Hayley Quinn - Supercharge Your Dating

Full transcript: Hayley Quinn on London Real

5:27 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Hayley Quinn who is an internationally renowned dating guru and relationship expert, or as the Daily Mail would say, you make your living helping desperate men and women to get over their dating hang-ups and take control of their love lives. You have coached thousands of men and women one-on-one, you’ve been awarded the female dating expert of the year, you’ve been featured on television channels Channel 4, ITV, Made in Chelsea.

5:55 Hayley, welcome to London Real. Thank you very very much for having me. It’s It’s great having you. I don’t know where to start. We just shot a really quick video before this and I said I’m gonna check all my American Puritism at the door, because I know I bring a lot of that baggage.

6:10 We have quite a history here on London Real with this concept of pickup because of an episode we had two years ago. And we have a large male audience and I was astounded by the amount of comments and questions we got for a video I posted last night. So it’s less than 24 hours old. And there’s like 40 actually really interesting, carefully crafted questions, that I will be asking Hayley all in shortly once we get her story and find out what’s up because there’s a lot of questions and I think people are confused and sometimes it just gets taken the wrong way.

6:42 You said something on one of your videos where you said, men are individuals, it’s not a group that is conspiring against you. You said that to women and that’s a great thing to say to men sometimes too because we get frustrated, we don’t know how to communicate and then we throw it all into one group, we get misogynistic, we get chauvinistic, and you know, it gets crazy. Like literally, on my webinar I did last night, I was like, women, just so you know, FYI, not out to get you.

7:06 They’re not evil or manipulative by nature. I actually had to have that as a strong FYI. Yeah, I’ve had that conversation with a few men and they still don’t believe me. So yeah, so this is great today. I wanna get everything out and talk about everything, but first I wanna talk about kind of why we’re even here.

7:21 And so I wanna talk about a book that I read about 10 years ago, and I know you read about 10 years ago, And we might as well talk about it, because I would guess that 90% of the people watching this have read that book too. And if you’re not familiar, it is the book called The Game written by Neil Strauss, which is his version that was… He’s a great writer, first of all. Neil Strauss writes for Rolling Stone Magazine. He’s written subsequent books afterwards, and it was probably his gift of writing that really brought this story to the full.

7:48 But it was a great story. It had a great story arc, it had good guys, bad guys, and it was the story of him, I guess exploring the pickup community, becoming a pickup artist, moving into this place in Hollywood. They call Project Hollywood. Yeah. I visited there.

8:03 You visited there. Yeah. Yeah. So good. Hayley has intimate knowledge here.

8:08 Then meeting up with guys like Mystery, Tyler Durden, and then kind of it all coming together, you know, at the end. And he released like a beast with this book because I think it was probably the first time it was ever properly documented in such a bestseller. I mean, there was the movie like with Robert Downey Jr. to the pickup artist, but like this book really dove deep. I remember I sent my dad a copy of that book.

8:27 What’s wrong with me? And so that happened. And then a lot of guys took that book and then they just went way down the rabbit hole. And I did too, I’ll be honest. I went down there, I looked up on mystery.

8:38 I think I ordered some of his stuff online. I went from there to like real social dynamics. I took a course with RSD in London like seven or eight years ago for the weekend. Whatever, I started like reading all about this stuff and David T. Angela and all these people.

8:52 So I saw that when, in the early part of the show, I met some day game guys out in Oxford Street. You know these guys too, we’re gonna talk about that. And so when I saw them do their thing on Oxford Street and Carnaby Street, yeah, that was like the hangout then. And we bumped into Nick Krauser. And we had Krauser on the show.

9:09 Before the show, we went out and did some day game with him and we filmed it. It wasn’t even day game, it was just us doing approaches. But we had no idea what to do. Our game was weak, but it was the first time people had seen, I think, guys stopping women during the day, which really is, I think, a London-based phenomenon. I think it might have started really in London, which is kind of fascinating.

9:27 We are like the day game capacity of the world. Yeah, and we’re going to talk about that, too. And I’m doing one of these long monologues, like Brett Easton. No, I love them. OK, Brett Easton Ellis does that on his podcast, and he’ll talk sometimes for 12 minutes without his guest talking.

9:39 And I’m like, Jesus, Brett. But anyways, I’m almost done. So we had Krauser on. It was a massively kind of polarizing episode. We had like 10,000 views for an hour episode really quick.

9:48 And it was people on both sides, But it wasn’t like the women didn’t like Krauser. It was like everyone either hated him or loved him. And a lot of guys didn’t like him. And some people came up to me afterwards and I was like, and they were like, oh yeah, he says this and says this and I don’t need game. And I just remember asking him, I said, why does he bother you so much?

10:05 You know, he just has a different point of view, but it really, it cuts deep inside us when we see this stuff. So that was our experience at London Real. Since then, I haven’t gone down the pickup or the, you know, we had Emma Sale on from Killing’s Kittens. But I had a bunch of pickup artists that wanted to come on. But quite honestly, I just didn’t like their energy.

10:21 I didn’t like their vibe. I don’t need a day-game expert just to come on and tell me what he does. I guess I was looking for more. So that’s why you’re here. No pressure.

10:28 So, you know, that was my story. I think we might as well just start off with your story because you read that book originally and you went one way and you’ve gone on a journey yourself. Down the rabbit hole doesn’t even begin to cover it. So, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So essentially I was into feminism.

10:48 I was studying at UCL, but fell in love with a boy. Isn’t this how all good stories begin, right? Fell in love with a boy. Unfortunately, said boy was really into the pickup community and also porn stuff. Okay, are they related?

11:02 They are. Don’t even get me, I’m gonna go down to like the pickup conference and summit is held at the same time as the AVNs in Vegas and that is no coincidence. Really? Okay. Really. I didn’t know that.

11:13 Yeah, so anyway, I fell in love with this guy. I was, you know, I’m from Cornwall originally. The dating scene was quite different there, and I had this expectation that if we loved one another, that meant straight up monogamy, that meant that we were together. He then went to Las Vegas. At the same time, this sounds like a joke, but it isn’t, my dad was very, very, very sick with an advanced age of cancer.

11:36 And on the day my dad was being operated on, he goes to the porn star convention in Vegas and using his mad pickup skills, has an orgiastic experience with three female porn stars, which he is then happy about and proud about. And when I read, heard about this, obviously I was mortified, attempted- He told you about this, or you found out about this? No, yeah, he, he, it was back in the days of AOL, he aimed me, and AOL chat messaging system. And he was actually, you know, happy about what he had achieved.

12:07 Hayley, check this out, I just did this. That’s what he said. Yeah, he was like, yeah, he told me. Okay. Okay, and obviously I was mortified.

12:14 How old are you now, roughly? I was like 19. Okay, all right. Pretty green still and I’d had a very sheltered life until that point and suddenly what’s the Cornwall equivalent of America? I have a lot of people listen for America. What’s the Cornwall equivalent?

12:27 Maybe somewhere like it may be like a small town in Alabama. Okay. Okay. That’s good. That’s good Okay, very very small town like my village my village was 2,000 people. Okay, good. Nothing against Cornwall lovely country Love it great surfing. So you get this a aim this instant message and then I’m like devastated. I literally shut myself in my small student room for a couple of days, drop out of university, do rejoin eventually, but it was just the combination of events with all these other different stresses in my life and I just thought what is this pickup stuff that has just basically ruined my life, you know, and unlike the good little feminist vigilante that I was, I looked up on Twitter and that was really at the beginning of Twitter, where it was a lot more accessible than it is now to contact people. I found some pickup artists on there, some of the guys from the game, and I started tweeting at them in this mad moment where I thought, I’m gonna pretend to be like a megafan and then I don’t and I was trying to be subversive. I don’t really know what I was going for but essentially I was tweeting at them and then eventually one of them got back to me and said, I like your writing style because I was studying English and psychoanalysis, would you like to be my ghost writer?

13:40 And that’s how I got sucked into this bizarre. So it’s like my life was going on a perfectly regular tangent I thought I was gonna work in advertising or something and then it went That’s crazy. So you can thank Neil Strauss for this I can Well, although everybody else can thank me or Strauss or blame Neil Strauss for my my very existence Okay, so you then you went to New York and you started writing for this pickup artist, right? Yeah, cuz I graduated in 2009. It was the recession. There weren’t really any other jobs going I had this vision of New York in my brain, which said this glamorous cosmopolitan environment, and I was like, this sounds like a great job, I get to write.

14:16 I turn up, this guy’s living in a really kind of dingy one bedroom environment where I am sleeping on his couch. Right, is this how most pickup artists live? Absolutely. Oh, okay. We’re self included at some points in my life.

14:29 Just wait for the wave of hate coming in from there. You’re self included, okay, that’s cool. All right, so you went there and it wasn’t all the glamour? Not at all, no. It was a really confronting experience.

14:39 I didn’t know anybody. He was kind of hitting on me. I didn’t know how to manage the situation. I just wanted to kind of write and do my work. And so after, at this period in time, I tried to get, eventually it was just too much and I had to defect back to the UK with my tail between my legs after not very long.

14:59 At this point, my parents had sort of, my parents are very traditional and they had disowned me to an extent. They said, you know, why don’t you find a nice boyfriend or come back and live with us in Cornwall and get married? Because that was their vision of what was a cool thing for me to do. And I said, no, I’m gonna get involved in the dating industry and I’m gonna work as a blogger. And my parents don’t even use the internet.

15:24 They just thought I’d gone cuckoo crazy. And so I went back to London at the time I managed to find accommodation in a big squat house, also known as a lair, which was populated by male pickup artists and I was the one in chicken house. Okay, Jesus. And in order to live there, we subletted one of our rooms to a client who paid most of our rent in exchange for us taking him out and coaching him and training him. So that’s when I started to do actual coaching as opposed to just blogging around the subject.

15:58 What’s it like living with a bunch of pickup artists? Messy. Messy. Okay, they’re messy. And is it probably not as glamorous as you would think?

16:06 Oh, no, there’s no glamour at all, it’s like- Okay, and are they not picking you up all the time? You’re just- No, I mean, to be fair, like the guys that I lived with announced that they’re still some of my very, very good friends and they saved my butt. Like I didn’t have anywhere to live. I couldn’t go back home. I didn’t have any money.

16:21 My parents refused to act as like, you know, as a flat in London to rent it. You have to have a guarantor because you don’t have any rental history. My parents flatly refused to do that. So unless they’d stepped in, I don’t know what I would have done. So really, weirdly, I was like the girl in the boys’ club, and I don’t know how I got there, but I was like this little sheep, and actually the community of those guys, they supported me.

16:44 I have a lot of bones to pick with some of them in there, but there was a lot of good people out there as well, and they kind of took me in. So then I began a bizarre period in my life of working for several large pickup companies, And I worked, you know, six, eight hour shifts every day, either in nightclubs or on the streets, teaching guys how to approach women. And I was learning what works in terms of social skills exactly the same time for the glorious sum of I think 10 or 15 pounds an hour, which was actually quite tricky to survive around.

17:14 And there’s not many women in the pickup industry, right? No. So this is a, it’s a novelty. I’d say it’s your USP, as they say in the tech world, your, you know, your unique selling proposition, because you rarely get the other side. Usually it’s the guy saying, do this, do this, do this.

17:27 Yeah, but in the end I became frustrated with that position because I thought, hang on a second, I hate being defined by the fact I’m a woman. I think I actually have good ideas about how people can improve their social skills and get better at engaging one another. And lo and behold, I’m always the female opinion. And the final straw I remember came, one of my many final straws, when I was at a pickup company’s team dinner and I was one of the only women And there were some students or clients that were there and one of the pickup guys, he was giving me a hot bae braiding out of 10.

18:00 And I just thought, you know what, FU, this is completely inappropriate. I do a better job than you do. I’m more diligent. I’m just as capable of as you are. Don’t put me in that category.

18:10 At the same time, I’d had a really bad relationship in my personal life that I had to escape from. And at the outside the other end, I just thought, surely there’s a space the more beyond a female opinion for women in the dating industry and in fact their skills here and there’s a mindset in terms of how you approach dating and meeting people that could be beneficial to women as well and I thought why is all female dating advice so focused on really superficial things like the way you look and you know getting your hair done and then just not calling him for a few days and perpetuating this weird female passive role that I don’t feel comfortable So at this point, my brain was kind of fizzing and I decided to branch out on my own and set up my own business based around coaching both men and women from the skills and the knowledge base that I’d accumulated over these years of working in the pickup industry.

19:02 Okay. Because you say you take a gender neutral approach and that’s a phrase that gets thrown around a lot, especially when it comes to Facebook profiles and things like that. But it sounds like that’s exactly what you do. Yeah, I’m like Switzerland of the dating world. I have like the men thinking that all their problems are because of women and women and thinking all their problems are because of men.

19:18 And I’m there to mediate. I think it would be a bad thing if I’m there slating one of the sexes to the other ones and being like, you know what, those women, they’re so, you know, they never know what they want. They’re so manipulative and, oh, guys, you know, they just can’t, you know, they can’t be monogamous. They’re terrible. If I started banging on that door, then it just, it screws things up even more.

19:41 Like- But there are people that do that. Absolutely. And there’s women that do that in this industry. Absolutely, and we’ve got it, and so we shouldn’t do that. should be about promoting like understanding of how men and women have been conditioned differently and the kind of mess that’s left us in when it comes to communicating effectively with one another because you know the men I work with are generally extremely amazing guys the women I work with are amazing women somehow there’s like a communication meltdown that’s happening in the middle and I’m there trying to mediate and that’s what I feel that my role is can’t we all just get along yeah I’m that guy who said that is that Rodney I don’t know, but I mean, it’s it does seem silly because we’ve had so many questions It’s so much outpouring, you know I’ve had a guest on recently that says life is about health wealth love and happiness and you know happiness and love or 50% of The equation and that they all revolve around our relationships And so this is a huge priority for people and like you said you have clients that are men that are probably these great guys And you have these women that are these really great women and like if they could just find a way To communicate or get together everything would be great. But we all that’s when we all go and screw it up, right?

20:43 We bring all these, all this baggage or all these thoughts and about the way we should behave or the way we need to behave. You quoted, I think there was a book called The Rules. And I read that book when I was younger, like 20 years ago and it was, if you haven’t been familiar with it, it’s kind of the rules for girls as in how to make yourself kind of unavailable or not to call him to do this or this. Like if you’re listening to us on iTunes, Hayley is rolling her eyes right now.

