Now, I generally have two skepticisms about Phone/Text Game or any “material” for it…

1. As with most things in game… I subscribe to the idea that, “What is simplest is best,” and with phone/text game, what is simplest shouldn’t take up more than maybe 10-20 pages at most. In fact, I only spent a measly 24 pages on it in my first book.

2. The fact that most follow up game should be a reflection of your ACTUAL game, or I guess, an extension of the game you ran on her when you met her. So, again, as with most things in pick up, I don’t know if there’s a “one-size-fits-all” model to it that any guy can apply.

Well, I have to be honest, I was pleasantly surprised by the book. It’s actually pretty damn comprehensive. It covers the basics that everyone needs to know, like time-bridging, preventing flakes, building basic attraction through texts, when to call/text, etc.

But it also does a great job of explaining the CONCEPTS behind everything. And as all you guys should know by now, I’m a huge fan of explaining the principles, rather than just tossing out hundreds of pages of routines.

In particular, they do a great job of explaining the idea of “investment,” and how to follow up game really comes down to managing how invested she is in the interaction. If she has a low level of investment, then you need to raise it through gaming her more. If she has a high level of investment, then you need to arrange to meet up with her ASAP.

Most people gloss over this concept and how to recognize it, when I actually think it’s probably the SINGLE KEY to all of follow up game. In fact, I spend a lot of time talking about it in my Conversation Demolitions as well, but I don’t think I ever explained as succinctly or as well as Braddock did here.

Braddock also did a solid job of providing some example texts conversations from his own life to illustrate the points.

So anyway, it’s a good book. I think if follow up game is your one major sticking point, then it’s probably a good investment as it’s extremely thorough. If it’s not your major sticking point or you’re already getting solid results, then it’s probably not necessary, but could probably point out a few blind spots or things your missing.

Overall: Solid B+

The Ultimate Guide to Phone and Text Game

If you have solid game, you should be closing 90+% of your first dates.

I’ve had girls who claim to me, “I don’t kiss on the first date,” shack up the first night. I had a virgin sleep with me the first night. It’s really only the extreme situations where she won’t sleep with you.

If you aren’t achieving these kinds of results, then the first thing you need to do is go to the landing page of this blog and get the free download on first dates. All you have to do is put in your email on the right side of the page.

The reason is you’re probably not taking care of at least one of the fundamentals of first dates:

1. You take her to a dinner and/or movie instead of somewhere actually cool and fun.
2. You’re doing lunch/afternoon dates.
3. You don’t venue change at least twice during the date.
4. You aren’t planning to get her back to your place or to get back to hers as part of the date.

This is all just fundamental logistical stuff that you should be doing every time without even thinking. If you aren’t, then get that free download and it will explain everything.

If you do all of that stuff but aren’t closing consistently, then you’re just not escalating quickly enough.

There is no excuse for not escalating on a date. Ever.

Here’s my reasoning when a woman actually comes on a date with me. Look, most women flake. I talk about THAT percentage a lot too. I don’t care how good you get, how tight your game is, you’re always going to have 50+% of your numbers flake on you. Usually a much higher percentage than that.

So those minority of numbers that actually come through and meet up with you, what does that tell us about those women?

THEY REALLY LIKE YOU… ALREADY.

This is the biggest mistake guys make. They get on the date and they think they need to keep proving themselves and build more attraction. I’ve always taken the mind set, “The fact she even showed up means she’s already attracted enough to sleep with me.”

From that frame, the reality of the situation becomes painfully obvious: you now have 3-4 hours alone with a woman who’s already attracted enough to sleep with you. You have no excuse for not making something happen.

From there it really is just a matter of escalating. Just to give you a bit of a roadmap, I usually try to kiss within the first hour or two if you didn’t kiss her the night you met her. If you kissed her the night you met her, then you should be kissing her by the 30 minute mark.

From there, you should have the entire second half of the date to escalate from kissing to sex. That is AN ETERNITY.

Aside from the constant, yet paced escalation, you should be spending the entire time building comfort. Again, you have a solid 3-4 hours of comfort building here, which is far more than enough time to build enough comfort. You shouldn’t be getting LMR from your dates either. If you do, then you’re coming across incongruent or they don’t know if you really like them or not.

Way back when I started, dates intimidated me and I didn’t always do that well on them. But as got more experienced doing tons of night game, where you have to build attraction, comfort and escalate sometimes with 10 minutes, having the 3-4 hour window and the girl to myself became really easy.

