Hey really quickly, here's my bootcamp schedule for the next couple months. December 12-14, they'll be in New York City, January 2nd through 4th, I'll be in Scottsdale, January 9th through 11th, they'll be in Miami, January 23rd through 25th, they'll be in San Francisco, January 30th through February 1st, I'll be in Kosamwe, Thailand, February 6th through 8th, I'll be in Barcelona, Spain. So that's my winter schedule, lots of nice warm places for you to learn game alongside me and my coaches. Spots are going fast though, so if you're interested in attending, go to ToddVidea.com/coaching and talk to my team. Now back to the episode. Today, I want to talk specifically to Intermediates. If you're a beginner, you can listen, you'll definitely learn some stuff from this, but who I'm really talking to are the guys who are going out, who are getting some kind of results, but they're not getting in the quality of girls they want, basically ever. They're not getting the consistent success they'd like, and it just feels like a huge numbers game. It's like this brute force, difficult endeavor that does occasionally give returns, it does occasionally reward you, but the returns on your investment just are not what you'd like to see. Very quick, 30-second definition of beginner intermediate advance, just so we can kind of place ourselves here. Beginner basically is where there's something fundamentally wrong or missing in your game, so that you cannot predictably get a result with a certain number of approaches. You could theoretically do 500 approaches and not get a result because there's something missing, like if you were to talk to girls and never make it man to woman, never ask for a phone number, never try and take them home, you're just talking and you could talk for the rest of your life and never get a girlfriend. So there's something fundamentally missing. Also, a lot of times for beginners, they just have approach anxiety and don't approach, and if you don't put yourself in contact with women, you're not going to date women. Or oftentimes, as beginners are just clueless, they don't understand game, don't understand female psychology, and they act in ways that they're needy or desperate that just turn girls off over and over again. In any case, beginners have a huge flaw in their game and they're probably getting almost no results. Intermediates, on the other hand, have a solid game plan. They have a method of opening, or at least meeting women, whether it's not through a cold approach. They have a method of making interactions man to woman. They have a method of going ahead and trying to close. Because they have those steps in place, they have a chance. And because they have those steps in place, if they will knock on enough doors, occasionally the door will open. The big problem with intermediate is the numbers game. It's that you might have to knock on hundreds of doors to get a result. And oftentimes, if you're knocking on a lot of doors, the girl that does open for you, quote, unquote, is not going to be the highest quality girl. It's unlikely you go talk to 100 girls, you get rejected by 99, and the one that says yes to you as a supermodel. It just doesn't make sense that that will be the case. That's true statistically. It's also true, even more so based on the mistakes that intermediates make, which is what we're talking about in this episode, which again, we'll get to in just a second. An advanced guy, as differentiated from an intermediate, now has the numbers game in his favor. He has a reasonable number of approaches to get a result. And also, he can now not only get girls who are at or beneath his level of attractiveness, but even girls who are quote unquote out of his league, girls who are more attractive, more desirable, more in demand at a glance than he would be. And what makes this distinction, why are advanced guys able to do this? Well, that's actually what the entire rest of this episode is about. Okay, so with all that said, what is the intermediate mistake? And it's very concrete, however, it has a lot of nuance beyond that concrete nature. The intermediate mistake at its core is simply being too obvious and too direct. What do I mean by that? Well, a fundamental piece of game, what you must do as a man in game, is you have to indicate to the girl that the conversation the interaction or having is man to a man in nature. It's not acquaintance to acquaintance, it's not professional to professional, it's not a friend to friend, it is man to woman. If she doesn't know it's man to woman, she doesn't have permission to flirt back, be man to woman back, etc, because it would be potentially winning her reputation or taking too big of a social risk, etc. So you have to make it man to woman. However, the most obvious, most direct ways of making it man to woman tend to be needy and straightforward. They let the girl know that she can have you. When the girl knows she can have you, there's no tension, there's no fun, there's no excitement and there's no win at the end of it. If you walk straight up to a girl and you say, "You're the most beautiful girl I've ever met, I would do anything for you." You have succeeded in making it man to woman. You have also succeeded in convincing her that she can do better and should do better. And that is the huge paradox of game. You have to make it man to woman, but most