21:09 But yeah, it was all about the rules of how to be a woman Again, you hate this stuff because really I mean they have first of all They have the worst acronym known to man in the rules, which is you should be a creature unlike any other which is a cure something which is basically that you have to wear a Slinky things, you know, and I just think I just think no, you know, why are we you know, actually it’s more important I think I’m big believe in just being very conscious about representing who you are and being okay to be Marmite and it’s all right But you know, you can put 95% of people off of you if you do a better job of communicating who you are to the 5% you’re actually supposed to get along with. So this whole people pleasing looks orientated stuff that the rules kind of perpetuates really, yeah, really aggravating.

21:55 Okay, so that’s kind of an extreme for women. Obviously, there’s a very serious extreme for guys which I guess is the macho guy or maybe the pickup artist. And I met some of these guys, I remember when I was on one of the RSD courses, I met some guys out and they were like, this is at the time, this is seven, eight years ago, and this is the time where the guys would wear all the buttons and this is with mystery. You said. The full peacocking.

22:18 The full peacocking, like the hat and the tall boots like they used to do in the book. I mean, this guy was, I remember seeing him, I’m being like, is this real? And it was just like the height of the P.O.I. I don’t even know, I don’t think they do that anymore. But at the time where it was just this whole peacocking, get girls to talk to you because you’re so unique and strange.

22:32 I mean, these are extremes. How do we get to those things? Is there value in any of those things? Well, I think actually it’s a value in the marketing and branding a lot of the time, because I think in a saturated market space, which men’s dating advice has now become, people have to become increasingly polarized in order to pull a crowd. Taking a middle ground isn’t going to help to win you any client base.

22:56 And unfortunately, I think the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of men who seek dating advice are extremely sincere guys focused on personal development, there obviously are people out there that are disaffected, that have had really bad relationships or what they perceive to be terrible experiences with women and they’re looking for an outlet or a solution for how they feel and that’s why people position themselves in a particular way or perhaps wear a funky hat or say something controversial on Twitter. Okay, you live with these pickup artist guys. What are they like?

23:26 Like, what are they like? Well, if you had to describe what someone considers to be a pickup artist, how would you say? No, there is no pickup artist, they’re all just different individuals and there are people in the pickup industry who I really respect and I think are focused on trying to help men and help people and do the good work and empower people. And there’s people out there that I think are a bit wacky. And then there’s another demographic of people who are, you know, good at running websites on the internet and are kind of geeky dudes that are essentially quite nice individuals.

23:57 So it’s wrong to, I think with the pickup industry a lot of the time we want to label it as one kind of a thing and it isn’t. It’s fragmented down into lots of very conflicting factions and there’s people that are there that are going and preaching very, very different philosophies. So it’s wrong to tar people with the same brush. But I mean, it gets a bad rap. No one likes the term pickup artist.

24:21 I don’t even think guys use it anymore because it’s so polarizing. Social Dynamics got in trouble recently when one of their guys was Julian I don’t know what his name and he came up with an apology because he was doing the videos of grabbing women’s heads in Japan and Doing all this kind of I guess probably misogynist behavior and then he went on some news channel and apologized or something And so, you know people don’t have good thoughts when this term comes up, right? And what what defines your Your message. I mean you talk about you want to promote a message of self-empowerment that we’re not restricted by outdated gender roles but if you’re talking about like what is Hayley’s you know ethos what is it like how can you describe what you teach I think you know I think everyone has to be an individual and has to be okay with that and they shouldn’t believe that they have to change in order to get something which is so fundamental you know people dating and intimacy and having romantic relationships is extremely important to people and unfortunately a lot of dating advice tells you you have to change stuff you have to do stuff you know it actually removes people from who they are and I think that’s an upsetting message I think actually what’s right for one person is going to be entirely wrong for the other one and in fact we should be preaching a message that’s based on understanding so we kind of get the matrix and understand okay okay so

25:37 You approach that woman in a bar and she turns her back to you why did she do that you know can you come from a place where you empathize with her and understand why she has that response to what you’ve done and then can you also develop ways that you can get better at expressing yourself Because lots of people are very restricted by what they think they can and can’t do particularly in a place like London And they also often don’t feel like they have the language or that they’re able to say what they really want So a lot of the time I’m helping people to articulate Who they are and I’m trying to preach that people don’t have to change and in fact that message that you have to change You have to be something or do something is is entirely wrong because the classic pickup line is stuff is this okay?

26:17 Let’s let’s get your wardrobe sorted out and make you I don’t know do transformational stuff That makes me I like I think you know what if you’ve got good self-esteem if your life’s in order You’re gonna be conscious of your diet you’re gonna work out a bit in a way that suits you and you’re probably gonna you know shower and groom and Care a bit about your personal, you know appearance because that’s just what people who’ve got their their house in order like they have a tidy flat That’s just what they’ll go for suddenly saying that you know you need to lose a hundred pounds and let me just give you a complete wardrobe transformation, it’s just I think that we’re in entirely the wrong ballpark there when we’re talking about people making a change in their lives.

26:56 Sometimes a bit of physical change can send a strong message to you that right now is a new time, it’s a new era, perhaps my life is going to be different, perhaps that psychological message is good, but I don’t think it’s where we should be putting our emphasis in any area. Okay. That’s one of them. The other one is basic approaching. a lot of guys don’t even go up to girls and don’t talk to girls and so like they have no flow unless it’s online and That’s a whole nother, you know piece But a lot of guys are I mean, you know The basic day game obviously is making a cold approach and the basic old-school pickup stuff was obviously it’s all approach related So, I mean that’s another one kind of a pickup 101. What do you what do you say as far as that stuff?

27:34 Well, I think people need to learn how to communicate with one another again And in London, particularly, we have a culture that we really respect, individual privacy and personal space. But to such an extent that we’re no longer communicating with one another, we feel awkward about speaking or engaging with the world around us. And I think that’s like, there’s a lost skill there that’s actually worthwhile redeveloping. I don’t think it’s about wandering around trying to pick up as many women as possible.

28:01 I think that’s a ridiculous goal for anybody. But I think actually developing the language that you feel comfortable in a respectful way with going and approaching someone is positive. And I also don’t just teach men to approach, I help women as well, because I think it’s also ridiculous that women feel that the best that they can do is maybe hold eye contact and smile a guy. And that’s as far as they’re allowed to go before they’re coming on too strong. So again, I’m trying to work on both with men and women to get them to engage with one another more and show them that that’s okay.

28:33 And there is, there’s like a third way of doing this, which doesn’t have to offend anybody and isn’t tantamount to anyone assaulting or infringing on anyone else. And in fact, promotes positive social values instead. Okay, the third part of that, and I didn’t even break this down into three sectors, but I was thinking, you know, appearance, approach. And then like the next one, I think that a lot comes up is, is, I guess that’s the game afterwards, or the communication or the neediness or turning the girl off once you do that.

28:59 And that whole piece, that’s always something that I remember the pickup guys were like, we have to address this. What do you do about that part? Because that’s a crucial part of, I guess, building relationships, right? Right, I think the thing is when you’ve got, I always think when your head is in the right space when you approach dating, you make a lot of these decision points and these communication points naturally. Like, I don’t believe in teaching people to power out lines or learning things by rote because that, and again, that is basically sending a message that how you’re communicating generally isn’t good enough.

29:27 And you have to learn a script in order for people to like you. which again, erodes people’s self-esteem rather than building it. If someone has, again, is in a really good space mentally in terms of how they’re addressing a relationship, you know what? If they walk up to a woman and they start talking to her and she’s not friendly or she’s not engaging or there isn’t that personal connection, you should be able to walk away in good peace thinking, you know what?

29:50 We just weren’t that compatible. Or you know what? I really like women that are open and friendly and for whatever reasons today, that isn’t what I saw exhibited with her. and so I’m gonna try and find someone who’s a more compatible match for me. Rather than endeavoring in this weird, people-pleasing cycle of trying to create a perfect model for an interaction where you will never be rejected, you know, that will just somehow short-circuit that loop, and that’s unnatural, you know?

30:16 Which is the classic game theory for men. Yeah. Is that you do this, this, this, you approach this way, you dress this way. And then a woman is like a slot machine, and it’s just not as if she’s a woman, you know? And you can’t predict that on life, and it’s wrong to even attempt to do it.

30:30 Right, and part of the classic scenarios that I’ve seen happen with a lot of these guys is they, okay, so they turn into that guy, they start dressing different, and they peacock, and then they get the approach down, and then they have this whole game thing, or I text this many times, or I do this, and then they find that as they go down this, they start learning all these, I guess probably you would say, bad behaviors, and then what a lot of them end up doing is this whole journey of self-discovery. So a lot of them, and I know you know this, and I think most people know this now, is that they start really looking deeper inside themselves and say, why am I doing this? Why am I pretending to be this other person in order to make her happy?

31:04 Maybe I should learn more about myself and maybe I should love myself. And then a lot of these guys really do come full circle. Absolutely, I think lots of the pickup guys, I know now they’re much more interested and they become interested in spirituality and philosophy and religion and these things that you wouldn’t normally think that they would engage with and they do go through that arch, that cycle and they realize they’re actually doing things are just feeding their ego.

31:27 And I did the same, like I’m gonna put myself 100% in this bracket. I remember early on, when I just started out, I thought, you know what, I’m gonna go down the sexy female babe teacher angle. So, and that was- Hence the pictures on Google. Oh my God, yeah. And I was heavily encouraged to do that.

31:43 I really, really, really regret it because I dislike it, and if I hadn’t been 21, then I wouldn’t have done that. But at the time, it made you unique, right? Yeah, it was like, that’s what I should be pushing, and you know, and actually, no, it was ridiculous. You were like the sexy girl that’s going to teach you about dating. Exactly. And it was just it was just ego because I was just didn’t I didn’t really have much sense of who I was and I was trying to find my way and the way that I projected that into the world was via like sexy pictures and taking a provocative angle and in fact that none of that stuff ever did me any good whatsoever and instead it did lead me on an interesting journey and actually how my journey came to a head was when I mentioned that how I got into this community was because of a former partner going to the pickup convention in Vegas.

32:28 I went back to the pickup in convention in Vegas 11 months ago and that’s when I got the female expert of the year award and it was eight years in the making and the title of the event was full circle so it was all really weird and when I went on to that stage I thought right I have gone on a funny journey and it did suck me in and I did go down the rabbit hole and maybe how I manifested that wasn’t the same as how men manifest it. But I definitely went through a bizarre ego trip phase and then I really experimented with my sexuality phase and then a complete personal meltdown phase and then I think hopefully out the other side coming to a position where I’m a bit more well rounded and more balanced because when you go from being in a position like when I was younger I was extremely geeky, I didn’t really have very many friends, I was always awkward and weird And when you come from that position and identifying as that person who doesn’t have any success romantically, doesn’t make friends, for me as well, I was like, poor, which is another thing that really stuck with me.

33:29 And then you learn these skills or a different way to engage with the world, which opens up this Pandora’s box of activities. Then I- And you feel like a superhero. Is that what you’re talking about? Yeah. I have all these powers and now I’m going to do all this crazy stuff with them.

33:41 Just stuff, you know, and I’m going to be like, you know, for me, I was going to do the sexy stuff and I’m going to be, I’m going to be friends with the boys that I’m the pickup artist and I’m gonna live here and I’m gonna do that and I’m gonna dress this way. And then obviously that eventually all bites you in the ass in some like really significant way and you get spat out the other side. How does that bite you in the ass? As in that business doesn’t work or you get rejected or you meet the wrong people by projecting that energy?

34:03 I definitely meet the wrong people. Like I think, you know. Clients or? Also with my personal life, you know, at the time I got involved in a really bad, really abusive relationship that I thought that really made me, I did things then that I just, I can’t even believe that I did. And I experimented with things that I shouldn’t have experimented with.

34:24 And I played in a very dangerous world, which literally nearly cost me my physical life and my existence. And it was partly because I had this arrogance. I thought, well, I’m like this, I’m in the pickup world. I can handle this guy and these weird sexy games and this weird shit that we’re doing, like, and I’ll be completely fine, you know? And then, and then you’re not fine.

34:45 And then suddenly, you know, your whole life, you know, suddenly you’re locked into something and you have to escape. And it was, I, in a way, I’m thankful that I went through that horrible experience because it grounded me and it made, it kind of realigned exactly what I wanted to do. And I think everything has been pulling me back to my original intentions and actually more towards the person that I was when I first, you know, first looked up those guys on Twitter.

35:09 That’s fascinating. I did I never thought that you might have had a female equivalent journey of that these male pickup artists have had cuz I’ve seen them And I met them and a lot of these guys will go and then they’ll go drink ayahuasca in Peru Come back with these heavily grounded people and you’re like, wait a second I thought this guy was a pickup artist, which most people assume is the most superficial occupation out there But yet they go on these journeys Yeah thing that we’ll say about pickup artists and anybody who gets involved in game is that it’s people trying to push themselves to go into scary places and so you can say bad things about anything they want but like I will always give credit to any guy who approaches anywhere because it’s really hard to do that and to just get out of your comfort zone and go do that respect is always given so these people funny enough they end up getting a lot of personal progression faster maybe maybe you did too absolutely I think I just I at some point like when I was young obviously for me sex was something that was you know you just you just didn’t do that you didn’t talk about it you certainly didn’t put yourself out there. When I was born, here’s the thing, the day that I was born, my mum held me in her arms and my nan said, what would you like for your daughter? And my mum said, a happy marriage. And that was very much the, and I love my mum dearly, but that was the

36:19 Framework that I was brought up within. Right. So Puritans, they came from Cornwall to America. Yeah, exactly. Probably on the Mayflower or something like that. Yeah, exactly. And from that point of view, when I first started finding out about this pickup stuff, And because I’d had this bad experience where this guy I’d been into had gone off and done all this crazy stuff, I thought, you know what, I don’t want to be afraid of sex anymore.

36:42 I’m kind of done with being afraid of sex. I’m done with being this dorky girl from Cornwall who I don’t know what the world is going on. I want to experiment with my sexuality. I want to know, you know, what’s out there and I want to know what I can do. And that’s, and I kind of decided to start aggressively doing stuff that made me feel afraid, particularly in the area of dating and relationships.

37:03 And I have done that consistency throughout my life for better and for worse, but at least I feel like now in the position where I’ve had so many weird life experiences in this area and at the same time have engaged with lots of other people on their personal journeys, which has given me some perspective I would hope to help other people from theirs. So where did you go? This is London Real, I have to ask. So where did you go? You went down the bisexual route?

