How to Actually Get Good at Online Game, And Game In General

Hey guys, welcome back to the Todd V show. For this episode, we have a very special guest with us. We actually have a student of mine and a student of one of my top coaches, Atlas, in online dating. And this is a guy who has had a ton of success in the realm of online dating. And we brought him on because I think he's a very good example for you guys to learn from of the process that you can go through to also be very successful with online dating and with dating in general. So I wanted to take some time. I know you guys hear me drone on on all these podcasts. I want to get some guests on here, get another perspective, maybe mix things up a bit for you. So this would be very interesting for you and also very, very educational. So without too much further ado, I want to introduce actually have two people on here with me. First of all, I have Arda, who is our special guest student for this session. So welcome. Hey, hello everyone. And also I have Atlas, who is the head coach for the digital black belt program. And if you don't know, you're going to know soon. But if you don't know, digital black belt is my premier online dating coaching program. And again, Atlas is the head coach for that program. So he knows a lot about Arda's journey. And he also knows a lot about obviously that program since he runs it. So I wanted to have him on here with us. So that too much further ado, let's just get to know our guests a little bit. So Arda, thank you for being here. Can you tell us just a little bit of background about yourself, just kind of how old you are, kind of your background in dating, women game before getting into digital black belt, what you were doing dating wise before, what kind of motivated you to take the plunge and get coaching? So yeah, I'm 24 years old before joining digital black belt. I was basically in college. I was lucky enough to have a lot of great female friends who were just throwing their other female friends or family members and stuff. So I had that social proof going on for me. So I couldn't really hone in on my in-person or like game skills on a personal sense. So I was lacking that verbal skill set before joining DVB. Or I also joined an in-person program of yours at Bootcamp in Los Angeles in 2025, right before I joined DVB. And there I saw I was lacking the in-person aspect of game or I have to do the attraction and meet a woman without doing a lot of social circle game. And that's what motivated me to join DVB. Gotcha. So you've had success in the past with social circle game. You've done some amounts of cold approach and learned some skills there. And then now you've done DVB as the most recent sort of iteration of your dating journey, correct? Exactly. Exactly. To learn more about meeting your woman on my own without having to rely on other friends or female friends, so to speak, in order to be able to get there. Yeah, it's awesome. So both through cold approach and through online dating, you're taking control essentially of your dating life, right? Not leaving it up to chance. Exactly. Yeah. Nice. How do you find the interaction between the skills that you would have learned on the Bootcamp and the skills that you've used in Digital Black Belt? Do you find that they're complimentary or do you find-- well, how have you found that particular aspect of your journey? I've found them to be complimentary. I mean, when the mentalist speaking game doesn't change that much between whether you take it online or whether you take it in person, you still want to be able to be that high-value person who commases lifestyle and who creates attractive high-value frames within the interaction, so to speak. It's just a different way of presenting yourself. Like with online dating, you still have to build a great profile and everything. But after that gets you through the door, your verbals need to do the job in order for you to be able to push the interaction forward. And in person, it's still the same kind of ideas. But it's more instant. And you have a little bit more leeway because girls need to make a snap decision versus look through your profile. So I've seen a lot of parallels between the impersonal aspects and the texting aspect of game. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, it's the same principles. It's a different media, different speed, different pace of conversation. But yeah, an attractive guy is still an attractive guy. The other thing I've noticed personally is I know there's a lot of guys who, if they learn live game first and get good at it, and then learn online game, they struggle with the profile and the messaging. But then once they get on the dates, they're good to go. Whereas when I think when guys, they learn online dating stuff first, maybe they streamline the profile, they streamline the messaging, and then they get on the dates and then they're lost. And the good thing is they can get lots and lots of dates to practice that way. But it is important to have both, I think, from what I've seen as well. And I think Atlas can jump in and comments on that a little later on. I think I'll probably have a lot to say there as well. So tell me about your journey. Once you got onto digital black belt, and keep in mind that a lot of people on here don't know how digital black belt works, so they don't know what the features are. They don't know what the sequence is. So tell us about your journey, both in terms of just step-by-step what happened, but then obviously tell us about your results and where you had successes. But also any places where you struggled or anything where maybe you had a sticking point or you're stuck in a certain place for a while and then you overcame it. Yeah. So when I first joined Digital Black Belt, I was already on the apps. And I was getting some results, but they were not predictable at all because my profile was fundamentally sucked. So the first thing we did with Atlas was just hone in on my pictures. So he has this old pipeline, right? There's like, so he generates AI images for you. So you don't have to do a lot of guessing or like you don't have to pay a lot of money to get your photo should taken or whatever. So there are a lot of great battle-tested pictures for you to just swap your faces on, which cuts down a lot of time and effort for you to dial in your profile. So that was the first thing we focused on. We focused on getting a lot of leads in through building a very good profile because online game is a numbers game fundamentally. Like you have to be shown to a lot of like attract the girls in order to be able to get a certain percentage of them because not the majority of the girls you open to are not gonna respond anyways. Even a good profile has like 33% matrate on hinge as you send out messages and send out openers. So we honed it on my profile and like we optimized all of my pictures one by one by swapping them and then running tests on how many openers I sent and how many girls responded to the opener and matched in my profile. So that was the first step. And after getting to around 20, 25% matrate, we dialed in the messaging afterwards. Atlas has a specific specific system that he teaches. He might get into more details about it. It's called the Emotion Relevance Connection Model. It took a while for me to actually grasp it because it requires a lot of repetition and a lot of mindset changes almost, especially for newbie. And that was like the second place that we focused on like just getting better at texting and pushing the interaction forward to a date. And then once I was able to set dates on my own, I just honed it on the in person aspect of game where I was going on. - I wanna cut you there just 'cause there's so many questions. I have like so many questions already. - It was already pretty good to get to the topic point and then I wanted to, yeah, I have so many questions. So let's first talk about the profile creation. Obviously you talked about how you created the photos. What was the process like for creating the profile and what like obviously don't tell me what all your problems actually want to like tell your problems to the internet or whatever. But what is the like how are you kind of characterizing yourself in your profile or how to do decide on the good prompts that you use, right? What kind of persona did you end up adopting? - Sure, it actually changed over time. I've changed my persona like a couple of weeks ago as well because others were ending into certain problems. But as I was like, at least it has this