of the ways that guys think to make it man to woman, most of the obvious solutions to that problem are problematic in their own right. So let's look at the basic structure of game that I gave for an intermediate. The steps they must have in place. They have to have an open of some kind. They have to have a way of starting a conversation. They have to have what I'd call a premise phase. This is the phase where you are making it man to woman. You're making it clear that it's a man to woman interaction and you have to have a closing phase. Now, the most obvious way to do an opening phase is a direct open. "Hey, you're cute. I want to meet you. Hey, you're really pretty. I want to meet you." You do that. You're automatically putting the girl on a pedestal and you're putting the girl at a higher level than you. And that can be recovered through being high value and just being awesome from that moment on, but you're setting yourself up at a disadvantage. And also, a certain amount of the time she's going to look you up and down, be like this guy wants to have sex with me, would I have sex with him? And if the answer is no, you're getting an immediate no. If you do a direct open, you're going to get a lot of, "Oh, thank you. That's very sweet, but I have a boyfriend." Or "Thank you." It's very sweet, but I'm not interested or I'm not dating right now or something like that. You're going to get a lot of immediate rejections, the boyfriend probably being the most common version of it. So can a direct open work? Yes, it absolutely can and does. And in fact, for beginners who have trouble making it man-to-woman at all and who are trying to get to intermediate, I actually recommend starting with a direct approach because it is the simplest way. But once you are intermediate, when you continue just doing the direct approach as your only approach, you're automatically getting a certain amount of immediate rejections and you're automatically inflating the girl's ego and putting her on a pedestal from the first moment. That's a problem. Next, let's look at the premise phase. For first of all, if you're doing a direct open, your open and premise phase are already merged because you're already doing premise, the man-to-woman element, on your open. But let's just say you happen to get into conversation randomly or, you know, you will gross that next you on a train and it just happens so you didn't have to be direct on your opener. Most of the time, the way the intermediate is going to show interest is if you're like, "You're really cute. You're really pretty. I really like you." In fact, this is what, you know, as kids we were told growing up by our parents, just tell the girl you like her, just let her know how you feel. And again, can that work sometimes with a girl that probably already likes you? And in many cases, that may be how our parents met their mates, right? Because they probably were intermediate at game. But again, you're giving your value away. You're putting the girl on a pedestal. You are being very, very obvious. Also, beyond being obvious with regards to social value, you're being very obvious that you want to have sex with the girl. And if the girl doesn't think of herself as a slut, she doesn't think of herself as someone who has sex easily. And a strange man is trying to have sex with her and she knows it. And she engages in conversation with him in a way she's acting slutty. So there's a natural resistance against that as well. We get to the next phase that's essential in-game, which is closing. Most intermediates do this in a very obvious needy way as well. They'll say, "Would you like to maybe get together sometime or can I have your number?" Starting up, one thing I'm from the frame, and by the way, frame just means your outlook. So you're setting up from the outlook that you would be lucky to get her number, or she would be doing you the favor of giving you her number. In reality, good game would reverse this. It should be an equal exchange or better yet. Her being lucky to get your number or to be lucky to see you. And again, when you put her on a pedestal like this, when you're needy like this, when you're direct like this, it's all just telling her that she could do better. Intermediates are trying to put their best foot forward while constantly saying, "You could do better." Imagine if this was your game. Hi, I'm a really cool guy, but you could do better. I'm really fun and funny, but you could do better. I make a lot of money, but you could do better. I would really like to take you on a date, but you could go on a date with a better guy. It's a bit like running a foot race while trying to shoot yourself in the foot. You're really, really working against yourself here. And there's an additional phase to game that advanced guys have, the intermediates don't. This is what I call an evaluation phase, or it used to be called a qualification phase. This is a phase where you are actually interviewing the girl to see if you like her. And this is a stark contrast to normal dating and a stark contrast to how intermediates game. Most intermediates are being put through an interview by the girl. The girl sitting there saying, "I have these standards and these standards. Do you meet them? Will you do this for me? Will you be nice for me? Will you buy me this? Will you be this for my friends?" And the guy's