37:26 You went down there? Definitely, definitely. I mean, that’s been cool because I definitely would identify as bisexual to this day, which is, and that was, that was great. But at the time, when you honestly, as I say, was as a woman, when you first approach another woman or you first have sex with another woman, that is one really crazy, weird experience, you know? That’s like, that’s a, you know, I went to killing kittens, torture garden, you know, lots of the fetish, sexy parties in and around London.

37:55 I had a very like, I’m going to say Christian, 50 shades of gray style relationship, but a much less healthy, the real world twisted, nasty version of that. And I’ve always tried to kind of try to enforce a policy in my life of choosing a weird option. So if there has been a left turn to take when everybody else is going right on a romantic decision point, I’ve gone left. Okay, okay, so you went there on all those experiences. Yeah, absolutely.

38:22 And that was big growth and scary and strange and… Yeah, yeah. But it makes you also uniquely qualified to do what you do now. Yeah, I mean, not everybody would want to have those experiences, but I think I’m pleased I had them. I’d rather have an experience and, you know, expand my comfort zones and act through a position of knowledge rather than being, you know, like by being trapped and by being restricted by what I, you know, I think I can’t, I can’t do or I can’t have.

38:49 And still, even to this day, that philosophy is rooted deeply inside me somewhere and, you know, if I actually leave my everyday life and, you know, a few months goes by everything’s just kind of like pretty normal and nothing weird because it almost doesn’t feel like me anymore. Some weird things have to happen. I like weird things happening. I’m down with weird. Okay, that’s cool. I want to talk about bisexuality really quick because you talk about you know that men and women like want to meet each other and sometimes women and women and men and men but there’s all this emotional hang-up baggage who’s gonna see what am I gonna think am I gonna hate myself I know a lot of gay men hate themselves because they’ve been taught that’s wrong and I’m maybe it’s the same with women like yeah I mean what do we do about that or how do you talk about that or I think it’s important to talk about it in a way that isn’t like in a way that sensationalizes and scandalizes stuff like it’s so that’s why I’m so annoyed at myself in a way my 21 year old self for putting up provocative pictures about myself because now that’s gonna be that’s gonna denigrate or that will always be there and I will always be labeled with the you know bisexual women particularly are very much tarred with just being like overly sexual you know it’s like a it’s like a non-sexuality in fact of all the sexual preferences I would argue that bisexuality gets a lot of flack because

40:05 You know people think that you’re you’re doing something that’s somehow you’re not treating relationships between women with the same level of seriousness and you know you’re promoting promiscuity and it’s not like that for me it was never like that I just knew that I was attracted to both genders and you know what I haven’t even been consistent in my attraction to both genders sometimes I’ve been more towards guys sometimes I’m more towards girls and that experience though of engaging with that I think if I hadn’t I think of all of the experiences and all the people and all the connections in my life that I would have never been exposed to you know I’m dating a girl at the moment well lady woman at the moment. And God bless her, she came to a meditation event that I ran of all things. And after the meditation event, she had the balls to send me an email and say, by the way, I thought you’re really attractive. And I thought that was great. And that was the first time I’d ever been kind of asked out by a woman.

41:01 Really? Yeah. And the rest of the time I just felt like that’s part of what drew me to the pickup community is because I just thought, well, I don’t really identify as gay. I feel awkward and out of place at the candy bar and other gay venues in London, I don’t feel like I fit in. But I definitely know that I’m attracted to women, but if I’m attracted to women and I see her and I don’t know what her sexual preference is, how in the world do I go about communicating that to her without seeming completely weird and bananas?

41:29 And funny enough, it was, in a strange way, being exposed to the pick-up community which sent me the message, you know what, it’s kind of all right to approach, you know, there’s a way that you go about it which makes the other person feel comfortable and And if you’re attracted to someone, you don’t have to feel guilty about that. There’s a way that you can express it. And funny enough, the more and more consolidated and comfortable I feel within my sexuality, it now doesn’t, it feels like a non-issue to me.

41:53 I talk about being bisexual, people know me as being bisexual, and that gives other people around me the confidence. So many of my female friends or women that I’ve met have expressed how they’ve wanted to have those kind of experiences. And they feel comfortable talking to me about it just because I’m so out there. Like when I did the channel four show by Curious Me, that documentary, I thought long and hard about doing that. And my thought process was something along the lines of, oh my God, if I go out there and I do this, does that mean that no one will ever want to date me ever?

42:25 Will I be some sort of like long-term relationship pariah? Because I’ve gone and said that I’ve done that and I’ve been filmed doing it. You know, how are people gonna react to me? But then I thought really, like I remember there must, I can’t be the only one who’s grown up thinking I’m the only one that’s like this. And I think if I thought if I don’t put myself out there, I’m going to perpetuate this bizarre myth that people like me don’t exist.

42:49 So that’s why I did it. And was there any blowback from the show? Or does anyone care about the show? Do you still meet people that are like, uh-oh, Hayley is the bi-curious mean girl? Yeah, weirdly, I got a lot of flack at the time.

43:04 Twitter people, Twitter people, lots of little trolls. I also met some really interesting people through doing it. And you know what else was weird? I never really had a really good conversation with my parents or my family about my sexuality. I remember once having dinner at a hotel and my dad made some comment about how his best friend was so happy that his son had a girlfriend because I thought he was gay.

43:29 And I was like, oh, I feel really uncomfortable. And at that point I said, oh, I like girls too or something, but I just chimed in. And that was as close as I got to feeling comfortable with discussing it with them. So really doing the show for me enabled me to talk to them about it. And actually that was really, really good.

43:48 And it made me feel so much more on a level with them and began a really good process of healing my relationship with my parents. And so these days, do you have clients that are bisexual women? Yeah, absolutely. Because like you said, you alluded to the options, I guess, for a bisexual woman are, let’s go to the hardcore lesbian club or let’s be quiet in the heterosexual club. There’s not a lot of mixed ground?

44:09 Exactly, there isn’t much mixed ground. However, I have been doing some work with a really fabulous group called Skirt Club who I have to plug because they have created a party or a meeting event, which is just for women that identify as bisexual or bi-curious. And I think that’s cool. And I think they’ve got some good press now that they’re doing with them. And I think the more that that’s seen that there’s a space for people to go to, I think you can be in that space and you can only kiss one girl ever, or you could just be a bit curious.

44:38 But it’s important to know that there’s an option out there for you, which is a million miles different to where it was 10 years ago when I first started wanting to explore that. Yeah. Indeed. On my tech show, Silicon Real, we have a woman on that has a big company. It’s called Datch and it’s kind of a women that meet women site, but it’s also kind of a curious woman that meet women and it’s really, and it’s very kind of open and honest and real and it’s not just a pick-up site, but it’s restricted only to women.

45:03 Of course, they always have guys that try to get on that site, and I’m like, why would they do that? Because they can’t. Oh, they do that. They do that. Okay.

45:11 Right. Okay. Well, I appreciate you giving us that bisexual angle. It’s also your USP. I mean, you’ve got videos where you kind of show a kiss close and you’re kissing girls on YouTube.

45:19 Now, come on, Hayley. You’re a marketing genius. All right? Yeah. Now, I’m like, some of the things that I’ve done in the past, I’m like, oh, painful moments of- All right.

45:29 I’ve also approached people on women on the street and couples. So I’ve kind of, I think that was in a period in my life where I was trying to, with the day game thing, approach people on the street, I was trying to somehow reclaim that and say like girls can do it too. And I do believe they can. So I was experimenting. And you approach women and couples on the street?

45:46 Yeah. And men. And men. Just for the full experience. Okay.

45:51 And when was that? A few years ago or? That was two years ago that I was making those videos. Okay. But you’re not doing that anymore?

45:56 No. Okay. All right. ahead with these day game guys. Absolutely.

46:01 Because I want to say it’s not a game just for boys. I think women can learn a lot about social skills, and I am massively in favor of women not being so passive or feel like they, lots of women feel like they have to wait for love. Right. Okay. Let’s get into it.

46:16 I want to get kind of down and dirty and find out about what women are doing wrong, what men are doing wrong. I know we’re generalizing, but let’s talk about women first because it’s something you bring up and you say that women should be able to approach, et cetera, et cetera. But most women out there have been taught, socialized to say, you never do that. You always wait. You always give the signs.

46:32 You give the clues. You dress. I don’t even know what goes on in the female psyche. But you say that they should be able to, right? Yeah.

46:39 I mean, there’s a sliding scale and a spectrum here and everyone has to do what’s appropriate for themselves. Like, I’m a pretty weird character. I’m quite comfortable. I like talking to people. So for me, it’s really suitable for me to just walk right up to people.

46:53 However, for a woman whose disposition is naturally different to that, she might want to learn and she might want to learn the skills to how to give out stronger signals because a lot of the time women won’t even feel comfortable to hold eye contact with a man in a bar that they’re attracted to and smile at him. So that’s like the level that we’re working to. So I’m not encouraging that all women suddenly have to take to the streets and let’s create like a warfare on Oxford Street or something like that, that would be kind of fun.

47:20 Instead, it’s more about kind of people really discovering what behaviors are perhaps not helping them when it comes to meeting people. That’s a funny example, because one of the first things that I remember one of the day game guys saying was, if a woman holds eye contact with you, then she’s interested. Now, that’s a big generalization. But then also, you’re saying you have to tell women that that’s a great way to tell men that you’re interested. So you would think that over our thousands of years of evolution, we might both know that there might be interest there.

47:48 And yet, we’re both clueless to the fact. It’s absolutely clueless because you know, it’s still the truth. Men and women’s signals are very different. Men’s signals are more obvious and more, you know, stronger and fewer than women’s. Women’s signals, and also a lot of the time, here’s what women think, they think, I am attracted to him, but you know what?

48:05 I haven’t spoken to him yet, so I’m not sure I like him. I don’t want to lead him on. So on balance, I better not give that signal. Okay. So they’re conservative kind of with that signal.

48:15 And men need all the help they can get. And men, on the other hand, are terrified that they’re about to get really badly rejected or that they’re about to do something that’s going to be considered some kind of, you know, sexual harassment. And so they’re feeling like they have to be really hands-off and really passive. Likewise, the women are in a very similar position and then never the twain shall meet. This is a cultural mess.

48:36 It is a cultural mess. And it builds up with anxiety and frustration and people vent it in probably all sorts of ways by, you know, whatever you’re drinking or going on social media or getting misogynistic or getting, you know, chauvinistic and then they, it directs as hate because miscommunication, that’s where hate comes from anyways, isn’t it? Just bad communication. Wow. And also just a history of perceiving things in a funny way, because, you know, if you feel like you’re going to be rejected by someone or you have a bad track record or or what you perceive to be a bad track record, that creates a belief where then all other instances are gonna be interpreted through that filter and you have no idea the amount of times I might be speaking to someone who’s one of my clients and they’re narrating a story about a time they’ve been rejected.

49:23 And I’m sitting there and I’m thinking, they didn’t reject you, you left that situation. You know, that was you. But in somewhere in their minds, they’ve taken far too much personal responsibility on and have seen something as rejection that really isn’t. You know, a lot of the time when men approach women, because they’re not fully understanding the position that a woman is in when a man first approaches her, they perceive a woman’s initial reaction as a rejection.

49:47 And I have to tell guys, you know, a woman will never ever, if you approach her, go, oh, well, thank you so much. It’s lovely to meet you. You know, my name’s Alice. I’ve been single for a while. This is awesome, you know?

50:00 It will literally never happen. And if you’re waiting for that reaction for a woman, it’s not gonna come. And so a lot of the time what both men and women perceive to be rejection isn’t really rejection. And so that’s a big part of what I work on with people is adjusting that framework and that lens. Right, because that’s interesting because a lot of guys, if they’re going to actually get up to do that approach, then that’s what they want to hear.

50:23 And if they don’t hear it, then it’s a failure. And they’re probably just miscommunicating the message. Exactly. And that’s a good point. You shouldn’t expect that welcome necessarily.

50:31 You talked about having a perception and then making that perception a reality. I think it’s something we all do. There’s an expression if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. There’s a lot of people that go out and they say, all women are gold diggers. And then they go out and that’s what they find.

50:45 And women probably are the same. And how do you snap your clients out of that mindset when they bring all this baggage and then they bring all that energy back to them? Yeah, absolutely. I am 100% a believer that the prover proves that the believer believes. And I think the first thing that we do is actually start to try and create empathy.

51:03 So we revisit a lot of situations they maybe have had in their recent history. We unpick them and we actually think, now really, why did the person react like that? Because a lot of the time, we project our own feelings onto other people or we bring all this existing baggage and we’re not really looking at, we’re not really third walling our situations in our lives. So I begin by trying to create an understanding and kind of a vision through the matrix and explaining why people behave the way they do or why I believe people over the way they do.

51:34 And from that perspective, we then have to start, you know, it takes a long time to unpick these behaviors, which is why consciously I don’t do things like boot camps, because I think, you know, doing a two day training where you suddenly change your whole life and you’re fixed forever, it’s just, it’s unrealistic, you know, if you wanna change your relationships with how you’re approaching dating, that is a long journey that you’re gonna have to start on and you’re, because those beliefs and those things that are those limiting beliefs and the things that hold you back. They take ages and ages to unpick. You have to have a lot of awareness about where you’re going wrong.

52:06 You have to create accountability. So you’re constantly pulling yourself up and reminding yourself about, you know, a better way to approach things. And then you have to change your lifestyle around to reinforce these habits. So it’s usually a very long road for people, but one that’s very worthwhile taking. Okay, which is good if you’re your client because then you can work with them for years.

52:26 Well, I mean, I don’t seem to work with people for years. I like to create actually people to do things independently. That’s really important to me. How do you make them accountable? How do you do that?

52:34 Well, sometimes it’s like very basic stuff, like people don’t leave the house enough. You know, they don’t go to the places where they might meet the kind of people that they like. And so, you know, you have to get people to commit to go to things because enthusiasm has a half life. And you know what, especially at this time of year, going home and sticking to the same routine sounds appetizing. And a lot of people, they get up, they go and they work at their job.

52:57 And when they’re in their job zone, they’re very focused on that. And then they go to the gym and they work out independently and then they hang out with the same friends or they go home and they watch the TV and they have a glass of wine and then it’s like the same cycle continues. And then they worry, wonder why they haven’t met someone. And it’s because I think actually, I’m gonna blame a bit of this on Hollywood has taught us to have an entitlement around dating romance where we believe that one day that it’s written into the fabric of the universe, that a lightning bolt will hit the sky, a rainbow will appear, doves will sing and will walk around the corner and conspicuously bump into the love of our life.

