborate thing that you can hope to concoct in order to win her over. It's not gonna change that. It's just gonna waste both your time. Maybe she's polite, maybe she's not. But the girls that liked you and were into you at the end of that were the same girls who were gonna like you and were into you before that, despite that. The guys who are good with women, well, I like to change the verbiage, excuse me, I like to change the verbiage of all this because the whole idea that a lot of people have in this community of approaching is built in. These mistakes are built into it. This whole idea of going up to a girl or a group of girls with something that they have to say that they're hoping will get a specific reaction controlling the situation, thinking that it's more than 60, 40 that they actually have more power in that than they actually do. They think of what to say, they walk up, they deliver it, and then they stand there waiting to either be accepted or rejected. This whole idea of approaching is just riddled with error, and it's no wonder why something's been broken for so long. We keep trying, we get better and better, but there's still a big gaping hole and we can't figure out why. I don't like to think of it as, I stopped using the term approaching just because of how we generally think of it when we think of approaching. Because when myself, or guys who are good with girls, they don't think of it as like, okay, so approach. Hey guys, I gotta get back to my friends. They don't think of it as this big thing they do. Sometimes they're gonna be around girls, they're gonna try to position themselves around girls, and then usually it's just something they shout over their shoulder. Then it's usually, hey, by the way, this and that, they're not trying to put an effort trying to get a good reaction, they're just simply getting their attention because they know, more than anyone else, that sometimes you're gonna get a positive reaction, sometimes you're gonna get a negative reaction. Remember, I said that there are things that play into what you do? Are you smiling? Are you looking them in the eyes? Can they hear you? On the approach, that's essentially it. The rest of it, it's up to them. Really, try it. I stopped using the terms approach, and I just started using the term dropping a hook. Dropping a hook, because when fishermen are fishing, and they stick their lines in the water, and the fish aren't biting that day, they don't say, oh, I'm a shitty fisherman. They say sometimes the fish just aren't biting. That's just the way fish are sometimes. Maybe I'll try a little different bait, maybe I'll go check out a different fishing hole, sometimes the fish bite, sometimes they don't. And I'm not going up with this whole thing, trying to do it, I'm just dropping a hook. I can go to the bar, drop a hook over my shoulder, I can bump into some girl behind me, look at her and say, excuse me, oh, I just dropped a hook. Sometimes she's gonna be like, oh yeah, don't worry about it. Sometimes she's gonna be like, oh, it's no problem, T. I'm gonna say, oh, that's a cool headband thing you're wearing. She's gonna be like, either she's gonna be like, thanks. Or she's gonna be like, oh, thanks, right? You've all seen either one of these reactions before, you know how it happens, but natural human tendency to overcomplicate, build up these big structures of what's going to happen when it's so freaking basic. The only thing that makes this complicated is all of this stuff. The only thing that makes it complicated is this thing right here. It's so, but freaking simple. The only thing that makes it complicated is your doubt, your insecurity that wants to make it more complicated to make you feel like you can't do it. It's freaking simple. I promised myself I wouldn't swear. I made that promise in years past, but freaking just sounds weird. Drop hooks, drop hooks. Sometimes they're gonna, oh, sometimes they're not. You lose nothing whatsoever. What have you lost right there? You're not taking it personally. And yet, because you're not wasting all of your time, 10 minutes trying to dig out, finally dig out a good reaction which never would've came anyway, when you could've dropped 10 more. And you're not thinking about it. It's this big script and this big thing you have to run up and do. What are my hooks? How's it going? What are you girls up to? I like that. Look, you did right there. That was cute. Do that again. Sometimes she's gonna be like, eh, sometimes she's gonna be like, this, look. What have I just lost there? Nothing. All you can ever do is gain information. That's it. Stop approaching girls and just start dropping hooks everywhere you go. The more you drop, the more girls you're gonna talk to. It doesn't have to be fancy. Guys, well, what hook? You know what my favorite hook in the world is? It's really, really simple. Did you see that I'm communicating with you? Did you see that right there? Who did not see that? Oh, yeah? Did you notice that I was doing something towards you? Did I get your attention? Did you see? Now, some girls either gonna be like, or some girls gonna be like, I just dropped a hook right there. All it is is finding out what's this girl's deal. That's all I wanna do. I just wanna know. And the only way you can tell is to say something. I used to teach differently. I used to say, well, look at them and see if they're really friendly. Then go approach them. And if they look really like pissed off, don't approach them. I mean, in general, I'm still gonna operate under that. But if I'm coaching, no, you never know. Cause I've had girls that look most friendly and they've just been cold and icy. And I've had girls that look like they wanna punch somebody actually be really sweet. And they were just kinda shy and nervous before. You never know unless you check. So why not? Why wouldn't you? Dropping hooks, man. I literally, every single day, I live in New York, so I walk past a shit ton of people all the time. Every single day, I literally will consciously try to make eye contact with each and every single person I pass. Practice. All it is is practice. And sometimes girls are gonna smile back. Sometimes, oh, you know what my favorite response is when I'm like giving? I'll just bore into people's heads. If they don't see me, I will just stare until I get something. That's another thing. Stare at people's heads. That's a hook. If they don't see you, never counted. You weren't staring. What are you talking about? Wait until their eyes meet. As soon as their eyes meet, you're gonna know whether they're into you or not. Either they're gonna smile back. Either they're gonna be like, yeah. Or my favorite response, which I was about to say, my favorite response, which most guys don't think of as a positive response, but when I look at a girl boldly and she looks away really fast, when she looks down, oh, I love that response so much, because I know just like when I, maybe in times past, obviously not nowadays, but I know when a girl's made me nervous when she's looked at me, I've had that same reaction. So when a girl does that, I just get this smile on my face because I know what I just did to her inside of her body. I just know, right? Right? Here's how you know you're doing it right. And I say the same thing about escalation. You know how you're doing it right? You know how you're doing it just enough? Because it feels really weird on the inside. You feel awkward. You feel funny. If you're not stepping outside of that comfort zone, if you're not making your own self feeling, oh, with the amount of eye contact you're making, you're not making enough. If you're not feeling really, really awkward about how far you're pushing the interaction, you're not doing it enough. I promise you, because if you were, you'd be having a lot different results than you've already been having. And if you just keep doing what you've always done, you're gonna keep getting what you've always gotten. So you have to take different actions. It's really what it comes down to. It's so simple. I mean, we could break this down conversation. I mean, I talked about conversations last year. I talked about offering. I talked about not talking too much. It's never about the secrets. The thing about conversation that's so funny, it's based on the same principle. Guys always say, oh, let's think about it in the same way. Like, what do I say? Like, what's the thing that I'm gonna be able to say to get her to like me? The ultimate fallacy, the ultimate lie of this industry, the ultimate lie of yourself down in your insecurity. You're not good enough as you are. She would not like you just for being the person who you are standing in front of her. You have to say something to get her to like you. She's up here, you're down here. And either she's gotta come down a couple pegs or you've gotta say something that's gonna bring you up. The ultimate fucking lie of the industry. And they didn't come up with it. You've been telling yourself that long before they ever came up and made money off of that insecurity. It's bullshit. In the meantime, she's sitting there wondering, why the hell is this guy talking so much? I liked him. I was actually into him. Why is he trying to act like he needs to win me over? Actually, now I don't like him anymore. What the hell is he trying to make up for? Guys always think that I have to be the funny one. I have to get her to like me. I have to say the thing that's gonna make her fall for me. No. One of our female assistants actually said it best one day because I was talking about a similar thing and she said it's far more sexy, far more attractive, far more important to be interested than it is to be interesting. Guys always think that in order to get a girl to like them, they have to be the funny one. They have to be the charming one. They have to be the star. The vast majority of women out there, they want to be the funny one. They want to feel as though they're the charming one. They want a guy to make them feel like they're the sexy one. It's your job to provide the framework for the conversation. It's your job to lead the conversation. It's your job to give her the opportunity to fill the conversation with the beauty, with the things that women are great at filling their lives with, with the funny stories and the giggling and the laughter that you're just sitting back poking fun at really. Tell me more about that. Are you serious? Oh my God, it's fucking hilarious. It's the same thing. When it's a girl you don't care about, you're like, no, that's really cool and she just won't shut up. It's a girl you like, all of a sudden you won't shut up because you're trying to impress her so much. What's changed? The girl or you? Why has the reaction changed from the girl? Simple. We over-complicate it in our heads because we've got something to prove. Not to them, but we don't feel like we have enough ourselves. We don't feel like we're good enough so we feel like we have to do something extra. All you gotta do is put yourself out there. That's essentially, put yourself in a woman's path and give her the chance to impress you. I'm not trying to reach any hook point with girls. I'm giving girls the opportunity to hook me. Sometimes they will. Sometimes they won't. The sooner I stop taking those wones personally and start laughing at them, the sooner I'm gonna start having a lot more amazingly enjoyable experiences with the girls that do respond positively because there's a shit ton of them out there. There's four billion women and I know when you lock yourself in your house for a month because you just got out of a breakup and you're just eating like Ben and Jerry's and you're playing video games and you're on the computer all night and your zits are popping out and you're like putting on a couple extra pounds and you're not sleeping and you're just like feeling like the biggest piece of shit in the world. I know you're sitting there like, man, what girl's gonna want me? Oh man, I do need some tricks. Absolutely, I am at a low point. But then we get out there and maybe start working out a little bit. We maybe start taking care of ourselves. We get good night's sleep. We start being productive in our professional. We get on a good streak. We've all been there. How many people have had a hot run where they've been in a really good place and people have found them attractive, charming and valuable? Show of hands, please. Right? And how many people have had runs where they've been cold? Where nothing's going right? Where shit's just in the gutter, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, I wave my hand all day at that. What's the difference? The outside