Now it’s almost not even fair. 3-4 hours alone with a girl who’s already attracted to me? She’s done! She doesn’t even know it yet, but she has no chance.

Again, this isn’t any superhuman skill. I know a lot of regular guys who have only been doing this a year or two who close this consistently on day 2’s as well. If you’re having trouble then you should read this post and then download that free PDF for first dates.

First off, love the blog. It’s a great resource.

Thanks in advance,
Xander

Yes, that’s 90+% on first dates. Unless you’re older (35 and up), I’d say you should be closing consistently at this rate. If you’re not, it means you’re not escalating quickly enough.

As for follow-up, it changes things in a couple ways. It creates more of a “relationship” frame versus a “fun hookup” frame. So she’s going to naturally want to take things more romantically, be more sensual and emotional about everything.

The biggest reason I tell guys to sleep with women on the first date is because once sex is out of the way, it gives everyone so much more leg-room as far as establishing the relationship moving forward. Expectations don’t get so built up. If a woman has sex with you, you KNOW she’s going to call back, whereas you can never be sure if you don’t.

If by chance you don’t hook up on the first date, I’ll contact her sooner than I would otherwise, as she’s not as invested in you yet. Typically I’ll always contact a woman after the first date with a text or something, and then schedule the next date after 3-5 days. If I don’t sleep with her, I may cut that down to 2-3 days.

Hey Entropy,

I just finished Man on Campus. It’s great. But I just recently transferred to a new school and will be coming in as a junior. How does this change the dynamic of my college game?

Nathan

Good question, and I can’t believe I didn’t address this in the course considering I was a transfer student in college.

When you transfer in, you have a big advantage and then a big disadvantage. The advantage is that you’re an upper classman, you have easier access to alcohol, probably have your own place, etc. So logistically you’re better off.

The disadvantage is that you don’t get the dorm experience, so you don’t have all of those insta-friends that underclassmen get when they first come in Freshman and/or sophomore year.

So I would just focus a lot more on meeting people through extra-curricular activities and classes. It may take a little more time, but considering your better logistical situation, it’ll pay off faster.

As always, ask me anything in the comments, or through email at entropy@practicalpickup.com.

Could you write about text message game sometime, Entropy? Like if a girl you’re into texts you a lot, whether its worth replying as much as she’s texting you, and when its a good idea to text or call after getting a number? I’d like to see your thoughts on it. Excellent blog, thanks for your thoughts!

- Tyler

Guys are usually disappointed when I tell them my text/phone game, as it’s painfully simple. For one, I hate phones, but also I really believe in just doing the bare minimum to get her out with you again.

First, to answer your questions: the general rule is you can reply up to as much as she’s texting you. If she’s texting you a lot, it’s always preferable for her to be texting more than you.

Secondly, I call the next day. If not, the day after. In conventional wisdom, there’s been a “three-day rule” which is complete and utter bullshit (if you haven’t heard of it, it’s the “rule” that you HAVE to wait three days to call a girl after you get her number.) I can’t tell you how many girls I’ve talked to who not only know that guys do this, but it drives them crazy. If you like her, call her. If she likes you, she’ll be wanting you to call her.

That said, most of my philosophy on phone/text game is that it’s really just to facilitate meeting up. If you gamed her well enough when you met her, almost anything you do should be fine as long as you’re direct and don’t play games. If she didn’t like you that much when she met you, she’s probably going to flake no matter what.

So, I guess here’s a crash course in how I run follow-up game:

- Text either later that day/night or the next day. Just say something cute followed with, “Nice meeting you.” This is nothing more than a ping for a response. If she responds, you know she’s interested. If she doesn’t, you know she’s probably a flake.
- If I REALLY like the girl, I’ll call her the next day. Most girls I call the day after, after I’ve texted back and forth with her some. Again, I really believe that guys lose a lot of girls to flakes because they sit around and wait to call them. You want to maintain communication with her and keep you fresh in her mind. Again, if she likes you, calling her so soon won’t matter, and if she doesn’t, it STILL won’t matter.
- Since I hate phone calls, I tend to do as much texting as possible first. If I can get her into some consistent text conversations, often I’ll just set up the date through text. If not, then I’ll call her within 48 hours.

I also schedule dates ASAP (another newbie mistake every guy makes). If I meet a girl on a Tuesday, I call on Thursday and set up a date for Saturday. If I meet a girl on Friday, I call on Sunday and set up a date for Monday. Etc.

