 I think the main catalyst for coaching was realizing like how much that community has given me and how much like how big of a transformation that I've made and how much it's like changed my life and realizing that like I can give other people that same thing. My name is DJ Fuji. I'm a lifestyle and dating coach and been doing this for a few years now and I think it's one of those things where you realize that you're calling you know and when I got into it just all of a sudden I realized like this is what I wanted to do. I think my whole life you know up until the point where I got in the community was kind of this this vacillation between like almost depression like like seriously like loneliness you know like just just feeling crappy about yourself all the time because you knew I have all these accomplishments I have all these things that I've done with my life and girls don't like me. Like a dark cloud? Yeah like just like a dark cloud above you you know and it follows you around like in the in the duck tails you know and and that's what it felt like it felt like I couldn't get away from that cloud and and that no matter what I did nothing would help and everyone around you tells you oh just be yourself and that'll that'll fix everything and you're like I've tried that for the last 20 some years it's not helping. The journey you go on has its share of ups and downs things that come to mind are like when you know you're doing that pain period you know and you're you're really going out there you're going out like six nights a week you're really trying to cram 20 plus years of social experience into like two years right right and and and doing you know when you do that sometimes you you lose focus or sometimes you start to doubt yourself and there were several points where like I come home I'd get blown out of like 20 sets in a row right I come home and I'd start to doubt myself and I'd start to wonder if like like maybe this isn't real maybe we're all just deluding ourselves and you can't do anything about it like you're either born with it or you're not because in the first you know year that you're into this the naturals are good you know they get results fast and the guys the synthetics like me it would just like plowing and plowing and constantly doing all the stuff and you're like you're not getting anywhere and so it's discouraging and I see a lot of guys do that and so kind of one of the downs I guess is is you know when you doubt yourself and you doubt the community doubt if this works if it's real self doubt yeah and every time that happened though I would I would look back you know I get down to myself but then I look back six months ago or like I'd look back three months ago and I'd ask myself was I the same person and the answer was always a resounding no it was always I was in such a different place like I've grown so much in those three or six months and that's what reminded me that's what kept me going that's hey this is real I am making progress I am improving things and you know there may be a long ways to go but it's worth it on the upside man I remember I remember the first time you know I hooked up with a girl you know and I remember it like freaking like it was yesterday like it's weird to think that it was that long ago you know but I remember it so clearly and it was it was a day game pickup at Starbucks with some Peruvian girl and like I remember everything about it I remember her name where you know where she was from where it's so vivid you know and and I remember thinking like like it felt like such a good feeling you know to know that like all this work wasn't in vain and it wasn't it wasn't about the sex right like it wasn't about the the physical part of the sex it was that this was like yeah exactly right yeah exactly like this was about like you know all this hard work kind of paid off you know and that I was I was getting somewhere and I had gone out for six seven months and nothing you know and then finally this stuff started to click and and then you know that I remember when when we broke up you know and that was like the first like break up with the girl that I had met you know doing this stuff and and so it's you know the test shares and ups and downs but I think any journey has to have that because if it doesn't it's just a flat line and it just it just no and there's no impact you know there's no meaning to it kind of early on one of the funniest things one of the things that really surprised me was you know I we kind of read the game I got in this right before the game came out and so you know I kind of experimented and then I'd read the field reports then the game came out I read that and I had like a lot of guys I had like one this like guru warship mentality and then but I had this very unrealistic view of like what people were out there doing and I went to a bar with with this guy who actually taught with with gone savage with Jason and they were teaching together and I went out this guy and he's still a good friend of mine and he pulls a girl home that night and you know the next night or the next day he calls me he's like you know you know how did your night go and I'm like oh I went okay he's like what did you think you know and because that was like his he wanted to know like what I thought of you know him pulling scroll home she was cute and I told him oh like it was okay he's like what do you mean it was okay I was like well I thought you're gonna pull like 10s right and and he's like dude I was like I thought you're gonna pull two of them you know and I had this like I had this very unrealistic view of like yeah of thinking like these guys were Superman you know and and thinking that they were not human that they were like gods that they were I could never be them because they were like they had magical powers you know and that's why you know in the 21 convention speech I talked about how it's like you have to to see coaches as as people just like you you know and you have to see them as as normal as human beings they have their flaws and I and I really when I'm coaching I make it a big point to let my students know I'm not infallible in fact I probably get blown out more than they do right and I've been blown out more than they ever have I think the biggest thing from my perspective that separates