world, we all have it inside of us, right? Sometimes we get into ruts and you know what, the biggest thing we need in ruts, when we're in the ruts, that's when we're most desperate. Guys call me, guys want coaching when they're at that pitfall bottom of their ruts. Guys are never calling me when they're sitting me in their happy full circles. They call me in their ruts because that's when it's like, I can't take this shit anymore. You know what the first thing I usually give those guys when they're at the end of their rope? When they're just so frustrated? Maybe, and it usually is at those really harsh moments, maybe after a divorce, maybe after some traumatic point in one's life. That's when the guys really are just like, what the fuck, at the end of their rope, frustrated. The first bit of advice I give them, patience. Patience, I know it feels like it's never going to get better right now and I know today feels like forever but you know, you've been here before, you're going to get out of it and yes, there are certain actions you can take to increase that speed. Yes, there are certain things you can do to jolt your learning curve. I'm lucky, when I'm in those spots I have things that I can immediately make myself do that I didn't have the option to do my first breakup or my first heartache or when I was much younger. I now have strategies that I can take to get myself out of that place a little bit faster. But we've all been there and we all obviously have been in the opposite. We've all maybe have dropped hooks. We all have just shut up and let girls talk, talk, talk, talk and we've all escalated just fine. The only problem is sometimes even though we know how to do it intellectually and even though we've done it in the past, we forget right here. And so yeah, it sometimes takes a little memory jogging. Sometimes it's like, I'll be sitting there and I'll fall into old patterns, I'll do old things. Any day of the week, son of a bitch, what happened? It's constant. This is actually, guess what? It's never going to be over. You're going to have to go back and forth with that shit, with that other side of you that just wants to drag you down. You're going to go back and forth with that for the rest of your life. It's not going anywhere. And there's going to be days when it gets the best of you. There's going to be days when you just are so frustrated with yourself on what you weren't able to accomplish that you just want to give up and wonder why you started on this in the first place. Oh, but man, is it impossible? No, is the greatest power those ruts and that negativity have? Just that persuasiveness to actually make us feel that it really is so bleak? That's really their only power, is making you feel that it is hopeless, that there isn't a tomorrow, that it's not going to get better. But man, it's all about reminding yourself of that simple shit that gets clouded, that gets thrown off. And the more you hear it, then the more you not only hear it, but the more you'll go out and experience it and feel the more hooks you drop and see exactly what I'm talking about in your experience that back to you. Hearing me talk about dropping hooks and how girls react, yeah, it sounds cute and you like it. But after you go out and you practice it hardcore for a weekend where I'm pushing you into every single one of them, like this has changed. It's all about giving yourself the experience in your life to constantly fight against it, constantly build yourself up, to constantly get better. There's never perfection you're never gonna win. All you can do is take that next step forward and improve yourself that much more. And what I can promise you is that it always does get better as long as you're always moving forward. You're better today than you were a year ago today, weren't you? Anybody disagree with that? Unless you were just in a harsh breakup or a harsh traumatic experience, is anyone worse off now than they were a year ago? Fuck no. I mean, it's right there, man. Stop making it so complicated. Start doing what you know how to do. And yeah, it's okay to remind yourself every once in a while when you need to. Cheers. Yeah! Give it up! I still have time too. So I wanna open up to questions. I love questions. Ask me anything you could possibly ask me and I will be excited to answer them. Any questions? Yes? When you're dropping hooks to you, so I'm trying to figure out how you end up getting the girls that you want and how you figure out the girls that you want. You drop the hooks and then the girls that respond, you figure out which of those you like or how do you do that? Really good question, really good question. I try to drop as many hooks as I possibly can. Old ladies at the bus stop. Dude at the gas station. Anywhere, like oh yeah, having a good day today? Great, I'm gonna try to like, oh that's a lovely book you're reading, man. Whatever it happens to be. Why? Because the principle behind this is that approaching is especially vexing for us because we've got two things coming together. We've got a perfect storm of anxiety hitting us. Not only do we have the she's a pretty girl and she makes me wet myself when I see her anxiety that pops up, right? We also have another anxiety going on and that anxiety is just a general fear of talking to strangers that we have that we've been raised with. Most parts of this world you've been raised to know that strangers are the devil and that you should avoid them at all costs or they will poison you with candy, with razor blades and apples. We all know this, right? Has anyone not been taught this from the time they're little? So for approaching we've got those two different points of anxiety. We've got, yes, girls are gorgeous and they make my heart beat faster and they make blood rush to other parts of my body. I know that. But then we've also got this other thing. I drop hooks everywhere because I wanna, this is still gonna happen. And the more positive reactions you get from girls, the less this is anxiety and fear and the more this is just excitement to get more physical and get to know them better. Like this is the power that drives you forward that gives you an extra snap on your punches when you compliment her and look her in the eye. This is how she believes you when you look her in the eye and tells you she's sexy and shows she knows you're not just full of shit. But this thing, I try to minimize this as much as possible in my life. Because I know that approaching this girl, dealing with this is gonna be a hell of a lot easier if I don't also have to deal with this fear of strangers that we all have as well. So I'm looking to, and in terms of who I like, yeah, sometimes I'm attracted to people that I talk to, sometimes I'm not. Once I'm not, we might be friends or we might not. The ones I am, so we should hang out sometime. She's like, yeah, she already agreed to give me her phone number. So when you agree to hang out with me that thereby concludes that we have to exchange numbers. Another question. You were talking a second ago about the idea that, you shouldn't believe that a woman is up here and you're down here. I guess what I wanted to know is do you believe in the idea of qualification that you need to qualify yourself to a woman or is that? Yeah, yeah. So I would, we, at the social man, we certainly teach the idea of qualification. And a big reason why is that everyone's different. And just because a woman may not be my perfect life mate, just because me and a woman might not be perfectly suited and attracted to each other, doesn't mean that she's not an equally worthy human being as me. So I still have to screen for someone that's going to be ideal life mate, but that doesn't mean there's any value discrepancy between us. I still respect her and think she's amazing, maybe not perfect for me. Maybe she's screwed up and's got a lot of her own issues to deal with, so I don't want to be around her as much right now, but I'm no better or no worse than her. You mentioned earlier that you have tools to kind of get you back into your game when you're feeling not so confident. So my question is, what are a couple of those tools? And then also, when you are on your game, what tools or what do you do to maintain that momentum or continue to step it up in that space too? Very good question. I already gave a couple of my tools just for getting myself back on. Everywhere I go, every single day, I'm consciously trying to make as much eye contact with possible. Why? Eye contact is your most powerful tool for socializing and anything in regards to sexuality. It's the end-all, be-all, the alpha and omega. If you're not making eye contact, nothing's ever gonna happen. If you are having strong eye contact that lingers a little couple extra seconds, it makes you feel funny in your stomach. That's all you need. You don't need anything else after that. That's all the sexual escalation that needs to happen right there in that moment. You can always get closer later, but eye contact. And it's not just people say eye contact. You're just like, look at that thing. Look at their eyes. It's a blank object. There's one way to do it. When, in fact, actually looking at someone in the eyes, there's different ways you can do it. I could look you in the eyes, but I also have my periphery open, or I can focus on your eyes so that everything just blends into a background blur and I can see you even more crystal clearly. Can you feel the difference between when I'm doing this versus when I'm doing this? She can feel that. One feels like we're friendly and we're talking. One feels like I feel funny and what's this guy talking about, right? If you are just not spellbound by the amazing sexual power that you can wield with your eyes, then you need to start working on your eye contact more than you're not doing it enough. I can promise you that. And if you're not making enough eye contact, why would you even bother working on anything else? It's like I wanna work on my high jumping abilities, but I can't walk. It's ridiculous. Why are you letting by the big things that actually make the biggest difference go, but you're worried about what to say if she says one particular thing in the universe? So that's the one big thing. I'm consciously working on my eye contact and I will continue to do so until I can look across the room, make eye contact with a girl and lure her towards me without saying a word. Then I'll stop working on my eye contact. Getting there. So second thing, dropping hooks everywhere. Getting over that, that shyness, pushing myself. But if I see that girl, will I still feel a little nervousness in me, a little excitement? Yeah, it's gonna be a hell of a lot easier to just jump and not think about it if I've been talking to everybody else all day. Hell of a lot easier. Other than that, it depends. I mean, this is where coaching comes in. This is where my own personal self-evaluation comes in after that. I have a tendency of when I get nervous, believe it or not, I have a tendency of talking too much. Crazy, I know, as it sounds. And so like when I would be off my game, like after a breakup, I would be talking too much. Why? I thought that I had to say something to win this girl over and impress her. So what's the coaching that I give myself and what do I have to force myself to do now? The opposite. Shut the fuck up. And one thing I usually give guys is I say if they want to change something about themselves, if they want to improve something, whatever it is. Like if a guy is holding himself back because he's too conscious, that wasn't my problem, I have to force him to start getting more aggressive, start getting closer to her, start being more forward. Whatever that is, whatever you want to correct, whatever you need to shift, I always say go as far over the line as possible. Go to the exact opposite extreme. Because usually, if you're trying to correct the problem and there's some anxiety attached because of the situation you're in, you can go as far over that line as you think you are and you're not even close to the line. I always say go as far over until you're getting slapped, till you're positive that, okay, I need to start pulling it back, then dial yourself back a couple of clicks. If you're just inching forward, you're never going to find out where the actual limit is, where you should be hitting, you're just going to be firing in the darkness. So in terms of me shutting up, I had to go to the other extreme. I had to do way less talking than I normally would do in an interaction when things are just going. And then when I'm good, when I'm good, I'm already having enough experiences to keep up my practice, so I don't