Day 20 : Radical Honesty & Craziness

The Day

I’m going to brush over the theory and facts quickly, as I want to get to the important part of today. And yes, I am going to make it educational, and I guarantee that everyone reading this will learn something to do (or not) out of it.

The morning was a daygame seminar portion with HG & Wizard. Some stuff about framing, public relations and learning game. I’m sure the other Rockstars will cover it in more detail.

We then went out for daygame. I winged with Vishal mostly, and again, he’ll cover it in his blog posts. There weren’t any particularly large takeaways for me today, but I did try to make more of an effort to learn about a girl and use more SOIs in set.

But this brings me to the core of today: radical honesty.

It began with a Council session comprised of Soul and Jeff. All the issues were brought to the table: what we liked about Project Rockstar, what we didn’t, what the instructors saw in us, and what we saw in each other. It was awesome, and also private. So don’t ask me to share.

What I will share though, is my experience from about 2:30pm-5:30pm this afternoon, and following the theme of the day, I will be radically honest about it. I won’t mention who the instructor is (everyone involved in Stockholm knows who it is, and it was NOT a Love Systems instructor, it was one of the UK-based coaches who volunteered to be here), but it was a prime example of how NOT to act and how to turn a shaky thinslice into one that makes people want to eject you from their social group immediately.

In case anyone hasn’t read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, a thinslice is something akin to a first impression you get of a person. Beyond that though, the thinslice can change over time as humans are dynamic creatures whose physique, appearance, social status and personality changes over time.

Let me demonstrate this through a progression of events involving this particular instructor:

Thursday Night: He invites me to open a set with him. I do. He proceeds to ignore me, not introduce me and just game the girls. I didn’t think much of it at the time and actually chalked it up more to the fact that the set was lost because I didn’t engage one of the girls and mini-isolate her. And plus, Soul had told me that he was someone worth learning from so I kept an open mind.

Friday, lunch: He and another instructor arrived, pissed, angry, and annoyed that we were “late”. This makes no sense as the Council session had ended at 2:10pm, it was 2:30pm and Soul had said to go grab lunch and meet up with everyone later. Heck, I even apologised and explained the situation to him.

Friday, enroute to daygame: He asked me about my sticking points. I told him it was sexual intent. He started to break things down, and offer critique and mostly impractical feedback from a technical perspective, but the fact remains- every instructor I’ve talked to has told me that it’s a problem for me, but no-one (apart from Soul and Mr M) has given me any actionable items to work with. This particular instructor then started to qualify himself, something along the lines of “yeah, I’ve been good with girls for a few years.”

Friday, daygame: We walked with the instructor for a bit, then after a long set, Vishal and I wandered off and did our own thing.

Friday, hotel lobby: We were supposed to meet up with everyone else at the hotel lobby, at 4:00pm. And so we waited. The instructor “debriefed” us, but no particularly constructive feedback was given. He asked if I was OK as I had looked “knackered” yesterday – WTF!?! But wait, there’s more. He then came over and asked if he could “pick my brain” about affiliate marketing, and proceeded to ask a series of questions which could only be described as value-draining. For those of you with skill in an area, this is like someone coming up to you, requesting your time and resources and offering nothing in return. What made it worse, was when it was clear that I wasn’t talking to him he proceeded to then do the same thing to Vishal.

Friday, 4:30pm: I went out with Vishal to do sets as no-one else had showed up. The instructor sent Vishal into a set where he couldn’t tell if the girl was hot or not, then proceeded to go himself into a set where the girl was stunning. I hate it when instructors do this – not give a shit about the students and the quality of their interactions and just go after the girls who are attractive themselves. Watching him in set, I got a really bad thinslice too. Something about the way he used his phone as a prop, overplaying the tourist card and the sort… it just came off as fake and unauthentic.

After, I told Soul that I wanted to switch groups and we walked off. I tried an approach, and even though my composure was fine, the girl could tell that I was in a draining emotional state. Rather than drag down the energy of my group, and worse, approach girls from a place of taking value, I decided to return to my hotel to rest up.

The sum total of all these thinslices and experiences, coupled with being emotionally tired over the past couple of weeks, resulted in a really bad, disgusting feeling within me. I felt terrible and physically sick. Beyond that, I am (as I write this) feeling pissed off. There are a ton of stunningly beautiful women out there on the streets of Stockholm, and I am here in my hotel room having to emotionally recover because some instructor decided to be a emotionally value-draining dick.

I have a rule for my social circles: if someone crosses a set of boundaries three times, they are set aside or unceremoniously cut. In the course of two days, this particular instructor has managed that. I will not be working with him for the remainder of Project Rockstar.

The Night

I headed back to my hotel to take a nap and rest up for night game. Had a very quick takeout dinner, and then a small “breakout” session with Vishal and Josh as we discussed the concepts of self-image and supernova. It has finally started to dawn on me the changes that are being made to my life and my own self-image as a result of Project Rockstar. The rest of the world will continue on for the duration of Rockstar, and more than likely, people’s lives will have remained fairly static over these eight weeks. Mine however, has been set in a new direction, and a chain of events is unfolding where the end simply cannot be the same or even remotely similar to the beginning.