whole like career that list of different pictures that work well for certain guys. So I was like looking into them. Like just picking the ones that I felt reflected me the most. So I'm a guy like who lost the travel. So I like, I have a lot of like travel pictures. I like being active and I just play tennis. So I have a picture where I play tennis to showcase that part of my life. So all of the pictures like AI generated but at the same time, they're not so far off that they're part of my life. If that makes sense. - Yeah, no, I totally understand. Cause anything that's up there, you might get asked about on a date or you might, you know, girl would assume you'd ask you in six months into a relationship. If that's not you, it's going to seem kind of fake, right? - Exactly, exactly. - Yeah, so we're essentially getting the best or taking what you are and representing it in the best possible way. But we are, you know, doing it. in an honest way, because you want to be honest in your relationships, yeah? - Yeah, like if a girl asked me, like, if I'm playing tennis or not, or like if a girl asked about that tennis picture, like I can actually explain to her on like justified why I put it up there. So they're all backed by my like real life characteristics. Nice. And you said you swapped out various pictures, you tested them various ways, you didn't just take like exactly or six pictures and just leave it at that, right? - No, I mean, it doesn't work that way, because like, as long as we like to think, like certain pictures are gonna work well, what decides is the market, and like the massive girls that see the pictures. So you have to do a lot of testing on the girls that you wanna attract and date. So I probably like swapped out hundreds of pictures and just tested and like the optimizations on my profile in order to like get the best of like both girls as in like I wanna represent the best parts of my life, but I also want it to be very attractive to the market out there. - Makes sense. It would be very hard to get hundreds of pictures to swap if you had to go take them all with a photographer. So I guess AI helps the area. It took a lot of like time and effort and money and guessing and love. It's like, it's so good. Like, I don't think there's a parallel. - Sure, and then let's talk about even beyond the photos which do convey a lot of personality and persona as well, but then you have your prompts which are gonna convey your personality and persona as well. How did you go about discovering or writing the best prompts and was there an iterative process there or how did that work out for you? - There was a much of an iterative process in terms of the prompts because pictures were the biggest need of mover for me. Atlas has this like prompt or analytics where there's like tons of tons of different prompts and I just like selected the ones that were one, battle tested and two, reflected my life the most and actually like challenges the girls a little bit like instigating so to speak because they're like following certain principles and guidelines that Atlas teaches in the community about like how to convey yourself in the best like possible way. And I just like reused a couple of the prompts that I liked in my profile and they were great. So I then have to like, you know, iterate on them or just swap out or test out a bunch of stuff. So in the case of the prompts, you just thought you got the good result with them right away, didn't think it needed to iterate too much more. And you were getting probably, and you said more, more change or more improvement from iterating the photos than from iterating the prompts you just kind of left the prompts at a certain point. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. I wanted to, you know, do my time to the things that matter more in terms of how much, in terms of the results. So pictures have been the biggest needle mover and that was also the case with a lot of guys in the community so that's why I did. - All right, so now let's talk about messaging. And I'm really curious to hear what you have to say on the messaging. Number one, 'cause I want to hear about this messaging model and I absolutely want to hear it from you. And then Atlas, if he says anything that you would dispute since you are the creator of the model, feel free to chime in and give us that. So I want to hear about the model. The other question I have regarding messaging is I know that since you've been a member of digital blackout for quite a period of time, I think like a little over a year in total. So over that time, I think the messaging and the resources available for messaging have changed and I would say improved, but they've changed, right? In the sense that now you have, there's a lot of AI tools for the messaging as well. So you can talk. - Exactly. - We talk about how you first were doing the messaging when it was without that as a tool and then how you're using that as a tool and how you found that whole process. But let's start with the model first. So I'm asking you a bunch of stuff. - Start with the model and then work through the messaging. Outlook has this model called the Emotional Relevance model, I guess. So you start with Emotional Relevance. It's kind of like if people are familiar with your whole modeling game, the OpenClose model, it fits into that premise face. The OpenClose model is like more linear where you go from like opener and then premise and then evaluation narrative close. The Emotional Relevance in connection model is more like a loop where you build like Emotional Relevance, where you set the premise of the interaction, you set up man's or woman frames, how the relationship is gonna look like. You architect the whole interaction or the frame of the relationship between you and the girl, such that it's set on very good fundamentals where there's like a lot of attraction. And then once you're satisfied with the Emotional Relevance and like the girl is bought into the Emotional frames, you move to connection where you actually do qualification while exploring and getting to know the girl better. So that fits into your qualification, phase of game or evaluation phase of game. And once you get more evaluation, you build up more emotional relevance by just pitching more ideas of togetherness and whatnot. And then by doing that, you not only like get more emotional buy-in from the girl, you also get more, you build up more connection such that it makes sense for you to move the interaction forward where you wanna gauge and then pita date, get the girl on a date, and then you do more that in person and then, you pull the girl, you van you change, and then you go to second day, third date, and then you end up in a relationship. That's how it's fundamental works, but Atlas could explain it better. - Yeah, so I'll just step in here and kind of clarify something 'cause I know there's a lot of like buzzwords being thrown like Emotional Relevance, Connection. Essentially, I call it the Emotional Leverage Model and the idea stems from the fact that after doing this for a long time, I realized that it has never really been about getting dates, but more about getting dates on your own terms, having relationships on your own terms, making the relationship really good. And effectively, what I realized was that once you have a really good profile, the difference between getting a date and not getting a date is simply just asking. And yeah, it's funny as it sounds, like with a great profile, you can just make good offers and women will come out. The thing is, is that we don't always wanna make good offers or maybe the offers are not beneficial to us. So for example, if I offer the girl in Uber and maybe like a Michelin star restaurant, she's probably gonna come out, especially on top of that with a great profile. The thing is, is that if I wanna size down my ask or size down the offer, well, what's the difference between her saying yes to a great offer and her saying yes to like a lower offer is gonna be what I call emotional leverage. Now, leverage we use this word in like business or negotiation. It's like the ability to influence someone, how much of a decisional advantage you have over someone. Now, I went ahead and attached a word emotional to it because I'm a big believer that once emotions can really outweigh someone's logical, rational kind of brain or decision making abilities. So I think that emotional leverage, especially in the context of romantic relationships or in romantic interactions, I do think that emotional decisions are