Leverage Your Dating & Social Skills
In this episode, we discuss the myth of the digital nomad lifestyle, and how time management skills are still crucial even when you have freedom and full-time travel.
We bring on two full-time digital nomads who talk about their lessons learned, and why most digital nomads have bad dating lives.
We also go in depth about how to leverage your skill in a way you’re passionate about and use it to create a side hustle or a new career.
As you know, the best way to get the dating life you want is to optimize your strategy as much as you can based on your lifestyle and personality. But just because you’re being efficient and optimal doesn’t mean you shouldn’t also be exhausting as many funnels as you can to meet chicks and other cool dudes.
This was inspired by one of my students, Jeff. Jeff is in his mid 20s and he’s a solid likable guy who’s got his life together and is fun to be around. The problem is that he’s not getting nearly the amount of dates a guy in his shoes should be getting. I have reason to believe that this is because he’s not exhausting his resources enough.
In a perfect world if you wanted to maximize your exposure you should be using these avenues, in this order of relevance:
1. Social Circle. The honest truth is that if your social circle sucks, it’s a reflection of you. Either you aren’t that fun, cool, interesting or valuable to be around.
2. Day Game. This is the easiest, cheapest and most efficient way to meet girls. It takes almost no time and you grow as a person every time you approach. If you suck at this, it’s because you haven’t done it enough and you’re scared. Face your fear, or sit around and get old and die with regrets đ
3. Social Events. Go to any environment where people are expected to be social, like festivals, bars, clubs, happy hours, or classes. If you’re doing poorly in these situations then just like Social Circle you aren’t that fun, cool, interesting or valuable to be around, OR you are too scared to talk to randoms and you need to approach more to get over your fear.
4. Hosting Sites. An awesome way to meet people is to host them in your city. Airbnb for your house, Turo for your car, ShowAround if you want to give tours and Couchsurfing if you can’t Airbnb. DogVacay if you have a dog or want to make extra money watching them. They make good wingmen too. These will also generate cash so you get paid to be social.
5. Dating Sites. You should have profiles on all of the relevant sites. Tinder, Bumble, Happn are obvious apps, but you should also be on Match, OkCupid and Plenty of Fish. If you’re older really want a relationship you can use eHarmony. If you’re religious use a niche site like JDate or Christian Mingle. Seeking Arrangements if you like sugar babies, models and girls who want to travel and have some money in the bank. And lastly, Lifestyle Lounge and SDC if you’re into group sex.
I guarantee that one site will be a lot more fruitful to you than others, so it’s important you get multiple profiles out there and measure which site gets the most responses. Otherwise you may be wasting your time on a site that doesn’t fit you best.
Profile Tips:
The pictures hold the key to whether a girl is going to read the rest of your profile. While women like to go off on a laundry list of qualities that include “sense of humor” and “kindness to animals,” they are almost as shallow as men when it comes to online dating. They sit back and watch the dozens of responses that come in and take their pick of the guys who look the best.
If you’re not a great looking dude then make sure you have some pictures that show your other qualities that women find attractive:
Make sure you’re swiping and sending messages. My favorite line to use in America on any app where you have to match with someone is “So does this mean we’re exclusive?” followed by the Tinder Marriage Roleplay (which we discuss in the Leverage Program). If she doesn’t think it’s funny, she’s probably not worth talking to. If you’re outside the U.S., she might not understand the humor.
Be cocky and funny in your profile to give off the vibe that you’re not taking online dating too seriously. Women want guys who other women want. You need to have the mindset of a guy who is already successful. Successful guys don’t take online dating seriously because they meet women offline.
In this episode, we discuss the importance of doing cool things in order to build yourself as a complete man. Â Following your passions as a career, traveling, and conveying you are an interesting guy to women are covered.
Takeaways:
Drew started out unconfident with women and worked his way up to becoming a successful club promoter and now a general manager of a popular bar in New York City. Listen to him share his story and the lessons he picked up along the way.
No one knows Drewâs last name but he does a bunch of cool shit, and hangs out with a lot of girls/celebrities, so they call him Drew Gatsby. Back in high school, when he was struggling socially, he decided âI just donât want to be that guy anymoreâ. He started throwing parties at his house and thatâs when he realized that people saw him as the guy in charge. People looked to him when thereâs a problem. It helped build up his confidence.
