 My name is Adam Lyon, so I'm known in the community as AFC Adam. I have so many different ambitions and things that I want to be doing in life, beyond just pick up and stuff like that. I'm known as being a geek, and not only was I always a geek, I still am a massive geek. So, some of the things that I want to do is obviously I want to make an independent horror film, start off with maybe a small film or build it up from there, but I've also got ambitions to, I've started sword fighting again, so I've been doing actually my live action role playing where you like dress up in costume and sword fight people. So, I've been doing that again and I'm looking to maybe put on some kind of small event like that. And yeah, just following the road to see where it takes me. The big thing that got me into the community was I realised that one of the goals that I was kind of dating, I'd had four relationships prior to learning game. One of the relationships, the last one that I was in, I found out that not only had she been seeing a whole bunch of guys behind my back, but when I confronted her with it and we broke up, she ended up stealing all of the belongings from my house, my PlayStation, my PC, my video games, absolutely everything she could take, she did, leaving my house completely barren. I think I've still got the photograph somewhere of how she kind of left my room. And about six months earlier, one of my friends had handed me this book called The Game and he said to me, he said, Adam, this book is designed for you. He said, do you don't realise it yet? He goes, but you were supposed to do this. He goes, I know when you do this, you're going to take to it like a duck to water. And I kind of threw it on a back shelf and ignored it, but it was one of the things she didn't take. So I sort of opened up the book, started reading it, signed up on a course and that was the start. Neil Strauss is obviously a big inspiration to me because of reading The Game and he was kind of like my first sort of look into the community. But I actually got to meet Neil Strauss quite soon afterwards, which was really great. He's a really nice guy, really genuine and I suppose he made me realise that a lot of the misconceptions about some of the top pickup artists were actually a lot of hearsay and a lot of it didn't hold true because when I met Neil in person, he was very different to the kind of image that I had kind of been led to perceive by the majority of the people in the community. With regards to my own journey through the game, there was definitely mixed sort of like good points about meeting some of the top gurus and definitely some negative sides. I had a lot of conceptions that some of these pickup guys were absolutely untouchable. They could do whatever they wanted when it came to women. And some of my aspirations to kind of like to maybe be as good as Neil Strauss and be able to get any woman I want, when I actually met him, I realised that actually he's very down to earth. He's kind of hit and miss, kind of just like everybody else, but still a very cool, fun down to earth guy who wasn't too proud of himself or too up his own rectum, should we say. Whereas there were definitely some other people that I met who not only want as good as they were trying to prove that they were, but they actually were kind of trying to force that idea on people that they were amazing, that they really could pick up absolutely everybody they wanted. And it was a shame because if they just accepted they could fail sometimes, it might make it a lot easier to maybe relate to them and to believe half the things they were saying. The lowest point for me in my journey in the game was actually probably the point where everybody else was looking up to me the most. It was the point where I had 14 different girlfriends. I had some of the most beautiful women throwing themselves at me. I would walk into a nightclub in London, 250 girls would walk in the door with me. I literally was probably at the top of my game and I realised I wasn't happy. I was unfulfilled. I didn't enjoy life. I realised I didn't have to work for anything. Women would just throw themselves at me. I was at the lowest point of self-motivation in my life. I had guys that wanted to be like me and I was actively looking at them and being like, why do you want this? This isn't fun. This isn't happy. And the turning point for that for me, the point where suddenly everything became happy and enjoyable was really when I realised that I wanted just one girl and I wanted to settle down. And I think anybody that says that they really do just one whole bunch of different random girls I don't think they've really experienced the pinnacle of that. Because when you really have that, when you really have a lifestyle where women are throwing themselves at you, Johnny Wolf from the P-Way Summit actually flew out to come and meet me to see how true this was. I've got a testimonial where he saw me throwing women out of my bedroom who were begging to come in there to have sex with me. And that was the lifestyle I was living and it wasn't fulfilling. David DiAngelo was a guy whose name I'd heard mentioned a lot throughout my journeys in the community, but I'd never actually bought any of his products or read anything of his. And it was only actually quite recently, although I was kind of familiar with some of his concepts like cocky funny, it was only very recently that I actually got to find out more about him when he interviewed me for his interview series. And I got a call from some of the people in his camp saying, hey, David DiAngelo would like to interview you. And I kind of got to speak to him firsthand. And the guy's an absolute genius. I mean, not just