really need to work on it or focus on it. I have enough women in my life that these things are happening that I don't have to think about it. Good question. In your experience, what is the most critical factor in a guy's psychology to get him over the belief that there's this great chasm between having a girl up here on a pedestal and he's down here and has to somehow raise... Good question. ...her, raise himself to her level? Good question. There's something that I teach, but this isn't my concept by any shape or form, but I use an acronym called TAR. And what TAR stands for is Thoughts, Actions, Reactions. Essentially saying in some situations you have thoughts that bolt into your head. If you had really bad experiences with girls when you were younger and you get put in a situation with a girl you value, those thoughts probably aren't gonna be too positive. They're normally, you could be thinking normally, but all of a sudden in that situation you start thinking crazy. You start going haywire, your brain takes over. Okay? Your actions then are a reflection of those thoughts and if your thoughts suck, those actions probably aren't gonna be too good either. They're probably gonna be. Your eye contact's gonna be jumping all over even though you know to make eye contact. You're gonna be talking too much even though you know you want to, et cetera. And then reactions, the R. What feedback do you get from the outside world? What are the girls saying back to you? So you have these thoughts and what usually happens is, this is how self-fulfilling prophecies form. I suck with girls. Your actions look like a guy who sucks with girls. Her reactions say, man, you suck with girls. Why? Because of the action that you're giving out right there, right? And then what does that reaction do? It goes back and informs those thoughts. See, I told you, you were right. You get more experiences that just reinforce those negative thoughts. So there's a couple ways you can deal with this to answer your question. One thing obviously is the whole inner game side of the thoughts. If I can just, maybe if I do enough self-affirmations or maybe if I just, you know, if I hammer home, hang out with the right people that tell me the right things over and over again, I hear it enough, it'll change those beliefs. Do I believe in that? Absolutely. To a certain extent, over a long period of time. What we essentially do in our coaching programs is, yeah, we're hammering home different beliefs the entire time to try to affect that T. But what we're really doing is we're getting him to change that A. We're getting him, even though he wants to like lock up into his shell of looking down and talking and mumbling and getting into his cage and not like, you know, physically and inciting emotion out of the woman, we get him to, even though it's hard and even though he's nervous to, once again, overreach those lines in whichever way we wanna push him, change those actions and sometimes it's hard as hell. Sometimes it's the simplest action. It's like jumping up and down, but when you're trying to do it on the edge of a building and you're afraid of heights, it's impossible. The simplest action in those moments can be the hardest thing. But we then get him to push to do those actions eventually, he starts getting different reactions from the outside world and I think that's where it really happens. You start reprogramming those memories. You start replacing them with those different positive memories. And in conjunction with the actions you're taking, when conjunction with the belief work that we're doing, then those new memories come back and they go back and reaffirm those thoughts. You know what? Maybe it's not me that girls don't like, maybe it just happened to be that girl in that one situation. And actually with these other responses, I find out that quite a few number of other girls actually do respond positively to me. Isn't that crazy? Our actions start getting, we start feeling bolder dropping hooks more and more, escalating sooner, keeping your mouth quiet, letting that awkward silence fill while you smile and she's like, oh, so anyway. And then you really smile because you know what just happened there? Yeah, that's my favorite moment in a conversation is when awkward silence is filled by her sweet voice. That's when I know it's on. Answer the question? Cool. One more? Or yeah. Oh, perfect. All right, so your theme is dropping hooks. Yeah. Taking action. Slash dropping hooks. So how exactly would you define dropping a hook? Yeah, a hook is anything you do to get a girl's attention. So once again, if I look her in the eyes with that focused look, I give her a little smile if I'm being friendly or little slight cocky upturn of my lip if I'm being sexual in a bar or alcohol fueled environment. That's a hook. If a girl's walking by, I could thrust my crotch into her and say, oh, excuse me, oh, I'm sorry, that's really tight in here, excuse me. Did she already look at me and have to acknowledge me? That's a hook. Can I say, hey, those are some badass shoes right there. Did I just get her attention and force her to acknowledge me and she'll either acknowledge me positively or she'll acknowledge me negatively? And each time has more to do with her and her life than anything I could possibly do or say in that moment. All right, so a hook is something that she has to respond to, something that grabs her attention. Something that gets her attention. So walking by and she doesn't acknowledge your presence whatsoever, you did not drop a hook. Oh, would a hook an approach interchangeable terms? I don't, like I said, you could use it, absolutely. But like I said, I don't like approach because of this whole going up and trying to make something happen, which is counterproductive to guys actually getting over this fear, in my opinion. Thank you. Anytime. And getting eye contact. I love making eye contact, but it's not always like reciprocated with the girl. Even if she may be interested in me, but like how do you go about getting someone to increase her eye contact? In the midst of a conversation you're talking about right now, like you're talking to this person and maybe the eye contact's not consistent. Maybe she's got some issues with her sexuality. Maybe you're screwing up on your end, you're tightening up, you could do some things. For whatever reason, her eye contact's just not there, right? Right. Okay, good question. Do you want to come up on stage real fast and I'll show you? What's your name? What's your name? Max. Max, let's give a round of applause for Max. Come on. Bring the mic. Max. Mike. Bring the mic. Very, very simple. Try not to woo you, like Erica awakening. All right, this was two years ago on stage. Don't read into that. 21 convention joke. All right, really simple eye contact rule. My goal is I always want to lock her in. If I have her held enthralled in that focused gaze that I'm talking about, you know what I'm talking about? You feel that, right? There's no, this is different than the way most people normally look at you, right? Right? Makes you feel different on the inside, doesn't it? I want her to feel that as much as possible. So I want to lock her in that eye contact as much as possible. So general rule. General rule. If she's looking at me, I am locked in 110% of the time. So let's practice that. Look at me. Nice. Addendum to that rule. Always mirror. So when she looks off in some direction, look off in some, I'm looking off in some direction. Now, the important thing is is that I can still see her in my periphery. So if she looks off and I'm looking off, I still see what her face is doing right there. So when she looks back at me, I'm locking that, I just want that eye contact. I'm taking it any second I get. So she looks back at me, bam, it's on again now, isn't it? Funny. Well, well, well. Look what we have here. She looks off. And it is kind of funny when you mention that. I mean, I don't know where you would get that from. Do you? It's crazy. Who does know? One change that I have to this little rule. Sometimes I look off just for emphasis, just to add a little extra spice demonstration. So I don't know what came over me, but that's when I realized, I just had to. You know, it's not when I come back, it's like it just hits you even more strong because it's had that moment to disassociate. So that's the only time I'm gonna break my eye contact at all cost rule. But otherwise, yeah, unless she's, it's like you're not making enough, I promise. Unless like this is all you need. So what do you have for breakfast? Oatmeal. Huh? What was that? Oatmeal. Yeah? What kind of oatmeal? With instant oatmeal. Instant oatmeal with raisins. With raisins. And cranberries. Cranberries. Huh. How'd you like that? It's really good. Pretty good? What kind of berries were in there? Yeah? Blueberries? Blueberries. You like blueberries? Oh yeah. Yeah? What do you like about blueberries? I mean, it doesn't matter what I'm saying. Sexuality's right here and yes, I'll lower my voice and I'll slow it down and I'll say it. Instead of saying it like this, I'll say it like this. Really? Well, why didn't you say that in the first? I mean, I'll start lowering my voice. But man, it's all in the eyes, right? You can clap for it. I felt it coming out. I don't know what we're doing. Here, clap for Max. That's really allowing me to seduce him like that. Time, how are we doing time-wise? Cool. Do you want me to seduce you now? Do you ever find that eye contact gets confrontational sometimes? Like people misjudge your intentions? Yeah, good point. My whole trying to make eye contact with any person anytime anywhere, excellent point. I will not do that if I feel my safety is threatened in any way, shape, or form. So if the man's bigger than me and looks angry, I'm generally not going to be boring my eyes at the back of his head. Very good exception to the rule, yes. Thank you for that point of clarification. A week later, you guys are like limping and crutches. Like, neck, you told us to make eye contact. We can, can we fit both of these in? All these questions are coming up the last moment. I got your favorite system. Who had their hand up first? Yeah, what's your favorite system for getting sexual? What I just did right there. Yeah. Oh, my other favorite thing would probably be, yeah. And this is just me. The thing about, the thing we teach about specific lines or specific techniques or anything like that is all up to the personality. There's gonna be some shit that I say that works great for you, there's gonna be some stuff I say that works terribly for you, and every single guy is gonna have his own personality that works for different. So take what you like, leave the rest. But one of my favorite ways to increase sexuality and an interaction and guys who are better with women don't do this. But I love sexual innuendo. It's one of my favorite things to drop. Like anytime I can say something and she's not sure if I mean it sexually or not. Even better if she does take it sexually and then I can accuse her of getting all sexual and I'm trying to have a serious conversation. That's probably my favorites or just compliments, man. Compliments get such a bad rap because if you say them like before a girl starts opening up, you know, if a girl's sitting there looking angry and pissed off of the world like she wants to punch somebody, you're like, you're really cute. She's not gonna respond well. Girls don't respond well to compliments when she knows you're full of shit. It's really simple. But when she's lighting up and she's showing off her personality and her sense of humor and she's looking you in the eyes and she's got that twinkle in them, you say you're adorable. She's gonna light up and she's gonna look like a Christmas tree. So yeah, compliments. Another one of my favorite ways to escalate the situation outside of what I just did with Max. Hi, I'm Melvin. I just wanna say I love you. You are the reason that I'm here. Just a dude, Melvin. I know, I know this. I know you're just a dude. I'm just saying, you're the reason that I'm here and I'm glad that you made a really good point with the whole 60-40 because a lot of guys in this community do not value themselves at all. They're always thinking. It's an ego thing. We think we have more power than we really do and it's not just guys in this community, it's everyone. But it's true. But thank you. I just wanna say thank you. Pleasure. Thank you. One more? Cool. Yeah, I just have, this is my question, okay? So, looking at you, I'm thinking back to what? Can you hear this fine? Loud and clear. All right, so I was thinking back to what Robbie Cramer said at