He says when doing this stuff just be an NFL quarterback, if something goes wrong, just forget about the last snap. Everyone has their own game, their own style. Drewâs style is talking to girls, instead of directly hitting on them. Most guys just try to hit on girls immediately and he brings something different to the table. He likes to offer a girl a shot and if she says no, he drinks it in front of her to show he doesnât give a fuck.
When it comes to promoting, just act like you belong there. Build as many relationships as you can and leverage them as much as possible. Even though heâs not in the industry anymore, he pops in every couple weeks to stay relevant. âItâs not about the money you make, itâs about the hands you shake.â
Patrick is a digital entrepreneur who left behind a lucrative engineering career to pursue his passions of photography and travel. He’s use the Leverage curriculum to build a lifestyle that allows him to be location independent and travel the world while making money. Hear his story and learn how you can do the same thing.
Over the years Iâve been a dating coach Iâve developed an opinion that other dating coaches love to fight me on: you should listen to feedback from women, but donât take their advice.
If youâre going to catch a fish, you donât ask the fish how to catch it. Girls will be correct about their subjective opinions (since itâs impossible to be wrong about them) but theyâll be wrong about how you should attract them.
Use their feedback about your shortcomings, but get dating advice somewhere else.
I learned this lesson the hard way when I was in my early 20s living in San Francisco. I had a first date with a tall blonde girl I met during day game. After a fun evening filled with great conversation and too many vodka sodas, she came back to my place where we made out and cuddled, then went to sleep.
I woke up groggy early the next morning, thinking in my half-asleep state, Hey, something seems weird… Oh yeah. There was a girl in my bed last night. Where did she go?
Over the next couple weeks we kept texting but she changed the subject every time I tried to set up the next date. Ugh. Dealing with flakiness sucks, but itâs often a sign that she isnât 100% sold on you yet, not just that sheâs a flaky person in general.
My female coworkers at my finance job would always talk about their dating lives by the water cooler, picking apart every detail about the guys they met. So I thought it would be a good idea to consult my coworker, a 45 year-old mother of three.
Yeah, I know how that sounds now that I write it out, but donât blame me- I was young and dumb.
Her explanation: âI think sheâs just a little gunshy to meet you again. Send her this text:â
Hey, I donât want to make you feel uncomfortable, so letâs meet somewhere where you feel safe đ
I hit send. And immediately after hitting send I felt that soul-crushing feeling you get when you realize your text SUCKS. You know the feeling- the drop in your stomach followed by thoughts of Why did I send that!?! Iâm the worldâs biggest loooser.
I asked my buddy who was great with women if there was a hail Mary I could send to recover. After clowning me for taking such bad advice, he explained that my only chance was to follow it up with something absurd.
Thereâs a swingersâ club in San Francisco called Power Exchange. My buddy had me follow up my embarrassing text with this:
I was thinking somewhere like this place:
https://www.yelp.com/biz/power-exchange-san-francisco-3
She responds right away âHahaha that was hilarious.â
But it was too little too late. I never saw her again.
Cautiously listen to womenâs feedback, but never follow their advice
One of my writing mentors taught me how to incorporate feedback from my friends when they review my drafts. He suggested that I listen to feedback on which parts of my writing suck, but donât take my friendsâ advice on how to fix it.
This idea also applies to feedback from women. If multiple women point out a flaw, take that as an area to work on. Just keep in mind that just because they can identify a problem doesnât mean they have good advice on how you should solve it.
Example:
Valid feedback from a girl: “You are too feminine.”
Bad advice from a girl: “You are too feminine so you should get a tribal tattoo.”
Another example: If three of your female friends tell you that you have bad breath then itâs time to see a dentist.
Why taking womenâs advice is dangerous
1. The way they THINK theyâll react is different from how they actually react
Hereâs an example: a line Iâve had great success with that I recommend my students use during their day game approaches is âDonât worry, Iâm only a third creepy.â (for more on this protocol, check out the podcast episode I recorded on day game.)
I was recently explaining day game to one of my female friends, and I told her about the 1/3 creepy line as an example. She said sheâd never fall for a cheesy line like that. Her reaction is the same as 95% of my friends I explain it to.