what he knows about pickup, but what he knows about life in general and about business and marketing. He's a very genuine individual and I learnt a lot just from a half hour phone conversation with him. There are definitely some people out there that have a negative outlook on the community. And I think that any time I've ever come across that, it's usually the person doesn't actually fully understand what the community is. For me specifically, and I think really that's what the community is, it's always a personal choice of how you view it, I've always viewed the community as a male self-help group. It's a bunch of guys that are firstly admitting they have a problem and they can't meet girls and secondly they're willing to do whatever it takes to get there. And yeah, different people have different journeys. Some it's maybe a bit more aggressive, some it may not be a pleasant experience. But I think on the whole for most it's a really good positive experience that they come out the other side of it with a better understanding of women. I think one of the main reasons that the community is taboo or is seen as being secretive and underground and maybe a little bit manipulative is specifically because us guys are kind of scared of letting the girls know what we're doing. There are so many people that hide behind false names, hide behind online stories whereas in reality you can kind of come out and tell the truth. Cosmopolitan and FHM, they're full of true life stories, things that have actually happened to me. There's nothing wrong with accepting it. One of my biggest signs for whether a guy actually is comfortable with what they're doing and in my opinion really should be giving out and giving this advice is based on how comfortable they are, A, being seen by people to be doing what they're doing and B, being comfortable with their name being put to it. Everybody knows me, I'm out in the open. I've made mistakes, I've done some things that are amazing but I've done all of it open. Everyone found out about my girlfriend before I got with her I told them what I was going to do, I told them before I was going to propose they've seen the whole thing, they saw it out there on the cards and it could have gone wrong, maybe something would have happened. Would my name have been ruined? Who knows? But the point is I was brave enough to stand by it and do it. One of the biggest reasons that I think that I've been so successful is this is not only have I been really open and told everyone what's going on but I've also tried my best to be as truthful as possible. I will literally, even if it completely pains me, come out there and try and speak the complete truth. What I love is so many people don't even believe it. There's no way that Adam can just come out and tell the truth and yet I do and I find that's the only way to be completely congruent is to not only be open but to also be truthful and that way you can, people see you for who you are and then you only get judged accordingly. From my personal point of view with regards to where I sit in the community I've always associated myself as a pickup artist because I wanted to go out there and I wanted to pick up chicks and end up dating them. Up until the point I got married was a definite turning point for me because I'm no longer a pickup artist. It's great that I still will get perceived as one and there's no way I'm leaving the community. I'm going to keep helping guys out as much as possible but I'm not out there to pick up chicks and as much as I'm going to help other people do that I see myself as somebody who trains other people to be pickup artists rather than being a pickup artist myself and I'm definitely starting to identify more with being a dating coach and looking at helping people with things beyond just picking up things how to handle a date, how to handle a relationship, things that I genuinely feel that I'm starting to gain a much stronger experience based on than a lot of other pickup artists who kind of meet a girl and move on to the next girl and concentrate on things like, you know, instant lays and how to have one night stands. For me it's much more about how can you prolong that how can you ideally meet the person you want to be with and stay with them forever. Two years ago there is absolutely no way that I would have considered myself as somebody qualified enough to teach relationships. I purposely haven't, even though I was dating at the time I wanted to make sure that I was coming down with a point of authority. I don't think you can talk about relationships until you've been married and seen it right through to the end. I'm still new in my marriage, I'm still not in a position you're not going to find me coming out of any kind of marriage product anytime soon. I want the experience and the wealth of knowledge before I teach about it. It's really hard for me to work out whether my personal journey through this and come into the conclusion of one perfect woman being for me is what everybody wants but I truthfully believe that for me, for my own journey from somebody who did have that and people have seen my journey and seen the phases where I didn't have any girls in my life they've seen me learn, they've seen me go through it it's been documented how I went from somebody who wanted to get a lot of girls to somebody who succeeded. I ran projectdontorage.com one of the largest club hosting companies in London I had those women in my life, they're still on my Facebook I achieved that and I know that for me specifically I definitely wanted that one. I speculate, I hypothesize that that's the same for every other guy but unfortunately this is a case study of just one guy and from there I can't judge