53:34 And that is owed to all of us and will one day mystically happen. And genuinely when that does not happen, people feel cheated and they start feeling really bad about their relationships. And what they have to know are there are just simple practical things and deep soul searchy things and there’s a million steps that they can begin to take, which will shift that around. but it’s not something that will come overnight. So the Hollywood film industry has hurt us all, is what you’re saying.

54:01 Because the typical Hollywood rom-com is just crazy. I mean, you’ve got the disheveled, nerdy-looking overweight guy that meets the supermodel girl in that funny little kind of circumstance, and then it kind of all goes well. And that doesn’t happen very often, does it, in real life? No, it doesn’t happen in real life. I mean, how often do people bump into one another serendipitously in London and start off a spontaneous conversation right yeah so you’re fighting against all of that basically all of that kind of bad propaganda that people are expecting so that means people don’t get off of their sofa they don’t be proactive yeah I’m just thinking well if you wanted like think about any other area of your life like getting an amazing job or you know you’re like the fitness body of your dreams you know or going to the university or the college that you want to go for these are things that people will really work at, they’ll push themselves, and yet somehow in the era of dating and romance, we don’t really take that same approach, we just think one day it will happen.

55:00 And I just don’t, that’s like, to me, unrealistic. Let me talk about that. So I used to work in the city of London, right? All the boys, the traders, the bankers, they went to all the universities, we’re all working hard, these guys would have their houses in Chelsea and their vacations, go to the gym, and they have all these aspects of their life that they worked hard for, like you said, for years, had a plan, And these were good guys, solid guys, guys with game, with personalities, everything.

55:26 And then I remember going out at night with them, they would have no plan, like no plan. And not even a short-term plan is in like, you’d be like, oh, well, let’s just go there and then we’ll see what happens. And not even a practical plan, and then no kind of a long-term plan, as in I’ve got to go out there and do this, or I’ve got to do this. And it’s always shocked me that these guys that you would consider, I don’t know, or having their shit together, they had no plan.

55:52 Yeah, and I think that’s another kind of misconception. I’ve actually had somebody, it really stuck in my mind. Yeah, this is years ago, he was a guy who was a city guy and he said to me, you know, I just assumed that when my paycheck reached a certain critical mass that the babes would be queuing up around the block and I would have done that. And it’s like, you know how you have these weird birds in the Amazon and they build this spectacular nest and they decorate it, and then the female comes along and checks it out, and if she likes it enough, she’ll breed with them, and it’s like they’ve got that kind of mentality in their mind, and in fact, obviously, they don’t stop to question that really, if that’s what has attracted the woman, then maybe it’s not the best, most compatible woman for you.

56:34 Yeah, that’s another sign. I knew guys that you would just take their Porsche keys out, and like, that was their wrap, and I’d be like, are you kidding me? That’s really a wrap, and like, yeah, that was a wrap, and the other thing about money that’s fascinating is when the guys don’t have it, then that’s the reason their life is not going good. That’s the reason the girls don’t. It’s because I’m not rich like that banker guy.

56:52 But then, you know, little do you know that the rich banker guy has just as many problems. And everyone’s got that. Everyone’s got problems. I don’t have the body. Everyone else thinks everybody else has it fixed and solved and has never suffered or has never tried and has got it easy.

57:03 Right, I’m sure every client of yours comes to you and says, I don’t get this because of this. Well, I’m sure women, I’m a single mother. I love that one. You know, my girlfriend’s a single mother. And it’s like all these things where you’re like, oh, that’s the thing.

57:13 And like, that’s never the thing. I mean, people are really looking, I think, for just really solid, wonderful, nice, grounded people that love themselves. I think that’s what people are looking for. Yeah, right. I think people are attracted to someone that has a strong, consolidated self-identity and who knows themselves, is consistent and is happy with their lives, and when you engage with them, when you interact with them, it makes you feel happy as well, that you feel positive in their company and you feel re-energized.

57:39 That’s what I think is attractive. And it’s also a world of individuals. different people will gravitate towards different things. And I kind of think unique is beautiful, just in terms of physical appearance, but also mental attitude and how you communicate with others. So the fact that we’ve somehow been lumped with thinking there’s like a cookie cutter, male or female archetype role, which is the right one to play to attract the opposite sex, I think has it all the wrong way around.

58:06 So you try to get people to promote their unique self into it? Absolutely, yeah. I think that weirdness or that uniqueness makes you cool and interesting. There’s one concept that the pickup artist had, which is called congruence, which I actually think is a great concept. And that’s, I think I’m summarizing it as in the concept of if you go up and pretend to be someone you’re not, then that’s obvious.

58:24 And they always used to say that, you know, women can perceive these things like five or 10 times as fast as men. And I actually think that’s true. I think women pick this stuff up like real quick. And so if something you’re doing or saying isn’t congruent with you, who you are, then it just feels funny. We’ve all met that person.

58:39 We don’t even know why we don’t like them. Then we’ve all met the congruent person. and you’re like, oh wow, I don’t know if they’re centered or they’re just not trying to purport what they’re not or they’re not trying to, and then they feel very real and genuine and that’s attractive. Yeah, and I think the thing is with guys, they feel like they can’t be real and genuine because if they’re, here’s the thing, if they’re a good person or they’ve been a good guy all their lives, they saw the bad guys and maybe look at the girls at school and they go, oh, I’m not that person, I have my morals, I love my mom, I’ve got good friends, then they think there’s this conflict in them where they feel like they can’t be sexual because that’s not something that they should do and they feel guilty and embarrassed around sexuality, which means that when they feel an attraction to a woman, a bizarre process of like Chinese whispers occurs within them and something that attraction comes out as, I’m looking for a gift for my niece, you know, what would you recommend?

59:33 And then the woman, she can tell that that guy is being insincere. She knows what he really wants to ask and you’re exactly right, it’s that immediate insincerity and that lack of congruency, which then disrupts the whole interaction because she can’t trust him. She knows he, you know, on some level doesn’t, you know, fully believe in himself, and then the thing falls flat before it even gets started. Right, and then we should talk about that because in England, there’s a bit of that, there’s a bit of that in Purits in America where you, yeah, you’re embarrassed of your sexuality, you’re embarrassed of your wants and desires, and you’re embarrassed to express them.

1:00:06 I mean, it’s classic, you know, stuff, like exactly like you’re saying. Like, you know, I’m attracted to her, but I can’t do that, and oh, not at all, I’m very pleased to meet you. And those other people over there are definitely listening and I don’t want them to judge me, you know? So we’re constantly also at the mercy of feeling about social scrutiny. That’s another thing that both my male and female clients will really struggle with, because for the men, they’re like, I don’t wanna be judged as being that creepy guy, because I’m not that guy that makes women feel uncomfortable.

1:00:32 I respect women, I really like women, I would love to have a nice girlfriend, you know? And so they have that as their problem. And the women are like, oh, but if someone sees me flirting with him, and I’m desperate, and you know what, desperate women aren’t attractive. If I was attractive enough, if I was good looking enough, I wouldn’t need to do this. Right.

1:00:48 And so there’s all this judgment that surrounds people that we have to just try and shift because it shuts people down and it stops them from expressing themselves. So I guess it would be a bit easier if we weren’t surrounded by people all the time when we go on our dating courtship rituals, because then you wouldn’t be thinking about the judgment and all that stuff. Let me ask you about approaching and approaching anxiety for men. If you’re a woman, you have no concept of what this means, because you’re like, oh, I don’t understand what the big deal is.

1:01:14 But if you’re a man, then you know what approach anxiety is. It’s very real, or maybe the more I talk about it, the more real it becomes. I want to get your opinions. But this is essentially the idea of going up to a woman, cold and expressing interest in her, but creates this deep-seated pain and anxious feeling inside of you. You could say it used to come when we were all pack animals, and that if you screwed up and maybe you approached the alpha male’s girlfriend, then you would get literally ejected from the clan and get beat up, or maybe it’s the social stigma, humiliation, maybe that had real connotations when we were hunter-gatherers, I don’t know, but it is something that’s very real, and you’ll get guys, I remember one of the pickup guys saying that they had somebody that just came back from a tour in Iraq that would trade fire on the front lines with these guys, but was scared to approach a girl, or open up a day game on the street.

1:02:02 So, is approach anxiety real? How do you deal with it? Is it best not to use that term? What’s your read on it? I think it’s absolutely a real phenomenon. I think they said men have been made to feel really guilty or really uncomfortable around their sexuality. And, you know, they get that they have this climate of fear that surrounds approaching a woman because they worry that they’re going to be rejected, that you all have said they get rejection, social scrutiny.

1:02:26 There’s a few things that I teach my clients as a means to start to deal with that sensation. First of all, I think if you have knowledge and you kind of understand things, a lot of time for men that works well to help them to feel more comfortable with what they’re doing. If you really feel like you have no clue, and this is, this is something actually, this is one of the, some pickup companies would teach this, which is something I’m against. They’ll go, go talk to that girl, go, go, go. Loads of pressure and they’re just being pushed into it by someone else. And that’s horrible. That would make anybody freak out.

1:02:57 Instead, first of all, I think it’s good to kind of understand, okay, so when I approach a woman she’s not going to immediately turn around and smile to me and light up why is that you know what kind of things does she need in order to feel comfortable with me being in her presence so begin to cultivate understanding and empathy then we I give very very small baby steps to do to get more comfortable with approaching people and sometimes we don’t even start with approaching women sometimes it actually begins with being more sociable generally and getting more used to conversing with strangers and with offering information about yourselves and becoming more the center of attention and so we begin to do that and then we practice things in a way that is low pressure because you know what you need to create a positive loop there a guy needs to go he needs to you know do a part or an aspect of the approach and see that he’s survived out the other side and actually it’s been a really positive and wonderful experience and that becomes a momentum that you have to perpetuate and for me you know this isn’t something I do so much anymore but for many years I was out there working day and night you know encouraging men to approach women and you know they have to feel you know to feel supported they have to feel like they understand what they’re doing that they know what they’re doing and then if it doesn’t go how it’s how you project it or how you imagine it to they have to

1:04:17 Understand how to then deal with that information in a way that’s positive and healthy and that keeps them motivating and keeps them wanting to approach. Tricky. So you used to be, back in the day, you’d be like, go, go, go. Well, I learned not to do that because I think actually that’s like, I’ve learned that that’s the wrong thing. So a lot of the time we do stuff like weird things like breathing exercises, you know, to calm the nervous system and to make you just feel really comfortable and really grounded and really relaxed.

1:04:44 Because when you feel relaxed and when people feel comfortable, generally they express themselves really well. Like people have good things to say. everyone can hold a conversation relatively easily. It’s not that what they’re being asked to do is something particularly difficult, it’s just their own inhibitions and their own sensations of fear get in the way of themselves coming out. So a lot of it is actually creating a deep validation of the individual and letting them know that who they are and what they want to say is okay and that they are good and they’re worthwhile as a person that people want to hear it and then taking the small, small, small incremental steps to changing that.

1:05:21 Interesting. What do you think of the classic day game? Oxford Street, high noon, a stop, you know, in the middle of all the shopping traffic. What do you think of that? I think that that won’t generally represent the vast majority of men’s experiences of approaching women. Because Oxford Circus is a beast unto itself, right? I like your depiction of like high noon and it’s like a savannah or something. I don’t know. But it’s a very particular kind of environment like I actually remember once when I was living in my terrible studio flat in Vauxhall it was about midnight and I was walking home and someone did that stop on me and my deserted street and I thought I was about to be mugged like I screamed screamed the houses down and then realized what was actually it was actually going down so whilst that will work for a particular kind of man in a particular kind of environment for most men that won’t probably feel like them it might not feel like that’s their best means of expressing themselves, it might not be words that they would ever say, and you know what, the women that they might want to meet might not be the kind of women that populate Oxford Circus generally, so I think it’s important to treat everybody as an individual and think about, you know, I usually start by thinking, okay, what kind of a woman do you want to meet?

1:06:36 You know, I begin with an avatar exercise where we begin to start to really think about what kind of women are attractive and appropriate for the guys, and that’s not not just at all in terms of physical appearance, that’s the mental qualities they possess, how the women’s lifestyle is, and then it’s quite easy to start to think about how the man can adjust his lifestyle to make sure that he’s meeting far more of those kind of women, and then he has to approach in a way that is suitable both for the environments that he’s going to be in, and it’s also congruent with himself. Right, okay, so where do these women hang out? What kind of men do they like?

1:07:09 I should be thinking that, you know, I want to go there and I want to be around those kind of women, is that what you think? Yeah, so for instance if a man wants to, you know Oxford Circus outside Topshop, there is a lot, don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of hotties there. If I walk down there I’ll probably feel a bit rubbish about myself and I think oh god I’m a troll compared to like half the women that are hanging around outside Oxford Circus. Really? But yeah, big time. But they are, you know, they’re usually maybe early 20s or something, maybe students, young women or tourists that have come there for the shopping experience.

1:07:42 So if you are like the vast majority of male-male clients, like a professional man aged 28 to 45, who’s looking for a serious long-term relationship with a woman who’s based in London, has got her own career and her independence, she might not be walking down that street anyway. Okay, so not necessarily the best place to stop. Do you think there’s value anyways? If you studied day-game for three months and you got, you know, you taught someone to do these cold approaches and these stops and to just be able to talk for a minute.

1:08:12 Is there value regardless there? Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes I would teach that like, I think I might be doing it this Friday actually, just purely on the grounds of feeling like you have freedom of expression. So the next time, just serendipitously in your everyday life, that you see someone that you’re attracted to, you feel like you can approach them because you feel like you’ve developed a rudimentary skillset in order to deal with those situations because you know what it’s like, you’ll see someone you’re attracted to at the most inconvenient time possible, like the petrol station or on the tube, and you’ll have that point that’s like a decision point of deciding whether to walk, turn left, and approach and do something interesting, or whether to go back to reading your Kindle, and maybe if you’ve had those experiences of being able to successfully communicate with women and it’s not such a big deal anymore, you’ll feel like you can engage and you can explore that relationship.