powerful than logical decisions and this is why we say, the phrase is like change your mood, not her mind, those kind of things. So that's the idea of the whole emotional leverage model that Artie was talking about. So it's a way for us to get more emotional influence on a girl because we don't just wanna yes from her today. We don't wanna yes from her tomorrow. We want her to say yes, like even if we flake on her today, even if we flake on her next week, we always want that buy in that investment. And so ultimately the whole model focuses on building as much emotional leverage as possible. And in order to do that, there's two important components and Artie mentioned emotional relevance, which is defined as how important you and the girl are to each other or let's say how romantically important you and the girl are to each other. And in that situation, the way we do this and a more practical way is by flirting and asserting romantic frames. So the more romantic frames you assert onto a woman and the more you flirt and the more you break the kind of platonic barrier, she has to make a decision. She's either going to accept that frame or reject that frame or maybe like just be neutral about it, but in that case, she's implicitly buying into that romantic frame that you're asserting. And so the more two people are communicating in such a 30 intimate way, it's almost like your brain is subconsciously just buying into this kind of relationship you're asserting other romantic frames you're asserting to the point where now she feels like, hey, this guy's important. He's emotionally relevant to me. I care about this guy more than all the other matches or whoever I'm talking to because of the way we're communicating. It's just so different. And then on top of that, we can even say that changing mediums increase as emotional relevance. So emotional relevance isn't just verbal. A lot of the times it's physical or even logistical dependent on the medium you're in. So if you're on a dating app, you're competing with a lot of guys. But then as soon as you get her number, you're competing with less guys. Now you're on let's say you get her on the phone. Well, you know, how many people is she talking to on the phone? Not many, right? And let's say like, there's more guys who are willing to text her and call her. So if you call her, you're way more emotional relevant. And then let's say you Face Timer. Well, the only people she's Face Timing is probably like her family or like her really close friends. Or you're just like 20 times more emotional relevant than any other guy in her life. So that's the main thing about emotional relevance. Just how important you guys are to each other, which then allows her to connect with you and allow you to connect with her. So that's the connection phase where you really check for alignment and fit in your values, beliefs, principles, perspectives, your outlooks on lives. And it's like, it sounds serious, but I can actually be used in a one night stand context as well. You know, for example, maybe the values are that, hey, we're two attractive people and we should sleep together. Or you know, the world's ending tomorrow. So, you know, let's just have fun and fuck it. Let's do, you know, let's have a crazy night. So like, connection sounds like a very serious word, but you can actually use it in short term encounters as well. So essentially what you're doing with this model is that because the difference between you getting what you want is just asking for it, you fundamentally just want to work on the fundamental. So work on building more emotional relevance, work on building more connection. And the difference is just between getting what you want just asking for it. Hey, what are your thoughts on adopting a cat? Hey, what are your thoughts on go check going to check out that park over there? What are your thoughts on grabbing some drinks? So all you need to do is just ask, but because of big foreign asked to work well in your favor, you need to have a good amount of fundamentals built. So it's just a, I guess you call like a flywheel loop where the more emotional relevance you build, the more connection can follow, and the more you guys feel connected, the more emotional relevant you guys are and the more connection you have. And I'm pretty much, you know, whether it's today, tomorrow, next week, next month, you can always just ask for what you want. And asking never hurts if she says no, as long as she's still talking to you, you can always turn that around. That's what we call gauging. It's just instead of just saying, Hey, 7 p.m. This restaurant come or 7 p.m. coffee, but let's go. You're just being a little bit more calibrated and say, Hey, what are your thoughts on grabbing some coffee? So just wanted to clarify that because I know a lot of listeners probably have never heard of this model before, but that should give a pretty good kind of cliff known summary into what it is. Yeah, it makes sense. So the idea to really, really, really super summarizing, boil it down is, and you actually showed me this, you showed me like data where you had users that because their profiles were so good, they literally could just ask for plans on and the first message and they were getting it because their profiles were so good, right? But you don't want like, I have plans because my offer is good. You once, I have plans in spite of how bad my offer is with the girl invested and you wanted to show up wearing her sexy underwear essentially. Yeah. Right. That's that's that you want to very bought in so the actual dating process is much more facilitated. And because you have so much abundance, because you're getting so many dates, you're not desperate to just get any date. You want the dates on your terms. Correct? Exactly. Yeah. So big part of the big part of the model, it fails with guys who are in the kind of like old school pickup mindset where they're like, I'm willing to say whatever and do whatever it gets to a date. You know, like if she gives me a lackluster answer, I don't care. What's the next move? What's the next line? Let me just pull out. Let me just get to the date. The model works really, really well for guys who are actually trying to qualify their girl. And it's really funny because it's like slow as fast, the slower the slower you take, the faster you get dates. And like, Artie can talk about this somehow. Yeah, I'll just let Artie explain like about how he can get dates in like 24 or 48 hours now with this model. And like he sends the same amount of messages as any other guy has, but it's just because he's not trying to plow. He'll get more results. Yeah. This is something that I struggled a lot with in the past, especially like when I first joined the program. I was just trying to say the next best thing and like, what do I need to say? Like, she said this, like, what's the best way to, you know, like just get a more attractive or like just how can I push her forward? But that doesn't fundamentally work because it just doesn't really follow the fundamentals of like a high value attractive guy. So when you're texting a girl or a man in an interaction, you just want to be able to like pay attention to what the girl is saying. See where you're at and try to in order to be able to get her to the next level where you want to push the interaction forward or you want to see it in person. Essentially two things. Number one from my experience in online dating. A lot of the process is a qualification process. I mean, you're both already matched with each other. You're clearly both attracted. So a lot of the process is a qualification process. But I think if I were to try and paraphrase back to what I think you were trying to say, is it the process of evaluating the process of being the type of guy who would evaluate a girl makes you a higher value guy? Exactly. And you're not doing that to be a high value guy. You actually want to be you actually want to screen girls because like you're fundamentally giving your attention and time where they're going to be like showing up to the date. But you you could be spending time you spending that time like texting other girls, texting better leads or becoming a better man like holding on your skills or like focusing on other areas of your life that you care about. But you don't want to give that attention and time to the girls that don't deserve it. So you just want to find out if the girl deserves that time and attention. And if your values are aligned and it's it's you know if you want to push the interaction