me or that that is my niche I guess is gonna sound stupid but it's that I actually care about my students and it sounds ridiculous but it sounds corny it sounds like crazy but I've been in field with so many guys that just don't care so many instructors that just don't care and I even wrote a blog post when that guy in Philadelphia shot those people and I wrote it to the instructors and I said you guys all of us as a whole we need to care about our students because when we don't this is what happens and it's it's it's a rare thing but it shouldn't be and a lot of that comes from like my Marine background where your men under you aren't your employees they are your men and you are not only responsible for them doing the job you're responsible for their welfare you're responsible for their lives you're responsible for for their financial lives right and that leading aspect of that that aspect of caring about your men right it's kind of let over and so I'm a really tough coach and I make no apologies about that I'm one of the toughest coaches in the industry and I really get after guys when they don't they don't give 100% but it's because I refuse to give up on guys even after those students even after those guys have given up on themselves I will not give up on them and I remember one point in I did a 101 in Las Vegas and a guy wanted to leave he just wanted to give up and he wanted to leave and I talked to him in the hallway of a club for two hours telling him what a big decision this is that if he leaves now he's giving up and if he gives up and pick up if he gives up in a little thing like this he'll always give up because he'll just set a precedence and after two hours I got him to turn around but he had completely given up on himself and I think the biggest difference I guess with me as a coach is that I will not give up on my students and and that's the reason I call myself a life coach is because and the reason I call myself a coach and not an instructor is because an instructor teaches a skill set a coach changes lives in fact I had a coach recently that I was talking to and we were kind of trading stories and he asked me why don't students respond to me like they respond to you and I told him because you because you're just a pickup coach because you don't have any authority in the way you speak because you don't care about them and he said well you know I do I do I just I don't know I teach them pick up that's what I do I said this isn't about pick up man this is not pick up that's the problem is that you think that you can give these guys a line and that'll change their lives you're not a pickup coach or you shouldn't be you have to change these guys you can't just hide their flaws and hope that everything's gonna be okay you have to get out there be proactive and help these guys change their lives and that's when things turn around for them when when students they they pay you a lot of money and what they're really asking you what they're really doing is they're entrusting you with their future they're entrusting you to help them overcome these obstacles and to change their life and that's not something that I take lightly so every time I get out there every time I coach I give it 100% and I put my heart and soul into it and it's an exhausting job but the reason I do this is because it's worth it I had a student that I trained one on one and he met a girl in San Diego that night from Germany met a girl that night took her home and I helped wing him I helped coach him along the way and you know we thought okay cool you got you know got a great success he met a girl he took her home you know he's he's learning he's developing and you know throughout the years I coached him with on relationships and other stuff and you know two years later I get this card in the mail saying that he's marrying that girl that he met on my one-on-one and that he wants to fly me to Germany for his wedding and so about a month ago I flew out did he flew me out to Germany and I attended his wedding and it was one of the greatest feelings of of like happiness and accomplishment you know to know that this guy met the woman of his dreams you know through this and that that's what makes all of this everything that I do that's what makes this worthwhile David Angelo to me is like Dale Carnegie or Robert Kiyosaki from the Rich Dad Poor Dead Sears he's a he's the gateway drug he's the guy who gets you into this he's the guy who provides a lot of the maybe not techniques or or actual things you can use but the mindsets behind all this he gives you the framework and he gives you the foundation or at least the foundational beliefs or mindset that kind of permeates a lot of the community a lot of what we're doing I actually got in the community a little bit before the game came out so I didn't have that book it kind of the guide me and when it did come out I read it and that book is long it's like 300 pages and I read it in literally a day I read it in like eight hours of straight reading I couldn't put it down because it represented hope it represented that this was what I wanted my the whole time and and it not only was it was the embodiment of like the community but it was like a guy actually did it and or at least he did it in the book right and we all thought that maybe we're deluding ourselves in the whole community everything and all of a sudden there's a guy who actually did do it and he wrote about it and this is his journey and so it was really influential to me to see that someone did it and it's to see that someone accomplished it and to kind of put all the jargon the characters the people in the industry all into one thing so I can really understand it and and so it had a huge huge impact on me and what's kind of funny is I've read that book about six times now and and it doesn't people are like why did you read it so much it doesn't have any content in it right it's a book it's a story but every time you read that book you're at a different point your development and you see different things when I first started out I read that book and I saw the loneliness I saw the despair in in what Neil was saying you know you just didn't have a girlfriend you couldn't find a girlfriend and all these things and I that's I resonated with that when I saw it again when I read