like, "Yes, yes, anything, your highness, whatever you'd like, I'll do anything for you." It really should be flipped around. The problem is, if you are intermediate in nature and you're giving your power away left, right, and center, and you're hoping and praying because you're not getting a lot of girls that you will get this one girl, you're automatically coming from the frame of being needy, being try hard and trying to impress the girl. Also, when you've already said, "Hi, I like you a lot on the open," and "Hi, I like you a lot," and you're amazing in the man-to-woman or premise phase, well, it'd be really hard to flip it around and be like, "But you know what? I'm not so sure about you." Right? Imagine that dialogue. It's the most amazing girl I totally love with you, you're so great, would you spend some time with me? Oh, but by the way, you're going to have to be this, this, and this, if we're going to date. It's just this stark contrast, it doesn't make sense. So at the risk of belaboring the point, why is obviousness and neediness bad? It's because girls want the guy who they don't deserve. They want, in their heart of hearts, the guy who is just a little bit better than them, but not so much better that they think he's going to cheat on her like crazy. They want the guy who is out of their league, but for some reason there's a special connection and so they can trust him. They do not want the guy who they are out of his league. Then they're going to constantly be looking at him and looking at him and thinking, "I should have done better. I should have done better." The grass is definitely greener over there. So this is why intermediates get the girls that are their level or more often the girls that are just a little bit below their level. An intermediate guy who's empirically like a seven will tend to attract sixes. An intermediate guy who's empirically lifestyle and looks and everything about him and personality is like an eight will maybe attract sevens. An intermediate guy who's a four will attract threes. It works because you're telling them that they're out of your league, but empirically you're out of their league and so it kind of matches and you're kind of in each other's league. But imagine you're a five, you're talking to a ten, she already is out of your league, already assumed she's out of your league, and you're telling her she's out of your league. She's going to be pretty convinced that she's out of your league and she's not going to want to play in your league. So what is the solution to this intermediate mistake? Well, you need to start acting like the guy who is out of her league. Let me tell you kind of a phenomenon that happened when I was growing up that I think is all too familiar to all too many guys, which is when I was growing up, I had one or two girls that I had a huge crush on and then I had a bunch of girls that were kind of cute or kind of run or whatever, but honestly I didn't really want to date them and I wasn't trying to date them. And if they asked me out, I might even have said no, I probably would have said no because like I'm like, I'm better than that, I don't want to be seen as dating her or that kind of stuff. But around those girls that are kind of cute and fun and you're friendly with, you actually have a good time and you joke around and you flirt and you do disqualify them. You are hard to get. You're not even playing hard to get. You are hard to get. And what ends up happening? The few girls you have a crush on absolutely don't give you the time of day. Maybe even think you're weird or creepy or lame or whatever. And the girls who you don't care about seem to develop crushes on you. And the girls you don't want all like you, the girls you do want don't like you. What's happening? Well, you are acting as though your relative value is beneath certain girls and above others. Whenever you're acting like your relative value is above the girl, you're acting in an attractive manner. Whenever you're acting like your relative value is beneath the girl, you're acting in an unattractive manner. So in a way, the secret is to treat the girls you really want. The same way you treat the girls, you know you can have, but honestly don't care that much if you get. And this is how really attractive in demand guys act towards just about all women. Let me give you two standout examples I've met in my life of guys who were inherently attractive. They had grown up being very, very attractive, very, very in demand. And because of that, they had grown a certain personality that made them even more attractive and made them, I would call these the two best quote unquote, naturals at game that I've ever seen. These were guys who had not learned formal game, but they were just attractive because it was in their nature. They're attractive because they had just had the right influences and the right life direction by pure accident and random chance to make them into very attractive guys. The first guy was a youth professional soccer player in Europe. He had grown up and he had been on top teams and from the age of about 12 or 13, he would go to practice and there would be groupies, hot girls lined up around the stadium to meet the next future professional soccer player. So he and his teammates had their pick of girls and you can imagine at 12 or 13, that's a pretty awesome thing to have be the case. By