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.

Part of that evolution was that starting last winter, I went on a PUA material binge. Although I have been in the community and sarging consistently for three years, I never read a whole lot of material when I started out.

But when I began coaching, my interest in it piqued. I wanted to learn as much as possible in order to teach as efficiently as possible.

You could say I was chasing the “unifying theory of pickup”. I literally watched and read EVERYTHING by every company I could get my hands on. I wrote vociferously and posted regularly on half a dozen boards. Looking back, I don’t know how I had so much time.

The point is, I was neck-deep in theory.

As I began to apply all of this knowledge and my in-field experience with a wide variety of students every week, my understanding of picking up women began to crystallize.

I’ll put it bluntly: We make shit REALLY complicated for ourselves.

I mean, the fact that you can go on boards and find 10-page diatribes on “disarming” other men who are talking to a girl or five-minute explanations on how to leave a 10-second voicemail is a bit over-the-top. This community, in general, suffers dearly from chronic mental masturbation.

I believe getting really good with women boils down to only SIX skills.

You may be thinking, “What about Reticular Activation Systems, and the difference between medium and large qualification hoops? What about the DHV routine stacks I wrote out and practiced in front of the mirror?”

Dude… six skills, and you will be set. It’s just a matter of singling out, focusing and practicing the skills you need to work on.

When I first explain this, it always seems a bit TOO simple. I know when I teach my students this stuff out in field, their first reaction is actually disappointment because they think, “God, I was working on all of this stuff for months and now you’re saying it didn’t even matter?” A few sets later, that disappointment usually changes to excitement.

Some guys come into the community already proficient at four of the six. And instead of working on the other two, they use material that completely messes up the skills they’re already good at. That’s what I want to put a stop to.

I have to warn you guys first though, you’re going to read this and your first reaction will probably be: “That’s it?”

This is expected. As a community, we’ve been inundated with copious amounts of theory and unnecessary thinking. Any guy who is experienced and successful in the community can tell you that he ends up only using a small percentage of ANYTHING he reads in the community.

That being said, these are the FUNDAMENTALS. You cannot succeed without them; and they are all you need for success with women. Unless you want cold approach threesomes and to be able to steal runway models away from VIP areas, you probably won’t need to know much more than these fundamental skills.

Finally, I’ll add that these six skills are placed in a special and sequential order. They each build upon the one coming before it. Earlier skills aren’t NECESSARY to move on to later ones, but they are more fundamental, meaning that skill one will improve skills 2-6, whereas skill six will have little effect on skill one.

OK, enough cockteasing… let’s get started.

1. Skill #1: Creating and Maintaining an Attractive Lifestyle — I’ll put this bluntly. If your life sucks, it doesn’t matter how much game you have, girls are not going to be interested and/or stick around. If you can open 100 sets a day, but you’re broke, homeless, unkept and unhappy, you’re going to end up with 100 blowouts a day.

What are the components to a good lifestyle? I break them down into these categories: Health, Professional Happiness (notice I don’t say stability), Hobbies, Social Circles, Style/Grooming, and Body Language.

It’s true that guys who live baller lifestyles will naturally find girls hitting on them every so often, even guys with “no game.” I can’t tell you how many students I’ve taken out who get eye-fucked and interest from girls left and right and they’re just clueless to it. It’s because these guys — to reference “Swingers” — ARE FUCKING MONEY, and they just don’t realize it.

The biggest mistake any guy can make is to GIVE UP THEIR LIFESTYLE to hit on girls. I know guys who quit hobbies, ditch friends and underperform at their jobs for the sake of “going out and opening more girls.” You’re shooting yourself in the foot here — failing before you even begin.

I would say, in general, most guys come to the community and already have pretty strong lifestyles. They have good jobs, interests (nerdy interests are completely valid), and friends. They just don’t know how to create and/or capitalize on opportunities.

Skill #2: Approaching — Approaching’s SOLE PURPOSE is for the sake of creating opportunities.

There’s probably more literature on opening in the PUA community than all of the other skills combined. The only reason is because approaching is the first issue guys run into, so it’s easiest to sell material on it — i.e., it’s the easiest to market and therefore the easiest to make a quick buck.

In truth, approaching is daunting as shit when you start out, but it’s actually the easiest skill to learn. It’s really just a matter of getting over the social anxiety of talking to strangers. Once you’re able to do that, getting a simple and pleasant response 90% of the time is no big feat.

Approaching is an art, not a science. You can read pages and pages on body positioning, energy levels, opening routines, etc., etc., but a calm, confident, “Hi, I’m X,” followed by a handshake will almost never fail. Ever.

Again, what guys get hung up on is their social anxiety (I refuse to call it approach anxiety because it’s a silly concept) of talking to strangers. They experience a lot of anxiety, so they assume that it must be a much more complicated process and skill than it really is. They digest hundreds of pages of theory on approaching hoping to allay their fears and nervousness about approaching. The truth is, nothing kills the anxiety other than JUST DOING IT.

I tell my students, “What you say first isn’t that important, what’s important is what you say SECOND.” Which brings us to…

Skill #3: Conversation Skills — I feel like the biggest tragedy in the PUA community is that guys who don’t possess basic and fundamental social skills start by immediately trying to flirt and run attraction game.