1:09:03 The tube, that’s a tricky one. That’s a hard place to approach, Everyone is just like I have had two dates from the tube really I’ve dated two men that I’ve met on the tube That they you approach them they approached you I approached them. Okay. Yeah the approach itself I agree I think there’s value if you can actually go down to Carnaby Street and learn how to stop people I think that can help you in a lot of parts of your life I think that could help you as a salesperson or just getting comfortable with people I think there’s definitely value as kind of that kind of a you know, Navy SEAL type move, you know And it is impressive and you know very few people can do really good cold approaches And so, you know, all the times I hung out in New York City, all those guys, all the times in London, everywhere, very few guys would go for the cold approach.

1:09:42 You know, a lot of it’s the IOI or you get the eye contact and you do this and you do this and you go around the way and then it happens. So it’s definitely a skill set that I think has value. I guess you just don’t want to go too far. Yeah, and you don’t want to copy anyone else, right? And so sometimes, you know, you look at the YouTube stars of chatting women up on the street and you might think, I really want to be that person, I’d really like to do that.

1:10:03 Kind of try and copy it verbatim. It isn’t going to work because that’s not going to be a representation of you. A lot of the guys that are really great, a lot of the people that are really great are approaching other people, are very good at being themselves or very good at expressing something that’s true to them. Right. The other thing that’s fascinating about the day-game scene, and I know because I know some of those guys, is they can do this amazing cold stop approach and have a conversation. And people will watch and be like, oh my God, this is incredible.

1:10:28 And they get the phone number, but they’ll never see this girl again. The flake ratio will be like 98% and I know a lot of guys get really frustrated with that because they do this and they get these number closes and then they find that there’s just no depth to this relationship. Yeah and that’s because they’ve been too mechanical about how they’ve approached. I often think the most valuable thing a man can think when he’s engaging with a woman is just who is she?

1:10:49 You know, who is this person? You know, what makes her tick? What makes her hurt? Right. And lots of guys feel like they have to, you know, like the timer is on and they have to somehow get through the next five minutes of conversation without screwing it up. And then after an appropriate amount of time has elapsed, they are now allowed to ask for this woman’s number. And that doesn’t, and again, then a man is entering into a sphere where he feels like he’s performing for a woman and it’s how good his performance is.

1:11:13 When really if he’s sought to find out a lot more about the woman and actually connected with her on that level and that should be motivated by the way from a place of thinking, I don’t just want to approach any woman, you know, I want to look for someone who, you know, whether I’m looking for short-term relationships or long-term relationships, I should want those relationships to be with people that I actually connect with and I actually have respect for as a human being. And if you approach it with that mindset, then you do a much better job conversationally in terms of being able to connect to the person and then you know that flake ratio goes down. Yeah, it’s funny because you kind of go in and you spent the requisite amount of time and then you get the number and then you get out of there because it’s so uncomfortable.

1:11:52 It’s obviously not going that direction. I knew a woman who ran a dating agency for a long time and she said, Brian, the hardest thing was managing expectations. You know, these women wanted the guy with the six pack and then this and the guy wanted the girl they see on the rom-com and it was like, they’re here and we need to get them over here. I’m so pleased you’re saying this. This is like a massive modern age dating problem.

1:12:13 Okay. Right? Which is like something that we, I don’t, I don’t think we had this and I don’t think it was, or definitely it wasn’t as profound as it is today. Like now it’s just like with everything we use, like every product that we have, you know, we want something this special mystical thing and I think we’re always chasing something that potentially doesn’t exist and that we’ve got this white elk syndrome when it comes to dating because we’ve got so like in a city like London though lots of people might not feel this way there is the potential to have loads of choice you know because there’s a lot of single people out there and there’s a lot of people that you could be attracted to so it’s I always think of it rightly or wrongly like the shift from having maybe that one corner shop where you brought one loaf of bread and that was the loaf of bread.

1:12:56 You enjoyed that loaf of bread and St. Agnes Bakery is very nice and you would go down there. But now you’ve got like Sainsbury’s Whitechapel which is like this huge mega store and you have every different kind of bread under the sun and so like which one do you go for? And I think that almost that overwhelming amount of choice and availability and options means that people aren’t so good at sticking with one person or accepting things. they always think there’s something else over the other side of the rainbow.

1:13:24 Right, so does that mean you should manage your expectations to try really to be thinking, okay, let’s be realistic here, or is that a horrible frame to come at? No, I think you should have an idealistic perspective in terms of going after what you want, but I think we should maybe be thinking about what we want in terms of like personal connection, the happiness we experience with that person rather than like, you know, I kind of think it’s, I think if you’re happy with a person, what’s the point of worrying about whether, you know, has an extra zero or not on the end of his paycheck or, you know, whether she’s, you know, this exact physical type like the girls off of Instagram that you had imagined. You know, I think there’s a lot of superficial stuff that we could do with challenging because I think that particularly the world of social media represents something, represents people in a very particular way, you know, that doesn’t match up to reality and creates these unrealistic expectations like I had this bizarre example of this in my own life like a couple of weeks ago.

1:14:19 Well, I was on holiday in Sri Lanka and I was with my partner and we found out that a couple of our friends were in Bali and we thought, well, maybe, you know, we’re here in this amazing place, but maybe Bali’s better. And so in some crazy move that was completely financially imprudent, we go to Bali. We go to Bali and it’s amazing, but it’s not what we expected. And then we hear that there’s this island off of Bali called the Gileals. if we just get this boat, we can go to this island.

1:14:49 And it became this like, we were, we were called at the pursuit of happiness or the pursuit of the ultimate vibe. Like we were constantly searching for something rather than embracing what was in the moment. And, you know, my boyfriend even said, I’ve seen these celebrities on Instagram, their holidays look better than ours. And I thought, this is crazy. This is crazy. We’re in paradise.

1:15:10 Let’s just enjoy it. And I think that pursuit or that quest but an ultimate kind of something is definitely something that invades our romantic and relationship life in terms of where our expectations are. Yeah, definitely. It definitely is on the mind of guys and girls. Like if I’m gonna tell my friends about him or her, what I need her to look like, what does he need to make?

1:15:31 You know, and it can go both ways on that. Let’s talk about online dating. And then I wanna hear about your Tinder story. I guess we should talk about them separately. What do you think about online dating and is it something you encourage your clients to do?

1:15:44 I think online dating has its space, in that so many people are engaging with it and doing it, but those are other people like, I always think that my clients are kind of in the minority of people who have made a really active decision to try and develop their social skills in order to meet new people. Most people won’t do that, instead they’ll do the easy thing, which is to create an online dating profile. So it’s kind of silly not to have one. That being said, it shouldn’t somehow dominate your dating life, your dating activity.

1:16:12 I say it should be 20% of your dating life, get it so it’s manageable, spend 20 minutes on it two or three times a week, find a site or a medium that works for you, and you might as well do it, but you should absolutely still be going out and trying to meet people in real life as well, because I think sometimes people rely on it absolutely, and just like you said, with the benefit of doing something like a day game, you know what, you might not meet the person of your dreams randomly in Covent Garden, but you’re developing yourself as you’re doing it. And I don’t think you get the same benefits through kind of typing messages into your computer. Okay, interesting.

1:16:49 All right, so do it because a lot of people find matches that way. I also think there’s maybe people open up more online, whether as in person, we really have to present these fronts and be these people. Maybe that’s a London thing too. I don’t know. I think that people present on fronts online.

1:17:03 I think it’s easier to construct a version of yourself on the internet, you know, you can like, I think that every woman out there will feel me when I say, you know, like the guy that is all super witty and daredevil and direct and sexy on his messages and then you get him in front of you in real life, you know, and he’s like, ugh. It’s not that guy. Not that guy. Okay. Not that guy.

1:17:25 That’s interesting. All right, tell me about your Tinder experiment again. Yeah, tell us what you did. I think you put two different profiles up. Yeah.

1:17:32 And again, you’re being mischievous. Yeah, absolutely. You said you’d like taking left turns, Hayley. Yeah. with people. You’re like pushing yourself, right?

1:17:38 I would say, you know what, I wasn’t so much trying to mess with people as I was trying to like take a dig at like selfies and like the world of like Instagram and how we’re portraying ourselves online. So I thought, well, it’s going to be really interesting. You know, our split test effectively, two profiles on Tinder, one against the other. One was completely normal. I put up pictures that were just like random pictures of me from my phone and I wrote a nice profile and for 30 minutes I swiped yes to everybody.

1:18:04 And then after that was done, I had my makeup done by a friend of mine who’s a makeup artist. We spent ages getting all the perfect shots. We also staged the pictures of me to be intentionally like man pleasing. So it was one of me doing like a yoga pose. And I was all…

1:18:21 Do we like that? Men like that? They like that one. Yeah. And I was…

1:18:26 It was one of me eating peanut butter demurely out of a jar looking kind of domesticated. Wow. And then what was crazy is we got this app called Facetune. Then we went in and we doctored all my pictures and literally a six-year-old could do it in five minutes. Because you assume if a picture looks different, there’s like some Photoshop, some professional person.

1:18:45 No, you can just use Facetune. Facetune, and it just does something with the eyes and the colors. You can smooth all your wrinkles out. I grew my boobs, I grew my butt, I’ve shrunk my waist. All with Facetune?

1:18:56 All with Facetune. And then I stuck up a bunch of pictures which were completely unrealistic Barbie pictures. And then I wrote like an idiotic profile, like, love my life, love my friends, XOXO. Cause I thought I’m going to go down the bimbo route and see what happens. And I suppose say, or just do you want to go airhead and you don’t want to go?

1:19:14 I just thought that sounds like, I was like, she sounds positive and friendly and like full of life, but isn’t really offering much information about herself. Okay. And so then I did the same and I swiped yes to everybody for 30 minutes. And then I saw how people responded to me differently. So it wasn’t like the most scientific of experiments, but I was like, hey, it was an interesting thing I think to do in terms of noticing how people responded.

1:19:36 And what happened? Super, super, super souped up Hayley. Did get more matches, but not that many more. I got about a third more, which actually isn’t tremendously loads more. I would say that the guys were more active at messaging super Hayley.

1:19:53 I’m probably misbranding this, but yeah, super Hayley. But their messages really didn’t have much, you know, intellectual content whilst actually normal Hayley got guys writing some quite nice involved messages where they’d actually taken the time to read her profile so really all that we came back with is you kind of magnetize what you put out there and I think that’s quite true in lots of other areas of your dating life. Okay tinder or no tinder what do you tell your clients? Depends what their age range and demographic is if they are like I don’t I don’t really work with any 18 year olds. But if they were 18 to, I know, early mid thirties, then maybe, but you’ve got to, here’s, here’s what I would say to it with a strong caveat. You have to know your own boundaries. So you have to know how you want to be dated, what you’re comfortable with or not. And you have to stick to that. And also think of it this way. If you meet somebody via swiping yes to them, a matching with them on Tinder versus meeting somebody serendipitously in real life, you’re obviously going to value the real life interaction far more, just because the method and the means of meeting someone has been different.

1:20:56 And I think something that’s very interesting is really in terms of who people tend to value and who people want to continue to date. I think a lot of that comes down to just the meeting process and how that’s set up and how we go about it. So Tinder is obviously, it has its flaws. It’s fine for people to experiment with it as long as they don’t take it too seriously and they stick to their own real system. Right.

1:21:21 Too good to be true. fashion way is the best way I love the old-fashioned way of just a real honest interaction and you’re saying that that that determines the relationship that interact I think I think it’s a very important factor so here’s it is here’s something I hear a lot from my guy clients which he’s spoken about that much which is if a man has met a woman and maybe he’s he hasn’t proactively gone and found her maybe they just end up hanging out and then it’s sort of like you know maybe they slept together one night and they fell into a relationship. A lot of the time I hear guys talking retrospectively about that and saying, you know, she was a really nice woman. We got on really well, but I never really felt like I chose her or I never really felt like I created that relationship. And so somehow he’s managed to devalue the relationship right from the get go or has questioned it because of how it’s come about. And I think that likewise, I think, you know, if it’s somebody that you’ve met off of, you know, an app and you’re maybe meeting, you know, sometimes, you know, I hear clients who have got two dates with two different people off of Tinder in the same location on the same day.

1:22:25 So it’s just, which is obviously stupid and I would never encourage anybody to do that, but it just shows like the baffling amount of choice. And I think if you are one of those people, then somehow the interaction can never surely be seen as, as, as valuable than if you’d have had one of those interactions. And I think that’s why things like a day game approach, for all of it, it’s ways that it’s flawed. It does a lot to kind of play into what people expect romance to be like and what they expect meeting people to be like.

1:22:56 Yeah. I mean, if you do that, then I guess you’ve gone above and beyond to do that. And then if you do find someone that’s interested, it is kind of like a big event. I guess people have some things invested. I know.

1:23:06 And whenever, you know, people talk about like their meeting story, you know, okay, there There are also, I do know, legitimately some Tinder romances, but people, when they say they’re meeting story, they want a meeting story. My nan met my granddad because she fell on her butt, an ice skating rink, and he was the person that picked her up off the floor. You can see everything about it, the accident, the serendipity, the chance meeting, him coming to a rescue.

1:23:29 It has romantic conventions and this mythology, which, to be fair, I think that we’ve watched, listened to since we were, since we were like, you know, small children and that’s created an ideal around it, you know, rather than it has an even more bananas meeting story. So do you encourage your clients to try to create those meetings to a certain extent? I think it’s good to understand what people expect. I think that’s a very powerful thing when you kind of can deconstruct what people expect around romance and dating and go, oh right, like there was this really interesting study, I wish I could remember the name of it, it was repost in the New York Times this week, which was all about a doctor who wanted to see if he could recreate love.

1:24:13 And so he created this list of like maybe 20 or 30 questions slash statements that two strangers would say to one another that were designed to elicit a feeling of connection and to bring out compatibility. And then at the end of the experiment, this is weird, they had to go to a place of like romantic beauty, like a bridge or something, and stare into one another’s eyes for four minutes and bizarrely loads of people that participated in that initial study ended up going on to date one another and claim that they were in love and I think that shows something you know that shows that the point was that you can choose to when you’ve fallen in love or you can do things reconstructively that helped to create that sensation. Right, that makes sense. It does make sense.