This method — I guess you could call it the “no bullshit” method — doesn’t decrease flakes, what it does is get all the flakes out of the way as soon as possible. I used to waste way too much time texting and calling girls for 2-3 weeks and not be able to get a date with them. This way, I’m basically telling them to put up or shut up, I don’t have time to play phone tag, to play scheduling games, or to wait around and pretend I’m less interested than I am. If she doesn’t like me, I’d rather her flake ASAP to spare me the inconvenience.

If I’m going out regularly, I’ll be getting 5-10 phone numbers a week anyway, so losing half of them to flakes is no big deal.

As for flakes, I’ll try them 2-3 times and give up. Again, I see no point in trying to win over a girl who’s not interested when I can just go open another set. There are guys who will call and try for weeks or even a month or two, and yes, there are ways to revive dead numbers months later. But I never really cared enough to try.

Could you touch on how you perfected the art of teasing / cocky funny? This is something I have trouble pulling off, though I see it works really really well during night game.

Thanks man,
- TR

Teasing requires three things:

1. It’s funny.
2. It makes fun of her.
3. It’s playful.

If you’re not funny, then take a comedy class or two. If you’re not making fun of her (she’s not giving you an emotional response), try being more of a dick. If you’re not being playful, you need to lighten up and have more fun.

Teasing and bantering is a massive amount of trial and error. The best advice I can give you is to try and go overboard — i.e., be as shocking and ridiculous as possible. You’ll end up offending a lot of girls, but then you can slowly calibrate it back and find the sweet spot. 90% of guys are too nice and not playful enough with their teases. So I feel like if you overcompensate first, not only do you become aware of everything you can get away with, you’ll get a good feel for where you need to be.

Just don’t complain to me when you get a drink thrown on you.

Another Friday, another mailbag. Lots of Doc Holliday questions to get through this week along with some pickup ones. As always, feel free to post your questions (about pick up, life, the universe and everything) in the comments or email them to me at entropy@practicalpickup.com.

I understand it’s none of my business but I don’t give a shit. What happened to Doc? I know he wanted to work on his education and go to school but is that really what happened? His blog entry seems so depressing and I was just a little upset because I related to him a lot… and he really was a true source of inspiration in some aspects to my own personal development, so to me it is important.

- Anonymous

Doc asked me not to give too much personal information about him. But from working with the guy every day for over a year and experiencing a lot of the same things he did, here are the factors that I would guess inspired him to quit and leave:

1) He realized he hated traveling, especially when we slummed it in a few cities (sleeping on couches and whatnot).
2) He wasn’t comfortable with the financial realities of this job. This may sound ridiculous for those of you who assume all of us are making six-figures and raking in the dough. But the truth is, bootcamps can be hard to sell, travel expenses rack up. Sure we could make $2,000 in one night but then we’d go three weeks without earning a dime. This wears on me sometimes and I know it wore on him even moreso.
3) He’s in love with his girlfriend and doesn’t want to sarge anymore. Enough said.
4) He didn’t envision PUA as his long-term career and didn’t necessarily want to be remembered for it in 10, 20, 30 years or whatever. This is understandable.
5) Although he enjoyed coaching, he didn’t enjoy all of the bullshit that came along with it: guru politics, community drama and gossip, etc.

He’s going back to school and wants to pursue a career in either teaching or coaching. Having PUA Instructor on your resume would still be taboo in those fields I imagine, especially if he ended up teaching like high school girls or something, lol.

All in all, I think it just wore on him and he got really burnt out. If there had only been 2-3 of these factors, maybe he’d still be here (like I am), but unfortunately not.

Hey Entropy,

What is going to happen to the content on Doc’s blog. He had some really good daygame info on there and it would be a shame for it all to become vapor in cyberspace.

I heard at one point he was going to do a daygame product. I guess that’s not happening now.

- Eric

Doc signed over all of his content to me and I have it saved on my hard drive. All of his best stuff will appear on the re-launch of this blog in a few weeks.

As for the day game product, he and I were doing that together (and actually almost finished). We have no plans to release it anymore.

Is Practical Pickup really finished? I bet this is just some marketing gimmick.

- Like Eight Random People

Yes, it’s really finished. Doc even has a day job already. And actually, if he came to me and begged to come back, I don’t know if I’d say yes… I’ve already put two months of work into new things.