You can’t run before you can walk, and as we say in Texas, you can’t put the horse before the wagon. If you are incapable of holding a pleasant and normal conversation with a stranger for more than five minutes, then how the fuck are you going to make them attracted to you? Changing what you say around isn’t going to do dick, it’s just going to make things more weird and more awkward.

It’s paramount that before guys try to become “pimps” and “players” that they know how to carry on a functioning conversation with a hot girl without freaking the fuck out — stammering, stuttering and yammering all over the place about stupid shit.

Learn how to avoid awkward silences, learn how to get her to open up talk about herself, learn how to make her laugh. Guys freak out about getting put in the “friend zone,” but if a guy has never even had a female friend before, maybe having a few female friends is the best thing that could happen to him.

It’s once you’ve learned how to comfortably build rapport and get a girl invested into the interaction that you can begin breaking that rapport and flirting — that is, building attraction.

Skill #4: Flirting — The mountains and mountains of PUA attraction theory, the first three phases of the M3 model, the crux of Pickup 101’s bantering and DYD’s C+F are all really fancy and complicated terms for “flirting.”

None of these gurus invented crap. They just took what men and women have been doing for centuries and put a name on it.

Flirting can be broken down into quite a simple formula. In fact, I challenge any reader to find attraction material that DOES NOT fall into this formula. Anyone who does gets a free phone consult from me (so I can put you in your place… err, I mean…).

Flirting and gaining attraction is simply a process of breaking rapport with a girl in a fun or acceptable way. Neg? Breaking rapport through a backhanded compliment. Cocky and Funny? Breaking rapport with humor. Bantering? Same.

Some guys interject with “What about DHV’s?” here. DHV’s are simply sharing yourself in a positive frame. So, in my opinion, they fall under skill #3.

The formula for flirting follows this progression: establish rapport, break rapport, girl qualifies and/or complies, re-establish rapport.

I dare you to find attraction material that isn’t following this basic formula.

The easiest way to flirt is to tease. All you need to tease well is a good sense of humor. Teasing breaks rapport with the girl while making her laugh. It creates a mixture of emotions: she feels good because she’s laughing, but she feels bad because you cut her down a bit. This mixture of emotions is literally what creates sexual tension — it’s emotional dissonance and something women fucking thrive on.

Another way to flirt or create sexual tension is by leading aggressively. Breaking rapport by leading and gaining compliance requires little more than balls and some calibration. Cute girl at the bar seems into you? Grab her hand and say, “Come on, we’re dancing.” Lead effectively. She may have not been THAT into you at the bar. But suddenly she’s dancing with you and before she knows it she’s thinking, “Wait, this guy is kind of hot!”

Skill #5: Logistics and Follow-Up — This is managing all of the odds and ends when it comes to closing girls. This is learning how to deal with her friends well, how do prevent flakes, leaving good text messages and voicemails and most importantly, mastering day 2’s.

Logistics and follow-up, although requiring a lot of minor skills and attention to detail (make sure you have a ride home, make sure you have condoms, etc.), it really hinges on you being relaxed and in control of the interaction. If you freak out over minor alterations in plans or unexpected factors, you will fail miserably at logistics.

Logistics and follow-up also require a lot of aggression. The more aggressive you are in pushing the interaction forward, the less time there will be for logistical interruptions and the more tenacious you will be in your follow up game.

Finally, doing well on day 2’s requires all of the above skills as well as skill #3 — what the community adoringly refers to as “building comfort” or Mystery once called “babysitting.”

In reality, this is where the meat of the interaction comes and this skill, in a nutshell, will determine how soon and how often you will have opportunities to close girls. If your logistics and follow-up game are rock-solid, you’ll be laying almost every girl who picks up your phone call and successfully pulling more often for SNL’s.

If you lack the aggression or the tenacity, your logistics and follow-up will suffer and you’ll constantly face, “the one that got away” scenarios.

Skill #6: Physicality and Sex — If skill #5 determines your opportunities to close, skill #6 is the actual act of closing.

I say physicality to involve all aspects of kino’ing and being good at foreplay and finally being good in bed.

Here’s a fact: It’s impossible to lay a girl if you do not touch her and touch her aggressively.

The better you are at it, the more it will accelerate the interaction and the more options you’ll have in managing the interaction and/or relationship.

Being good at foreplay and sex will determine your return rate and eliminate LMR. It will also put you in a better position to manage the relationships after you lay the girl — creating more FB’s, MLTR’s or getting a girlfriend much easier.

The biggest thing that puts the skids on this skill is sexual anxiety. A lot of guys will talk themselves out of golden opportunities over and over and over for no other reason than that they lack the sexual confidence to push the interaction forward.

Here’s some news: girls are usually just as nervous as you, if not more. If someone doesn’t take the risk and try to make something happen, nothing is ever going to happen. So very similarly to overcoming approach anxiety, conquering sexual anxiety is a matter of throwing yourself into the situations and doing it repeatedly.

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Edit: This post was eventually expanded into a full-fledged eBook. Check it out at >a href=”http://www.practicalpickup.com/”>http://www.practicalpickup.com/.

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.