1:24:55 So apart from when the timer goes off after the four minutes that might potentially ruin it a little bit. That could be bad. A biggest mistake guys make, I know That’s a very general question, but is there anything that constantly comes up with your clients when you’re just like let’s get this over This and this over with yeah, absolutely wait for permission for guys that wait for permission They wait for an absolutely crystal-clear signal from the woman that she’s definitely interested Yeah, like a smoke signal a big a big sign and So that they he feels a hundred percent secure that she likes him so he can go in Right growl right and really that’s putting the cart before the horse because the woman is there thinking I don’t know if I like him or not until he’s engaged with me until I get a sense of his personality his behavior his vibe and so she’s Communicating. I’m not really sure if I like you or not Which is fair enough because I haven’t engaged enough and the man is they’re going oh, but she hasn’t really given me those clear signals She’s given me hot and cold signal. So I better not do anything Right, right and that doesn’t make a story that your grandma and grandma tell you when you’re younger Right because they she’s not gonna say well I blinked at him 16 different times and then I sent him this and that alright so so take action is what you’re saying Yeah, absolutely I think you men have got to understand that a lot of the way that a woman will become attracted to them

1:26:06 It’s not like a woman looks at a guy and thinks yes or no It’s like he has to go, you know, generally I think women are attracted by how a man engages with them and that personal dynamic and that interaction So if a man doesn’t take the first step forward if he doesn’t begin to engage with a woman if he doesn’t get used to stating what he wants. It’s almost like a huge part of that process of attraction never even begins. And so he just won’t know. So is it true the man must lead in many interactions in a relationship, including this one?

1:26:34 No, not always. I think that for most people, that’s the kind of role that they will identify with. However, I think again, that you have to kind of be consistent with who you are as a person. And I remember from just being really personally, again, like I just never felt comfortable with being pursued. It always felt weird and wrong and I don’t think I’m alone here and I know there’s guys out there who actually really don’t feel super comfortable with being that dude so I think we have to find different ways that we can engage with one another because I think there’s a polarity and there’s a masculinity and a femininity that isn’t just a fine to men and women and it isn’t quite that clean cut. Okay but they do have to approach before they have permission. Yes. Okay all right any any other big ones that usually come out? For guys, yes, not making their intentions clear, so you know, ending up becoming a woman’s friend when perhaps they wanted something more. Like the friend zone. I literally did a webinar on the friend zone last night, but it’s a huge, the travesty of the friend zone is really that I think a lot of the time the woman is interested in the man in the beginning, and so there’s a potential there that never gets capitalized on purely because of how they’re engaging with one another. Right, so that’s really unrealized potential that is a waste and then once you’re in the zone and it’s

1:27:50 Hard to get out of the zone and then the longer you stay the less chance you have it’s like a black hole or something so okay so um so state your intentions either overtly or just at some point you know even if you you start a conversation serendipitously or you meet somebody you know through a different mechanism you know at some point it’s gonna be say you look great tonight by the well my smile or I like how you did that or you know I like how honest you are you You know, that was really cool. Or I like how you let other people barge in front of you. One of my clients actually, like I spoke to last night, said that he approached a woman after he saw her giving a sandwich to a homeless man on the street.

1:28:28 And he said, wow, you know, I really like how you took the time out of your day to do that. Most people don’t connect with others. And that’s dating more of an attention. That’s like, he’s also validating a behavior. He’s like gone, right.

1:28:39 I’ve seen a baby that you’ve done that in terms of my value system, that’s something that I like and I would look for in a partner and I’ve observed it in you and I appreciate it. You know, women like men that observe them are aware of them and pay attention to them. In fact, I think it’s very frustrating as a woman if you get a guy trying to run some kind of game where he’s just seeing, you know, your physical body and he’s just thinking attractive babe, I must try and win her over and he’s not really trying to connect or perceive all of the other layers of things that are going on.

1:29:08 Okay, but is that different than stating an intention as in I want to have a relationship with you, I want to have a sexual relationship with you, do you need to state that as well? I think it’s really important the first time that you hang out if you want it to be a date that she knows it’s a date. Okay, how do you do that? You’ve got to say, you know what, I want to see you again. Okay.

1:29:24 You know, let’s meet for drinks next week. Okay. So you’re clear. And if she says, oh, you know, can we, let’s just get together as friends, you can say, that’s cool if you just want to be friends, but advanced warning, you know, I will be, I will possibly be flirting with you because I think you’re very lovely. That’s a good one.

1:29:39 Good to use that word. Yeah. day game, but the one good thing about day game is that when you do that stop, it is pretty obvious what you’re doing, right? Yeah, exactly. And you don’t want to…

1:29:49 The thing is, I think that with the friend’s own stuff, it’s like boy meets girl, girl meets boy, there’s a potential for romance between them, but because the man isn’t really clear enough or doesn’t kind of take the right moves forward, the woman is confused, thinks he doesn’t like her that much, the attraction really never gains momentum, but they maybe form some kind of personal connection that then the woman doesn’t want to risk messing up by making it romantic. And so then as days, weeks, months, sometimes years pass by and then the man confesses, you know, this is what he’s already felt, this takes a woman by surprise. And for her to, you know, be aware enough and to articulate, well, hey, maybe at the beginning there was kind of a potential there, but because as we related to one another, I, you know, I kind of stopped feeling that way.

1:30:31 And so, you know, now I really just see you as a friend, that’s, it would be convoluted. Instead, she’ll probably just say, I’ve always seen you as a friend, and that first chunk is missed. And so then the guy thinks, oh, I must be crazy, or what is going on here? And instead, it’s been this, again, one of those miscommunications that’s prevented two people from possibly exploring a relationship if they were compatible with one another. Okay, biggest mistake women make?

1:30:56 Is it similar? No. Okay. I think there’s loads, not giving out clear enough signals, so not showing any availability. And then in London, particularly, not having any availability, full stop, just being so busy that there’s no time to meet anyone or date anyone.

1:31:14 And also, and a big one for women is being too judgmental. Probably phrase that badly, but it’s true. Like- About the men. About the guys. Like, I can literally sometimes go to a bar with a female client, she’ll walk in, she’ll go, no, I don’t like anybody in here.

1:31:27 And I’m like, but shouldn’t we speak to some of them first? Get to know them a bit. And the thing is sometimes, you know, I get it, like I’ve had many periods of my life where I felt this way, where it’s just like, you just think, well, they are all the same, or I could never go out with another guy called Simon. You know, and suddenly like these big swathes of men are just eradicated, instead of actually maybe exploring relationships. And you know what?

1:31:52 So often, you know, when my female clients ends up in a relationship, it’s not obviously with the guy that she necessarily anticipated she’d be with in the beginning, But in dating out of type, she discovers somebody who’s actually better for her. So open-minded. Keep it open-minded, communicate, work on giving clearer signals, construct your lifestyle in such a way that you’re going to actually meet people, create time to explore those race ships. And also have really good rules and boundaries because I think lots of women might fear re-engaging with dating because maybe they’ve had a bad experience with a guy or they’ve been screwed over or something bad has happened and they don’t want that to happen again.

1:32:33 And so a lot of the time you have to, before you even, to feel safe to engage with dating, you know, they have to know what they’re comfortable with and not comfortable with. Like Tinder is such a good one. For instance, so many women will go on a Tinder date and think it’s gone really well. And as soon as the guy leaves the Tinder date, he’s back online on Tinder and they can see it. And it’s like this, this heartbreaking moment.

1:32:53 And you have to be able to say, if you are well aware that’s something you don’t want to happen that you’re not comfortable with, you have to be okay to communicate with that. Because then you’re, you know, then you’re being proactive and you’re doing yourself due diligence and that’s something that’s, there’s definitely more of a female problem. Okay. So boundaries is as in when I go to do this behavior, if this happens, it’s not okay and I’m going to let them know.

1:33:15 And if this happens, I’m not going to let them know. Clarity. Clarity. Because guys like to know, like actually guys all the time, they want to please women, they want to make women happy. But unless we give them, you know, you know, clear communication about what we’re thinking, you’ll never know.

1:33:28 Like, one of my female clients phrases absolutely brilliantly a few days ago, she said, I had this secret test for him in my mind with a secret deadline that if he failed, I would then terminate the relationship. And I was like, yeah, you’ve nailed it. That is exactly how women work. You know, it’s like, you’ll kind of become aware that maybe he’s doing something or behavior you’re not happy with. So instead of talking to him about it, it’s probably better just to analyze this behavior further and then set a secret deadline.

1:33:57 If he doesn’t have changed, you’re going to check, you’re going to get rid of him. And that’s not really giving him any fair warning. It’s like the worst dismissals process in the world. So like, I mean, I’m joking, but a lot of the time also women feel like that there’s a way that you have to date in like a city like London or like a New York and they got to learn how to do it and really don’t have to do that because everybody is different in terms of their expectations, in terms of when they think they should have sex with someone, when they think it should be monogamous, if they even want a monogamous relationship.

1:34:28 And so it’s so much better to just get really comfortable with what you want and to really understand yourself and work out what your own parameters are ahead of time before you meet someone. Because lots of women will wait for the guy to, you know, say, I really wanna be with you, or to ask them out or to make it official. And so they end up getting dragged along onto somebody else’s pace and somebody else’s timeframe, which doesn’t necessarily feel comfortable to them, but it’s down to the women themselves to communicate what they want and understand that it doesn’t make them needy and it doesn’t make them desperate to want what they want.

1:35:02 Right. You’re pretty good at this. I see a future for you here. It’s interesting because you see both sides of the coin, and so that’s kind of fascinating. I wonder if it’s a bit of a problem sometime if you’re just the male coaching the male and maybe without even knowing it, you might be like, it’s us against them.

1:35:18 I was thinking earlier, because when we were talking about that guy that sent the questions in saying that I was a quack, which fair enough, I thought if anything else, I have at least consistently for absolute years spoken to thousands of men and women in depth about what they think about dating and relationships and where they’re at in their life. So I must have a back catalog of personal references in my brain, which I’m operating off of. So that’s what I try and base things around.

1:35:44 Yeah, and I think it’s helpful that you coach both sides because I think it really is helpful because you can then you get to See well the whole picture really as opposed to you can’t get into this I think if you’re coaching from one side you do get to start looking at as a group while women do this You know women don’t respect this, you know can’t call the next day this and like you said We’re all individuals especially when you get to New York and London and you do start thinking well, you’re the big city now So you’re gonna have to do this. Yeah, or he’s not gonna do that And I’m gonna go to some of the comments because these were gold and we did a quick video before this and I had this one this really says a lot about I guess a lot of people you interact with online but I’ll just cliff note it and it says my advice Brian I get advice all the time I don’t have any more of these dating people on it’s quackery of the highest order devaluates my show I appreciate that most of these game or dating people are nothing more than con artists don’t be associated with them full stop some questions though and then he listened nine questions and I have them all I mean this is this is on YouTube so you can check me out it’s not on a private message it’s on YouTube and so then he goes on and so it’s fascinating and I got this a lot with Krauser the first time guys would be like oh I don’t believe in game I don’t need game but I got some questions you know and so and

1:36:54 So it’s funny because it hits us carnally you know with something that bothers us or maybe something we know that we’re not good at or we’re not comfortable with and then we’re curious but at the same time we are repulsed I don’t know there’s a lot of funny things going on here yeah and I think also it hits people in a spot that, you know, that generally people are really, really, really sensitive about romance and dating, you know. Yeah. And their skills are lack thereof.

1:37:17 Exactly. And you know what I do as a dating expert, I basically stand on some kind of pedestal which goes, you know what, if you’re unhappy with your dating life, here’s me purporting to know the solution to your problems. The lightning rod you are. Yeah. I am an absolute lightning rod to get the tomatoes ready.

1:37:32 I’m prepared. But I think, you know, I just have my peace with it and I think, well, you know what, I think I have my space here. I think I have something reasonable to say. If people don’t like it, that’s fine because I think we have to create, it’s important just to create dialogue. Dialogue.

1:37:45 Yeah. No, and I like that. So let me hit you with some of the questions. Okay. You know, earlier you talked about bringing baggage to a relationship and this is a really guy with a great honest comment.

1:37:51 He said, finding dates isn’t the problem, but I was very much in love and was cheated on. So how does one let their guard back down enough to have feelings for someone else? Because it sounds like this is a real issue, how does one truly let go that level of betrayal? Wow. You know what? I’ve been cheated on particularly badly at some points in my life and I know how difficult that one is to deal with. Oh, where to begin. Okay. I think a really good thing to do is just to be honest and upfront with people. And I mean like I’ve had weird things where, you know, if my partner is hanging out loads with another girl at a party, I’ll get like a weird feeling of discomfort within my stomach based on bad previous experiences.

1:38:31 And I can either sit there and be a weird, anxious wreck, or I can communicate it because I think the second you start saying stuff, you actually, first of all, you create a vulnerability where people accept you. And also it gives people an opportunity to understand where you’re coming from, which means you don’t have to feel so mental. So not only would I communicate to said new partner, you know, or I know this, I would just say, look, I know I’m going to sound like a crazy person, but I felt uncomfortable about that.

1:38:57 I know it’s unreasonable, but it’s because, you know, I had this thing happen. So, you know, if you could just bear with me via this miniature bit of turbulence, now the second you say it like that and you’re logical and upfront about it, and then people are like, oh, okay, you know, and I’ll even say to women, I’ll be like, oh, you know, it freaked me out a bit at the beginning because I, you know, I had this, I had this terrible thing happen. And then suddenly you, you form a connection to them and they’re on your side.

1:39:18 So I think actually being open about it is a really positive thing to do. And then you know what else? Trust is also, I think a really good way of thinking about trust in relationships and stuff is it’s a compound and it’s something that accrues over time. So it’s unrealistic for you to 100% trust somebody straight away and you shouldn’t expect that of yourselves or of them. You’ve got to see it as a growing thing that you build up over a period of time.

1:39:44 Right. Good advice. Really good advice. Overcommunicate is probably smart. And like you said, worst case- We’re in the age of the overshare, you know, let’s just go for it.

1:39:53 Let’s go for it. I mean, worst case, it allows you to just kind of communicate with someone and, you You know, if it freaks her out, then I guess, you know, maybe, maybe you learned something about her. You know, like I said, I mean, I’ve had relationships in the past where I’ve had some really intimate discussion or confession, like really early on, and it can really create a bonding experience. Yeah, I think so. By the way, blah, blah, blah.

1:40:12 I mean, you know, sometimes it can be a little creepy too. But no, but no. Okay. That’s good advice. Let me see.

1:40:18 A couple of just like basic questions. Someone says, does three dates mean sex? And that’s an interesting question. And I would love to write it off and say it’s not about that. But it’s a good question.