the book again then I was in that pain period and I resonated with him getting blown out a lot and going in and not being able to to kiss the girl or not being able to push through boundaries or barriers then I read it again and you know it was it was that feeling of wow I had this newfound ability right and where am I going to go with this it's exciting it's you know it's kind of the road is open right and then I read it again and and this time it was like now I'm a coach and now I see the fears that the coach has and that a lot of people don't see and at one point Neil mentioned that he was coaching one of his first boot camps and mystery told him to go in and show the guy how it's done and he said fear grips your heart it grips your chest like a vice when you feel it and I felt that exact same thing when I was put in that situation not only do you have to go in and and do it for yourself but you have to show other people that it's possible and and so each point when I read it different things resonated with me and that's why it's been a kind of a very powerful a very powerful thing in my development I think some people roll their eyes the game because it's it sounds like it's unbelievable right it sounds and I believed it because I wanted to believe it I believe it because I wanted to believe it was possible and and he could have made the whole thing up we know he didn't but he could have made the whole thing up and I probably still would have believed it it sounded you know incredible but it gave us all hope you know I think it's like if we were all trapped on Mars and someone wrote a book about you know about a guy building a spaceship and going off it's the classic story of a guy overcoming the odds and so we want to believe it and at the same time you have people who doubt it because they are falling into that societal kind of concept of oh you just be yourself and at the same time they don't want to believe that you can actually do this you know that you can actually change things around you can actually like change your lot in life and so there's a lot of resistance to that in society we see this you know newspapers and magazine articles everywhere and I understand I don't judge anyone for for putting it down or for not believing it or anything else because society itself is hardwired not to want the game the game is detrimental from an evolutionary standpoint to the the group the tribe right and so I get it it doesn't apply anymore but I get it just like we're not we're afraid of snakes and spiders we're not afraid of hamburgers which really is what kills us today heart disease car accidents we aren't afraid of the cars we're not afraid of the hamburger we're afraid of snakes and spiders and yeah that doesn't make sense logically until we look back on why that is and so like I understand why people don't like the community or why they they don't think that it's that it's kosher right and they think that it's manipulative and it's evil when Dale Carnegie's book first came out everyone in the world thought he was manipulative and he was shunned for years for decades until people started to realize this is how the world works and I think the community is going to be the same way what I think actually created the community is the internet because before the internet it was kind of always around on the underground but it was never cohesive because there was no global network to connect everybody and the internet's really what took this need that's been around forever and because you've always had guys that were not good you've always had like that bottom 10 percent that just didn't have that skill set and the internet kind of connected all those people together so that they can all collaborate and say okay what do I have to do to fix this and before that you had to hopefully have like an older brother or someone that you could look up to that you could that hopefully had the answers but when the internet brought everyone together all of a sudden now all of those guys were able to come together and try to fix the problem controversy in the community it's pretty much the community itself is is controversy in and of itself just because everything about it is from different people's perspectives can be seen as wrong manipulative you know everything else and it contradicts what society says is right and anytime you do that you're seen as wrong and we saw that with a rock and roll music which seems ludicrous to us now just like we think our parents are ridiculous for having segregated restrooms for black people it sounds like it's outside of our reality like why would you ever do that and so as we grow more and more progressive I think that natural evolution is gonna happen now at the same time I think pick up I think everyone's going that there's just go always going to be an element of pickup that exists underground because it's just so far out there and it's so controversial that I suspect it'll take 50 or 100 years before we get to the point where we can accept that there are guys out there that are learning techniques that will give them an unfair evolutionary advantage and that's a hard bullet to bite I absolutely believe feminization in America exists I don't put it down I don't think that it's a bad thing I think it's just a phase I think it's just a cycle and it's required just like the men's movement which this is the start of I really believe it's something that's going to to come about it's a phase the natural phase it's a natural part of our progression and I think those things just like people say you know the crazy like people who think like 9-11's an inside job and the crazy conspiracy theorists right they think what those people are and say from my point of view those people are necessary why because if there really is a conspiracy those people will bring it to light and I think in a word to maintain a neutral balance a healthy balance you need the extremes if you don't have the extremes then you're all over the place and those two extremes create equilibrium and that equilibrium allows you to stay in the center so you know the feminization of America or say the male equivalent when that comes about right all those things are just the extremes that are going to let us coexist in the middle the number one question I get from outsiders