We headed over to the Scandic Anglais to meet everyone else. After saying hi, Josh, Vishal and I open a set. For a warmup it was alright. There was a technical glitch with Vishal blowing Josh and myself out of set (he’s high energy), but we all learnt a bit about winging.

I then ran a two set with Jeff – it didn’t really go anywhere, but I learnt that I need to push physical escalation more, and to be more conversationally dominant in set.

Vishal and I opened a two set of older women. Mine was lovely – Arabic-Swedish and a great smile and figure to match. I played around a bit with faster physical escalation, but it was hard because the Scandic has much more of a conversational lounge feel to it rather than a high-energy club. I felt that this girl was ready to go home, but I had no idea how to make this happen – at this point it was only 10pm, everyone (including the women) wanted to go clubbing… and the set ended up fizzling.

I then spent some time winging Josh with his girl, who was most definitely ready to go home with him… I even bounced with them over to another bar, and offered to jump on the grenade with the girl’s very unattractive friend. A number of things happened which made it fall to pieces, but I’ll let Josh cover that if he wants to. I ended up leaving and then running into Alex outside a club (tried to get in but couldn’t), and subsequently into Jeff, Adam and Josh after that. Enroute to the club where we chatted up two adorable blonde Swedish girls using a functional opener and just teasing… and with some rapid sexual talk from Josh they brought us into the club with them. To be fair, Josh facilitated them getting us in, but he did steal my target once we were in the club

Walked around the club a bit – it was full of gorgeous women. I talked a bit with some of the mentors and coaches and Soul, and found myself back in set with one of the blondes we had brought in. I was testing for physical escalation but while she was happy to stay and talk and banter, I couldn’t escalate beyond moving her around by her hips. I ended up number-closing her, and Bugsy tried to up the physical escalation by putting her arm around me and having her kiss me, but he hadn’t witnessed the whole set and it was miscalibrated. This particular girl was down to escalate either later in the night, or continue a relatively normal conversation and go on a date the next day. Pushing the escalation too much blew out the set, but hey… it’s a learning process.

After that we left the club to do streetlight game with Soul. I winged Micha on a number of sets. In fact, I think this is one of the first times I’ve winged Micha, and man it was different. He has this Romantic-Viking thing going on where he comes off as extremely charming… whereas I tend to be more break-rapport in set.

Soul spotted an adorable blonde girl walking, and sent me after her. I opened, direct, talked with her a bit about Stockholm, and with Soul yelling out “qualify!”, “touch her hair!”, “kiss her!” in the background proceed to charm her, get her number and kiss her in all of five minutes. Following this set Soul explained to me the difference between physical escalation during attraction and during qualification. I’ll cover this in my takeaways below.

Tired and cold, we bounced back to my hotel and enroute witnessed Soul undergo what he calls “rapport ploughing”. This is where he logistically and conversationally bombards the girl with smooth talk and interesting conversation, until she relents and offers up herself to his charms.

We met up with Micha and his friend at the hotel, then headed to Sturehof, a combination bar-restaurant-club. Soul and I chilled for a while inside, and outside Vishal, Alex and Micha were working a three set of girls. As the restaurant closed (1am or so) we found them outside. Vishal’s girl was an absolute stunner, and she was completely enamored by him.

I saw a cute Asian girl walk past and I chased after her. Opened direct, built attraction, and began to qualify her. I suggested meeting up on Saturday, but she had other plans. Given that I’m leaving Stockholm early on Sunday, I ended up just taking her facebook. In retrospect, the number would have been better just for practice, but whatever.

Alex went home at this point, and the remaining craziness of the night began.

As we were crossing the street in search of late-night food, Vishal pulled in a girl who was wandering across the road. She was older, likely in her thirties, and she fell into his charms. She then followed us around for a bit… it was funny. She kept on wanting to go back to our hotel with us. We all picked this up as a sign that she was down-to-spitroast. We passed Bugsy at one point and he gave us this quizzical look as he worked out what was happening. In the end though, Vishal (not the girl) put up last minute resistance and he sent the girl into a cab on her way home… much to the chagrin of Micha and myself who turned around and were like “hey, where’d she go?”

We found ourselves in McDonald’s warming ourselves up from the cold Stockholm night. A fight broke out between ten or so people in McDonald’s, and the police were called in to break it up. We somehow ended up sitting next to these two crazy Swedish girls and their boyfriends. The girls kept on trying to imitate British and Australian accents, and we just chatted with the guys. Micha ended up number-closing one of the girls – I hope he follows up with her. Both girls had the most gorgeous set of legs and matching physiques EVER.