the time I met this guy, I think he was like 19 or 20 and he had had that be the case for years and years. He was on his way to playing for potentially a top club in Europe. He was not famous yet, so he wasn't like trading on fame. He was attractive because he was young and athletic, but he was used to have him girls flock to him based on what he was associated with and whose teammates he was. So he took on a persona and a vibe that he just found girls really funny, really fun, didn't take them seriously, loved to give them a hard time, loved to tease them with the idea that they couldn't have him and girls absolutely and totally ate it up. In fact, on a program that I was coaching in the early 2000s, some of my assistant coaches on the program were working with him as a student and on two consecutive nights, he and the assistant coach were talking to two girls and is going really well, but the two girls wanted to ditch the assistant coach and go have a threesome with him. That's how attractive this guy was. The other example is not too dissimilar. This is a guy who had grown up in a small town and then he moved to Los Angeles to become a male actor and he was getting cast as a male actor, not because he was a good actor, but because he was so phenomenally physically attractive. He was consistently getting roles as the attractive extra in Hollywood movies. So he would get cast as like, "Fratboy #16," that kind of stuff. And so he was just like I candy to be on screen and not have speaking lines in Hollywood films. But because he was very, very attractive, he had had girls who had flocked to him throughout his life and he got in his head that he was even more attractive than he actually was and see he became cocky, he became very sure of himself. He became a guy who would play hard to get and liked to be playful and tease and toy with girls. As a result, I won't name names, but he ended up sleeping with one of the absolute hottest a-list celebrities at the absolute height of her fame at Hollywood party. Now both of these guys were physically attractive, but both of these guys were pulling girls who were more physically attractive than they were or at least would have more value based on their physical attractiveness because physical attractiveness doesn't mean as much for guys that it does for girls. But what happened with both these guys, they grew up in such a way that they put value on themselves. They thought of themselves as the prize. They believed that women were chasing them and they acted accordingly. So good game, advanced game in a way is simulating how these types of guys act. It's also simulating how you act inherently around the girls that you find fun and interesting, but don't genuinely really want to date. Again, if you can treat the 10 like you treat the 6, you're probably going to be more attractive to the 10 because there's a reason why growing up the 6s were attracted to and the 10s weren't. And there's a reason why for intermediate guys in particular, the girls that are beneath your inherent level are very attracted to and the girls that are above your inherent level are not. So let's put it all together. How do we go from intermediate to advanced? Well, let's look at each of the stages. Instead of opening with, "Hey, you're hot, I want to meet you." Can we tone it down and make it less obvious? Could you say, "I'm intrigued by your look." That's called softening. So instead of going fully directly, we've gone semi-direct. We've given a lot less power away. That'd be an example of an adjustment that would take you from intermediate to closer to advanced. Or what if we went with a push pull direct instead of just your cute, how about your cute fingers crossed, you're not crazy, or your cute, but wow, what is up with that look, right? So now there's a positive emotional spike and a negative emotional spike to balance it out. Even better, still win possible if there's something you could tease on as your opener and just open without even making it man to woman on the opener. So let's say the girl just did something kind of embarrassed. We're like, "Yeah, I'm going to pretend I didn't just see that. Could be your opener." How you haven't given any power away at all, but you have started a conversation in an interesting way. So you can see there are ways to start a conversation that are indirect or semi-direct or push pull direct and don't give your power away. There are also openers like, say, for example, an opinion opener where you're just starting a conversation, "Hey, I need your opinion on something," or you do something that's just a topical opener and those also don't give your power away. Now those are a little more risky because you're also not making it man to woman. So you've lost that aspect of the opener. You have not made it clear what you're there for on the opener, but if your game is good enough, if you are advanced and you know how to make it man to woman on commands and in a good way, you can get away with that. You don't need to make it man to woman on the opener anymore. Next, let's talk about the premise phase. Again, this is the phase where you're making it man to woman. You're letting the girl know what you're there for. And again, there are better ways to do it than with compliments. Instead of saying, "I would like to sleep with you." How about you say, "I'm not sure if