forward, you just want to get those signals where the girl is willing to qualify herself and like become a part of your world. And it works the other way as well. You know, if the girl has an interesting life and you know if you want to be a part of that as well, like you want to see that. And like relationships is very like you like you need the world with the girl. And in order to be able to do that, you know, you don't do that with every single girl. You just want to do that with the right caliber of girl that you want to go after. If I were to like summarize what I've learned, all of my like time in this community is it would be that. Like you just want to screen the best match for you and not just for for walling or like based on how the girl looks and and whatnot because like fundamentally you wouldn't open a girl that you wouldn't find physically attractive to. But once she gets through the door, like she's physically attractive, like what else is out there that the girl can provide or like that you want to see the girl, like possess such that like it makes sense for you to push the interaction forward then. Get into a relationship or one night's stand on what not. Awesome. Yeah. It sounds like in this process you've become not a guy trying to fake high value, but actually a genuinely high value guy, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would say so. Like the more I do this, like the more I internalize all of the high value behaviors because like at first when I was doing it, I was just mimicking high value behavior and it was like working upon to like certain caliber of girls, but like after a while, girls are able to see through that because that's how they're wired. They throw you a lot of shit tests and like once you about france lips, like she can actually like they can actually see the whole you know picture that you're trying to be like gimmick hero, like you're trying to make like some high value behavior, but the more you do it and then you more, the more like you focus on getting kind of the best fit for you and screening for that, then it actually becomes much, much more I would say genuine because you're coming from a genuine place, but also you wouldn't take every every girl that comes away. It makes a lot of sense. So I think two more questions personally for you and then I know Alice had some questions for you. As well. My two questions is just to reiterate from the messaging thing, the technological part of the messaging, what is your, are you using that pretty actively or are you just so good with the messaging, you do it on your own, you do a combination, what's your personal journey? Honestly, the messaging, the AI messaging came after I spent a good amount of time being involved in the community and like my text game became like so good that it didn't really make sense for me to use the AI messages, but I know a lot of guys are getting a lot of values in terms of like getting content about what the right about in terms of the message, even if they don't write the exact same thing that the AI messaging, AI message generation gives them, they kind of to be fit, make it better for themselves and then use some aspects or some content or the angles that come with it. So I know a lot of guys are getting value from it, but for me personally, like I don't want to use AI as a system messaging because I deeply care about developing this as a skill set on my own and like getting like feedback from Outlist instead of an AI assistant such that like I become better and better and better over time on my own Vizal, they need like AI assistants. That makes sense. That makes sense. And I know I'm I'm kind of similar to you like I did doing text messaging and online messaging for literally decades before the AI thing came out. And so I do do a lot of my messaging, but sometimes when I'm stuck it is nice to actually use the AI to just generate some ideas and then I usually end up writing some version or something similar about my own words or whatever. But yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That goes. All right. Can you tell us about just about kind of what your results currently look like and what you're kind of day-to-day overall experience now that you've you've done a lot of the work over, you know, a period of a year. What does the end result look like and especially was it looked like as compared to what it was like before you started or right at the start? Yeah, before I started I would say my results were like very inconsistent. I don't have like a dental test at bay of getting new leads. Even if like a relationship doesn't work out even if you know the set doesn't go well and whatever. So I was like being more needy and like more attached to my sets. Right now I can't even like. You know keep up with all my my hinge leads like I had profiles on all three like Tinder, Bumble and hinge like I can't even open Tinder and Bumble like even my leads on hinge. I can't even get back to them because I have so many leads on Instagram and and my I message. And I tend to prioritize them because they're like hotter leads that I just got out of the apps. It's it's a good problem to have but sometimes like I'm overwhelmed with the text messages like get on my day-to-day and like I set aside my phone for the good part of the day because like I don't want to see all the notifications and like the distractions that come from the girls. Apart from more of the in person parts of you know this whole process. I tend to go to two to three dates a week like I can go on more dates if I wanted to. It's just a matter of prioritizing like higher interseeds and also like prioritizing my other priorities in life. Because like I work at a tech startup that takes up a lot of time I want to get better at you know I produce music on the side and I want to be able to do that and I also like go to the gym five times a week and like I want to be able to do that as well. So the and also in between the dates. I want to be able to like reflect back on them and like learn the lessons by going through them with Atlas is special like after the dates when I do a B-Preath with them like one on one. On his Slack channel. Considering all of that like having two to three dates a week like consistently with like a system of ties approach helps me save a lot of time so that I can like focus on my other aspects of my life. But I also develop my game skills and get incrementally better and better and better and get into relationships and you know have great experiences with all kinds of women that I find interesting. So that's kind of. So part of my journey that I'm at where I'm like able to attract my ideal like dream woman on a consistent basis where I have like a lot of abundance, especially like on hand and on the apps. And I'm also able to spend like with having built up that skill set in texting and in person aspects of game. I'm actually able to do that pretty efficient these such that I have time that I can like put into my other aspects of my life which in turn makes me better as a man overall. Yes, there's a good feedback loop there. One thing I want to clarify just because I understood that I don't know if the listeners would you mention that you are prioritizing your your leads on on iMessage on Instagram as opposed over your app. So that you mean the ones that were on the app and then have now filtered to the more intimate forms of communication correct. Yeah, that's exactly what I meant. So after potentially like two to three days like like texting girls back and forth like it max like it takes me two to three days to get them off the app to either iMessage or to Instagram where I built a great profile. So coach is within the BVB and also his AI image generation where I put the same kind of images on Instagram and just build a good profile where like it's easier to get girls on there. So that's what I meant from dating apps to other mediums far it's easier to meet those girls. And that goes along with what Atlas said about the emotional connection it's a more intimate form of communication etc. And then you also mentioned having personal personal interaction with Atlas via via the slash channel and also I think maybe calls but can you talk a little about that because that's one thing that for years I excuse me. For years actually it's one of the reasons why it took me years and years to finally release an online dating program because I felt it was very very difficult to give the kind of one on one attention that's necessary or that that really really helps and I'm really