1:40:26 It’s a good question because I think that that’s that’s one of those things where people are thinking that there’s some like rules written down somewhere Or chiseled into a piece of rock or a stone which is which and this and we must abide by that and in fact No, everybody has to work their individual timeframe So it sounds potentially by the whoever wrote that question that for them Three dates is when they would expect to have sex with someone and that’s cool all power to them for that They need to communicate that and act on their own prerogative and then not be but then be prepared that the other person might not be reading off of the same page as them. Because I think there isn’t like a universal rule system. Everyone has to go at a pace that they feel comfortable with and your job really is to look for people that you’re personally compatible with and who at least to begin with view relationships in a similar way to you.

1:41:15 Right, and I think it’s important that you’re upfront about that. So does that mean if that’s what your intention is, I guess you should already state that there’s attraction there and that we’ll be flirting. And does that mean you should probably be escalating physically or whatever, as opposed to like, it’s going to happen after day three. I mean, is that all part of your congruence then? Exactly. You know what?

1:41:32 Like if you’re physically attracted to someone from day one and there’s like, the chemistry is there, then there’s nothing wrong with you trying to kiss them. And sometimes, you know what, you don’t, sometimes you do things, you do things as means of self-expression rather than expecting a particular result or come back from the other person, you know what? And if, if you, I’m thinking man to women here, just because I presume that’s the way, the way around it will work most commonly.

1:41:55 If you’re a guy and you’re on a day and you try and kiss her and she says, no, I’d like you to know that that could just mean that doesn’t mean that she’s not interested. That’s like that for a lot of women, they would feel uncomfortable saying yes straight away because they’ve been conditioned that actually it’s part of that flirtation and part of the courtship where they, they say no. So it’s, it’s about beginning that process and then you could just communicate to her.

1:42:18 Okay, we’re gonna have to stop being so flirtatious with me. Otherwise, I’m gonna try and kiss you again In fact, I’m gonna try now, you know And yeah, I’m being cool and being upfront about it and not seeing it is as a huge personal Rejection right don’t take so much thought I mean, yeah Don’t put so much steak at that small action and also even if it’s not a successful kiss At least you are stating your intentions So yeah, and the lady they know and then she’s never gonna be able to say hey I thought you’re always just gonna be my friend, you know, I thought that’s all you wanted Yeah, my girlfriend wouldn’t kiss me on the first date god damn it and but yeah But you know, what are you gonna do some girls like you said? It’s just the wrong timing or the flirtation or the courting whatever. It doesn’t mean they don’t like you But besides interesting the three days thing is fascinating. Like I know people men and women that are like, oh, yeah I just met this guy. I’m flying to Australia to meet him and like and I’ll be like and I’m like, okay Have you guys had sex? No but you know I’m known him for four weeks and I’m gonna go there for two weeks and I’m like this sounds like a train wreck and And sometimes I see this under communication where people are making these like long range kind of plans.

1:43:17 Right. And that’s because I think that people that are getting romantic thing, right? They think, oh, I’ve invested lots of money in it, lots of time into it, romantic idea. Therefore, it must work because it’s almost like they’ve got like 75% of the things that say it should be in a whirlwind romance, whilst neglecting possibly the most important 25%, which is how they interact with the other person. Yes.

1:43:40 Yeah. screen train wreck and usually they are train wrecks, usually they get over there and there’s bad communication and one of them didn’t want it or there was a friend zone and then they’re like I wish I’d never done that. And I have to say this as well in terms of female dating, I am suspicious of the guy that tries to fly you to Paris, you know, the day after he meets you or something like that. I think that whirlwind romance thing that we’ve been taught to prize often to me says that like the person you’re engaging with isn’t taking the appropriate amount of time to get to know you and to understand they can trust you and it’s just like not a healthy way for people to engage with one another and so I think there’s a total easy-come-easy-go thing. Yeah well said they’re probably leave they’re probably living their own dream reality through you. Through you. They’re just like a bizarre reflection of right themselves. Right or maybe you’re just facilitating this fantasy. Yeah exactly. Yeah maybe they’re not trying to get to know you.

1:44:31 Maybe they just want to go to Paris. Yeah. That’s interesting. Okay good a few There’s a guy with nine questions. I don’t know what.

1:44:38 Oh, let me just go with his first question. I really like this guy, by the way. What is her opinion on looks? How important are looks to women? And I guess for you, we can say with other women and with men.

1:44:47 Okay, how important looks? I think, again, that’s the balance depending on per individual in terms of what they’re exactly one. Some people are gonna be more looks orientated than others. Some people have stronger physical preferences than others. I’m a huge believer that you can, that vibe, your personality, your charisma, how you engage with someone is the most important thing.

1:45:09 I think that you’d have to be kind of like a philistine-like person on some level to think, well, they’re not blonde, so I don’t like them. And then you should really strongly question if that’s that person’s mindset, if they’re really, really harsh when it comes to certain physical characteristics. Are they really the kind of person that you’d want to engage with in terms of dating them anyway? I think the most, most people, though it’s gonna be one of those, I think those bell-shaped curves, you know, you’re gonna have some people where looks is very important, some people where looks is completely unimportant, and a bunch of people in the middle who are somewhere on that spectrum.

1:45:44 I think if you engage with them, if you have a really strong personal connection, if they perceive you to be unique, and that doesn’t have to be unique in terms of physical beauty, then that will do a lot to make people feel attracted to you. Like there’s these weird studies that show, you know, if a woman, for instance, whereas red or orange in a room, she’ll be perceived as being more attractive just purely by increasing her visibility. Okay, and it looks more important to men than women.

1:46:11 It’s a classic question. I think that men are more visual in terms of how they find people attractive. They’ll make a clearer decision right off the mark. Like a man will look at a room of, let’s say women, and he would kind of go, these are the ones that I’m most attracted to. And women will do it to an extent the same, but they wouldn’t probably wanna make that judgment call until they’ve interacted and engaged with the men further.

1:46:37 That being said, I laugh and smile about this a lot because I am 100% not my boyfriend’s type and he’s not my type either. We didn’t even fancy each other to begin with. But because we actually, through some weird circumstances, we ended up meeting and we ended up getting to know one another, though we have nothing in common and we’re not even each other’s physical types, there was something that happened there that was unquantifiable and based on our personal connection.

1:47:05 So I think that will always be the most important factor regardless of gender. How do you feel about open relationships? You mentioned you’re attracted to a woman recently, are you with your man? Is that something that you do? And do you advise people to do it or not?

1:47:18 Or again, are there boundaries? Yeah, personal preference, again. I think there’s people like, you know, how some people are straight, some people are like gay, some people are somewhere in the middle. I think there’s some people in life that are like natural monogamous and that completely suits them and that’s them. I think there’s also people that are more open in terms of how they wanna lead their relationship choices and none of it is evil or morally superior to one another.

1:47:39 It’s all about being very open about what you want and what your expectations are because if you want to have open relationships, that’s fine. Just make sure you communicate that towards the people that you’re engaging with. You don’t have to communicate it apologetically or with embarrassment, but you have to be upfront about what your expectations are and what you want, because again, then you’re going to meet people who, you want to meet people who are kind of like-minded and who see things in a similar way to you.

1:48:04 And then he could build better relationships with them. And so, you know, I think I’ve got my younger brother, he lives in Cornwall. He’s been with his girlfriend for absolutely years. They’re totally, I think, going to get married and have babies. And I don’t think it’s him.

1:48:20 I don’t think he’s been conditioned and he’s so brainwashed he doesn’t know what you want. I just think that’s him. I think that’s his prerogative. But likewise for me personally, probably having a relationship that was 100% monogamous and that to me would feel alien. And I also think relationships are quite dynamic things.

1:48:40 So I think you might start out with a monogamous relationship and it might go elsewhere or vice versa because I think people change and people grow in very different ways. And also your bond, sometimes I think you can feel in a monogamous phase, Other times you can feel it in a phase that’s a bit more open. And I don’t think we should make too many moral judgments around that. I think we just better be honest and upfront about it and try and communicate it well.

1:49:05 Okay, are open relationships complicated? Oh, all relationships are complicated, right? Well, come on, come on. But how do you have a relationship with more than one person in a- I mean, monogamy took off as a concept for a very good reason, right? Like, it’s like- It’s simple.

1:49:18 It’s simple. It’s like a beautiful, it’s like a phone plan. You know, it’s like having a certain amount you pay every month rather than like the flexible options. So you’re saying it’s the easy way out, that’s what you’re saying? Well, not for all people, but then again it could feel extremely restrictive and uncomfortable.

1:49:33 And actually, you know what, if somebody feels repressed and they feel unhappy in a relationship or the dynamic or how it’s set up, that will manifest in all kinds of funky ways that will eventually affect the relationship anyway. Okay. So for you now, it’s open, that could change, that might not change. No, no, it’s not. I wouldn’t say it’s open.

1:49:48 I think we have our own little parameters, which are maybe not 100% straight up monogamy, but we’re pretty close. Okay, one observation that I will make, and this is with hanging out with my player buddies or the pickup artist guys I knew or all this kind of thing, is that I always had a few friends that were like, yeah, I’ve got three girls and I’ve got two girls, but I’ve hung out with a lot of the dudes in New York and in London. And I must say that I rarely met a guy that could date multiple women at the same time was happy.

1:50:19 Like they might told me they were happy, but they might pretend that they have this life and say, I’m going to meet this girl in this city, this girl in this city. But most of the time, that doesn’t happen that way. And I find that most guys end up settling in some type of a monogamous pattern because I don’t know. It’s a lot of reasons. I mean, like if you try to think that, you know, one woman or one man is a lot to handle, I mean, try doubling.

1:50:39 I know. I know. And I think having someone that understands you that, you know, that you’re compatible that you have a wealth of history with that you get on with. That’s so, so, so valuable. Like I wouldn’t trade my partner in, you know, I mean, you say it all gets different for women, but like if I was offered 16 boyfriends or so, I wouldn’t just wouldn’t do it because I think that that’s a deeply seated human need to have someone that’s your partner.

1:51:06 Yeah, yeah. And so if you’re a guy listening and I don’t know, you’re thinking, oh yeah, my buddy, I’m gonna have three girls and it’s gonna be great. And it might be great for a week, But then after a while, you’ve got really three different emotional beings that have their needs and need you and if you’re gonna continue the relationship, it’s- And I think that’s a funny thing about the pickup world that’s kind of perpetuated a myth where this many women is superior to one woman.

1:51:30 And I think actually, you know what, people go through phases in their lives where they’re like sometimes where they wanna explore, they wanna have a certain amount of experiences and that’s kind of the zone that they’re in. But I think usually just as most of the pickup guys themselves have actually done. Once they’ve gone through that crescent, they end up wanting to have that person in their lives. And that’s not for better or for worse, but I think that’s just a core driving factor of people.

1:51:55 All right. So we are monogamous beings then. Most of the time. Okay. Well, it’s time.

1:51:59 Well, you know what? I’ve read this. I have to say I read this great book called The Red Queen, which is kind of a biology book. And the way it expresses humans anthropologically is essentially monogamous with a little side of infidelity and other stuff that happens. I think that as a species, we strive for monogamy as something that suits us, pair bonding is incredibly important.

1:52:24 There are lots of things that make that hard. Over the course of, I think, particularly if you’re in a relationship for years or decades, I don’t think that if you lapse from that idealized state that that’s a death blow necessarily for a relationship. I think that could be part of the growth of the relationship. Does that make sense? Yeah, I know that does.

1:52:46 So, whilst I know that monogamy might be our default state, it might be something to aspire to and something we want, I don’t think we should punish ourselves if that’s not what happens 100% of the time because I wouldn’t think that’s human nature either. Which is easier said than done because, you know, our religion, our social structure is built around monogamy. You could argue that monogamy is a great social structure because it keeps everybody in check and all that stuff.

1:53:08 But yeah, try telling someone that their affair after 15 years was the right personal growth step and I guess a lot of people are gonna have a hard time with that, aren’t they? Yeah, well I think when you have something like an affair in a relationship, both parties are complicit in that in some way and I think that’s kind of a modern way of looking at things but I’m quite down with that idea. I think usually if someone has an affair, it’s a bizarre manifestation of them having some emotional need that isn’t being met and them looking for validation outside of the relationship And you know what, I think we’re like human beings and we are fallible to that stuff.

1:53:41 It’s really easy if you’re in a long-term relationship to forget how awesome your partner is or to not create enough time to nurture the bond between you or to start because you know them really intimately to start speaking to them in a certain way. And then it doesn’t take long after you’ve seen the same person and then you have this kind of like sexy new proposition that wanders into your life that validates you. And you know what? have to be as real with them, they don’t know you as well. And so you can kind of perpetuate this myth about yourself, which also feels really nice. Also, you know, when you kiss somebody for the first time who’s a new partner, you get this spike in or like dopamine and other pleasure hormones. So it makes you feel like, wow, this person is it. And then you go home and you know what, you haven’t done some kind of domestic task and over a period of time, we get like knots in relationships where we become frustrated and angry with one another if we don’t resolve things and so I can see how it’s so easy and I’ve been there and like my partners that I’ve dated been there where you slip up and you screw up and I think that whilst it’s easy to man bash or woman bash when people do that I can think we have to emphasise empathy for how it’s so easy to find yourself in that position and not really recognise the devastation that can cause out the other side, but then you have to work through that and sometimes

1:55:05 It can be, you know, sometimes it can, I think it can be a warning sign that saves a relationship rather than destroys it. Right. This is back to your empathy. Yeah. That’s interesting because, yeah, so you’re about empathy and kind of maybe even forgiving and maybe trying to understand what’s wrong with that relationship.

1:55:20 Yeah, absolutely. Do you do any counseling for couples? Yeah, sometimes I speak to couples. All individuals that will come to me, though I’m like open to that for some reason, I’ve just never spoken to that many couples, but lots of the time I’m talking to people who are in some phase of their relationship, though the majority of my clients are single and they just want to meet more people. Sometimes I speak to people and they have got themselves in some complicated situations and something I try and emphasize is not having any judgment, you know, not bringing anything towards that.

1:55:50 You know, if someone comes to me, I just want to listen to them, let them know it’s or right and that there’s and try and create a plan where they can help themselves and I think people need that and what’s weird about our society at the moment is perhaps I don’t know if it’s because we don’t have especially in England like we don’t have you know not that many people are religious we don’t have like such a sense of community and neighborhood we all much more people are living by themselves now as opposed to with extended families I think people are missing someone to talk to and to communicate with about how they’re feeling and that’s part of the reason that people like me exist is is because there’s some need out there that isn’t currently being served.

