I recently went along to an attraction seminar run by street pick-up expert Alex Coulson, and decided it was time to get a dating coach by signing up to one of Alex’s dating workshop bootcamps. On these bootcamps an experienced pick-up coach takes a small group out into nightclubs and teaches you how to approach and interact with women.

I’ve never been a nightclub kinda guy. That whole scene was frowned upon in my conservative upbringing, and since I never really got into going “clubbing”, I never became comfortable in that environment. Add loud noise which makes conversation difficult, and my awkwardness about approaching and meeting people, and the whole nightclub experience was just unpleasant for me. But clearly for other people comfortable in that environment, it looks like a lot of fun. So I’m keen to learn the approach skills I need so that I can enjoy it too.

Although the bootcamp isn’t for a few weeks yet, my coach has already given me plenty of “homework” to do in order to prepare for it. Every couple of weeks we have  a coaching call where he gives me my next assignment. My first assignment was to go out into some clubs, have a look at the sort of people who went there and decide which clubs had the women who I thought seemed most interesting and attractive. Even just going to the clubs to get myself familiar with an unfamiliar environment was part of the idea. I felt pretty awkward at first, but slowly got comfortable wandering around different clubs, sussing them out.

The next assignment was to start making approaches to women, using a simple conversation opener to start a conversation with the aim of talking for at least 90 seconds. First time I went out to do this I was so nervous, I nearly chickened out at the door of the nightclub thinking “I just want to go home!”. But I also really wanted to get this fear handled. So in I went. I was pretty rough at first, and about 50% of the women I went to speak to were prepared to talk to me. Going alone was also really hard work; I quickly learned the value of having a wing-man. There’s something psychological about having some support nearby, so I don’t feel like a loner when an approach goes badly. Another important thing is to have low expectations of myself: simply to make and approach and start a conversation as my measure of “success”.

The next night I went out, I hooked up with one of the other guys from the workshop so I had a wing-man. Funnily enough, he was more nervous about making approaches than I was, so I ended up making all the ones that he declined.

I went out again last night with one of the guys from my men’s group. We checked out a few nightclubs, but he’s a bit older than me and we don’t seem to be aiming for the same demographic. Rather than making approaches, we wandered from club to club, which made me a bit restless. About 1am we decided to head home, and ended up having a conversation with a really lovely (and very attractive!) woman at the ticket machine in the parking station. After driving back home we had a conversation about the importance of remembering our successes, and spending less time beating ourselves up about our failures. We could choose to focus on the positive interaction with the women at the car park, or on the missed opportunities in the nightclubs. Focusing on the positives will always make you feel better, and good vibes lead to more good vibes. We just have to undo the societal and childhood conditioning that leads us to focus on fear, doubt, uncertainty and failure too much of the time.

Tonight I’m going out again with another guy who has also joined up for the bootcamp. I’m looking forward to it; he seems like a decent guy, and I know he’s as committed as I am to getting this approach thing handled, because he’s forked out his cash. A lot of other guys I’ve been “winging” with haven’t had that level of commitment, and it shows. If you want to be successful at anything, you need to have commitment. I’ll let you know how things go. I’m also going to start celebrating more of my successes on this blog; I think it’s key to developing the positive mindset you need to become successful.

I can’t help guys that aren’t serious about wanting help!

You see, I was chatting on MSN to a girl I’d dated recently, and she asked me:

“Graham, how is it that you have so many women interested in you?”

“Why do you ask?”, I replied

“Well, I have this friend who’s really struggling to meet women. Can you help him?”

My natural reaction was to think “Sure, I love helping guys with this.” But somehow my gut instinct kicked in. Maybe it was the fact that this guy wasn’t asking me directly, or perhaps it was just the phase of the moon. But something twigged in me and made me ask:

“Is he serious about this?”

“Yeah. Of course. Why do you think he wouldn’t be???”

She seemed offended that I’d even considered the possibility that he might not be serious.

“OK. Then. Yes, as a matter of fact, I can help him…”

The girl knew that I was a writer, but while we were dating I’d never got around to telling her what I actually wrote about. I went on to explain that I had the perfect answer to her friend’s question in the form of a book titled How to Become a Chick Magnet.

The book describes in detail the exact process I used to transform my life from nerdy computer engineer who was hopeless with women, to a man who now regularly has women asking me to meet up for coffee with them. It is precisely targeted to answer to my friend’s question. I couldn’t image a better match if stone tablets dropped from the sky at that precise moment in history with a message to help him.

So I pointed them to the website where her friend could pick up a copy. And guess what… they made every excuse under the sun as to why he didn’t want the answer to his own question! “It looks like it’s got a virus” he said. Nope… no viruses on my site buddy. “It looks dodgy” he said. Dodgy? Hardly. It’s the real deal. “What, I have to pay for it?” he said. Oh, so we want a freebie. Well that’s not what I call a good indication of commitment.

Crikey! I go to all the trouble of finely handcrafting an answer to this guy’s problem in advance to save him all the time I had to invest in sorting it out, and then lead him to it; and he still doesn’t get it.

There is no magic quick-fix formula for attracting women. Sites that try to sell you one are running scams. If you want more success with women, you need to make some changes in your life. You need to take action. Not your mates, not your mother, not your sister or your brother. But you. You can’t change your life by getting someone else to do it for you, which is what this guy wanted. My intuition about that turned out to be spot-on; he wouldn’t even take the first step, let alone the others I recommend in the book that would actually get him the success he wanted.

If you’re reading this, chances are you probably want more success with women. I’ve lead you to water, but I can’t make you drink. And frankly, I’m a bit over trying to help guys who make excuses and won’t take action. I’d much rather work with guys who are committed, because I know they get awesome results when they read my book, and getting results is what I get excited about.

So if you’re prepared to take the first step, and the ones after that which ensure your success, click here to grab a copy. Start drinking at the well of knowledge and charting a course towards a life of vastly greater success with women. Even if it does have mixed metaphors!