So, no this isn’t a gimmick. Although it’s definitely marketing. Speaking of which, there’s only one spot left for our final bootcamp in Boston.

How do you steal your friend’s little brother’s girlfriend? I know, its a dick move, but the kid is a total jerk and she needs somebody more sophisticated, like me.

-Zeo

LOL. Well, moral ambiguity aside, I’ll give you a short answer. Build attraction like normal, isolate her and then frame her boyfriend negatively over and over.

Asshole…

How do you know when to let go after you tried to get in touch with a girl?
How would you know when to stop pursuing her?

- Rockstar Dentist

Well, the real answer is you can stop calling a girl whenever you feel like it. But I suppose that’s not very useful.

It comes down to a few things: how much you like her, and how much effort you’re willing to put into winning her over.

These days I don’t call a girl a second time. But back when I was getting good, I’d call a girl 3-4 times over two weeks trying to get her to pick up. Some girls will pick up the third or fourth time, so it’s good practice.

Also, there are a minority of women who have retarded rules like they won’t pick up a guy’s first two calls. It’s basically a way for them to screen for guys who are really into them (or just really aggressive)

I’ve gone back and read the entire “Personalizing Pickup” series. I agree with most of what you’ve said. How about a series of articles on how to overcome these sticking points?

- Anonymous

Yeah, that’s what an eBook is for.

Last time I covered the opener and the transition. Today I’m going to cover the rest of the model.

Direct Opener- Excuse me, I know this is crazy or whatever but I thought you were cute and wanted to meet you. I’m Doc.
Transition with Cold Read – You know, you really have this like west coast vibe.

The nest step is

Fluff Talk

After you cold read about where she’s from she’s going to tell you if you’re right or where she’s actually from.

This is a perfect opportunity to create some rapport and make some small talk. As I said in part one there will be times when the girl will give you more information than you asked for, instead of her just saying “No, I’m from Chicago.” She’ll say “No, I moved out here from Chicago and go to school at Harvard.” The second response gives you more to work with but let’s just assume she replied with the first one.

PUA: You know you really have like this west coast vibe.
Girl: No, I’m actually from Chicago
PUA: Really? I never would have guessed that. I was actually in Chicago a few months ago. My friend Dave lives in Wicker Park and we went to this really cool club one night. I think it was called The Apartment.
Girl: Yeah I know The Apartment!
PUA: Yeah it was really crazy they have like a shower and bathtub upstairs. What are you in Boston for?
Girl: Blah Blah Blah

If have any sort of life you’ve probably traveled a bit or at least know something about major US cities that you can talk about. And if you don’t you can always just say “You know I’ve never been to Chicago. Do you like it?”

Every now and then you’ll get thrown a curve ball like “I’m from Wisconsin.” Well I’ve never been there and don’t know anyone from there so I’ll say something like, “Really? I think you’re the first person I’ve ever met from Wisconsin.”

You’re not trying to do anything fancy here. You’re just trying to establish some rapport and get her used to talking to you.

Entropy and I really believe that guys need to learn basic conversation skills before trying to learn to pick up girls. Entropy covers this topic very thoroughly in his ebook.

Qualification Question

Although I said that your cold read will at times act as qualification, most of the time you’ll need to find out more about the girl. And like I said in the beginning of part one, all I do in day game is cycle qualification and comfort a few times.

A whole book could be written on qualification, and probably has, but I’m just going to give you guys the basics.

A qualification question/statement is a question that you ask to elicit a response from a woman that’ll tell you something about them. You then reward her response to your question by qualifying her on it.

The qualification question that I usually use at this point in the interaction is “So what do you do when you’re not ____.”

The “____” is what she was doing before you opened her. So if you meet her in a bookstore it’s “So what do you do when you’re not shopping for books?” The funniest example of this I ever had was when I opened a girl in the addiction and recovery section of a bookstore. I was like “So what do you do when you’re not…” and as I trailed off she looked up, saw what section she was in, and took about 5 steps back so that she was in the self help section. We both laughed about it.

Sometimes the girl will give you a kinda blow off answer like “I work” or “I hangout with friends.” If they do this I like to tease them a little by saying something like “Wow! You have friends too! This is so amazing.” It’s really all about the tonality of how you say it. You don’t want to sound like a dick, you should be smiling and she should be able to detect your sarcasm.

If she tells you anything like “I just finished med school and I’m doing my residency right now.” You should reward her with something like “Wow that’s great! I think it’s awesome when people have jobs that help others. Have you always wanted to be a doctor?”