is isn't what you do manipulative isn't it tricking women isn't that evil isn't that bad and I kind of see it the way I can see it like the Marine Corps if you're an outsider in the Marine Corps they have a phrase actually in the Marines that says two people know Marines Marines and the enemy everyone else has a second hand opinion and it's kind of the same way in the community where depending on your viewpoint the community could look evil or it could look like a great catalyst for change in the men's movement like a beacon of light like a lighthouse now you look at the Marines and in America we think wow it's great they're defending our country they're serving the country they're you know going over and peacekeeping and everything else but look at it from another viewpoint what are Marines they are cold heartless murdering machines that's that's what we are and that is blatantly what we are and if you go to boot camp you you see it and some of the things disturb you you just see Marines mindlessly droning kill and it's disturbing and it really shows you that looking at the same object from different angles gives you different viewpoints and so when sometimes girls will ask me when they find out what I do they say you know that's that's just you know I didn't know that about you that this seems wrong that seems manipulative whatever and I say well what do you think about me being a Marine and they say well I think it's great I think that's awesome that's sexy and I'm like why I was basically a murderer for four years that's all I was I was trained to heartlessly kill without having any remorse or emotion behind it and it really makes them realize that everything in the world that you see is simply your subjective reality of it it's your viewpoint of it so when people ask is the community manipulative I asked them when you go on a job interview and you know you sit down in the interviewer's office and you take your shoes off and you put them on the interviewer's desk do you do that well no that would be rude I would never do that why not what if your feet are tired well I just wouldn't do that because it just create a bad impression so if a guy came in and he was looking at his feet and he wanted to approach a woman he's looking at his shoes and he came in timid with bad body language and quiet and submissive and therefore would give a bad first impression and I tell him don't look at your feet I tell him be louder I tell him believe in yourself how is that any difference and every girl says I guess it's not the one of the things that I see that that really is spawn a kind of a new generation of independent guys is the frustration of the big company is kind of like you know New York City they have all those tiny delis the mom and pop shop and it's from the frustration of you know that the giant companies the giant corporations and the bureaucracy in those corporations and especially even for me you know one of the things that I love about being independent that I love about being off on my own is not being essentially beholden or not being a part of a giant bureaucracy where you have to do things a certain way again because not because they're effective but because that's the way it's always been done or but because that's that makes us look good or that that's our brand and we have to do that because that's our brand and and so a lot of us you know that I've kind of gone off on our own have formerly worked in those in those organizations and now we're kind of coming up with our new ideas and we want a kind of I guess a platform to just spread those ideas and to help other guys I guess without being censored that's the biggest thing we're independent and by our very nature we aren't stuck in these old paradigms of why do I do it because that's the way it's always been done like we bring new ideas and and fresh ideas and new perspectives El Topo in particular has like completely different ideas on a lot of stuff that kind of contradicts a lot of the old stuff and it's new it's fresh and it's it's effective and he's able to do that because he's not caught up in this existing group think that that happens even in big corporations where it's like we've been doing this for a hundred years and it's ineffective why do we do this and everyone else in the organization says that's the way it's always been done and I think when you break off from that when you bring in new blood you bring in new ideas that's what spawns new accomplishments and new innovations I see the community as gradually evolving you know the realization that you can't like what one person said you can't put whipped cream on shit because eventually you smell the shit right and those are just a great you know a great example of what this thing has kind of evolved to it to be at the beginning all of us thought you could all of us had this idea that we were like losers but we could trick girls into liking us by having the right line or the right technique or the right blah blah blah and and that was almost even true to an extent but what we didn't realize is that unless you actually make that change there's just so much you can do with like covering a bland lame lifestyle and personality and everything else with like a trick or a facade because eventually people will see through it and so the community is moving towards a direction where it's about changing you it's about changing your life it's about improving not about disguising you as someone more attractive you know John sit and talks about how he used to think that like wow this girl doesn't even know I'm a dork like she's totally fooled you know and that's kind of how we all thought it was and the community is moving much more towards a place of you have to work on yourself as a whole and in fact that was one of the big things that drew me to the 21 convention this idea of holistic growth working on you know your body working on your self-confidence working on you know the tactics working on body language you know working on your spirituality working on yourself as a whole and when you become more attractive then that's what we're really going after more attractive means that you are that people want to be around you that you're more self-confident that you're not validated by external sources by other people that yes your source of