any further than that. With regards to people who view that perhaps the male population of the world has become feminized and we've allowed that women to kind of like take over I really just see that as part of the balance in the sexes I think that we definitely lived in a very male patriarchal society where males are very much dominating things and I think that now as we've started to reintroduce that balance I think guys don't really know their place in the world I think they've never really known how to maintain a balance because they've always used to being in a position of power and I think that's definitely created some sort of imbalance and I do think that the community is a splinter off that's kind of evolved from that need for men to realize how to maintain that balance and I've always said this, when you learn pickup artistry when you get good at it, really all you do is become a little bit more female with this imbalance that's happened with us trying to maintain a balance between the sexes there's now become an imbalance specifically in men and also in women in how people should behave, what our roles should be and I think what we're going to see is a consistent change and there'll be some kind of equilibrium that sets and that will constantly be at battle I mean at the end of the day the war between the sexes is one that will never end, hopefully because if it ever does that will mean the loss for all of us there were definitely a bunch of people when they first started the community that were seen as snake charmers there were definitely people that I believe don't have the skill to pull off what they've got I'm not the kind of person that goes around and drops names on people but I can say I know for a fact that some guys that are charging $3,000 for a course sometimes even more have had sex themselves with less than 10 girls people that come to me and say, Adam how do you do it how do you maintain a relationship, every girl I ever get just breaks up with me and all I want to do is settle down with one and then they then go out and preach how it's important to have multiple girls and you shouldn't just stick with one and it pains me, it pains me to hear it and I know there are people that would love me to come out and point the finger at those people but unfortunately if I do that they're only going to point one right back and make up falsehoods because if they're happy to lie about how great they are they're going to be happy to lie at how bad other people are so I've got this whole philosophy it comes from my game and it comes from everything I try and add value to as many people as possible and I'm going to go out there and I'm going to help as many people as I can and literally person by person I'm going to prove that this does work and that we can help people the only thing that's ever pissed me off about the community the only thing that's really got under my skin is a lot of the old issues being drug across to the current things when we first started doing our boot camps and I first started running them I was running them back in 2006 my early boot camps were nowhere near the quality that they are now my boot camps in 2008 are completely different to how they are in 2009 I'm constantly evolving and changing and I'm seeing that in my students results in the testimonials that I'm getting we're getting more and more people with success I think the one thing that pisses me off is as soon as somebody has one bad experience from the past they definitely try and translate that so if they do a really bad boot camp with one of our competitors they'll suddenly assume that all future boot camps that everybody else whether they've done one or not is bad and even if they've had perhaps a less than perfect experience with myself then they aren't willing to come again or they aren't willing even completely for free to see the improvements that have happened I know as ANSI's done with the 21 convention with regards to renaming it and rebranding it and going about changing things we're constantly doing that with our own boot camps the results we're getting now are better than ever and I just wish sometimes I could go out there find all the people that think that it doesn't work drag them out there give them a completely freebie and just show them how much difference we can really make to people there is definitely political siding and conflict and sort of like a background subterfuse that goes on around the community with the corporates definitely trying to take things for themselves to generate as much profit as possible however I think you're going to find that in any industry any around the world I've worked in public relations, I've worked in marketing I've worked in the movie industry, I've worked in television and all of these places had their own different political intrigue that was going on it's just what happens when you mix money I genuinely feel that the community itself has always had a number of different branches there's definitely been people that are very much more about improving your life, improving your lifestyle and trying to help you with that side of things and there are definitely those that are always going to be talking about magic tricks and routines and kind of like the number one line that's going to guarantee to get any girl to want you and I think that's just how it is it splinters in different ways we're always going to see that separation there'll be new types of pickup methodology that we can't even imagine right now I heard there's a guy who's specializing in Halloween game everyone's creating their own different niches within it I've seen a lot of different types of guys within the community I've seen the core big companies I've