If you notice at the end I ask another question to make our interaction even deeper and find out more about her. Another great technique is to relate some part of your life to what she does. With the girl who wants to be a doctor I could talk about how my brother is a doctor and tell a random story about me and him growing up.

Grounding Story

Up until this point in the interaction the majority of what has been talked about is her and her life with little stories about you thrown in here and there. This is the point where you really share yourself with her.

Basically your grounding story is a story about you that both builds comfort and attraction at the same time. For day game I like to have the story focus on what you do and WHY you do it.

Here’s an example what I usually say–

“Yeah, like, for, me I work in film. And it’s really cool because like always growing up I was just fascinated with movies. As a little kid I’d literally just sit in front of the TV and watch the same movies over and over again. Just looking at the different cuts and camera angles… Yeah I’m totally a movie nerd. So fair warning.”

The most important part of the story is that I love what I’m doing with my life. I’m doing what I’m passionate about.

Now not everyone love what they do for a living but everyone should have a hobby that they love. If this is the case use your hobby.

“Yeah, like, for, me I work as an accountant. And it’s cool and whatever. But I really love playing basketball. My mom said that basically as soon as I could walk I’d try to play basketball with my older brother and his friends. And it’s really cool, now because I coach some kids on the weekends.”

… I actually like that story more than mine.

There’s not much too it but be prepared for women to ask you questions about the stuff you just mentioned.

More Qualification*

Outside of the number close this is the last step and about half of the time you won’t even need it. Hence the *

I usually only add this last bit of qualification if the girl didn’t give me much with the cold read and my other qualification question.

The great thing is that now that you’ve opened up to her with you’re grounding story she’s much more likely to share herself with you. I’ll usually phrase this step like this–

“So yeah, obviously you hang with friends or whatever but like seriously what do you like to do?”

And it works the same way as the first qualification question. She’ll answer, you reward her for it, and follow it up with another question about what she does or relate it to your life.

Number Close

I first heard this number close from Sinn. It’s simple, it leads, and it’s not too forward. It’s the best number close I’ve ever tried and I’ve stopped using anything else.

“Well I gotta go meet some friends but you seem really cool. Let’s exchange numbers and maybe we’ll grab coffee or something.”

If she says no, it means no. Don’t try to plow or anything… unless you enjoy flaky numbers.

And that’s it.

The entire interaction should last anywhere from 5 – 15 minutes and the numbers you get should be fairly solid.

I’m going to post an interaction that follows the model tomorrow so you guys can see how the conversation flows.

First is when do you decide that a number is dead? Sinn came up with a great system for following up with numbers called phone freeze out. Basically it breaks down so that for each time you’ve called her and she doesn’t answer up or return your call you freeze her out for that many days before trying to call again.

Written out it looks like this–

Day 1 – Call
Day 2 – Freeze out
Day 3 – Call
Day 4 – Freeze out
Day 5 – Freeze out
Day 6 – Call
Day 7 – Freeze out
Day 8 – Freeze out
Day 9 – Freeze out
Day 10 – Call
Day 11 – Freeze out
Day 12 – Freeze out
Day 13 – Freeze out
Day 14 – Freeze out
Day 15 – Call

In theory this could go on forever but after two weeks (15 days) you can pretty much assume that the number is dead. I also like to leave a voicemail each time I call and she doesn’t answer. It’s best to keep them short and not mention the fact that she never returned your call. I usually just say “Hey, It’s Doc. Talk to you later.”

I used to leave leave messages of me singing a la Jeffy and his Air Supply voicemail… but then I kinda realized how weird and inconvenient it is to sing into someone’s voicemail.

Now I usually just send this text.

I wait until it’s about midnight or 1AM and send this fake booty call “Come over. Key is in the usual place.”

Usually they reply saying that you texted the wrong person or something similar and I always respond “Haha. oops. that wasn’t for you.” and call them the next day. Most of the time they pick up and will start grilling you about the booty call and who it was for. Just laugh it off, cut the thread, and stack into something else.

Saffron has great connections to parties and night life and he would just change the name of his dead numbers in his phone and every week or two send out tons of mass texts to the girls saying “Hey everyone. Big party at X bar tonight. Come out.”

Some nights a few girls would show up, other nights just one or none would come. Either way they’ll give you social proof and a lot of times will create jealously plot lines and all that shit.

Try both, see which you prefer, and make the most of your numbers.