Leaving McDonald’s and heading back to the hotel, I talked with Vishal about the events of the night and even though none of us had spent the night with a girl in Stockholm, we had had a phenomenal time. We are high on life

Learnings

• Rapid conversational escalation into sexual topics. The way to do this, is to get comfortable using dominant phrases and questions on sexual or sensual topics. Turn it into what Soul calls a Mastery Topic, and be comfortable with it. Vishal has a different twist on this, which is using sensual language and description (especially about touch and physical sensations, e.g., “as the water gently glides down your leg, bringing each part of you alive”).
• Faster physical escalation is most definitely possible during streetgame and daygame.
• Attraction and qualification during daygame look different. Attraction is sort of leaning back, teasing the girl, breaking rapport (for me anyway). Qualification is about intense eye contact, getting close to her, and making her blush. Something akin to the Robbie Williams stare (credit: TD and Soul).
• I need to work more on my SOIs, compliments and leading conversations towards building commonalities and connection.
• I need to ask Soul and Mr M more about logistical escalation. Soul offered some advice in that doing whatever it takes to create logistical maneuvering is what it takes – inviting the girl for a drink at yours before going out clubbing, or inviting her for coffee or whatever… anything that advances your interaction logistically is useful.
• It’s time to take another look at sexual framing. I think Sheriff is going to cover this back in London too.
• Flakes. Soul gave us a whole lecture on why we were number-closing 9s and 10s but getting flaked on almost 100%. I’ll write something up once I’ve broken it down (perhaps tomorrow’s entry).
• I still need to slow down a lot more when talking.
• Off-field practice was awesome. We need to do more of it.
• Winging. When there is no conversational catch, and no passive attraction can be built, then it is best to apply the “what is more awkward is less awkward” principle and just talk to the other girl with cold reads, statements or questions.
• My conversational repertoire could be better. While I have Soul’s basic outline for attraction and rapport-based conversation, I am still stalling out at times. I need to expand my mastery topics.
• I have a new set of immediate sticking points/leverage points to work on: SOIs and compliments, which I’ll handle by practicing first and then injecting them more and more into sets infield. Sexual vibe, which I’ll explore using some change techniques I know, and this will also address some of the issues I have with sexual intent. Sexual conversation, which I mentioned above. Mastery topics for daygame.
• Resistance level to opening. This is a concept that we’ve observed and will develop more. Watching the instructors, they have a very low level of resistance to opening sets with low probabilities or that are logistically harder. I can feel my own resistance threshold lowering as I progress through Rockstar. I expect that within the next couple of weeks it will level out completely.

- Aaron P

Day 19: Daygame with Soul

Day

Today was absolutely awesome.

We spent the morning with Soul, learning the seminar theory behind how he does daygame. The model he taught us essentially follows the Love Systems Triad – escalation across the emotional, the physical and the logistical. In daygame, you can progress all the way to comfort very quickly on the emotional aspect of things. You can also progress physical to the point of just-before kissing, and logistical to a number-close. Soul doesn’t recommend instant-dates, and I think there’s an article floating around somewhere explaining why.

The rest of the seminar is covered in his upcoming daygame book, and we are bound by NDAs not to reveal the rest of it. But ask some questions and I’ll try to answer

After grabbing lunch with some of the mentors and workshop attendees (mostly friends of Soul, some journalists and the sort), it was time for infield. Thank god it stopped raining just before we headed out, but it was still incredibly cold.

Daygame

I paired up with H, R, Alex and Josh and headed out onto the streets of Stockholm. What a disappointment. Whereas yesterday evening the streets were awash with specimens of Swedish perfection, it appeared that everyone was at school or work (not surprising given it was Thursday afternoon).

Sets I did during the first couple of hours:

Three set in the mall

The set- Josh vetoed me. I went in, went direct, the girl dropped her dog’s leash trying to shake my hand and it nearly ran away. Her friends quickly came in, and I went to introduce myself to them… one of them blew me off immediately, not even taking my hand, while the other was warm to me. It was weird – even though my target was completely flustered and prepared to stay and talk, the social pressure of her friend leaving was enough to make them all leave.

Good- it was a hard set, moving, 3 girls plus a dog. I opened. I got attraction.

Bad- not engaging the friends faster.

Loss point- not engaging the friend faster.

Improvements- engage the friends faster, or go direct on all three of them.

Girl outside store

The set- She was standing alone, holding a Zara bag. I just had to. Went up, making strong, direct eye contact to make sure that she knew I was walking towards her. Opened with “Hi, how’s it going?” then complimented her on her style. We talked a bit, about Stockholm and our days, and then I felt the energy drop. There are actually two reasons for this: one, is because this is a sticking point of mine – not stacking forward and carrying the energy of the interaction, and two because her friend arrived at that very moment and in the split-second choice between talking to me or her friend, she chose her friend. Unfortunately I had not hooked enough for this to pan out properly.

Good- eye contact, walking up directly, not flinching when she broke eye contact during my approach.

Bad- not going wide and deep enough with topics to hook.

Loss Point- friend entering.

Improvements- hook faster with a more emotional topic upfront.

Girl on Phone

I didn’t even get to open this one. I saw her hang up the phone, ran over and as soon as I got there she was back on the phone, and told me “sorry, I don’t have time” and walked off.

Following that I met up with Soul, and the seminar attendees rotated instructors. I spent the rest of the daytime with Soul and Alex and Josh.

We again, took to the streets of Stockholm.

We got a chance to witness Soul in set with a very-cute platinum blonde. He chased her all the way into a subway station, and stopped her just before the ticketing gates… he then proceeded to charm her over the course of 15 minutes, and number-close her. I didn’t see the entire interaction, but Soul told us later it was like they were a made-match in terms of interests and commonalities.

I did a couple of other sets while out with Soul.