the beginning where he was talking about these sort of different categories of people. And if I were to place you, I would place you in the upper left, the sort of outgoing and extroverted kind of guy. You know, you definitely have that energy. And I would definitely say I'm somebody who is probably more in the bottom right, very analytical kind of an introverted person. So, how would you suggest that I take what you're suggesting and apply it to somebody like me who would naturally be more serious and maybe like I can get too intense and girls can think I'm creepy or something because the energy isn't quite as sort of bouncing all over the place as yours, you know? You're more of an introvert is what you're saying. Let me ask you a question. Is that a disposition or a prison? Do you have to be that for the rest of your life? Here's the point. My business partner, Christian Hudson, he might have heard of him. He was one of the people that founded Charisma Arts. He then went on to found our mutual companies been doing this for a while. He's an introvert. He's a big time introvert, but he decided that he wants to actually have social interactions with people. So, he'll drop hooks from time to time and he'll act in ways that are gonna get him different results. To talk to women because I've gotten a lot better at that. I'm just saying that my, I think that my sort of energy is different from yours. And so, I'm just wondering is your suggestion just to like try to take everybody who has got a more serious energy and introvert and make them into an extrovert? Or is it, I mean, how would you suggest that I drop hooks and do what you're doing in a way that's like not gonna creep a girl out if I'm like a little more serious about it or something or just maybe less bouncy or something like that? Well. Does that make sense? It absolutely makes sense. It reminds me of my speech from last year. One thing I can see just from this question is that your face tends to be just a little bit, it's not the most expressive, it's not as expressive as my face, say that. And one very common thing I touched on this last year is that whenever you get nervous, I talked about whenever you're in those situations that you actually value and you actually care about and shit goes haywire. One of the most common reactions is that your face tightens up even more. It becomes more of a mask. And the point that I made last year was that there is no, outside of your eyes, there is no more influential signal, communication, piece of communication with a woman that is more important than your face. Before we've ever had written or spoken language, human beings have been communicating with their face. We can display the almost infinite range of human emotion on our face. And therefore, if you're not communicating, if you're tense and if you're tight and if you already have a predisposition not to have a lot of emotion and you're in a situation that causes you to tense up even more. Remember when I said trying to overdo it in the opposite direction in order to hit a happy medium and start hitting a place, right? And what if this, and here's your point kind of, it will feel unnatural. It'll feel really weird. It'll feel really awkward, right? It won't feel as almost natural for me as maybe would be, right? It would feel less good for you. Is that what you're saying? What I'm saying is- For you to take these actions, it would be harder for you to do that. No, I just thought I'm saying is I feel like you, you have sort of, you're describing a system that works great for somebody who's got your natural dispositions and I'm wondering how you would modify that system for somebody who has my dispositions. That's all. I've worked with guys, I've worked with guys who are mildly autistic, who suffer from Asperger's, whose anti-social habits would outweigh yours. I'd be willing to bet a considerable amount of money. This stuff's universal. This stuff isn't about introverts, extroverts. This stuff's about human communication. And it's all about, and you know what? And you're right. Some people have a more of a disposition one way or another. Some people are screwed when it comes to this lottery. Some people are screwed when it comes to other lotteries. Everybody kind of evens out in the end, I believe. But the question is, is what do you want in your life? And yes, the easier route, the more comfortable route will continue to get you what you've been getting. Or you could decide to do things radically different, not radically, but different in ways that are feel, just really unnatural to you, that take you dramatically outside of your comfort zone, but that get you different results. Are you doubting your ability to take different actions? Are you doubting your ability to force yourself to smile more when you're talking to the girl? If you're smiling, you'll never be creepy. You use that word a couple of times, and any time you've ever been referred to as creepy, it's because you're not smiling, I promise you. You just seem to be saying I should be more like you, which is fine. You should have more emotional expression on your face, and that's not a me thing. That's a human communication thing. I'm just seeing is what you're saying is I should be more like you, which is fine. I'm just saying, in person, I haven't found that to work very well. Any guy, my expression on my face is gonna look different than every other human expression on every other face, but it's their own individual fingerprint. It's their own expression. When they are actually communicating using their emotions, it's not gonna be my emotions. Every single person, when they're dropping hooks, or they're just expressing in the interaction, it's gonna look drastically different. It's gonna be an expression of their personality. When you are actually, when you're on fire, because you raise your hand when I ask you on fire and you're social and people are laughing, you're in a great mood, one, I'm willing to bet you've got a big smile on your face, and two, it doesn't look anything like me when I'm smiling and I'm in a great mood. It looks like you. I don't want me. I want you only, I want you turned up. I want you vibrant. I want you in HD. I don't want you in the bland, ho-hum, monochromatic colors that have been getting the ho-hum, monochromatic results that you've been getting. I want something better. You're right. If I could add to this, just to kind of reject, I'll say that I am also, maybe even more than you, I'm a very extreme introvert. I don't know if you guys know that or not, but I'm like total, if I'm not out meeting women or doing something on purpose to meet people, total introvert, and I'm very happy with that. So at the same time, I can't see the value in what Nick's saying and doing, and I have been able in my own life to implement that at certain specific points on purpose for a short amount of time, the rest of the time, and I think any of the speakers have a long time to tell you this. I'm total blank-faced, psyched, cracked strokes all the time on it. So dude, I'm like maybe even more than you. I'm just total, you're looking at my pictures on Facebook of me, they're dead serious or look really high, and I don't do drugs, I never have. So yeah, at some points, I'm able to do that stuff throughout the rest of my life. I'm not even, so. I think we're actually in the same boat on that. That's why I want to make that clear. We also got to wrap up, so both of you guys. Yeah, thanks for the questions. Cheers. Hey Nick, appreciate some too. Definitely man, seriously. Tough questions are the best to answer. Yeah, really great question. Thank you guys. Next speaker is a close friend and a co-coach with him at the Social Man. He's been there since its founding, his name is Nick Sparks, and he's a returning speaker to the 21 convention. One of my favorites and a total badass. Thank you for coming. Thank you man, appreciate it. Give another obligatory round of applause for Anthony for, I mean, this seriously is an amazing event. And I appreciate being asked to come back here. I definitely appreciate it a lot. So thank you guys for having me. Also, congratulations to yourself, of course, as I'm sure you've heard more than once. Not every single person actually has the courage to stand up and make a change in their life. Everybody's got issues, everybody's got problems, but very few people actually do something about it. So awesome on one hand. Also, another reason to be, you know, congratulate yourselves is that this has been going on for what, now like five hours so far today? Multiple hours yesterday? Yeah, six hours perhaps. I don't know if I could pay attention or focus on anything for that long. So the simple fact that you're able to do that deserves its own round of applause as well. It's interesting though. I kind of liken it to an analogy I would use as actually listening to a woman as Fran was talking about it up here earlier. It can be difficult sometimes, just like it's difficult to actually focus on hour after hour after hour after hour of guys talking. Why? Because, well, in this case, you're tired, your brains have processed so much shit and it can only process so much more. In those cases, when you've got a beautiful woman standing in front of you, your heart's pounding, your head's going, it can be hard to actually listen and pay attention in that case without thinking a million different thoughts at the same time. So it can draw a little analogy between what you're doing right now, the actual focusing skills it takes, and talking to a girl. It's not really part of my speech, but I just thought of that. So why am I here? What am I doing standing here? I'm not gonna talk about who I am. I mean, who really cares, honestly? Well, it started about 27 years ago when my mother gave birth to me. No, nobody really cares. I wanna talk about why I'm here, though, because that's the important part. That's what actually matters. What am I doing here? Why am I standing in front of you? Exactly, I don't know. I mean, the obvious thought is that I'm standing here because you guys want to learn to get better at talking to girls. It's the obvious one. However, that's not why I'm here. I mean, yes, I'm a dating coach for a living. It's what I do, but that's really at the root of it, not why I'm here. It may be a symptom of why I'm actually standing here, why you guys are all sitting in the room right here, but it's not why I'm standing up here. The reason why I'm up here, and the reason why you guys are all sitting in those seats right now, is that, bear with me, because I'm going to explain myself, is that we are living in a society that's been dominated by fear. Sounds a little kooky. Let me explain myself. What the hell does that mean? Once again. We live in a society, we live in a world, country, culture, whatever you want, that's been dominated by fear. Why do I say that? Why do I make such a broad, sweeping, general statement like that? Reason being is that, look at dating in our culture. Look at meeting and talking to members of the opposite sex. How should it be? If there wasn't any fear involved, what would happen? You'd be out someplace, maybe at a coffee shop, maybe at a bar, maybe walking down the street. You see a girl that you're attracted to. You see a girl that you like. You walk up to her. Hey, I think you're cute. I'd like to get to know you more. And the girl thinks to herself for a second, either, yeah, you seem all right too. I'd like to get to know you better. And you guys start talking and get to know each other better and decide if you want to make babies or not. Or she decides, I don't feel the same way. No offense, maybe I've got a lot on my mind. It's just not a good time for me. It's just not going to work out. And you say, I completely understand. No harm, no foul. And you just simply walk down to the next girl that you see that tickles your interest, say the same thing to her, and she decides to make the decision. Easy, simple, the way it should be. Almost too easy. Why can't it be that way? Why? Because there's fear everywhere. When you're walking up, your mind is racing. Oh my God, so what should I say? What is she gonna reject me? Is she not going to reject me? What is she gonna think about this right now? Is anybody else gonna see me get rejected? You're trying to make a conversation happen, and it's like, okay, what do I say? What do I say? What do I say? How do I do this? I wanna do this, but I'm not sure. I'm gonna get rejected here. And you're not the only one feeling fear. That's for shit sure. She's gotta be worrying the entire time too. Is this guy a douchebag? Is this guy an asshole? Is this