1:56:26 Hayley, you’re wise beyond your years. Have you heard that before? Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. What’s next for you?

1:56:33 I mean, what’s in five years out, I know a few years ago you were gonna be the superhero and you know, you were gonna be the date game queen, crushing all the guys on Oxford Circus or the sexy dating girl, but like now what is the next five years for you? Like what do you wanna be? You know what? I think I’ve become much less obsessed with becoming like queen of dating or like having some kind of like media success or YouTube stardom, what I’m actually trying to do is I’m trying to restructure my business so that I have, I can keep promoting my message and put better options out there for people in ways that are, it’s really important for me to do things that are affordable because I very much remember being extremely skinned and then redusting my lifestyle.

1:57:13 So I have more of a lifestyle because my career, which is often fed into my personal life and my social life has dominated my whole life like I don’t know a long time now and I actually want to reclaim some normal life to do other things that I’m interested in so right now I’m working on a YouTube web series I’m writing a novel like a dramatic web series yeah okay fictional web series around dating and relationships you’re starring in or directing yeah doing doing everything so that’ll be out on my YouTube but I hope by kind of the spring or easter time that’s my goal that’s cool yeah because like you know I think ironically I got into the world of dating because I wanted to be be a writer and I had certain ideas and messages that I wanted to convey and suddenly I got sucked onto this like this funny career trajectory which has been so rewarding and so amazing and I absolutely want to keep working with people, my clients, the people I work with and my passion, they’re so valuable to me and so important to me but I also want to go back to thinking about other methods and means of communication by how I can deliver that message and I don’t think it’s necessarily all about running webinars And right. Yeah, how’s business? How is the webinar? How is that all good?

1:58:21 I mean like I can say that I my business was I struggled with it. Like I wouldn’t say I’m a natural Business person like, you know, my brain doesn’t really work in that way I also didn’t have a business plan or a game plan myself It’s something I very much fell into which I’ve had to kind of retrospectively build up And it’s only really in the past year that my business became profitable where I wasn’t like in desperate need of money slash rent slash food and on that real baseline of not having anything now businesses is going really quite well and I think that as time is going on is I’m much less bothered by how much money I have my main concerns now about having more free time for myself to do other projects I’m interested in and also to reach people in more interesting and creative ways Because I’ve never really felt comfortable with being a pick-up guru or being a dating expert in the conventional dot-com business sense of the world that’s never going to feel like me.

1:59:24 So I feel like as long as I’m expressing myself and doing stuff that fulfills me, that’s what I want to be happy and I’m much less bothered, thank God, finally about whether I’m in the daily mail or about whether the pictures are presenting about me in a certain way or not. So that was a bit of an obsession for a little while. Yeah. I think like, but honestly, you know, there was so many, the amount of TV shows I’ve nearly starred in and pilots I’ve created and contracts and management and oh my God, like by the end of that, it was just like a bizarre wild goose chase.

1:59:55 There was a road to road to nowhere and actually took my investment away from things I really care about. And I feel like actually at peace with thinking, well, I don’t really need that. As long as I’m reaching some people, as long as my message is getting out there some way. I don’t need a spectacular vehicle and a makeup team in order to do that. I’ve done it my own guerrilla way and on some level it’s permeating, on some level it’s resonating and working and I’m cool with that.

2:00:21 Okay. Interesting. So you don’t necessarily need to be that next star or be in that TV show. I mean, you’ve done TV anyways, but it was a lot, you were really getting into that whole game. Yeah, but then it was driving it in the wrong direction. Once I’ve reinvested in my clients and my ideology and my own content, that’s what has always grown my business.

2:00:41 Yeah. People can sense, again, congruence and genuineness. That’s what I found with this show, is that people get it. And I think maybe on the surface you would come across on these things and these television appearances as this person. But I guess if people don’t really feel the content of the message, or ultimately you caring and giving it a shit about them and guiding them, I don’t think they really follow you in a long term.

2:01:06 I don’t think so. I love the webinar idea. I think you can teach a lot through non-direct methods. I think, you know, we’re humans. We love narratives.

2:01:14 And so like, that’s a great way to teach sometimes and not by being the one on stage and speaking to camera. So I think that’s exciting. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’m really happy.

2:01:24 Like I’ve just launched my Hayley Quinn club, which is cool. So on both my websites, they now have a subscription members area where they get all All of my, all of these massive amount of video products I built up, weekly web tutorials, monthly webinars, Facebook groups, support communities, and it means that for a really low cost for people, I can engage with people and I can speak to people and it’s not, and that’s really having that. It’s not only giving me the ability to communicate with people more, but it’s also genuinely decluttering my life and allowing me to focus on one core thing, which means that my, You know, my energy levels are good and I’m out there ready to create and do stuff that’s more, you know, exciting and newer and interesting ways to get that message to people.

2:02:05 Right. And you’re inspiring a community, which feels good, right? Yeah, I love it. You’re actually communicating and people are like, oh, I’m getting real value out of you and you get to see them and… Yeah.

2:02:13 And my guys are the best. Right. You know, like I haven’t… I’m historically terrible at webinars, I should probably say this. Like I just…

2:02:20 I think the content is very solid, but from a technical perspective, if anyone is going screw it up. It will be me. I’ll forget to press record. Last night I forgot to plug my Mac in and I got it down to 3% battery and then had to like just about ended the webinar in time. I’ve had all kinds that I had once. I was doing it in a conservatory which didn’t have adequate lighting in the sunset and I got plunged into darkness. So I think that, but through all of that, my, that my supporters and my clients and people who are members of my site, you know, they get that they support me and I get so much back as well and that you know I love hearing from them I love them participating with them so it’s just been yeah it’s been awesome yeah we like tribes as humans so there’s something there’s something to that that’s hard to describe and when you tell people like it’s the community people are like yeah yeah yeah but I mean like if you really have people that are like-minded and I have some great people that watch the show it’s like it really feels good and especially when like you see them making changes for the better for their own lives like no it’s simple stuff right yeah stuff like that and on your website it’s great you can go in and you can go one way you can swipe left as a male and right as a woman and so you can get kind of like customized content which I think is great it’s great it’s a I don’t know

2:03:32 It’s great for you it’s a it’s a great thing that makes you different yeah it’s so much work I’ve just got to put that out there I have to double up on everything you know I’m just gonna try to start to launch my female orientated YouTube channel so all the time I’m like whoa I’ve got to do this twice over but I think you know what like men and women’s problems are different and I just do not want to be the person that gives what I think is I try to make a quick buck out of people with generic rubbish advice that honestly plays on people’s fears or miss out on things that just aren’t true you know like the pickup community it’s always these five secret words will you know make any woman love you and for women it’s like the one secret that if you know it he’ll never forget you.

2:04:13 And it’s like… I love your voice changes there. They’re great. I mean, what a load of rubbish, you know, and it’s like, it is not an easy position for me to come to. It says like, if you want to sort this area of your life out, like anything, it’s a bit of a journey.

2:04:24 It’s about you investing it consistently and that doesn’t have to be financial. That’s just you learning things, putting stuff into action over a long period of time. It’s not a fantastic business model, and it’s not what people want to hear, but it’s actually the truth and it is what works. I know because I’ve seen so many people who have created, you know, the most ridiculous levels of change in their life, you know, who have gone way beyond what my expectations were or what they even expected of themselves.

2:04:50 And so I know it can be done, you know, and I think that people really have a lot more power than they recognize to change things. Yeah, and it’s like you said, I mean, you should think of it like a university degree or, you know, like some other skill that you want to get good at and you got to put the time in and stop watching those Hollywood movies. Yeah. I always ask everyone that comes on here a few questions at the end, I’m going to hit you with them.

2:05:10 If you could make a phone call to the 20 year old Hayley Quinn and give that young lady a bit of advice, what would you tell her? I’m guessing you just got off the AIM chat with your man in Las Vegas. I’d rather on that. 20 years old. What would you tell her?

2:05:22 What advice would you give her? Dump your boyfriend. Don’t ever dye your hair blonde. You don’t need to be so afraid about not ever having any money. Money will come to you and you will find it and you will always have a place to live.

2:05:35 More risks, be more comfortable within yourself, I would say don’t and start I would also wish that I told her this is gonna sound ridiculous I’d be like get onto social media get into it it’s gonna be big in the future. So yeah and also don’t be a dick you know and don’t think it’s all about your outside physical appearance keep focusing on what you want to say and understand your permission to say that. Okay wow that’s the most advice I’ve ever got from that question that’s good best advice you’ve ever received business or personal?

2:06:02 Business advice would be you’re only 20% of your way through the shit that you’re going to go through in order to get what you want. That put things into perspective because I have felt like you have no idea like I’ve had my websites hacked, I’ve had my business fall to pieces like at least three times over I have cried so many days about the business and you know what you kind of feel like after you’ve invested you’re so much you should think like have I not reached the end of the rainbow yet? Where is it? And for someone to actually level with me and be like, you know what, if you want to be here, you got to keep working.

2:06:34 You know, this is like, this is, you’re only a little, you’re only at the start of your journey to get to where you want to be. And that was a, that was actually a great reality check. That is a good reality. Some people say that if you knew what was involved in some of the projects you take on, you never would do them. And maybe that’s a good thing.

2:06:48 Yeah. That’s definitely been true about a lot of things in my life. That was business advice, personal advice. What’s the best personal advice I’ve ever been given? Yeah.

2:06:58 Anything your parents told you or do you wish you would have ignored everything they said? Absolutely not. I’m sorry mum and dad, but you screwed me up. Yeah, they fuck you up your mommy dad No, I think the probably the best part. What is the best personal advice I’ve ever been given?

2:07:10 I don’t know. I think honestly I think that I’m gonna go with my nan. She said she said she’s had a couple of great things to me She said the only person that you bore is yourself. She says at first you don’t succeed. Try try and try again and she always taught me to be weirdly she always taught me to be kind to other people and that kindness was a good thing and a value that’s worth perpetuating. My nan brought me up when I was younger and really I think so much of what I teach weirdly goes back to some of the old-fashioned values that she drilled into me at a young age.

2:07:48 The only person you bore is yourself. What does that mean? That means if you’re bored you’ve made yourself bored. It’s not like it’s not like the world around you is boring. Yeah. You know and I think that’s right. I think like you know when you’re talking about your personal narrative so many people are like oh but this thing happened to me and then it was it was terrible and then they just make out that they’re like this victim and you know what stuff does happen in life but you know it’s wrong to look at the outside world and to think that everybody else has had a privileged smooth ride and you’re the only one that’s had like a bumpy road instead you know everyone has their dramas and everyone has their problems and their things to overcome and the best that we can do is just try and accept it and to carry on and not to look at other people you know with too much envy yeah the victim narrative does you know no favors no one wants to hear it quite honestly and you don’t even want to tell it to yourself because it it disempowers you you know you just need to you need to just kind of accept what’s happened to you and move forward and not be tried because otherwise you will tell yourself this story like oh and then that happened and then that person did that and then all of a sudden you’re not in the presence last bit of advice question for you to the 20 year old listening out there, male or female, who wants to grow up one day and be a pickup artist or be a

2:08:58 Internationally renowned dating guru like you, what advice do you give them? You know what, I would say that you don’t want to model yourself on somebody else as in any area or any respect of your life. I think when I tried to pretend to be a male pickup artist and then when I tried to be a polished, pristine, TV friendly dating expert, both times didn’t really go my way. You know, when things have worked in my favorite is when I’ve actually just listened to my gut instincts. It sounds really cheesy, but it’s true. And when I’ve done things that I felt were morally the right thing to do and that felt in line with myself on a really, really deep level. So the more that people can actually take time out to introspect and to tune into what they’re thinking and feeling rather than trying to be this other person, I think that you’ll get a lot further that way.

2:09:47 Words from a wise woman, Hayley you are really the opposite of what I thought you might be and that’s a horrible thing to say because I’m I meet people all the time and I’m very open-minded but you know your media profile says one thing about you or maybe that was the old you or this you and people don’t know I guess people I guess people are suspicious anyways when they hear about guru or a dating expert and stuff but um but you’re the real deal and it’s I’m really glad that we had this time to talk because even your five-minute YouTube video doesn’t do you justice that doesn’t do anyone justice really So no, you have some really good wise stuff here and I could really even tell by these questions people asked you on YouTube Like I think I think people have a genuine respect for you and for what you’re what you’re saying out there We’ll find out after this drops I will get the hate but no, I’m really glad we talked. I think you have some great ideas and a good representation So maybe my phobia of this area will wane in the future or maybe you’ve just wrapped it all up I would hope so So thanks so much. If you’re listening to us on iTunes, you can come see our extremely good looking faces. You can swipe right or left. I don’t even know Tinder anymore. I’ve been out of the game that long. I don’t know either. I don’t even know which way to swipe.

2:10:55 I don’t know what I would have done with Tinder in the day, but I feel for all the people out there that are doing it. If you want to look her up, you can find Hayley, I’m sure at your website, haleyquin.com. Absolutely. And I have to say, because when I spoke to my business partner, he is a massive, massive, massive, massive fan of your show. And if you go to HaileyQuinn.com, which is H-A-Y-L-E-Y-Q-I-N-N.com forward slash London Real, everybody that’s listening to the show can get 30 days free access to every product that I’ve ever made.

2:11:20 Love it. Which is pretty cool. So I think there’s some good stuff on there. So if you go to HaileyQuinn.com forward slash London Real, that would be the space. Love it.

2:11:28 I’m going to go and check it all out. And you’ve got the female YouTube channel coming up. I love that. I love the fact that you’re doing that very smart move and I like the fact that you’re on YouTube. You’re on there a lot.

2:11:37 You’ve got great videos. That’s how you can tell if someone knows what the hell they’re doing on YouTube, is if they care about their thumbnails. And she’s got great thumbnails with the yellow font. You know, it’s all good as YouTubers. You got to be careful with us YouTubers.

2:11:47 We’re a little crazy. So there you go. Hayley, we say it’s about the journey on London Real. You’ve had a really impressive journey. I don’t think people know the kind of journey you had.

2:11:55 And it’s nice to see that you kind of went around this way and you had that crazy female version of the PUA cycle that you see. And so I didn’t know it would happen that way, but it did. So thanks so much for your time. And I wish you all the best. Thank you so much for having me.

2:12:09 Pleasure. Love it. All right. Take care. Bye.