Blonde Girl

The set- She walked past us. Soul told someone to go. I went. Opened. She was startled a bit, I stepped back slightly, told her “sorry for startling you” and proceeded to compliment her on her cuteness. We then started talking about what we had done that day, and a bit about Stockholm. She kept on mentioning that she was tired, and at one point she was about to start walking so I touched her lightly and said “let’s walk this way.” A bit more conversation ensued, and as I tried to broach into different rapport topics she kept on saying “I’m very tired” and walked faster and away.

Good-Pacing the logistical situation, attempting different conversational threads.

Bad-Lack of emotional pacing. Soul says that what I should have done was pace her energy levels, ala “Hey, I know you look tired, but I really meant what I said. I wouldn’t be here talking to you unless I really thought that you were adorable, I want you to know that.”

Loss point- Ignoring her emotional energy drop.

Improvements- Pacing her emotions.

Flair Girls

The set- I ran this set with Alex. Soul spotted two fun-looking blondes across the street, and sent us after them. Alex sprinted to get to them – the man is on fire! I eventually caught up with them and introduced myself by saying something along the lines of “OMG, what is it about you two? You made my friend run all the way across the road to come talk to you!” They ate it up.

Some crazy homeless guy comes up and starts trying to talk to us. I tell him “cool man” and backturn him, ignoring him. He soon leaves. I then tease the girl I was talking to for being Swedish and ask her if all Swedish people are like that. She plays along and jokingly says that it’s her dad.

I began mini-isolating her, while Alex talked with his girl. We went deep on some rapport topics, but what I’ve found is that most of my conversation during daygame tends to revolve around travel and worldliness – I am going to expand this to business (another specialty of mine), culture (I can already do this with Asian girls, I can probably learn to do it with European/American girls) and social dynamics (in particular, networking and meeting people). But back to the set. The two girls had just finished a bartending course, and were off to a dinner party. The girl I was talking to asked what we were doing later tonight, and for some reason an imaginary Mr M appeared on my shoulder, telling me to number-close her. I pulled out my phone, asked for her name and to punch in her number. She didn’t comply, telling me her phone was out of battery and gave me her friend’s number (who was still talking to Alex). We talk more. I physicaly escalate more, moving closer to her and touching her more, but she backs off. I take a step back, continue the conversation and ask again for her number, teasing her that she never charges her phone and is irresponsible. She punches in her number. We talk a bit more, mostly just light teasing and then they say they have to go and leave.

Good- smooth wing transition. Teasing – I’ve been listening to Braddock’s stuff and using it more in set. Attempted physical escalation. Logistical escalation (number closing, seeding possible day 2s).

Bad- over-aggressive physical escalation. Not complimenting or SOI-ing the girls. Not qualifying enough.

Loss Point- who knows, let’s see if we can setup a day 2.

Improvements- more compliments and SOIs.

Nightgame

Following a quick dinner and power nap, it was time for nightgame. I stopped by Vishal’s room first where Alex, Vishal and I went through some drills that Mr M had suggested to us. The essence is this: practice your approaches on wings, and have them give you feedback.

I discovered that I tilt my head a bit too much, am speaking too softly, am speaking too fast and am blinking a lot – all things that are correctable.

We then headed out for nightgame. We met the rest of the attendees and mentors at a nearby hotel bar. Bugsy, Wizard, Alex S and Soul’s friend M were all there. Soul and M opened some girls, Wizard opened some girls, while everyone chatted away and was just being social.

I found myself talking with M and two girls who had just walked into the bar. I fudged this set. Not thinking, I had entered the set prior to M hooking, and his style is fairly different from mine – whereas I introduce myself up front, he has a different way of teasing. My bad, dude!

Vishal and I weren’t planning to stay out late, so while he did a set with Soul at one end of the bar, I opened a seated 2-set with Josh.

The set- I opened with “Hi, my name’s Aaron.” Immediately the Swedish-Asian girl moved her stuff away so I could sit down. Josh’s girl (the brunette) did the same. I sat down. Touched her elbow. Asked what they were doing out tonight. We talk more. Deep and wide rapport across a range of topics – travel, Stockholm, London, business, marketing, sports. She is telling me about all her drinking stories and how she went skinny-dipping. I pause, make it really obvious that I’m checking her out, and tell her “Hold on. I’m trying to picture what you would look like naked.” She loves it. I start dropping in some SNL frames – she is sexually aggressive, she is independent, she makes her own decisions. We talk more, I get her name (facebook close). We talk more, and she goes to the bathroom. I see Josh number close his girl. My girl comes back, and I number close her. Before they leave, we are told that we all have tentative plans to go out together tomorrow.

Good- Opened very strong. Immediate mini-isolation. Deep and wide rapport.

Bad- Logistical escalation was poor on my part. I could have seeded a day 2 better, and had a stronger hook for it.

Loss point- Texted her something fairly forward and aggressive earlier tonight at Bugsy’s suggestion. Let’s see how it goes!