impressed with Atlas is ability to do that and the fact that he does do that so it's something that I you know it's worth highlighting so you can talk just very briefly about that and then Atlas after that i'll turn it over to you for the questions I know you have. Yeah i'm for it and saying like from profile creation to you know picking images you know picking your your prompts on these dating apps or you know setting updates or even like Atlas told me to record my dates i put up a put up a microphone and then just recorded my dates and then like came back. And then he just took the snippets from the date and then he just analyze them and then he was like oh like you're doing this right and then you're doing this wrong and then he gave very very specific feedback to my you know where i'm currently at like to my skillset and like where i'm holding short and then she also gives like specific you know. Just applied i'm on my next state and become better like from day to day my actual game looks better and better better better because we break them down to the fundamentals without list 101 on his lap 10 with like 101 call. Which saves me a lot of time and effort and also like. Like it cuts down the learning curve yeah for sure i know you had a couple a couple questions that you wanted to ask are. Yeah so the first thing i'll start off with because you you mentioned it is the effects of instagram that you've noticed now you don't have to give away like the secrets are like the implementation that you did to build such a good profile but i'm just curious more about the results. You've noticed and whether or not you felt like it was a good return on investment and i guess it's like how do we even quantified a return on investment because would you say like you spent a tremendous amount of effort compared to like all the other guys who have like normal guys not dbb guys who have like great instagrams and like do you think that it was a good investment i'm just curious to hear your thoughts. Yeah i would say it's a it's a very good investment because in modern times that you put a special like younger woman want to see you have. And instagram profile and like you have a life going on outside of the apps and that's like the best like social q that they can see before they actually need to you it's kind of funny because like some of the woman that i didn't take off the app from instagram but like to i message and then call them and then got them out of the baits. They still ask for my instagram on the date just to be able to see my past and like they want to see if i'm like a regular you know still guy beyond you know like what i presented in person so i think women are becoming more and more and more. Blind to seeing you have social feedback especially on social media so that's definitely something that is like worse in less dating on the other hand instagram actually let's cut a little bit of corners especially on the dating apps like it takes. Much more emotional leverage to get the girl from the app to i message and then to phone call and then to date compared to getting the girl off the app and to instagram right your profile and your stories and your lifestyle is doing most of the work there rather than your verbal to so allows you to be more efficient. Instead of going the whole pipeline of like going to i message and then doing your phone call and it hasn't spent. it allows you to build more personalized, like emotional leverage. But at least gets you the dates where you can just do them in person as well. And especially when guys don't have extremely good text game, when they don't optimize it, they can use Instagram profile as like substitute for the lack of emotional leverage that they can build over an iMassage or on phone calls, which gets them to the date where it makes them, it makes it easier for them to get better with their rubles. Yeah, that's a good point, right? So you're kind of bringing up this idea that there's many ways to get to a date as long as enough leverage is there for her to say yes. What is your kind of go-to funnel or maybe you have many different funnels, but kind of like what are you doing right now? Are you calling girls on the phone and do you feel like that's beneficial? Do you think I should do that more? Were you calling them in the past? If you can just walk the listeners through your current funnel right now. Yeah, I'm trying to test you out two different funnels actually. One funnel is getting the girls out on Instagram and then from Instagram get them on dates. And the other funnel is get them on iMassage and then calling them and then get them out on dates. In terms of the date quality, the girls that I call and get them iMassage on become more personal with gave me slightly better results in terms of the in-person aspects because you fund them and so you fund them and so you fund them and you're going to do on the date on the phone call itself. It's kind of like a minute date as the outlet puts it. He sometimes refers to the phone call as the first date and then when you see the girl in person that's kind of like the second date so the interaction is more more so to speak when you meet the girl. But with Instagram it actually, if you're on a time crunch where the girl is traveling or you're traveling and then you get the girl on Instagram and let the profile build the work then you can get the girl on the date a lot much faster and then you can actually see the girls, you know, more pictures of the girl and then you can see the girl's lifestyle. Like it goes both ways like the girl can see your lifestyle and you can see the girl's lifestyle and you can actually it allows you to eliminate certain sets that you know may not be as desirable anymore or if you want to prioritize your sets, if you want to prioritize certain girls you can do that based on the Instagram. So I like to see a girl's profile before I meet them as well because I can actually get more information about the girl and whatnot or the Instagram as well. But if you asked for my personal preference, I would say having the best of both worlds is amazing. So both having the Instagram and having the girl's number and then calling I would say is the best funnel that I'm going to do more of in the future. But currently it's like 50/50 where I take the phone number if I feel like it and if I don't feel like it, I just go forward to Instagram and then just set the date that way. Right. So you have like a preferred way to go. But I think it's interesting the way you talk right now because the way you're talking right now is unlike how people or guys usually talk about dating girls. Like the way you're talking you're saying like, oh, if this situation then I do this, if that situation that I do that. But if I can do this, then I do this. So it's almost like you've built yourself either a way of thinking or just many different tools that you can apply in different situations with different girls. And you don't have this like dogmatic approach. It's like, no, I have to just do it this way. Never call callings a waste of time or it's like, no, I do it this way. You only call if she doesn't pick up the phone and just chase her, keep bringing her till she picks up. Like, would you would you agree? You'd now feel like you have a versatile kind of tool set on how to apply different situations. I would say so because I trust my verbal abilities. Like when I hold a girl, I know I'm going to build more emotional love it. Or when I meet up with a girl, I know I'm going to build more emotional love it. Or I also have a good, you know, desirable Instagram profile. So when I give up my Instagram, then I know the girl is going to be more hooked. And if not, like the interaction is going to, you know, get good forward as usual. So there's no harm or benefits in the worst possible case. So having this versatility also gives me the ability to mix a match certain approaches with certain girls. And like based on what I'm going to do, like if I have more time, then I'm going to spend more time with the phone phone call and the number to build more emotional love it. And if I have less time, then I'll just, you know, get the Instagram and set the date that way. Yeah. And you're still getting results regardless, right? Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. Awesome. Cool. Yeah. So I guess, you know, I know we talk a lot on the phone during our calls and we talk about crazy amount of, you know, different topics. And I'm just curious if you have to kind of summarize three aha moments or like three really important lessons and they might not even have to be like throughout the whole duration. It could just be three things you're, you've really been like working on now or three moments that like you've really been thinking about and kind of using to help you with your journey. What would they be? The first thing is speed to lead. That was something I struggled with for the longest time. Part to because my text game at first wasn't that good. So I was like spending a lot of time trying to optimize my text and before sending them. But once the girl is hooked and she wants to to text and stuff, getting the world to getting the girl to wait is not the best approach. When you see like hotter leads where the girl is like more hooked, like you want to be able to get back to them faster in order to be able to push the interaction forward and build that emotional leverage because the emotional leverage model has a temporal aspect where you, if you let the lead go cold, then it's not as effective. So you want to be able to get back to your leads like the faster in terms of a frequency that takes some I would say. So it takes me like two to three days to get the girl from match to idea or phone number in order to maximize that emotional leverage. So that was the first all-home moments. I had the second all-home moments. So wait a moment. Sorry, let me just put you up. You're still like for speed to lead, right? That's not a term that's often used in like game or pick up. Could you kind of. Okay, so I guess what it is is it's just the idea that the faster you progress the conversation to faster, you're going to reach your objective. So maybe it's intuitive, maybe it's not. But the real question is it's less about the idea but more about the practical application. How are you able to get back to girls quickly without kind of overhauling your life or without having this like anxiety that like if you don't message her, she's going to ghost you or like unmatch you. So how are you balancing that? How do you do speed to lead, but also manage your time properly or even protect your time? Yeah, so I applied a technique called the window method that you teach real well in the community and also I think taught mentioned a couple times. So the window method goes as follows. I have two windows within my day, one in the morning, between 9 and 10 a.m. and one window in the evening between 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. But I just text girls. Like I go through my hinge and I go through my Instagram. I prior I tend to prioritize girls who I got off the app to Instagram or iMessage. So I just text them first. But within those windows, I just text girls back and then when they text me back, I just text them back, you know, like if it's within 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. or 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. So that's how I'm able to get back to these girls pretty quickly, but also not burnout and have time for my under priorities of life. So you're not like sneakily or deceptively kind of like timing your messages based on how fast you replies? No, I mean, if a girl takes like, point of four hours to get back to me, but like if I see it within that window, I just text them back. Like I don't really just like look at the girls, like how frequent these detects are like how long it takes for it to text me back. So yeah, awesome. Yeah, I thought that was really good inside because yeah, I think a lot of guys have this idea that like if she takes three days, I have to match three days, which then like takes you guys forever to get to the date. But with the window method, you're essentially kind of training her in a way to match your availability and like once your time's up, your time's up, but you can't even message her. So, you know, yes, you'll be in love with one pocket. But yeah, ironically, sometimes I feel bad for for certain girls because like I can really like text them as like they really want to text them the day, but like if I like I don't have like time and focus. to give to give them like outside of those windows because if I do that I'll try myself crazy. But ironically I sometimes feel bad for the girls that are much much more fun to text back and forth like during the day. Sometimes they get really annoyed and call me out on that. Even with the window met they still call you. Even with the window met. It helps more than it hurts. That's cool. Yeah. So yeah, you can continue now. Sorry for calling you off there. Having the girls wanting to hear from you too much is not exactly a low quality problem to have. Exactly. I have a lot of great problems after training, this community and building up data bundles. The second thing, the second aha moments, and this wasn't like this didn't happen in a snap moment where I was like, oh, like I was in a nervousness and the night God like insane. The other of it the next second, it just like I ingrained this over time. But what matters is the frame of like where you're coming from rather than what specific thing you're doing. So whenever a guy like sends you a text for you to like review or or whatever, like I see Atlas sometimes like question like why are you asking this or like why are you saying this? Like because he wants to see the frame a certain guy is coming from. And what I've learned from Atlas is like what matters really is like is the place where you're coming from? Are you coming from Kelsey high value frames or like are you trying to duplicate the girl? Like are you being genuine or like are you trying to mimic like high value behavior? But like you're not actually very yet. So instead of like focusing on like if I call the girl is it needy or like if I double text is it needy what matters most is why you're double texting or the way you're double texting or the frame you're coming from when you're double texting or talking to the girl. So it's almost like it's not has nothing to do but it's more about like okay so it's the idea that would you say that frame is less about a sliver of a moment but the accumulation of your behaviors over time. So there's like no real such thing as like a huge fuck up. I mean yeah like if you insult you're like very bad and that could be a huge fuck up in your interaction. But it's almost the idea that there's no real like critical errors because certain things to say like for example you could potentially send something that like in a vacuum can be perceived as maybe oh like why are you like overvalidating her or something but in the bigger picture your frame is correcting it because it's more about the accumulation of your behaviors not just one sliver of a moment. Yeah exactly. So there was this example that stuck with me that I have with you. So I was like texting this girl and she said she was traveling in Florida and she was living in New York. So and she was in Florida for a couple days and I was like when are you coming back and then like outless ask me why I asked her when she was coming back because she was because she was interested in like which frame I was coming from and I'm like I was coming from the frame of like if she's gonna take her time in coming back and like if she's not coming back soon then like I'm gonna prioritize other girls. So that's why I was asking the question. So the same question could be asked you know could be viewed as like a subficitary thing like when are you coming back like I always miss you and you know like I used to come back soon and whatnot but like like in the sliver of the moment it could look a little needy but it matters more as to how you I guess process the information and like how you set up the interaction moving forward based on what she tells you. Yeah yeah no that's pretty good right like when are you coming back yeah that could be viewed as needy but it all could it also could be viewed like strategic right like how you said she that's pretty cool. Yeah and the third aha moment was what Atlas puts as childlike curiosity. So it's the idea of putting this spotlight on the girl and getting to know her better instead of just having interesting stories to share. So when I was first learning game I thought it was more about like you know showcasing like high quality like lifestyle or like you know summing off like your lifestyle and whatever and like that works up until a certain point and that's kind of needed in a certain way but what matters more especially with like high and higher and higher quality girls is being interested in them and like putting the spotlight on them. At