Yet when it is delivered to women in an actual approach by me or my students, 95% react positively. Even if they have a boyfriend, they still usually crack up laughing at the line.
What people say they like is usually different from what they actually respond to. Their advice they give you is based on the way they subjectively imagine the way the world works, rather than how it objectively does.
Woman are very bad at knowing and explaining what they want in a man. But in terms of what they think and feel about you in the moment, you can always trust that. That’s always real.
2. A lot of their advice is garbage
Our culture does a terrible job of teaching young people how to date, both men and women. Weâve all heard the nonsense like âjust tell her how you feelâ or âjust be yourself,â and sadly, a majority of the dating advice out there just isnât helpful.
An attractive women can be extremely passive and just stand at a bar. Confident guys will approach her. She can literally do nothing and have a successful dating life. Sheâll never know the pain of running across the street to hit on a brunette with a great ass, only to get a scoff and be told the infamous âI have a boyfriend.â Or she could say that being nice is the key to attraction, when in reality sheâs attracted to aggressive guys who are confident.
Women canât relate to the skills that guys have to develop to become more attractive. Their worlds are just different. That translates into garbage advice. If youâve ever been told to âjust be nice,â you know thatâs true. Donât take any piece of advice at face value- you have to test if itâs true through your own experience.
3. Women are subjective (and men are too)
To be objective and rational, the necessary steps are:
Whenâs the last time youâve heard someone do this when it comes to her dating behavior? It just doesnât happen. People act emotionally then backwards rationalize their actions with logic. So for example, Sarah could think that she liked Brian because of the hilarious joke he made in the bathroom line, but it was actually because he was well-dressed and tall.
Women constantly face social pressure, like the need to avoid being called a slut. For this reason, they often wonât provide objective explanations of how attraction works because theyâre not even consciously aware of what happens when theyâre attracted to a guy. They rely on social norms rather than actual psychology.
4. Brutal honesty isnât socially acceptable
If you have a fundamental flaw in your character thatâs preventing you from attracting the women you want to date, no one is going to feel comfortable pointing that out. It violates social norms and people think itâs rude.
Most people arenât used to giving helpful critical feedback because itâs a difficult skill that takes a while to master. So instead of learning how to provide brutally honest feedback, they just avoid doing it to spare your feelings.
A lot of people will say things like âI want people to be honest with me. I can handle the truth.â Youâre a guy whoâs into self-improvement, so thatâs probably true for you. But most people who say this are lying to themselves. They think they want honest feedback, but when actually presented with it, they become defensive and blame others instead of taking an inventory.
Look at their incentives. Just like a retail salesperson who has the incentive of selling you expensive clothing, women have the social incentive of not rocking the boat. It does them no benefit to be honest with you if it may result in an awkward conversation.
People feel good when they say nice things about other people, even if it isnât true. Itâs easier to be nice, and American culture does not value honest feedback.
Whose advice should you listen to instead?
Mine, of course đ
But seriously, you should take the advice of a guy whoâs been in your shoes and is now dating the type of women you want to date.
You also need someone who can take the invisible rules about attraction and make them visible for your specific situation. Often a guy whoâs naturally good with women canât explain why the things he does works. A guy who sucks with women is going to give you terrible advice based on speculation.
Weâve discussed Robbieâs Rule of Osmosis in previous newsletters, and it applies again here. Surround yourself with guys who have great dating lives and are good at explaining their specific actions, and youâll pick up their good habits by osmosis.
The takeaway
Female friends are experts at being women, not at attracting women. How they feel about you in the moment is valid, but that doesnât mean they know how to give you advice on how to improve.
Keep these three ideas in mind:
You meet a girl and things start out well, but she starts getting distant or flaky. Itâs a situation weâve all been in. Steve, a Leverage Program member, posted a great question in our private members area about this very situation. Here’s his question:
A girl I’m enthusiastic is being flaky about our third date. Our conversation has always been smooth and to me it seems like we share mutual chemistry.
We met on Tinder and got drinks on our first date. Our second date was a cooking date at my place. We made out, cuddled in our underwear, and I cooked her breakfast the next morning.
We had plans to hang out, but she canceled because she said she has “so much to do” because her mom will be visiting. It feels like a BS excuse. If she wanted to see me I can’t imagine preparation taking that long. She also invited me to her birthday party, but then rescinded the invite and said it’s “too soon to introduce me to her friends.”