Improvements- Better logistical seed for the day 2. Setting more SNL frames, finding out more about her logistics (where she lives etc etc)

Takeaways, Learnings and Observations (mostly from Soul)

• Don’t worry about approach invitations, just approach anyway.
• Daytime approaches: look for girls who meet your threshold across your attraction switches, and go for them.
• Slow. Down. More. Count three second pauses when delivering parts of an opener.
• When the energy drops in a conversation, the key is to carry it forward by stacking into different conversational topics. Women may say “it just happened”, but the reality is as a man it is our responsibility to “make it just happen”.
• When a girl is really forward with you, just say “that sounds like a plan.”
• My style is “break rapport” apparently. To balance this, it means that I have to compliment girls more, get to know her better and qualify her more.
• Use more compliments and SOIs in set. Get interested in her: talk less about me, as my value is already being subcommunicated in set. I should instead find out more about her and let her talk, and qualify her based on those things.
• Emotional pacing & reinforcing that I really meant what I said (especially for me).
• Mr M taught us something that I think is called “group attraction” or something. The essence is this: in set, the girls see you and your wing having so much fun together that that alone generates massive amounts of attraction. Even though we are getting closer as a team, the Rockstars don’t have this yet.
• Read an interesting article on the plane yesterday – when you flirt with a woman, your testosterone levels and cortisol levels go up. This keeps you healthy. So… the (somewhat not-quite-scientific) conclusion to this is that your intent increases as does your physical health when you flirt with women
• Watching the game mentors, I see that they have zero hesitation when approaching – it’s like brushing their teeth to them. I feel that this instinct is growing within me, but it’s not quite there yet. I still hesitate when approaching. I no longer believe in the need to warm up or be “on” to approach, but it is not yet habitual for me to just approach. This is something to work on.
• Being drawn to women is a powerful emotion and wave, and one that I need to cultivate more.
• Work on mastery topics: travel, business, social dynamics, culture.
• Body language fixes: no head tilts, less blinking.

- Aaron P

Day 14: Rockstars of Glory

The Day
Two weeks into Project Rockstar, and it is all starting to come together.

The day kicked off with some minor work on our ongoing projects and then the second day of Mr M’s Munich bootcamp.

All the students were given a debrief and specific feedback for what they needed to focus on for later tonight. Mr M then covered his theory of attraction, and a number of related techniques and concepts that allow you to build attraction easily and naturally.

The bootcamp felt long. Maybe it was lack of sleep from the previous night, but I found myself having to nip out for some fresh air in lieu of having a proper power nap. The rest of the Rockstars (having been on a Love Systems bootcamp before) went out for daygame at Oktoberfest with Soul, Keychain and Vercetti.

Post-bootcamp we all had dinner at a nearby Fujian place (I still find it cool that Asian people here speak German), then bounced back to our various accommodations to rest up for bootcamp. I took a 20 minute power nap, downed some green drink (thanks LondonHunk!) and got ready to head out. I also had the chance to spend some time talking with Soul (http://www.lifewithsoul.com) about escalation anxiety, pulling the trigger and sexual intent. He gave me some advice about trying out different things, and finding different sexual elements to play with – quantity, quality or challenge.

Bootcamp
In field was pretty gruelling. After an absolutely incredible night yesterday, the combination of a different venue and the wear of less sleep and seminar time was showing in the students. Nonetheless, each and every student was able to push forward in their game, and work on in throughout the night.

The club we were at was huge. Something of an industrial warehouse converted into a nightclub. A ton of rooms, huge circular central area and an insane number of people. The demographics of the people there was definitely different from the first night of bootcamp – girls were younger and more middle-class, but also a lot more fun.

I observed students in a number of sets and gave them feedback (plus some for tomorrow’s seminar), and also did a couple of demo sets that involved me getting blown out haha.

For example-
Boring girl: she is dancing by herself. Her friend and her friend’s boyfriend are making out behind her. I open, pull her down and begin to rapidly escalate. We get face-to-face. I test for a kiss – no-go. I talk more. Test again – no-go. Her friend’s boyfriend sees this, and pulls her up and whispers something in German in her ear. She freaks. He then tells me that we should go together, presumably to hook up. The girl is freaking out at this point, so I talk with her friend for a bit then leave.

Vietnamese girls: ran up, stopped them, talked for a bit, then proceeded to pick one up, spin hug her and carry her off. Her friend understandably freaked a bit and they ran off giggling.

More Asian girls: Opened 3 of them who had just entered the nightclub… they jumped a foot backwards when I opened and ran off.

Random girls walking by: I was just grabbing them and going direct. Most of them either blew me off, or said thanks and disappeared.

Bringing Down The House
Once 2am rolled around, the Rockstars went nuts. I gathered up Josh and Vishal and Micha and we decided to play veto extreme – it’s kind of like veto, but you have to veto someone every ten seconds.

We open a ton of sets. From what I remember…
Girl outside ladies room
I walk up to her, say “hey” loudly, she jumps a bit, and looks super nervous. She looks like she is about to bolt then I spot her boyfriend. He says something in German, and I say “you’re a very lucky man”. He says thanks and they both leave.

Birthday Party
This was a 6 set of girls the Vishal vetoed me on. Despite not really wanting to do it, I went in with “Hi, my name’s Aaron.” I then looked for the reactions. Two of the girl went green, the other four were red or yellow. I engaged the ones that went green, sat down on the edge of a table nearby and started talking.