guy gonna break my heart the way the last guy did? Is this guy a psycho killer who's gonna chop me up into little pieces and leave me in the trunk of his car and then feed me to his cats once my body gets a little smelly? I don't know, somebody might think that. Maybe not, maybe it's just me. She's got a lot of shit on her mind. How do I look? Do I look prettier than other girls here? Does my hair look okay today? Do I look fat in this dress? Fear, everywhere. And you all know exactly what I'm talking about because you've all felt it. You wouldn't be sitting right here if you didn't feel it, especially in relation to women. It's that feeling in your chest. Kinda creeps up, it feels really shitty. Fear, anxiety, doubt. And it sets off negative thoughts, it sets off self-defeating thoughts and actions. Happens to everybody. It happens all the time. It happens when you're trying to talk to a girl. Happens, maybe at work, maybe at school. All over your life, you have pressure on something. You get that shitty feeling. And what happens? We've developed in our society a ton of ways of dealing with it. Of making it go away, of avoiding it. What do we do? I don't know, we have another drink, maybe we smoke, maybe we go on our computer and just watch mindless things to avoid doing something that we don't really wanna do. I really like the blue screen happening. What are you doing? Either way. We maybe pull out our phone and just stare at our phone. Do we really need to check our phone? But no, why? Because it's easier, it's comfortable. Instead of dealing with the shit that my mind could be dealing with, oh no. Get my mind off of it. I focus on some other shit. There's a million different things you could be doing. Because actually facing it, actually looking it right in the eye, it sucks. It feels like you wanna get this far away from it as possible and it's everywhere in our lives. We've got a million ways to avoid it. We've got no real way to stand up to it. It's just there, it's something we deal with every single day and it sucks. That's why I'm here. That's why I'm standing in front of you guys right now because it's my job, beyond all other things, to teach you to break through it, to stand up to it, to overcome it when it happens in your life in relation to women. And coincidentally, as you gain confidence from that, it affects every other part of your life where this has happened. It's a skill, it's a talent. And what's the root of this? How do I do it at the very core? It's the magic. I say a couple of magic words and it's gone. No. The way that I do this is basically based on a very simple foundational principle. And of course there's more specifics and I'm gonna get into more specifics. But it's based on something very simple. It's based on the fact that when you feel like crap, your body goes through a very significant, very powerful physiological change. It's eeks out of every pore of your body. Every single muscle in your body is a slave to this feeling. And when you feel great, when you're feeling on top of the world, when you are feeling amazing, your entire body, your entire physiology is affected by it. It's eeks out of every single pore in your body. That's why you've each had times when sometimes you're just on. You can't explain it, but you can go up and talk to any girl you want to. Everything's just rolling. You get in the zone. Women are loving you. Things are going great. Maybe it was in the honeymoon phase of a relationship. Maybe it was a night when you just drank a little bit too much, but you can't put your finger on exactly what was going on, but you were just feeling it and you were amazing. You all have the potential inside of you. It's you at your core. It's not a figment of your imagination that was doing that. That's who you are. Sometimes, a lot of times, especially in our world though, unfortunately, fear, doubt, anxiety creeps in and holds you back, restricts you, cuts you off, ties you up, closes you up. That's why we have expressions out there like, he's really coming out of his shell, that shell being the shit and he's actually being more comfortable. He's really opening up. That's what those expressions mean, quite literally. And this physiological change that occurs is very significant because everyone else around you is aware of it. Maybe they're not thinking. They're not thinking about the stuff the way I do. They're not conscious of every little shift that happens, but they can feel it, especially women are very, very intuitive, as we all know. They can tell from a mile away how you're feeling. And unfortunately, feelings are contagious. Nobody wants to feel shitty, right? I mean, that's pretty universal. Nobody likes feeling shitty. So when you're feeling shitty, when you're feeling anxious, your body is giving off all the signs that you're feeling anxious. Anybody who gets a whiff of that around you, you're always going to be universally repelling to everyone. Everybody's going to be like, I'm getting the fuck away from that. I mean, unless they're your friends, they have to deal with you. They have to be like, is everything okay, buddy? Are you feeling all right? However, when you're feeling great and your whole body is reekin' that, maybe it's when you're around your very best friends and you're having a great time and you're comfortable. Or around your family, or around people that just get you. You can be yourself around. And your whole body's radiating that. You're feeling good, feelings being contagious. Everybody wants to feel good. So when you're sending off those signals, you're going to be universally attractive to everyone around you. So here's the linchpin of it all. Is that if it were the case that whenever you're feeling shitty, you always radiate shittiness. Oh, Erica. Whenever you're feeling great, you're always radiating these positive energy. Then my advice to you today right now would be simple. I would simply say, well, when you feel good, go out and talk to people. When you feel crappy, lock yourself in the house. Don't talk to anyone. Thank you guys. It's been my pleasure to be here today. Unfortunately, that would be awful advice. Wouldn't be very good advice at all. And luckily, there's something that we can do about this little dynamic. There's something that we can do to turn it on its head, so to speak. Your physiology will always follow your feelings. Except for one situation where it doesn't. There's one time and one time only where your physiology will not follow your feelings. And that one time and one time only is when you consciously focus on your physiology. A mentor of mine gave me very wise words one time. He told me that either you can let your feelings control your actions or you can let your actions control your feelings. Probably some of the most profound words I've ever heard in my life. And it resonates through everything. You don't feel like going to the gym. You don't feel like working out. You feel tired. I don't feel like working out. So you don't work out. You feel even crappier. Or you say, I know I feel like crap. I know I feel like not going to the gym, but I'm gonna fucking do it. I'm going to do it anyway. I swore too much last year. I didn't wanna do it again this year. I'm gonna do it anyway. So you go to the gym, you work out, you get your blood flowing, the endorphins start going, and all of a sudden what happens? You feel great afterwards. Man, I always feel amazing after my workout. I should do it more. Either your feelings are gonna dictate your actions or your actions are going to dictate your feelings. And the same thing can happen with that physiology that we talked about. Because as I mentioned, whenever you're feeling like crap, your body will force itself, cut itself off, close itself off, signal to everyone around you, stay away. You should not even be around me because you're gonna feel like crap if you get near me. However, just like I can focus on pointing my finger, retracting my finger, raising my right leg with poor balance, lowering my right leg, I can always control my physiology. You can always take action. I mean, that's the secret to life. Free will, the greatest gift we could ever have. We could always control our actions. And so what are some of those actions? What are some of those differences that happen between when we're feeling amazing and when we're feeling closed off? Well, when we're feeling closed off, when we're feeling like crap, the very first thing that happens is our heart starts to beat faster. Makes sense? As our heart beats faster, it causes our breathing to be affected by it. We start breathing quicker and we start breathing a lot more shallow. We basically breathe only as deeply as it'll take to keep us alive. Quick, show, slow, quick, shallow breaths. Because we're breathing quicker and shallower, we start talking more quickly. And because not a lot of air is passing over our vocal cords, our voice becomes very weak, comes from our throat. And as the air is rushing over faster, we speak a little bit higher. Now anybody would tell you, of course, that talking like that is always really sexy to women, obviously, everybody knows that if you've been studying this stuff. Erica knows. And so as your heart's beating faster, as your voice goes to shit, your blood starts flowing out to your extremities, out to your muscles, away from your internal organs. So of course, your butterflies come in your stomach, you get a lump in your throat, and all of your muscles go very, very tense. Your shoulders get pulled forward and up slightly. It puts a lot of pressure on your chest and on your neck, which is why people who are stressed out a lot often need massages and carry a lot of tension in their shoulders and in their neck. Your back arches forward ever so slightly, and it's not just the upper body that grows tight as well, but your lower body. Your legs get stiff, your hips get very tight, your knees, your ankles, so that your legs just become like two planks kind of stapled into the ground. You become kind of like a statue of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. The cartoonist did a good job of drawing what the most uncomfortable body posture could possibly look like. That's not even the most dramatic change that happens though. The most dramatic change that happens, the thing that really screams out to everyone around you, how awful you feel, is that your face goes under an incredible transformation. First it starts with the eyes. Because your thoughts are going a million miles a minute, your eyes are darting around all over the place, and as your eyes are darting around all over the place, I mean, that's never a good thing. It's like you're looking at a million things, but you're really not looking at anything. It's like I'm looking at all of you, but I'm really not seeing, I couldn't tell you a single thing about any one of you right now, they're just darting. And the most dramatic thing happens is that my face just starts to lack all expression. It just becomes dead. It becomes a mask. It's like I'm not even there. And if you've ever seen a newspaper where it said man murders 15 people, and they show a picture of the guy's face, it looks empty, it looks soulless, it looks lifeless. You know anyone who's ever been addicted to hardcore drugs, heroin, crystal meth, crack cocaine. Then it's what their face looks like. They're not even there. It's like their body's here, but their soul isn't even present. And so I'm not saying that when you feel like this, that you look like a mass murderer or a crackhead, but I'm saying you look a lot closer to this than when you're feeling good. And the signals you're giving off to people, I mean people tell me that, oh Nick's just a good looking guy, that's why it gets girls. But if I looked like this when I was trying to talk to girls, do you think any women in the world would be attracted to me? Probably not. Or maybe a couple, but I don't really want them. So now what happens when you're feeling good? Exactly the opposite. Your heart starts beating more slowly. As your heart starts beating more slowly, you start taking deeper, slower breaths. Oh, thank God, that sucks. As you're taking those deeper, slower breaths, it affects your voice. You start speaking more slowly. Start speaking a little bit more deeply. And because you have more air rushing out over your vocal cords, you don't even have to try to yell, but you start speaking with more strength, more power, more volume. Your blood now is being sucked back into your internal organs, no more butterflies in your stomach. And your muscles become nice and loose. Oh, your shoulders drop back down and pull back. Your