I like this girl a lot and thought we had a good connection. However, her flaking makes me feel shitty. Am I making too much of it? Am I being too pushy? What’s my optimal next play?
There are a few possibilities in this scenario and it’s likely a mix of all three. Let’s go through each one.
1. She’s not into him
From the way him described the situation, it sounds like heâs in chase mode. It’s 100% normal to be offended, feel shitty, and be salty when things turn out like this. Connecting with and liking a girl that doesn’t pan out sucks.
Why does this situation make most guys irrational? Because you didn’t just invest the time you spent with her. You invested years of dreaming up a relationship with a certain kind of person you hope to have, and this person matches years of daydreaming. You get excited. Then poof. She’s not into you.
Do not let the above affect you emotionally and act irrationally. It never ends well with this kind of girl. Ever.
Also, think about what chemistry actually means. If she felt this “chemistry” to the extent that he does, she’d be taking him to all these things that she says he can’t come to. When a girl likes a guy, she makes it easy for him to see her (unless sheâs being manipulative or thereâs some other issue going on).
2. She’s too rigid
If it’s a big deal to meet her friends, imagine all the other things that aren’t actually a big deal that she will think is a big deal. Run from this kind of girl, because dealing with them is a full time job.
Don’t make excuses for women who aren’t into you. When you jive with someone, you hang out with them. If her birthday and her friends visiting are such a big deal, really think about how rigid this person is. Think how she will be a year from now. Good luck with that. Never mind that she did invite him- that’s some evidence that it’s not a big deal.
Introducing a guy to her friends is only a big deal in the movies. Seek someone who is flexible, not rigid, and not in their head. It’s hard to stress enough how valuable of a trait being flexible is in a partner, and most guys (and women) never even think about it.
3. There’s another dude in the picture
My instinct is that the un-invitation is not about her BS excuse, but rather another dude in the picture that will be at the party.
I ran this situation by a female friend of mine, and her conclusion is that there’s someone else: “She’s not hanging out with her mom. A guy visited her. If it was her mom, she’d find a way to sneak away for five minutes. She can’t do that with another guy around.”
It’s always safe to assume that you have some competition. Any hot woman will have exes, current guys she’s lukewarm about but who are pursuing her, guys in her social circle who are out of a reach but she’d gladly date, and the list goes on and on. Believing that sheâs getting chased by other guys is good for you because it encourages you to keep approaching other girls. This gives you an abundance mentality so no matter what happens with any one specific girl, you arenât phased by it.
The Lesson
If you’ve been following my newsletter for a while, you know that I like to make everything about attraction as simple as possible. I can’t stand dating coaches who overcomplicate things.
So strip away all the gaming, game theory, questions, guessing, and gauging. As cheesy or oversimplified as it sounds: is she being present and transparent?
Long story short: solid connections between people that are en route to building a deep connection or falling in love show mutual presence and transparency. When one of those things is missing, there’s usually an alarming reason why. It could be that one person is not interested, there’s someone else in the picture, or someone is a basket case. If a new relationship feels like a ton of work, it’s probably not on a path to anywhere positive.
Iâm taking on a few new clients in the Leverage Program, so if you think you could benefit from coaching tailored to your exact situation, like what to text a girl back, apply here.
I look forward to working together.
If you don’t feel confident in your dating life, it says nothing about your character. It’s just an indication that you need more practice so you can stack more wins.
There’s a lot of nonsense out there on what confidence is, or what it takes to develop confidence. Confidence is the thoughts and feelings that result from a series of wins stacked together. It’s your expectation of how you’ll perform in a given situation, and it’s different from self-esteem, which is your overall evaluation of yourself.
I was reviewing Mate by Tucker Max yesterday and found a brilliant definition of confidence:
“Confidence is the realistic expectation you have of being successful at something, given (a) your competence at it and (b) the risk involved with doing it.”
Confidence ONLY comes from experience and competence. “Fake it till you make it” is a bad long-term strategy because no matter what you tell yourself, your brain subconsciously creates a metric that assesses whether or not you’ll do well in this situation with reasonable accuracy. Confidence is grounded in real world results, whereas arrogance is based on your imagination and self-delusion (and doesnât work).