seen a lot of the independent movement within London, when I first started coming out to it I was one of the independence I was one of the first guys that came out of it from my honest experience the independent guys have a shelf life there's only so long they can maintain it because there's so much bulk of work that has to be done that eventually it starts to wear on you you need to kind of take that relaxed lifestyle now I know some of them have managed to survive that by living certain times sort of part of the year in a different part of the world that's a lot cheaper to live coming into more affluent areas and using that to help them survive I know some of my good friends do that by living in Thailand and working in Los Angeles but I think in reality if you're looking at this career, if you're looking at long term you need that infrastructure you do need support of a big company it was definitely a decision that I came to after being an independent for a good couple of years having a big company behind you definitely helps if only with advertising, marketing and having a receptionist answer emails there's definitely a tipping point where you can only have so much success without bothering to set up the infrastructure and everyone's seen it when you're an independent when you start making that much money when you start growing you have to set the infrastructure up and become a corporate and if you don't what happens is you end up with upset clients and suddenly your name ends up falling apart and you see the rise of the fall of these independence all the time the average independent lasts maybe a year or two years before everything starts to fall apart unless they set up an infrastructure and then what happens is you just have a new corporate setup I think Miha was a great example of that he was an independent that splinted off and then he went corporate he had to because in order to sustain the kind of size that he was getting he needed the corporate infrastructure to keep it alive I personally feel that the community is an ever-changing construct and I don't think it's either aligned good or bad I think that realistically the community is always going to change it'll have its ups there'll be media stories where we're portrayed in a bad light and then every so often you'll have it where it goes the other way completely and it shifts and suddenly the pickup community will be dating coaches helping out the poor guy who's a virgin it's always going to shift around it's always going to be moved around and realistically the media are going to control how people see it at the end of the day I try and do things one student at a time helping as many people as I can I really feel that the community is constantly going to change in a bunch of different ways I think we're going to see continued growth into new areas new niches coming out we're going to see new faces constantly changing as to where it's going to go exactly I think it's impossible to predict but the one thing that I'm proud of knowing is that being a part of it from its early years I want to be at the forefront of helping people continue to push it especially with regards to the media and getting it seen as publicly acceptable to enroll in one of these programs to do something about changing your personal life and to go on and be happy with regards to how people are going to be perceived in the future I do feel it's going to be personal growth it's still going to be pickup it's still going to be there we're going to see it splinter in so many different ways there will be a branch that's pure pickup there will be a branch that's pure dating coaches we're already seeing it some of the big corporates are already changing their terminology to call themselves dating coaches rather than pickup artists we're definitely going to see this happen but the community will always still be there it's just going to grow and expand into multiple different areas I think a lot of the events are kind of hit and miss and I think it's specifically because people don't have the strong level of attention to detail it takes to organize them there are definitely exceptions the PUA summit has grown from year to year to year to definitely being one of the core calendar events you have to go to the real man conference had big bang and whizz and sparks but it only did one year and we haven't seen it come back it pulled more people than any other event has ever done but it didn't pull the amount that I think they needed to maintain it at that level which was the issue the 21 convention came in from the outside it was organized by everyone thought a little kid at the time didn't really know what he was doing but it was rumored to have the people there and of course if there are guys that are going to come there and want to listen to you talk then you're going to go there and talk in reality the whole thing was organized really well it definitely had some key elements for me the big reason I tended the 21 convention initially was because it was recommended to me by one of my friends and he said you need to go and speak at this event it was actually a sin that first recommended it to me back then it was the under 21 convention and I remember thinking when I stood up on the audience I had to look out to the crowd and I was like these guys don't look like the under 21 and I was hearing all these other guys talking about college game and all of the different things they were teaching I was like man you guys aren't looking at your audience these guys aren't under 21 they're over 21 and so I stood up and I asked I was like guys who here is under 21 and no one raised their hand and it made me realize that these weren't guys that were coming out