I want to sleep with you." Or instead of saying you're cute, be like, "Mm, you're kind of cute." Or you would be cute if you did this. Or you were cute until you did this. Or it's too bad you didn't do this because it would have been cute, right? So there are all these different ways to still say the same thing without saying it. Or you could say like, "You probably thought that was cute, huh?" Again, you're indicating man to womanness in the interaction, but you're not giving your power away. You're doing it in the negative or indirect or with a push pull. Now, once you have had an opener that doesn't give you power away and you've made it man to woman without giving your power away. And if anything, and this is key to really, really being advanced, you've made it man to woman while pushing her away while disqualifying her more than you're qualifying her while indicating it might not work or indicating you're not sure about her more than indicating you are sure about her. Well, now it makes sense to have that extra phase I was talking about the intermediates don't, which is that evaluation phase, that phase where you interview her. And most of your interaction should look like this. If you're to see, for example, infield footage of me talking to real girls on dates, you would see that most of the date seems to be me being the interviewer and her jumping through my hoops and trying to impress me as opposed to the other way around. So, and I'm actively picking up the things I'm looking for in a girl, challenging her and questioning her on whether she is those things, and sometimes giving her a hard time if she's not meeting my standards, and sometimes elevating her and letting her win me over if she is. And that's the dynamic of a really attractive guy. And then finally, when it comes to the clothes, number one, you're in a much better position for the clothes as an advanced guy because you didn't give your power way in the open. You didn't give your power way in making Amanda woman. You had all the power in that evaluation phase that you now have in your game and she's been working and trying to win you over and she wants to be closed by you. So that all makes a big difference. But then on the clothes itself, you're going to close in a way that's not needy. You're not going to do all that stuff of making her jump through hoops and be like, so do you want to hang out and be like, yeah, I guess I'll take your number or you don't seem like the worst company. Yeah, we could grab a drink sometime, right? It's a much more sort of relaxed, casual, assumptive, confident way of closing. And so when you put all these things together, each and every little line is only a few percentage points change in your results. The difference between like, you're really cute. I want to talk to you and there's something that's very strange about you. The difference between those two is not huge in and of itself. It does matter and it matters especially because if it's the first line, it's your first impression. But that one line is not going to make or break your entire interaction. You could do that one line in a non needy way and then be needy throughout the rest of the interaction, or you could do it in the needy way and then be awesome and maybe recover it in a lot of cases. But you are behaving consistently throughout the entirety of the interaction. And if you are consistently telling the girl, the honest signal, I'm lower value than you. I'm lower value than you. She's going to take the message that you're lower value than her. If you're consistently telling the girl, I'm awesome. I'm having fun. I think I'm worthy of you if not better than you and you're going to have to work for my attention. Well, she's going to pick up on that message as well. And so each and every one of these little lines does not inherently change the entire interaction, but the accumulation of all of them does. And that's the difference between inner media and advanced. And the nice thing is you can start that journey one line at a time. So if your whole game is very, very needy and you throw in one more push pull, interesting, polarizing non needy line, you're getting a little bit closer to advance. You throw in another one, a little bit closer advanced. You eliminate a needy behavior, a little bit closer to advanced. And so the process to go from intermediate to advanced is incremental, but it is very, very clear. So if I had to sum up all this advice and I'm going to go for all levels here, if you're a beginner, make sure you have all the necessary elements in your game so that you have a chance. Once you have that, though, once you're intermediate, the path forward is making it less obvious and less needy. And every incremental adjustment you can do along those lines is going to make you more and more advanced. It's going to make you more attractive, more consistent with your results, and also getting higher quality girls. So that's the episode. If you have questions about it or in particular, if you have a question you'd like to have featured on the next podcast, send it to me at
[email protected]. I do prefer them as audio, but I will take written questions as well. And if you're interested in doing coaching with me, check out ToddVDinner.com/coaching. All right. Thanks again. See you on the next one.
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