The subconscious part of your brain is more important for confidence than what you rationally tell yourself, meaning that if you donât subconsciously believe you have the skills to be competent, you donât have confidence.
Unfortunately, there is no faking out your own psyche when it comes to how confident you feel about your abilities. Your confidence has to be calibrated on your competence. You can’t lie to yourself because your self is smarter than you are- LOL, confused yet? I am. Anyway…
If you step up to bat against a major league pitcher, you know that the best guys in the world are getting a hit 30% of the time, and getting on base 40% of the time. How confident should you be if you don’t play baseball? Even if you played in high school or college, your confidence isn’t gonna be very high, and it shouldnât be!
You develop a higher level of confidence in any field when it’s something you’ve done often, when you’ve failed over and over, and when you’ve achieved some success. When you learn what works and what doesn’t, you develop an accurate assessment of how you’re likely to perform in any situation.
If you keep practicing and the wins aren’t coming, it means you’re practicing in the wrong areas, getting bad advice, or you have blind spots you’re unaware of. Don’t keep doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result. That’s crazy. Get some coaching, learn proven methods of success, and practice those methods. That’s the only way to develop confidence over the long haul.
Let’s talk about rejection.
What most guys don’t realize is that women don’t actually want to reject you. They don’t enjoy it. They have no desire to make you feel bad about yourself, they are only doing their best job of exiting an interaction that doesn’t interest them.
If they aren’t attracted to you, their goal is to signal to you in the least awkward and offensive way possible that you should move on. Unfortunately, most guys don’t pick up on these signals.
Common Signals of Rejection:
1. The first hint occurs when she communicates with a passive businesslike manner and avoids eye contact. This is when you get one-word responses and she doesn’t actively engage with anything you’re throwing out there.
2. If you persist, you’ll get the cold shoulder. This is what’s occurring when guys interpret women’s behavior as subtly “cold” or “bitchy.” She starts going from passively rejecting you to being actively dismissive.
3. Finally, if you haven’t gotten the message by this point, she’s likely to say something that you interpret as condescending, rude or mean. She’s doing everything she can to get you to leave.
The thing to remember is that this behavior isn’t really about you, because most women constantly get hit on really poorly. They’ll frequently encounter sociopathic guys who have no fear of rejection. These guys will walk up and say whatever they want. Their confidence occurs from the lack of a biological fear response, so they have no calibration to her signals.
The other common uncomfortable way women get hit on is by guys with poor social skills. Guys who can’t pick up on social norms, like guys with Asperger Syndrome, come across as creepy to women because they’re oblivious to the signals women are sending and they keep on pushing. Like guys with sociopathic traits, this is a category of guys that women have to go out of their way to send signals of rejection.
Should I hit on less attractive girls?
Back in 2007 when I was working through the requirements to become an approach coach for Pickup101, I needed to get an infield hidden camera video where I got a number or instant date on camera- a daunting task. I spent an evening walking around the UTC Mall in La Jolla and hit on 32 women.
I got the “I have a boyfriend” line 32 times. I vividly remember letting a few approach opportunities with the hottest girls go because I felt like I had less of a chance with them. But after 32 rejections, I was completely annoyed and on the verge of feeling straight up angry.
Finally, on the 33rd approach I was able to get a girlâs number, but the audio didn’t work. I really wanted to destroy those stupid wireless microphones. I was so angry I needed to break something to release my frustration. But I got some Zen calming advice from my cameraman and called it quits that day.
We later traveled up to West Hollywood for the weekend and hit up the Beverly Center for more approaches. The talent in LA was way better than in San Diego, and even when I get rejected the girls were way sweeter about it.
It dawned on me that the hotter the girl, the more experience she has rejecting guys. Because of this, the idea that you should “warm up” by talking to less attractive women is a silly one. Doing so will only lead to harsher rejections, because you’re dealing with a girl who doesn’t have as much experience confidently and respectfully exiting conversations. Less attractive girls have less experience dealing with guys in general.
Men and women have radically different experience with dating. Women get hit on so often that they develop experience rejecting men.
Ever since she hit puberty, an attractive woman has dealt with all kinds of guys approaching her, checking her out, making suggestive comments. By her 18th birthday, odds are she’s already had six years of this happening every single day. Compare that to a typical 28 year-old guy who’s hit on 100 girls in the last year: she has way more experience under her belt.