It turned out to be a birthday party, and before I knew it Vishal and Josh were there in set with me. After chatting with the less attractive girl for a bit, I started to talking to the more attracted one (freckles, redhead, hmmmmmm). I locked in next to her, so she was facing away from her friends and talked and began to escalate.

At one point Mr M stopped by and gave me some feedback: when escalating physically, instead of using larger smiles to ease tension, I should look away instead, and smile less. A subtle difference, but one that will undoubtedly pay dividends over the upcoming weeks.

About ten minutes in I noticed that Josh had left, and Vishal was engaging two of the girls on the other side of the bench. Their less-attractive seventh friend had also made an appearance with champagne, and they were getting ready to toast. Josh motioned me to join him elsewhere so I left. In the quick debrief Mr M mentioned that I could have isolated and made out with the girl. Grrrr…

More random girls walking by
Lots of grabbing and going direct. Some nice interactions, but nothing spectacular.

30-second makeout with pictures
This set was pure awesomeness and a logistical nightmare. After playing veto extreme with the other Rockstars, I spot four girls making their way into one of the rooms of the club. I sprint, against the advice of my still-sprained ankle, after them. Mr M does a double take as I rush past him. I miss the first three but I open the last one.

I swing her around in a more aggressive sort of daygame-style spin, and tell her that her dierndl makes her look absolutely adorable. She lights up. We exchange names. I tell her she is crazy. I give her a hug, and spin her around. I then pull her in close, and I stare into her soft blue eyes. I stroke her face, and brush her hair away, and without further words, we kiss. She grabs me in and we make out. I stare back at her and we exchange a moment, then she takes my hand and pulls me towards her friends. I meet them, briefly.

We all head to the dance floor, and while everyone dances away to the high-energy beat of the music I am simply slow-waltzing and rocking back and forth with my girl. We kiss, her friends see this and two of them disappear. The remaining friend wants to dance more, and we end up on a platform.

Hilarity ensues. Some random German guy spills beer on the girl’s friend. She is freaked, and pissed. We move slightly away from him, but he is persistent. Next thing I know, he is grinding with me girl’s friend and trying to kiss her. He does not succeed initially, but he keeps going. This is perfect for me – an instant and impromptu wing. We move again to the main dance floor and towards a quieter area of the club as I want to isolate. Unfortunate my new-found wingman is being overly aggressive and groping the girl while forcing a makeout. He loses the girl, and I find myself being dragged away by my girl and her girlfriend to get away from him.

As we wander around the quieter parts of the club I found out more about them. They are au pairs visiting from different parts of Europe, having just arrived for Oktoberfest. None of them use facebook or have German cell numbers. This is unfortunate. Perhaps I should have taken my girl’s Italian cell number, but this felt like more of a this-night-only kind of thing.

We wind up back in the main club room, on the dance floor, rejoined by the rest of the girlfriends. I propose we head to the bar for a drink. On the way there, I spot Soul and MunichHawk standing nearby, and motion them to come wing. They smile, and I soon see why. At the bar, the navy seals team is there: Josh, Vishal, Micha and Alex. I introduce my girl to Micha and Josh, and they are introduced to her friends. Vishal joins us. Vercetti and Mr M are standing nearby, smiling like proud parents. Some bootcamp students meander over and watch, as we all mini-isolate each of the girls and proceed to make out with them… I bit my girl on the neck too, just for fun

The girls’ buying temperatures must have been sky-high, as some of them became very giggly and they all rushed off the dance floor, never to be seen again. It was a bittersweet ending to an otherwise awesome interaction. Perhaps we could have seeded and created a bounce back to our place for an afterparty, but perhaps not.

Takeaways

• Easing tension while physically escalating – smile less, and takeaway by looking away rather than smiling more.
• Sexual intent and escalation anxiety – experiment, try everything and stretch the imagination. Challenge myself. During the final mini-isolation I had my hand on the girl’s lower back. Soul walked over and repositioned it to her behind… he later told me that I should have gave it a nice squeeze and proceeded to escalate further, just to see where things would go.
• Comfort point – there was a moment during the final set/interaction where the girl went “ohhhh” and was pressed up comfortably against me. Soul tells me that this was the point where she felt comfortable to take things physically to the next level, and that next time it happens I should watch for it and continue things forward.
• English – speaking English in Europe is fun. When in doubt, open with “do you speak English?”
• Closing – yes, things are improving, but I feel that I can still be closing more. Numbers or facebook as contingencies, and pushing even faster physical escalation as the main aim.

Highlights of the Day

• The mystery of the petite Polish blonde and the Beast. I think every student and instructor hit on this set at some point… how an adorable, cute and sexy Polish girl was paired with an absolute beast of a woman is beyond all of us.
• Standing outside the apartment building next to where we were staying trying to work out why the key didn’t fit before realising that we were trying to open the door to the building next door.
• Mr M: “After teaching bootcamp, I kind of understand how strippers feel when they’ve been dancing all night.”
• Soul: “Gaming is like being a duck. On the surface, you are smoothly gliding across the water… but underneath, you’re furiously kicking your feet away.”
• Shout out to Mr Wong from Australia – thanks for reading mate!