back straightens. Releasing all that tension from your chest and your neck. Your lower body loosens up too. And this is important because your hips are really where your sexuality is at. If your hips are tight, I mean eye contact is number one, of course. But if your hips are tight, a woman's not gonna be feeling any sexuality. You look at the video I did last year where I demonstrated physical escalation and my hips were very much on a swivel. I mean, I like to rub my crotch against girls quite a bit when I talk to them. And it all comes from having nice, smooth hips. I like to lead with my hips when I'm moving, when I'm feeling nice and sexy. And your legs, your knees, your ankles are all nice and loose. So your weight shifts nicely and slowly from one foot to the other, not quickly, but just kind of like warm honey. Moving nice and smoothly back and forth. Oh yeah. The most dramatic change, of course, the most dramatic change, of course, happens in your face. Your mind slows down so your eyes start to focus on one thing at a time. You take in everything, every little detail. You pay attention. It's like Sherlock Holmes when he surveys a room. He takes in every little detail of what's happening around him. And most dramatically is in the expression in your face. All of a sudden, your face booms with expression. Doesn't matter what you're talking about. You're not talking about it with your words. You're talking about it with your entire body so that somebody who couldn't even hear your words can feel what you're saying. If you're not communicating like that, you're not communicating. And so you can always control these things. You can always control your physical body at any second you want to. And I'll tell you the three most common times in relations to women. And I see this time and time again from working with guys. The three most common areas where a guy freezes up and tenses up. And he's not even aware of it. I have to watch it and tell him about it. Yo, you're closed. Open yourself up. Three most common times when he's going to approach a girl, those first five seconds, when he's trying to make a conversation happen, what do I say, what do I say, what do I say? And when a girl is showing them that they like him and he knows deep down that he has to escalate. Oh God, what do I do? What do I do? I talked about last year, you just have to do it. It's those three times when a guy freezes up, unbeknownst to him. And the second that his body goes tight, the second that he gets to look in his eyes, cat food in the trunk, she is going to immediately drop her attention. She is going to immediately lose all interest, period. So that's the biggest part. That's the 80%, that's the 20%, excuse me, that does 80% of the work. If you're doing that, you're gonna have a lot of success with women, period. If you're just controlling your body, making sure when you're talking to them, looking them focused, open communication, it's gonna get there. I mean, luckily that's not our only advice either, but it's the big part of it. So with that in mind, with that as being the most important thing to always focus on, I wanna talk about some of my best stuff for getting through some of those rough spots, some of the biggest things out there. Let's start with the approach. Let's start with the first area that really causes guys to freeze up and tense up and get nervous. Going up and saying hi. Goes up, usually gotta keep a little too much of a distance. Hey, hey, keep a nice distance. So what's the most important thing about approaching? There's one skill that I would say is most important to approaching. What would that be? Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I would say that it is observation. Observation, and not just for the use of situational openers. Not just to be able to say, oh, you have a dragon on your shirt. How cool is that? Are those silly bands? I love those. By the way, okay, quick tip. Get some silly bands if you don't have them. Seriously, they're amazing, first of all. Girls love them, and if you ever see a girl wearing them, which you will all the time, all you gotta do is like, there's some badass silly bands, yeah, I know. And oh, what do you have? I don't know, what do you have? Oh my God, it's the easiest way to start a conversation with girls. Get some silly bands. Ridiculously easy. Anyway, anyway, beside the point. Beside the point. Number one is observation. Not just for situational openers, but because a girl will be telling you subconsciously whether she wants you to approach her or not. How does she do that? What are the signals? It's really obvious when you think about all the stuff that I just went over. Because this being more open, being more closed, physiology, it doesn't just apply to you, and to me, and to you, and you, and you. It doesn't just apply to the guy sitting in this room. It applies to every single human being on the face of the planet. Everybody's got shit they're trying to work through. Everybody's got fears, anxieties, doubts. Women, maybe even more so with men. If we could even fathom that being possible, have this shit brewing inside of them. And so you can look at any woman out there, any woman you see tonight, you can look at her, and you can look at exactly the stuff that we just went over. How much expression she has in her face is the big one. How loud is she speaking? How much animation does she have in her body? How much is she, like, focussily looking around versus how much is she just closing herself off and looking away, keeping to her friends, keeping to the bar? I can promise you that if you go to a try to approach a woman who is showing everyone in the world sending off loud signals that she is feeling like shit, that she is self-conscious, that maybe she is nervous, maybe she's worried about how she looks in her dress, maybe she has just had a really bad week at work, maybe she has gotten to a fight with her friend, maybe she got dumped by some asshole guy, maybe things just rolled out of the wrong side of the bed. If she's sending off those signals and you try to talk to her, now unless you're feeling incredible, unless you're on top of the world and feeling amazing, open as possible, she's probably going to give you a negative reaction. I mean, when you're feeling like crap, you don't want to be bothered by anyone, you don't want to deal with anything, you want to be kept to yourself, get the fuck away from me. I'm good, leave me alone. You don't want to deal with that. And, just like you're gonna see tonight, when there's girls who are feeling good, who are feeling open, who are signaling to everyone in the world, even though they don't even realize or doing it, that they feel amazing, looking around, smiling, moving around, doing that like loud girl laugh that girls sometimes do, and we're like, why is she laughing so loudly and obnoxiously? She's signaling to every single guy, hey, I feel good, I feel sexy. Come talk to me, please. And if you go and talk to that girl, as long as you're not just reeking of closeness and discomfort, and I don't know, a stack of, I don't know, as long as you're not just radiating that you're very, very close, she is going to give you a positive response. She is going to light up a little story, just to highlight this. I was working with some guys, Bar in New York City, and corner of the bar, there were three girls, by far the most attractive girls at the bar. Hands down, every other guy there saw them, every other guy there noticed them. One of my guys says, man, I wanna go talk to those girls. So we observed them for a little bit, observation, and they were just closed as shit. They were all circled tight together, frowns on their faces, and I said, not yet, not yet. Because the thing about all of this is that, if a girl's closed to start out, she's not gonna stay that way. Some girls are, I feel bad for them, cause they've got some real shit to work through. But most girls, most people, what happens? They spend a little bit of time at the bar, they start having fun with their friends, they start to loosen up a little bit. Maybe she has another drink, maybe a song comes on that she really likes, maybe she starts getting, talking to some good friends, and they have some laughs. People will open up over time. You just give them a couple minutes, depending on the circumstances. So, this guy said, I wanna go approach them. I said, not yet, not yet. And sure enough, we watched some other guy saw the exact same girls, just like all the rest of the guys did. You know, he was the one guy who had the balls to approach him first. So he walked up and I said, give him 15 seconds, girls will be rejecting him. Sure enough, about 12 seconds later, he was walking away with his head down. The girls were, you know, closing in the ranks. And every other guy saw that, and I mean, no harm, no foul to that guy. He had the balls to do it, props to him, cheers to him, all the respect in the world. But all the other guys were watching them like, I'm not gonna go talk to those girls. I'm not gonna be the guy to get rejected in front of everybody else, not that. But me and my guys continue to observe. We continue to keep an eye on them. And sure enough, because those guys, because that one guy went and talked to them, they started to loosen up a little bit. Maybe they said to themselves, you know what, we came out to the bar to have fun. Maybe we shouldn't be so stiff. Maybe we should have a little bit more fun. Maybe that guy, I don't know, kicks something loose, like inside of them. And they started to smile more. They started to laugh more. They started to turn out more. They started to look around a little bit more. So I said to my guy, okay, now go, perfect. Talk to him now. And he went up, made sure that we'd already gone over, open, closed, so I made sure he was expressive, eyeing, moving the body around nice and loosely. He went up and go and talked to them, simple line. I think it was something just like, guys look like you're having a great time. I had to come say hi, nothing to it. And sure enough, the girls blue-eyed open. They were all laughing. They were all touching him. They were all like, you know, he was part of the circle. And every other guy in there was looking at him like, oh my God, this guy's some kind of master. This guy is, oh my, I wanna learn from him. He is, he knows something and I don't. He, what is he doing? What did he say? No secret to it. No secret to it. Observation, paying attention, not just having the gear spin a million miles an hour up here, focused. Watching, observing. Most important thing when it comes to opening, by far. Five minutes, really? Okay, really, really quickly. I wanna give you something for conversations. Something for that, you're in a conversation, things are going, that'll change your life and every conversation you'll ever have. I don't say that lately. Conversations, even as Fran was talking about earlier, they always tend to happen where the guy talks way too much, way too much. Girls love to talk, right? We all know that, we've all heard it before. Girls love to talk. Why is it that we seem to be dominating the conversation a lot when we're talking? Well, because we're nervous. Well, because we don't wanna lose the conversation. We're afraid that if we keep quiet for too long that things are gonna drop. What? Oh, that was a question? That wasn't a five, son of a bitch. Oh, I'll slow down, man. What's that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was like, hold on. Questions at the end. I'll save a couple of minutes. Oh, jeez, oh, it happens. It was fun. All right, what am I supposed to do with this, Anthony? What am I, okay. So, we're a conversation, change your life, yeah. Guys talk way too much when it comes to conversation. So, they're afraid that if they stop talking, if there's any silence, the girl's gonna lose interest, so they have to keep her attention. That is some of the most self-destructive thinking that you can possibly be doing. You really should not be talking that much. It's the truth. Girls really do like to talk. So, what's a technique that you can keep in mind to swing things back in your favor? Everything that I teach, all the techniques I use, they're simple as possible. They're very, very, very simple. And why? Because when you're nervous, when you're going haywire, I wanna give you just a simple objective that you can focus on, concentrate on, and do that's going to have the most positive result. Why? Because everything that I teach is very simple, but at the same time it's very difficult. Why is it very difficult? Because you're actually looking that fear, you're looking that anxiety, you're looking that doubt right in the eye, and you're stepping through it. You're not trying to circumvent it, you're not trying to look around it, you're overcoming it. So, the simple thing to focus on when you're in those situations, you're talking and you just wanna do one thing. I like to call it the buffer. It's beautiful. Why? How do most conversations go? That a lot of guys have, a lot of guys that I work with, how do their conversations go? Well, they start the conversation because that's what a guy does. He says something, and then she says something. And then he says something, and then she says something, and then he says something, and then she says something, and then he says something, and maybe she doesn't always say something, so he says something again, and then she says something, and then he says something. She says something, and he says something. Back forth, back forth, and sometimes, if there's a silence, he'll say something to try to get her back into it, right? Has this happened to anyone? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? How would my conversations look? And especially in those first five or 10 minutes when you're not sure, like, once she opens up, once you guys are laughing and you're having a great conversation, and everything's flowing, I mean, shit, do whatever you want to at that point. But it's always in that time when you don't really know each other and you want her to be more into you, and you're not sure how it's gonna go yet, and you're trying probably way too hard. How do my conversations look at that time? Well, of course, I say something first. I'm the guy, more often than that, unless I'm wearing silly bands, and she starts a conversation with me. I say something first, and then, of course, she's gonna say something more often than not. She's gonna respond, and then I pause. Silence is your most powerful verbal weapon. I know that doesn't exactly make sense on a literal level, because silence isn't verbal, but silence is your most powerful verbal weapon because when there's silences in the conversation, if you rush to fill those, you're trying too hard, period. She will lose interest because at that moment, you are trying way too hard, and for what? You don't know this girl. She feels awkward in her dress. She's having a bad hair day. Why are you trying so hard? She doesn't, she's not up on this pedestal. She doesn't feel like she's up on this pedestal that guys put her up on. The whole thing about her being up here and us down there, it's bullshit because girls sure as shit don't feel that way. So when there's that silence there, if you rush to fill that gap, trying way too hard, if all of a sudden she fills that gap, all of a sudden things are starting to work the way they're supposed to. All of a sudden, you can get a smile on your face when a girl says, so, and goes to continue the conversation at that silence. I'm like, ding, okay. She's interested in me. This is clear sailing from now. I can have fun, I can enjoy this conversation. I get to know this person. So, she says something, I pause. And this is a good time to actually think about what she's saying. Most guys are thinking about what she's saying as she's saying it so they can come up with a clever line right off the bat. Most guys wanna have that witty response as soon as she's done talking. Like, you know, pop it up, oh, ha, ha, ha. Like, that's how it is in movies sometimes. So we think that's how we should talk. It's not the guys that she wets herself over talks. The guys that she wets herself over in a good way, of course. They actually pause, they reflect upon. They think about for a second. And then, after I'm done pausing for a second, I don't say what I'm going to say just yet. Oh no, here's the part that changes everything. I buffer, oh, it's so beautiful. What is a buffer? A buffer is a statement that builds a little bit more anticipation for what you're going to say next. But that also could prompt her to talk more. It's beautiful. It's amazing. So what are some examples of buffers that I use? The one I use constantly, the one that I use all the time, is really, really, really, really. You ever hear me talk to a girl? I will say, really, no less than a thousand times. I kid you not. My girlfriend got pissed at me one time, actually, because we share a bed. And this was early in the morning. I was still sleeping. She had woken up. And apparently, I was flirting in my sleep. I was buffering in my sleep, apparently, because she looks over and she told me the story. I just had this big smile on my face. And I was just like, really? That is so interesting. And I woke up and she was like, you son of a bitch. You cheating son of a bitch. It's the best. I say really a thousand times, really? That is so interesting, I might say. Or I might say, is that right? Is that right? Is that so? Really? You don't say. You know what's funny about that? You know what is so interesting about that? Really? I can't believe you would say that. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Now hold on for a second. Buffers, they're magical. And why are they so magical? One, it builds up anticipation for whatever you're going to say next. You throw out a buffer and all of a sudden she's like, what's so interesting? What's so funny? Really what? Tell me. I wanna know. Please, do not leave me hanging like this. And the other thing is often the times it gives her that prompt to do what she has been dying to do the entire time, which is talk more. So often the times I don't have to say anything. She'll say something, I'll pause, I'll buffer really. And she'll be like, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Go on for more and I'll say, is that right? And she'll be like, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'll say now, wait a minute. And she'll be like, what? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You should never, ever, ever run out of things to say. One, because you're not rushing to say everything that you have in one bolt. And two, I mean, for every one thing a woman says, you have things that click in your head that they remind you of that you could say in response. But if you just throw out a little buffer, really? Pause again, you have to pause again after the buffer. And then she starts talking again. All of a sudden you've got a million more things that you could say based off that new slew of stuff that she just threw at you. And you can say anything off of that thing that she just threw out, or you can say anything off of the first things she just threw out. And maybe you buffer again and she throws out another like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You've got a whole new slew of material that you can talk about, that you can vibe off of, that you can use if you're paying attention, if you're listening. Buffers, they're the most beautiful thing in the world. And if you concentrate, you do them anyway. Everything that I teach, it's intuitive. It's all the shit that you do when you're just hanging out with your friends, when you're relaxed, when you're not worried about what to say, when you're not trying to impress her, when you're not thinking about what you should do, it's what you do naturally. And if you focus on taking the actions that you do when you're feeling good, your feelings will follow. Just like when they say, when you're feeling anxious, just take some deep breaths. I didn't make that up, that's for sure. But everything else that I have is kind of based off that exact same principle. Buffer, focus on it. And girls are just talking, talking, talking. You're like, is this really this easy? Really? You should be talking to the minimum of the time, every time. If you're not, you're doing something wrong. Now once again, once she starts opening up and starts, you guys start laughing and you guys start having a good time together and you're not thinking about shit, then, I mean, you do whatever you want. Don't worry about anything. But in that interim, that pre-things and things that are a little rocky, buffer. How much time do I have left? 15, I thought that was six. 15, 20, okay. What do I wanna talk about? I'll talk about painting a picture, painting a picture. Another conversation technique. That's really the part where a lot of guys get caught the most. A lot of guys can approach, sometimes get good responses. I mean, a lot of times when guys have girls that are laughing, looking at them, basically throwing themselves at them, like it's nervous, you have to escalate. You have to do some of the stuff physically that I talked about last time. You have to take action there. You have to pound on the keys. But, I mean, getting good at that escalation part, when you have girls that are lighting up and you're having a good time with. I mean, that can be tricky. That can be some fear to fight through, but that's a labor of love. That's the most fun you'll ever have. But, consistently getting there time and time again so that you have those opportunities to ask. That can be the part where a lot of guys get caught up. So, on top of buffering, what do you do while you're pausing and while you're buffering to give yourself a little extra time and to give yourself more ammunition, whatever you wanna call it? What you're doing and what you do naturally when you're just having a conversation is you're doing what we like to call painting a picture. What painting a picture is, is when a girl says something, when you're feeling nervous and you're thinking about what to say, oftentimes you just focus on the words and you're thinking, okay, what can I say to that? What can I say to that? And your brain usually darts to logical, topical points that can stem from the thing that she says. For example, she says, I'm from Chicago. And your brain, oh, Chicago. And you start thinking like, okay, Chicago, you start trying to do like an association. Chicago, oh, Chicago style hot dogs, Windy City, Cubs fan, Dubairs. Oh, Lake Michigan, the beach out there, Wicker Park, I lived in Chicago for a brief stint. So, I've got a little more Chicago ammunition. But your brain starts looking for these topical things that make the words like remind you of. It's what you do when you're nervous and you're struggling to think of something to say. What we like to say to do is paint the picture. And what that means is that you basically take whatever she said and you imagine, you paint a picture of her doing it, of your entire life's past experience involved with your own self doing these things. For example, I know it's a little abstract. For example, a girl says, I went to Mexico, four words. So, if you're trying to struggle to think of something to say based off those four words, you don't have much to go off of. Your mind is racing, let's see, Mexico, beaches. What are some other things? What are some other topical things that you think of when you think of Mexico? What's that? Cabo? Tequila. Yeah, easy. It's the way guys think. It's the way guys relate to each other, topical things. Oh, yeah, see that baseball game last night? Why not, we're dudes. Nothing wrong with that. You wanna relate to the woman. If you wanna talk to her, you have to speak personally. You have to make it personal. You have to start painting the picture. So, when a girl says to me, I went to Mexico, I'm painting a picture of her experience and I'm recalling my past life experience with something similar. My train of thought is going to go something like this. My train of thought is going to be, oh, well, was this a spur-of-the-moment decision that you made or was it something that you've been planning out for a while? Did you pack at the last minute like I always do or did you plan your trip a couple months in advance? Was your flight delayed? Like, flights happen to be delayed quite a bit now. How long was the flight again? Cause I'm not even sure how long that flight to Mexico. It's probably pretty rocket. Did you watch the movies on the plane? Did you just sleep? Or were you so excited that you couldn't sleep? Did you have a shot of tequila when you hit international waters? When you landed, did I lose your luggage? Or was your luggage actually all there in one piece? You're a girl, so you probably overpacked quite a bit, didn't you? That's what girls do. It happens. No problem with that. You have to look pretty. I respect that. Did they have a mariachi band playing in the airport when you got off? And not to be stereotypical, but that's the only song I could think of. What was your trip like? Was it were you just laying on the beach the whole time? Were you going out, getting hammered every single night? Were you