 Only one or two generations ago pretty much all boys were brought up in families where there was a man around. There was a father where there is a good father or a shit father, you know, there was a lot of variation on that, but there was pretty clear roles that men and women played and I think most boys had pretty clear role models and though it was pretty clear about what they had to do in life in order to be a man in whatever society they existed in. Now, I think there are some advantages to that in the sense that, you know, you understood where your place was and also some disadvantages in the sense that there was only one place you were allowed to be. I come from a generation where a lot of guys were brought up without father figures and myself included. Not that I don't have a father, I do and I love him very dearly, but he wasn't really around when I was growing up. And as a result, I got to choose my father figures, which is something I'm very grateful for. I didn't have somebody telling me, listen son, this is how you got to be a man, this is what you got to do in life. And so I got the opportunity to go out there and find my own influences. And I think for a lot of guys out there who are in that position, they might feel like they're missing out on something or that they were hard done by it. And that can be true if that's what you believe. You can live that crutch all your life, that you didn't have a daddy around to tell you what to do and so therefore you never became a man. But I would prefer that you take that as an amazing opportunity to go out there and choose your own life and choose your own mentors. My influences have been diverse and in some ways contradictory. As a teenager, I was really into the doors when somebody going to come up here and love me and nihilist French literature and I thought there was no point to life and so we may as well just have a fucking good time. And then I swung from that into becoming quite a hardcore Buddhist. And so my influences were my initial Buddhist and Kung Fu teachers and to this day I have amazing respect for those men and they influence me every day in the sense that they taught me to take autonomy for myself, to not accept anything without experiencing it myself but at the same time to have the humility to be open-minded enough to experiment with a whole range of internal techniques or mindsets or lifestyle decisions. The women that I have had the privilege to have in my life as lovers or girlfriends have influenced me greatly. I have a profound respect for women and they have taught me more about myself really than anyone else because a really good woman when you meet her will act as a mirror to you. She will hold up to you your strengths and show you things about yourself that you didn't know existed and at the same time she will show you your flaws and your bullshit and reflect that back at you and go what do you got for me. So the girls that I spent long periods of time with really shaped and influenced my life as well and I think that's something important to understand. If you want to be a great seducer you need to actually really love women. There are misogynists out there, there are players out there who fuck a lot of girls but never learn much about women or about themselves as a result and I pity those men because it's very very short-term greedy goals. I see seduction as a life long pursuit something that both sexes benefit from and both grow from if done in an in an ethical and honest way. So yeah my influences Jim Morrison monks chicks and of course the guys that I have come to consider to be brothers and fellow warriors on this path that I've met through being a coach in this I've met some absolutely amazing men and I've also met some amazing charlatans and con artists who've you know taught me about what I don't want to be and what can happen if you follow the dark side too long. As a mentor and a coach in this industry what I find is that in order for me to feel good about myself I need to make sure that what I teach and what I do is in complete alignment. Now I'm not saying that I have a monopoly on the truth that I understand everything or I'm a master and I think the moment you think that you must have mastered something it means you stop learning. So for myself I'm constantly growing I'm more than happy to receive feedback criticism and to engage with new ideas but at the same time when I'm coaching I need to have conviction about what it is that I'm doing and in this industry as a leader in this industry it holds me constantly accountable and I think some people are okay with having a product or a service they sell which they don't believe in or they know is bullshit or you know it's pure marketing and then can live their own life and feel asleep at night. For myself I'm not able to do that and as a result one of the best things about being in this industry is that I am constantly held up to my own standards that I if there's something that I expect somebody else to do then I must be able to do it myself. I would never ask a student to do something that I have not done myself and at the same time I would never expect him to have a deep internal shift or to confront his demons or to face his ego or whatever else if I was unable to do it myself which is why I think it's good that I have been through a very wide spectrum of life experience. I have been a fuck-up in some ways at some points you know I have experimented with drugs I have hurt women in the past I have lied I have cheated I have done those things at the same time I have you know pushed myself to extremes of what I would say would be spiritual purity or living in complete alignment with my integrity and because I understand the light and the dark and I've been through those and I've seen the consequences of living in both of those I think I'm more than qualified to be able to coach guys from more or less any position they've gone through. Unfortunately because this industry is completely unregulated no government body has dared to come and look at it look at us yet which is you know good for tax but not so good for regulating it. There's there's a lot of men who come to this because they are lonely because they are scared because they are broken because they missed out in life they're vulnerable people often who come to to be coached and unfortunately that means that a lot of vultures circle around them and try and squeeze as much money out of them before discarding them as possible and as a result of that we're seeing a backlash where a lot of guys who've come into the community received coaching probably overpriced and overhyped and not really gotten any change out of it have then thrown out the whole idea that you can be coached to become better with women or your lifestyle or to change your beliefs which is really sad. When I got a guy come to me who's spent 3k on a boot camp that he considered to be a rip-off the worst thing is not the money he lost it's that because he was coached by the best in the world and it didn't work for him it means to him that he can't be helped and if a guy feels like there's nothing else for me I can't be helped that's that's a really tragic thing so I think it's very important for myself and for the other coaches who I know have integrity and teach very well and get results that we actually start to call these people out and more more importantly than that we band together and creates systems and standards that coaches must adhere to in order to be able to call themselves lifestyle coaches or seduction coaches. The question is where did the game go wrong or right? I don't think it necessarily went wrong I think what it did is it it appeared out of a particular city Los Angeles which is a bizarre place it's not like most cities on the world on the planet and it it came out of a knee jerk response to a bunch of guys who were nerdy guys who couldn't get laid with LA club chicks and so they kind of modeled what was going on in the club and worked out what girls were responding to and cobbled together some techniques that would kind of mimic what a high value guy in that situation would be doing. I think the game in itself is a really positive thing in the sense that it created a you know a public knowledge that this was possible that it was possible to go up and talk to a girl across the street or across the bar without knowing her without her being in your social circle and that you could have a shot at it and I think that's a really powerful thing anything that gets a guy to walk across and talk to that girl is better than nothing but at the same time the presupposition that it was built on all that all indirect schools are built on is flawed the presupposition is women won't like you for you therefore you need to pretend to be something that is not you and you need to trick them in order to get them into bed all indirect schools are built on that presupposition and it's it's a really terrible mindset to come from internal awareness to understand your own emotional state your thinking processes the way your physiology and your emotions and your thoughts interact and in this industry as a leader in this industry it holds me constantly accountable and I think some people are okay with having a product or a service they sell which they don't believe in or they because you never know what's going to happen who you're going to meet and out of that my reputation spread a lot I met another guy called Sasha D game who I've now been collaborating with for the last year and has highly influenced me and I think I've done the same to him and create industry standards which is not far away because you're seeing a lot of complaint which is completely justified from a lot of guys who've been burnt along the way not through you know forcing anybody but but making people think by exploding their realities by questioning their presuppositions about what is and what is not possible or what you shouldn't shouldn't do because I've done everything you shouldn't do really