- Aaron P

Day 13: Storming Munich

The What
Absolutely awesome day.

Woke up in the morning and had the time to get ready properly, do some shopping and even to start reviewing some of the notes that I’ve taken over the past 12 days.

I then headed out with Mr M & Soul to the first day of the Munich bootcamp (http://www.lovesystems.com), and met up with the rest of the Rockstars there.

We sat in on the bootcamp seminar as both students and approach coaches. For me, this was my first Love Systems bootcamp, so it was pretty enlightening. The material presented was very different from what I’ve seen taught by other companies, and is definitely more geared towards people who like to think things out logically and structurally.

After 5 hours of seminar, we headed for dinner at this awesome German “fast food” place called Ocui. You take a swipe card, get your food freshly prepared, grab a glass of wine and then sit down in an urban-chic restaurant and have healthy and awesome food.

Following dinner we all rushed back to prepare for field time. Soul, Mr M and myself also met up with a journalist who wanted to cover the bootcamp for a local paper.

But onto infield…

This was a HUGE bootcamp. 4 instructors, 6 rockstars and our tour manager Conor approach coaching, as well as locals Frame and MunichHawk and ubermentor Jeff approach-coaching too. We hit up 2 clubs in central Munich.

I only did about 5-6 sets over the course of the night, most of the time was spent making sure the students were being pushed into sets, that they were opening properly and getting into interactions. It’s kind of reflective to see what the past 10 or so days of being pushed ourselves into sets that we don’t want to do has done to our game and calibration.

All the students were phenomenal, approaching, opening, going direct, getting numbers, kiss closes and all sorts of other chaos. Congratulations to all!

I did do a couple of demo sets~

The first was an attempt to show a student what a blow out looked like, and that it doesn’t matter if a girl “rejects” you. It didn’t quite work. Some tall, hot German girls walks past. I grab her, pull her in. I tell her she is adorable. We talk. We exchange names. We get up close. We talk more. I realise that I’m supposed to be coaching the student. We talk more, and exchange flirtatious eye contact. She promises me a dance later.

The second that I remember was showing a student how to go in “semi-direct”, or basically walking up to a girl and just introducing yourself. This was in the outside area. This girl was cute. Sexy cute. She had a small piercing just below her lower-right lip and a tongue piercing. After talking with the student for a few minutes, encouraging him to approach I decide to do it instead. Normally this would be perceived as awkward, having hovered around the girl for five minutes. But what is more awkward is less awkward, but what is less awkward is more awkward (credit: TD). I open, sit down and we exchange names. She has an American accent. I ask her about it. She says that she has been to Australia. That is perfect for me, and we connect, and talk, and talk, and talk. All throughout I am doing social touching (touching her on her arm, her upper arm, her elbow, her shoulder), and “clawing” her in on emotional high points for a sideways hug (credit: Tim). I glance up at the student, and decided that the point has been made – you can open, and talk to a girl, just by going up and saying hi. I leave the set. In retrospect, I should have number-closed or facebook-closed this girl, as all the signs of interest were there. More in this below.

The third I remember was towards the end of the night. I spotted a girl standing by herself looking bored on the fringes of her group. I go up. I say hi. I pull her in towards me, introduce myself, and ask for her name. It is something German. At this point there are 5cm between our faces. We talk. And dance. I spin her around, push her away, grab her in. Soon we are locking fingers, and we are waltzing. Her arms go around my neck. I go to kiss her – no go. I spin her away, and back. We talk in what is known as “vibing” – where the content of the conversation is less important than the emotional message conveyed behind it. I go to kiss her again. She turns her head away. Spin away, pull her back in, and then I look deeply into her eyes. The tension builds as she gets the message… she is the first to break the tension, saying “no, no, not tonight…” I pull her in, arm around her waist and we just rock on the spot for a bit. At this point, I am somewhat bored, I whisper something to her, and bid her farewell…

The rest of my sets pretty much involved me grabbing girls as they walked past, whispering sweet nothings into their ears, watching them smile… and exchanging some flirtatious eye contact while their less attractive friends dragged them away

I also had the opportunity to watch Mr M & Vercetti in set. They are phenomenal. It is both awesome and worrying that as they walked around the venue… they were checked out and ogled over by both German women… and men

It is starting to dawn on me the progress we have made and are making in Rockstar. I know some of us were worried, that we wouldn’t be ready or have made enough progress as last year’s Rockstars because of less field time… but after tonight, everything is starting to come together.

Takeaways

• Teaching pickup totally changes the nature of the game and your inner game. There is something very, very different about walking into a venue and then directing the social interactions that happen in there. It’s almost like you become master of the venue and are able to influence or even manipulate the social variables there – and when you can do that, there’s no need to be anxious or even a real need for state.
• Sexual intent: this is still my main sticking point. For example, getting bored with the set towards the end of the night, or not automatically going for some sort of contact close in every set past hook point (where the girl has been engaged). Mr M says that this is pretty much a “you need to pull the trigger” problem, and is a habit to break and reform. Soul says that it’s a matter of finding hotter girls or making each set more challenging to myself. Mr M also mentioned the notion of “ohhhh”… where you see a girl, and she just does all the right things for you and you can picture yourself doing all sorts of dirty and sexy things to her.
• Escalation: I am going to structure my physical escalation more- same basic structure in the beginning, but a smoother escalation towards a kiss… touching her face, brushing away her hair, pulling her hair first… before kissing. I am also going to add in a basic two-step qualification to all the sets I run.
• Framing – friendly frame. Almost everyone I talk to I mention that the people in XYZ country are really friendly. It sets the right frame, and subsequently makes them friendlier!
• Nonsensical vibing. Something that describes how Braddock games and teases. I don’t really understand it yet, but have heard it and it’s both funny and effective, and something that I should add to my game.