trekking through the jungle, climbing waterfalls and ziplining and hiking and looking at monkeys swinging through trees? What type of girl are you? Discovering old ancient Aztec ruins or maybe a combination of all of them? How long were you there for? At the end of your trip, were you anxious to get back? Were you homesick? Were you tired? Were you just wanted to come back? Or could you have stayed another week? Did you never want to come back? Were you thinking about moving there? Trip back, was it all right? Did you sleep back on the plane? When you got back where you refreshed, excited to go face the day and face your life, or did you need a vacation from your vacation? What was your favorite part of the trip? If you could go back there, would you do it exactly the same again or would you change some things? Painting a picture. And here's what the principle is based off of, is that you guys all have lived at least, what? Who's the youngest guy here? 18, anyone who's 18 here? Anyone who's 19 here? Okay, you guys have all lived at least 19 years on this planet, 21 tonight. But you guys have all lived at least 19 years on this planet. You have a wealth of experience to draw from, living in our generation, in our part of the world, in some part of the world, on planet Earth. And it's logical that her being a human being on this planet, in our culture of sorts, has had pretty similar experiences growing up as you did. I used to love Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and say by the bell when I was growing up, chances are there's gonna be a lot of girls out there who like the same thing. I can take a wild guess. So anything she says, if I scroll through my back history of experience with it, I can probably have at least one thing that she can relate to. Sometimes I won't. Sometimes she could say something that I have no experience with. I'm completely clueless with. And when that happens, I now have an awesome opportunity for her to teach me something with genuine curiosity. I don't know anything about that. You have to tell me all about it. You're gonna be my resident expert for, I don't know, whatever she's talking about. And if I say something, if she, whatever she says reminds me of something in my life experience, and she's never heard of it before, I'm like, what? How have you never heard of blank? Are you serious? They're the greatest band in the world. Are you kidding? What's wrong with you? What planet did you grow up on? You tracking through, painting the picture, going through your history, you always have something you can connect with. And because it's genuine, because it came from you actually listening and pausing and thinking and buffering, giving yourself some more time to buffering again. Maybe she might say something which can bring through another million things that you could possibly think of. She never run out of things to say it. Everything you say will be pertinent, will be valuable, will make her really light up and excited because very few guys actually do listen. It's scary. I wanna give an example of how great, of how universally this can be used. And the example I like to use is taking the most boring possible thing that a girl could possibly say to you and show that even with that, if you paint the picture, you've still got a million, not a million things, but you've still got quite a good many things that you could say. And I've heard this one time and time again, if there's one thing I've heard that a girl could say that is more blah, like she's just saying that, she doesn't give two shits, it's if I were to say, so what are you guys up to tonight? Cause I usually like to start with boring interview questions. What are you guys up to tonight? Because girls are expecting it, it's the way that people usually communicate, it's the way that the man of her dreams that she's always imagined is gonna talk to her. But the difference is, instead of every other guy that just goes down the list, oh, that's cool, what do you do? Oh, that's cool, where are you from? Oh, that's cool. I'm actually gonna list and I'm gonna, my response to whatever her response to be is gonna be different than anything she's ever heard before in that situation. That's where I get their attention. So one of my favorites is, so what are you guys up to tonight? And the most common boring response that you'll probably ever get is, oh, we're just hanging out. Oh, we're just chilling. Not much really, just hanging out. Could there be a more boring response that a girl could possibly give you to a question? Probably not. So, I wanna paint the picture with this because I believe that if we take the most boring example and show that there's still a million things you can say that anything that a woman could possibly say, you could have a million things to say. Never running out, especially with the pausing, buffering, pausing, you have to do that. That's unbelievable. So, we're just hanging out, we're just chilling. Anybody wanna shout out something right here? When you can think back about you and your friends just hanging out, just chilling. Your own life experience with this thing that she said, what it calls to mind, what it reminds you of, what are some possible things that pop up? Anybody, just shout it out. Out at the bar specifically. Yes, I definitely do that with friends, but when you're out at a bar maybe, out at a drinking location with some friends, what does that night look like? Unwinding from a hard day of work, what'd you say? Ordering shots, great, what else? Beer pong, nice, why not? I invented that game. I'm not sure if you were aware of that, but it's a long story. Anybody else? You and your friends, you're hanging out, what does the night look like? Playing some sort of games, some sort of drinking games, bullshit games, yeah. What else? Talking shit to each other, happens. What else would you do with your friends? What do you guys all hear for? I mean, aside from the reason I gave you, what did you all think you were here for? Women. Women, you go out to pick up girls, crazy. What else? Hard day at work, maybe a friend's in town who you haven't seen in a while, maybe, I don't know, maybe it's Friday night, and that's what you do on Friday night. Maybe, mm, there's an occasion somebody's birthday, get together for that, right? Maybe, Jesus, I don't know. Maybe you are gonna be ordering some shots, getting crazy. Maybe you're just gonna take it easy and have a beer or two. Yes, five minutes? So these right here are all amazing things that she can fully relate to that are going to, I mean, as boring as that question is, these are all things that she can fully relate to that all make excellent responses that are gonna be unlike anything else she's heard that night. I can promise you, because most guys here, oh, chilling, oh, that's cool. If you say really, are you guys all from around here? Have you had a long day and you just blowing off steam? You guys all work together? How do you, did you go to school together? You on vacation? Is one of you just in town visiting? You guys going crazy tonight? Are you just doing shots? Or maybe playing some beer pong? Well, there's no beer pong tables here, but if you're a house party, maybe, some bars, definitely have them. Taking a quieter night, just having a couple drinks, just relaxing, celebrating anything. Somebody's birthday? Oh, she's wearing the tiara. I'm not an idiot, I know what that means. Baby, they're just out, you know what? I know what you guys are out for. You're just out to pick up boys, tell me the truth, I can tell by that look in your eye. You're out here to meet boys. Everything that you've ever done when you're out with friends, all 100% the same things they do. They're not that different. They're the exact same, I mean, aside from having a vagina and being a little crazy sometimes, they're the exact same as we are. Oh, we're crazy too. Anything that you could possibly think of from your own experience, easily relatable. You have far more in common than different and the only differences that you really have are all put up by this thing on your shoulders that are just filling it up with doubt, creating divisions, telling you that everything is different, telling you, God, filling your head with so much shit that gets in the way. The only barriers that you ever have to cross, the only tests that you ever have to pass, the only things you ever have to overcome, they're not coming from her. She's just wondering why she's still single and why she can't find a guy. They're all coming from right here and if you just start focusing on the right things and not letting this shit brain run wild and fill your head with garbage every single time you start to feel like crap up here but actually take action to overcome it, those walls melt away and you see that it's so much easier than you ever thought possible. It's so much more fun. It's the way it's supposed to be. It's enjoyable. Guys are supposed to have fun going out and talking to girls. It's not supposed to be work. It's not supposed to be this traumatic heart. Oh, I gotta go and do this again. I gotta focus, I gotta push myself. No, you can't wait to go out and do it because it's the most enjoyable experience you'll ever have in your life. If you're thinking about the shit the way it's supposed to be thought about, focusing on the right things and not letting the bullshit get in the way. I'd like to open up if I still have a minute. I'd like to answer a question or two. Do I have a? Perfect, perfect, perfect. What's that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we've gotta start our boot camp up for the weekend, of course, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll be definitely down for a question or two afterwards. Question, you had a question over there, I know. Peter, come on. You can shout, I think we can all hear you. What's that? Yeah, did any guys go to try to approach them? What were the responses they got from those girls? Weird, some people never open up. Sometimes girls just want to be hanging out with girls. Sometimes I go out with friends and I don't want to be bothered. It happens. There's a million girls in the world. It's one of the nice things about there is that there's always more girls. If you try to beat your head against us, well, why can't I do this? You're just gonna frustrate yourself more. You're just gonna get more down on yourself. You're just gonna, it's gonna kill any momentum you have. And the other key point that I want to, why this is so important of paying attention to those who's open and who's closed? I'm glad you brought this up. Is because when I start out, I mean, I'm usually feeling a little creaky. I'm usually feeling a little stiff at the beginning of the night. And so I want to make sure that the first girls I approach are going to be more open themselves, are more loose themselves. Why? Because feelings are contagious. And if I'm feeling a little stiff at first, I'm gonna go talk to some girls who I know are gonna give me a positive response, who are gonna give me a solid response back. And so I start talking to them. I start getting looser. I go talk to some other girls who are fairly open. And as I'm showing my socialness, other girls are gonna start to give me positive signs because they all want to talk to the guy that's being social, which you know by now. And so I'm gonna start talking to the girls that are giving the most open signals first. The first one, two, three, even four approaches I do in the night are going to be with the most open girls for the sheer purpose of getting myself looser. Because once I start rolling, once I get my social momentum going, that feeling of being in the zone, it's something by following those steps. It's something that you can, it's a muscle, but it's something that you can do every single time you go out and strengthen and get into whenever you want to. You can control that. And so once I start getting rolling and once I start feeling great, then I'll go talk to any girl I want to. And because I'm feeling so good, because I don't give a shit, because I'm feeling amazing on top of the world, girls who are closed, I'll be able to get them to open up a good amount of times. And girls who are, and girls who are so close that they blow me up, I don't give two shits. There's a meal, I'm feeling so amazing, just rolls right off the shoulder and I go talk to the next girl and have an amazing conversation with her. I'm glad you brought that up, good question. Very important though, yes. You gotta wrap up. Gotta wrap up? Yeah, that's fine. All right, so, well thank you guys for your time. Once again, I appreciate it. Good.