positive emotions that your source of positivity itself and that you no longer need people you want people in your life but you don't need them and people just kind of flock to you right it's just it's going from a place of darkness going from a place of neediness going from a place of loneliness going from a place of scarcity to a place of abundance to a place of positivity to a place of just value-giving right to a place of just complete abundance and I think that transition is where more people need to go for it in the community it's going to transition more into that type of journey I have a really optimistic vision of what's going to happen in 20 years and I hope that in 20 years we are progressive enough to where we look at the community and what it's become and it's become like a self-help movement it's become the men's empowerment movement it's become the men's success it's become the equivalent of feminism you know with all the positivity I mean it's become a movement where men can can can be men and they don't have to be ashamed of it a lot of men that are in this community and a lot of men out they're experiencing problems because they're ashamed of being a man they're ashamed of being dominant they're ashamed of their sexuality and they've grown up in this environment where it's bad or it's you shouldn't you shouldn't express that whole idea of manhood is shunned and our gender roles are so vague now you know that it's like no one knows how to be a man whereas in our parents our grandparents generation it was very clear to cut right like my dad to this day will not use an umbrella at all he's like men don't use umbrellas right and when I got to the Marine Corps they're like you don't use an umbrella Marines don't use umbrellas right like those gender roles are very clear and then defined and you know maybe there's disadvantages with that as well but one of the things that it does do is it makes you unapologetic about being a man and I think hopefully in 20 years that the community will have kind of influenced society in the sense it'll have made a big impact on society in the sense that we'll move towards a much more progressive progressive system where people are going to to be much more accepting of new ideas well in the spring of 2009 I got an email from Anthony Johnson dream and telling me you know that you know that that there was this 21 convention formerly the under-21 convention that had that drew a lot of speakers and it was really about changing your life and that was kind of my philosophy on how you get good at pickup and so that was one of the things that really drew me in about that well I think what may separate the 21 convention from other conventions or other events is the theme really and that theme is holistic development that theme is not like I was saying before not just about a line or about learning a technique which which are fine but it's about improving yourself it's about working you know on your health it's about working on spirituality on working on you know wealth on working on you know your social circle working on your lifestyle like all these things it's not pigeonhole it's all these things that kind of come together to make you an attractive guy and and that's not only where the communities moving forward and where the 21 convention is really kind of behind that but it's where I think success comes from in this community because you can only fool other people and more importantly you only fool yourself for so long and after a while that all that that illusion that facade crumbles honestly man I had no idea that that the footage would get that many views or comments or anything else in fact when I gave the speech I remember talking to Anthony and two of a few guys afterward because we had a lunch break in between mine and I remember getting off stage like dejected and I talked to one of the guys and I said I talked to Anthony and I said it was that as bad as I thought it was because I just feel like a miserable failure like I thought I just botched that whole thing and I felt like I wasn't getting energy from the crowd and I was really down to myself and the guys were like no no no it was it was good and like I kind of thought people were were just bullshitting me you know and it wasn't until I went into the lounge went into the restaurant and I heard people talking about it that I realized my perception of it wasn't the same as what everyone else saw and when I saw the video I realized like when you're up on stage your evaluation of yourself is very very different I'm my my biggest critic overall and but I'm happy the way the footage turned out I'm happy that guys are getting a lot out of it I'm getting a lot of emails about it and I think first and foremost I'm really happy that guys are watching that and they're emailing saying like it's changed the way they've seen the community it's changed the way that they're going about things and they're they actually have a game plan now they know what they're doing or they know where they're going and it's it's revolutionized I guess their thought process on how to get good at this and that's really my objective online I see myself being in this industry for a while because I kind of see it as my calling now I don't know whether that's gonna be something that's a lifetime or maybe just a few five ten years but I see my own growth in this just like I see my students growth and I tell my students this all the time that you shouldn't look at me like like I'm at the top of the mountain looking down at you telling you to come to the top of the mountain you should look at me like we're both ascending the same mountain and I'm just a little bit further I'm just a little bit further up so I can tell you where the potholes are I can tell you where the the falls are where the the easy and the hard points are and I can help you along your way and I can give you a hand and pull you up but I'm climbing that same mountain and don't ever think that I'm at the top and that I've reached the peak because the definitions of success that I use is from Earl Nightingale and that is that it is the progressive realization of a worthy goal which means if you are not continuing to go forward and you're not continuing to set new goals and to go after them you are by definition not successful