one point in my game I was like struggling with evaluation qualification and Atlas shared this childlike curiosity model where she told me to get the girl to talk more and direct the interaction direct the conversation where the girl is talking more and sharing about herself more but also maintain that you know romantic frame while you get the girl to talk instead of like sharing interesting stories about yourself. So it actually kind of makes sense because you're like more outwardly focused and like that comes off as more charismatic because what matters like like most people are more and more interested in themselves or and have their perceived rather than the other person in an interaction and it's more true on the dates where the girl is actually like for this dress about how she's looking and how she's perceived by the other other you know other guy or the guy in front of her. The telekryocidimetic real works because it hits on that you know you put the spotlight on her such that she kind of she wonders how she's perceived as by you the other person she's attracted to and then it becomes so much easier to qualify girls and like let them reveal their true character instead of just surface level traits about like their looks or you know whatever happened to them at the grocery store and looked on. Yeah would you say it relieves a lot of pressure from kind of like feeling this need to perform that a lot of guys might feel. Yes certainly it helped me a lot. It helped me a lot especially on phone calls where I was like super nervous at first when I picked up the phone I was like what the hell do I tell and like after I started asking pretty basic questions especially like when I first pick up the phone I just ask them what but they're up to write that second and then they reveal something and then like you dig deeper and deeper and deeper based on the information they give you. To the point where they have to reveal their personality traits where I can qualify them on. Qualifier this qualify or tell them I like that part of of the girl or tell her you know like you know this relationship may not work because you're this way this way and this way. I want to jump over the question here just because I I don't want people misapplying this advice and doing that suddenly asking a bunch of like factual biographical questions is suddenly good game or good on a date. Can you differentiate between asking filler biographical logical questions versus asking the kind of questions you're talking about that actually created deeper connection. Sure that's something I actually I struggle the most with as visual like starting out with DBB I thought asking biological questions or like questions that look logical on the surface as visual like what they're doing that that specific moment it allows them to give you certain nuggets as to what they're doing like if the girl is like going to a yoga class then it might show you that she takes care of her appearance and whatnot so you can dig deeper into into the qualification unlike you can build more emotional relevance that what you're like what if you guys go to the same yoga studio in the future as kind of like a flirtatious you know frame that you can put put forth and then like you can qualify based on that like if you go to the yoga studio is she gonna like check out your butt or is she gonna lock in you know that that kind of you want to build out flirtatious frames based on what she gives you but you still need to get some information from the girl and you do that by asking like very simple questions or you know providing all these like flirtatious frames or you build more connection based on that yeah so when you ask these questions you're actually well number one you're not asking them is really asking them because you actually are curious and then you're listening and you're you're using that information to either tease tell a story or ask a more intimate type of question and do things exactly exactly because you're not just stacking questions on questions on questions blindly right no no you don't want to you don't want to do that so what you want to do is like build up some context about the girl such that when you tease the girl that actually makes sense based on the context she gives she gives you makes it much much more powerful or maybe you want to qualify or disqualified a girl, maybe you're impressed by something she's shared, but if she doesn't share it, you can't be, you know, impressed by it, or you can't be impressed by the girl if she doesn't share it with you in the first place. So that's what you're trying to get. Makes total sense. - Awesome, yeah. And I guess to kind of wrap things up, like would you say that there are things that you had to, let's say like unlearn to become better because you've been working on this for a while now, right? And I know the journey hasn't been linear. I know, yeah, I guess we could start with that, right? Like I know there were moments when you were struggling a bit. Like this wasn't definitely like easy. Like maybe it was simple because you knew, or like you always had the feedback and you knew what to do to get better, but I guess it wasn't easy. And like would you, I guess could you just share like some of those moments or like what motivated you to stick with the, with DBB, even when like times got tough or you felt like something was just, was it moving fast enough? - Yeah. So when I first started out, I was living in suburban San Francisco where the market does not have a lot of girls. So like I was running out of leads a lot, living in a suburban place. And I was running into a lot of logistical problems that leads to I had because they were living an hour away. And there was like no way we can just see each other fast enough. So that was where tough, where I was like getting better at texting, but they were not converting into dates. And I was like questioning whether it was the logistics or it was my texting, that was the problem. So that kind of got me into a pretty bad state where I was like questioning a lot of stuff. And then in order to be able to solve that problem, I moved to New York where the logistics are much better and there's a lot of, there's a lot of volume of girls that I can meet up with. But the reason why I stuck with it and just went along with it was that I knew with the right guidance, the right volume and being in the right place, I could get better at this. And I fundamentally wanted to get better at game and I had a really good support system at BBB where I was like even I was feeling down or you know, it set didn't go well or I let my emotions get the best of me. Like I can actually talk to you and get feedback and get grounded and like become better in my next set. I guess that's the most important thing that's one of the most important things that BBB got me. It's like a good support system where I can just get neutral couple eyes that can assess my situation and then give me feedback based on where I'm at and what I should focus on next. Like I remember like as I was moving to New York, I just sent you a bunch of you know, apartments that I could be moving in and you just stack ranked them based on how logistically good they are for my dates and for pulling and whatnot. So I would say I got a really good support system in the BBB which caught me going. - Nice. Yeah, I remember like looking at those options for you and yeah, I thought like the move was great like how you move from where you were and to New York, not that San Francisco did it. I guess like how leads it's just logistically tough for you, right? Like the whole driving, women being in like, you know, if you're, I don't know how to map exactly works but I know that like maybe like downtown San Francisco might be like super far from like Palo Alto or something like that, right? - Yeah, I had to take an hour to get to downtown San Francisco where I could go to dates like it's like two hours based on the road. It's not scalable, especially if you're busy and like you wanna have other stuff in your life. It wasn't the best place to be at, especially for someone who wants to get better again. - So logistics really mattered. - Got it. Yeah. And yeah, would you say there are anything that you felt like you had to like unlearn? - Yeah, this was something I was struggling recently but might sound ironic for a newbie but I had to unlearn some of the, you know, TZ gaming lines that I was like reusing and like doing over and over and over again, especially like in person and post-sate. So once you learn