Highlights of the Day

• Konichiwa opener: For probably the third time in my life I was opened my a girl. A HOT girl. She was walking past with her less attractive friend, and we made eye contact. She says: “Konichiwa! Are you Japanese?” My mind went: “No, but IT’S ON!!” I grabbed her while her friend vanished outside. We talk, we get up close, we talk… I tease her, touch her, grab her, pull her in… the words are meaningless, the meaning is in what we are doing with our gestures, our touching, and our eye contact. And then the friend reappears. And grabs her, apologises, and takes her away. As she is being dragged away, she is looking back, with a “I really want to spend more time with you” look in her eyes. I mentioned what had happened to Mr M and the Konichiwa opener is to be field tested tonight- whether the girl looks Japanese or not.
• Straight German guys offering to buy us drinks – told you people here are friendly.
• Quote of the day from Mr M: “Fuck, I never win that game” (in reference to who gets to use the bathroom first).

- Aaron P

Day 12: Rockstar Munich

After waking up illegally early I headed out with Alex and Josh to Heathrow to fly to Munich. On the way, we found out that Vishal took the 6am flight out and was already there. Micha had arrived the day before.

Getting on the plane was a bit weird. Everything was very precise, on time and… uniform. It was also probably the only plane trip I’ve taken this year where I haven’t had an in-depth conversation with the person sitting next to me (who was a businessman from HK on his way back home).

I caught up on sleep on the flight, and we landed in Munich. After struggling to decipher the ’80s-style ticket machine we started the 45 minute journey into the heart of Munich. Alex started chatting up this German girl, and Josh and I decided to join in. A couple of stations later and we ended up talking to two cute German girls, one dressed in the tradition dierndl. I believe that Josh ended up number-closing one of them who is taking us out to Oktoberfest on Saturday.

And speaking of Oktoberfest… after rendezvousing with Mr M, Soul, Vishal and Misha we all headed out for Munich’s #1 attraction. We actually arrived fairly late, around 9pm, and everything closes up at 11pm.

I would describe Oktoberfest as a HUGE outdoor carnival with gigantic beer halls scattered throughout. After grabbing some quick, hearty German food, we decided to join in on the fun. One of our wealth mentors bought a round of beer, and we spent the next couple of hours drinking, having fun and lasciviously hitting on German girls. Aggressively. Like, walking up, grabbing them around the waist or shoulders and telling them all the naughty things we wanted to do to them.

Everyone ran a number of really cool sets, and I believe that a some numbers were exchanged. Probably the strangest thing was the realisation that as Oktoberfest was finishing up, it became harder and harder to stop people and talk to them… they just wanted to leave. Reminds me a bit of doing “shark game” as the clubs and bars close at the end of the night.

We bounced to a club nearby… which was empty (but we did get Mr M on hidden camera haha), and then hopped in a taxi which took us to some strange German disco area. Where there were no girls. Oh well, I’ve only been in Munich 12 hours, and it’s been an awesome adventure already.

Just wait until tomorrow… Rockstars… Love Systems… Munich… Oktoberfest… oh my.

- Aaron P

Where are all the women?.. Day 12

woke up this morning to go and meet vishal at the train station. Kind of an amazing day you see german women everywhere running around in traditional dresses that’s really hot. Took the rest of the day to collect everybody to come around. So all the Rockstars except Claude (god rest his soul) is in town, and Mr.M brought his guys Keychain and Soul. So we decided to try out oktoberfest after getting our accomedation all settled.

It’s a crazy place that nedds to be experienced it’s people everywhere and thay are drunk. It’s  ahuge carneval so not that many hot women. We finally made it t the huge beerhalls were people were standing on the table ands drinking and singing to horribla german music and fat lady carried around 1 litre glasses of beer. We kind of hanged around and most of the guys grabbed a beer. It closes real early though, but we did our absolut best to tru to game all the rockstars went out with no fear at all but it’s fuckin hard to stop a marching german trio. We tried everykind of way and we finally just had to physically stop them really rude, and everything went top shit.

We were following our german Country captain as he was going to take us to a club and ended up taking us to what’s seemed to be a gaybar, no women.  After that tragic failure we got in a cab and asked him to take us back to the oktoberfest. But the bitter germans that don’t know any ewnglish that that he did us a favor and drove us out to fuckville instead. Geez this night really turned in to shit I’ve had one descent set so far and all the places that we were taken to just contained men……. WERE ARE ALL THE GERMAN WOMEN???? I think you can call this frustration but Im super bummed so far abnout this town.. I hope that tomorrow is for the better….

Cya

-love Micha

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