here because they were under 21 and they wanted to learn how to pick up chicks in college these were guys that wanted to come in here some of the greatest pickup artists in the world come and speak and that's what there was on stage some of the best pickup artists in the world that had all come to speak just unfortunately the other speakers didn't bother to take a look at the audience to work out what was going on so from that point on I made sure that I tailed my talk I changed it there on the spot to one that anybody could understand no matter how old they were and since then the 21 convention has consistently pulled in the big names from around the world for me it's once you meet Anthony that you realize that he's not just some young kid he's definitely a guy who does have that strong level of attention to detail maturity that's needed to organize an event like that and it's refreshing it's nice to know that he isn't just somebody who's thrown a bunch of college kids together he really is somebody who's got you know a dream and ambition to really make something of the event and as long as he keeps doing that then I think people are going to keep turning up any time someone can create a business model that involves them giving out free content and free material I'm 100% for it I've tried to make sure I give as much of my stuff away for free as possible and I've definitely taken flak for it from a personal point of view so there's absolutely no way that Anthony can't be taking flak for it I get people come up to me buy my product and say you know what, I managed to find all of this stuff completely for free online so if you don't mind I'll take a refund and that sucks when you first hear that you think man you've already enjoyed the stuff you've just managed to get hold of it for free and now you don't want to pay me for the content but on the other hand there are so many people that are willing to keep supporting you to keep paying for it to make sure you can continue to do that then it's great I think realistically it's really nice to have an event that does cover everything from health to nutrition to pick up and those kind of things and I think that's always going to be a pull we are part of the self-help movement and I think guys are definitely interested in those other topics and it's definitely something that's set to 21 Convention Apart from potentially the other events where I am right now in life I'm currently in South Beach we've just done a boot camp where we've just helped 10 guys half of the guys in the course managed to get laid the rest of the guys in the course probably weren't looking for that but every single person with that 100% we've had success rate all managed to get phone numbers to get dates with girls that they were interested in and that's something that we've seen consistently for the last 15 months of doing training in the courses myself, I'm happily married I've got a lovely little house in South Texas I've got a kitten that I live with and I absolutely love my life I'm looking forward to over the next couple of years having a family and looking at what I can do to continue improving our courses because now I don't look at them from somebody who wants to help myself anymore which I feel a lot of pickup artists do I'm no longer interested in my own results every single person has a different view or an idea of what they want in the community a 21 year old virgin is worried that he's never going to get laid he's worried that for the rest of his life he's not going to know how to relate to girls and it causes problems the guy that I helped recently on this particular boot camp in Miami he didn't know how to kiss a girl when she was initiating things she tried to kiss him four times and he kept turning it down because he'd never kissed a girl and he didn't know how to do it a guy like that if somebody doesn't come in and help him and tell him the signs he may never kiss a girl he may be a 45 year old guy somebody else that I've helped in the past who is still a virgin so for everybody they've got their own goals I find it's very rare that somebody just comes into this because they want to have sex as many people as possible those guys exist there's just not that many of them the biggest challenge that I have in my way is really finding all the guys that don't believe this works because they've been burning in the past and trying to get through to them that actually can work actually they can get success rate and actually there are people that can help them and it's not just myself there are definitely a number of guys that can help and I really want to get over to them and I'm willing to sit down with each of those guys completely for free to help them to show them that we really have created something that works now whereas in the past it was definitely hit and miss there were definitely a bunch of snake charmers in the early days but there are people now that know how to make this work I really believe that there are two sides to game there's your personal self that you kind of want to redress because once you fix that then you've got a core level of attractiveness that you've built up that women are going to see and be instantly attracted to but on the other side of it I've seen guys that have an absolutely perfect core sense of self really super overachieving type guys they're absolutely great and yet have no idea how to relate to women so I feel there are two sides on one hand you've got game and on the other side you've got yourself now you can work on either one independently and it is going to have some kind of impact on your game but to truly be the best you can possibly be you have to work on absolutely everything and combine it