game, the first moments you learn game and like you figure out these lines, you know, you and I are not gonna get along, you know. You might be bad for me and whatnot. Like you get good reactions from girls and like all of that like push buttony lines get too good like emotional reactions from girls but the more and more and more you do it, it starts having diminishing returns and then it becomes negative such that it's sometimes re-incepts. So I learned as I like got better at game, I learned how I went to use like these TZ lines and like these more like gaming lines and like sprinkle it into like a normal like baseline level conversation. So ironic that I had to first learn game to the point where it was get and better and better and better and then started getting worse and I got a lot of negative reactions after like overly teasing and overly reusing these game of collines and then I kind of learned the sweet spot where I had to to tease the girl or riff-rame things and then just chill and lay back and like let the girl talk and you know, gave me back which I guess it comes down to calibration where you have to do, where you have to mix and match the best of both worlds. - Yeah, it sounds like you started to actually understand game and act like a high-value guy as opposed to just copying game if that makes sense. - Exactly, yeah. And it might also be my personality but like whenever someone gives me advice, I tend to take it like to the extreme. So as I was like watching Todd's videos or like seeing out with you know, give feedback to other guys and like learn from it, I tend to overly, I know, overly, I know, overly do it. Which was you know, good for my learning because like I know where the limit is now and like I know where to stop and be chill and like just be more like calming brown than the interaction because like if I have to tease I know a tease and I can just you know, give it to the girl and I know when to like put the brakes on now and just know when to relax and be normal. - Yeah, I think one thing you brought up there that was interesting was how you said how you would take advice to extreme but it wasn't even advice I wasn't giving you. It might have been advice I was giving to someone else. And I think that just highlights like how important, you know, whether you get coached or not but just like individualized feedback is because we're at a day and age or like you can kind of just look up advice online but how much of that advice is relevant to you. So you really need someone to see kind of your blind spots. One example I can think of recently was that there was a guy and a girl refused to enter the coffee shop and yeah, it's pretty like sad story but I asked him, you know, what do you think about that? Like what do you think you should change, right? And the, I don't remember the exact answer he gave me but it was like working on some kind of like micro tactic. And like well, look, I mean working on this like micro tactic or like let's say like a push pull or something is not gonna get her into the coffee shop, right? It's like she didn't even enter the coffee shop in the first place. There are other things that we need to fix before we can even address those things. So like if I told him to like work on these things but then like you are to maybe you would read that and maybe like oh now I need to work on that. You know, I do think that can maybe like interrupt your journey when like you should have been just focused on that thing that was important to you. - Yeah, I mean one thing that's great about having those one-on-one calls with you was like, I knew exactly what to focus on next. Like like you laid out where I'm at, what I'm missing in my game and then where to go next. And the steps to go there, you just made it so clear. It was like super easy to follow that recipe and then like level up on my next date or my next phone call or my next change conversation. - Yeah, I think Todd and I always talk about just like improving one thing at a time and like not being so obsessed with like the end goal or like just like stacking on like five things to work on on a date. Todd did you have any remarks you wanted to say or questions before we? - No, I'm just one thing I would say is just hearing this overall, I wanna say I'm proud of you essentially. When you've done a really good job and obviously come along when in terms of results but what I'm when I say I'm proud of you, what I mean is you're actually talking like a guy who gets it. You know what I mean, you're talking like a guy who like understands game guy who actually values his time is high value and a guy who's kind of finding his own style and not just blindly copying like you've learned to think and problem solve and figure it out as opposed to just you know, be spoon fed answers, which is very, very important to mastering anything but especially mastering game because games always gonna give you new scenarios you've never seen before. If you can't handle that, you don't have a game. So I think you're doing very well and very proud to hear. all of that. And yeah, that's the main thing I have to say. Really appreciate all the support and you know all the time and effort you guys put into building all the videos and the programs and whatnot. Like I'm not a religious person but I really believe like you guys are being God's work. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, I was actually going to say that right? Like I'm really grateful for you to just come on here and tell you know the listeners or whoever will be listening about like your experience and what you learned. And the question like the final closing question was like why? You know like why do you feel so like positively about this? Because I'm super grateful like that you're on here and you're able to share your story. Well because I've fundamentally you've learning game and becoming better at relationships is fundamentally going to make the world a better place. One's people are happy in their relationships. One, everyone is more satisfied with this mental woman dynamic in the world we live in. I think the whole like net happiness of the whole world is going to be better. Man are going to achieve woman better and in turn, women are going to be with better man who step up because learning game taught me and like over time I realized like in order to be able to like be involved in like get involved with like a sort of caliber of girl like you need to step up as a man to get to that level. Like all the game is great but like if you can fact it up with like real life you know values and skills and you know possessions as a man it's not going to work. So it prompts me to be a better man, work on myself, provide more value not just the woman but like to everyone like I know because like learning game also improve my relationships in work. Relationships with my family relationships with my friend because I became better but also became a better communicator in terms of how I like talk to people and push down myself. So those are kind of the two things where I think games like super beneficial on a personal level but also as like a net game for society itself. Yeah it's very well said. It's very cool. Arna thank you so much for coming on here and sharing that with us. It's really good to see you know someone who's been on the journey to be able to experience it because you know it's been you know many many years since I've gone through the journey myself so I can relate I can explain it but when you have someone who's just done it recently I think it's more relatable in a lot of ways and I love the fact that you actually had some new insights or shared things in new ways that I hadn't even considered myself because you know everybody's journey is different everybody develops their own style of game as they get to be at an advanced level. So yeah thank you so much for coming on and sharing I'm sure it's going to be very valuable to a lot of the guys who are working on their online game and even on their live game because in the end it is all the same thing it is all a process of continual improvement and making yourself a better man and and and the journey is kind of the destination in a way. So again just I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your busy life to be here. I hope the listeners appreciate as much as I did and Atlas as well thank you for taking the time to be here. With that said we're going to wrap it that'll be the end of the episode. Thanks again, tune in next time and we'll see you then. Bye guys.