Regardless of how experienced you think you are, I promise she has more experience rejecting guys than you have being rejected.
But remember that most of the time women are being hit on by guys they don’t want to talk to. That’s good news for you. You’re not a construction worker catcalling her as she walks down the street, you’re not an intimidating sociopath, and the better you get, the easier for you it becomes to read the social signals she’s sending nonverbally.
And if you were wondering, I finally did get a number on camera. Here’s the footage. Notice my horrific outfit, bad posture and general dorky-ness.
If you have a good eye for reading women’s reactions, you probably noticed that this girl was not into me at all. This is the classic example of a pity number. She just gave it to me because she didn’t want to make me feel bad, especially on camera! Needless to say, she never responded to my texts but hey, I got the video.
Here’s one tip that I use all the time when asking for a girls number to alleviate any awkwardness. Just say “Give me your number or if you don’t like me, give me a fake one.” She will always giggle. It turns the taboo number exchange into a laugh which can only strengthen a connection.
We discuss how to have “the talk” to set up non-monogamous relationships, and how to stand out in the dating world when everyone is addicted to their phones.
How you do anything is how you do everything, and the people you choose to associate with reflects on your character. It’s crucial to surround yourself with guys who are better than you if you want to become better with women.
Women are attracted to social status more than anything else, and one of the most important ways to show (not tell) your status is by being a leader or providing value in a group of other attractive men. This is why I always talk about how improving your dating life is more than just knowing how to attract; it’s about being a complete man who’s attractive to women.
So what do you do if all your friends are losers? Ditch the losers so youâre in a sink or swim situation. If you have no social contact, youâll have no choice but to force yourself outside of your comfort zone to meet new people. And do it for your own mental health too; we naturally absorb the attitudes, thoughts, and actions of the people around us, so remaining in friendships with toxic people hurts you. Itâs a subconscious process that psychologists call âconvergence.â
Identify what kind of friends youâd like to make, and start participating in the activities that these people do. Are they into physical fitness? Join a Crossfit gym. Are they businesspeople? Hang out at the country club. Do they play chess? Join a chess tournament. Not sure who youâd like to meet? Pick up a side job in retail and start talking to your coworkers. Want to meet fun people while learning a new social skill? Do improv comedy. Just start doing something, absorb your experience as feedback, and adjust your actions from there.
By encountering people with similar interests to you in a natural environment, itâs easy for you to make friendships when you both start to gradually reveal more personal information about yourselves.
In order to become friends with people, you need to provide some value to them. This can be as simple and straightforward as being a good listener. If people feel comfortable and at ease around you, theyâll want to form a friendship with you.
Men tend to have friendships that fall into one of four categories. If you understand these categories, you’ll know how to keep your loser friends at a distance and how to build valuable connections with others.
Just Friends
Just friends are guys you see from time to time and have surface-level connections with. It could be a poker buddy or a guy you see often at the gym. The distinction here is that it’s someone you don’t intend to get to know better or see in a different situation. Sometimes a wingman will fall into this category- he’s someone you’ll go out with but don’t have any kind of lasting bond.
Rust Friends
Rust friends are the friends you’ve had your whole life. It could be a childhood best friend or someone else you’ve known most of your life. You may have different priorities and values now, but the length of your bond is what sustains the friendship. These aren’t necessary deep friendships- they’re just old ones.
Trust Friends
Trust friends are friends who you’ve established a close bond with. Having this kind of friend to support you is crucial. You can share your challenges with them and they’ll help you get through them. They’ll help you meet women and you know you can count on them.
Must Friends
Must friends are friends who you “must” share everything with. They’re your deepest source of a masculine bond, and they form your inner circle. While it takes a long time with a lot of shared experiences to form, these are the types of lifelong friendships we cultivate in the Leverage Program. Having women in your life is great, but you can supercharge both your dating and your social lives by surrounding yourself with successful men and mentors.
Does any of this sound familiar? Iâm a smart, funny, and cool dude, but when I get around really hot chicks, its like my mind goes blank and my IQ drops 50 points. I canât think of anything to say … Read More
Full Length Speeches Interviews & Clips The 21 Convention Podcast Interview Click Here To learn more about The 21 Convention
