You’re walking down the street and you see her. She’s incredible. She’s beautiful. You just have to pick her up. You know that she would like you if she just got to know you. So what do you do next?
This is the situation that inspired me to learn how to meet and attract women. I got to the point where it was too painful to walk down the street because I would see so many beautiful women and I didn’t know what to do. One day I finally reached the breaking point and I decided to take action.
This post will deal specifically with the first 60 seconds of approaching a woman on the street. It will give you some important tools to get comfortable approaching in a powerful and impactful way which naturally generates more attraction. This information is applicable for approaching single women and groups of women whether they are in the street or in malls or other similar locations.
I believe there are 3 keys to dramatically improving your success with street approaches and I’ll go over each of these in detail. These three keys are so important that when I apply all of them I can consistently get a date with about one out of every three women I approach. When I ignore one, my results are much less positive.
Three keys to doing street approaches are:
1 – Master your own Personal Magnetism
2 – Develop Precise Body Language Communication
3 – Pull her into your reality
Rule #1 – Master your own Personal Magnetism
Let’s face it – in most cases a woman decides if she wants to talk to you before you even open your mouth. It doesn’t matter if you are in a club or on the street. It happens so quickly that guys who are not aware of it will never see it. While you are walking up to her there is a split second that she is thinking to herself “OK, this guy looks like he is going to talk to me, do I want to talk to him or do I want to blow him off”. Similarly, if you are approaching a group of women they instinctively look at each other. In an instant they non-verbally communicate to each other (almost on an unconscious level) whether they want to talk to you or not. It’s like they are thinking, “Is this guy cool? Do we want to talk to him?”
So, first things first. If you want people to be drawn to you like a magnet then you have to become your own personal social magnet. When this happens, people will invite you into their circle of friends and they will want to hear what you have to say. Becoming a social magnet is actually very easy to do because you’ve already done it so many times in the past. However, for most people becoming a magnet is something that only happens randomly. Learning how to trigger this state is fairly easy to do and once you get use to doing it, it just gets easier and it happens faster.
You become a social magnet by having a “fun to be around” internal state. If you are happy, having fun and you are in a good mood, this is naturally reflected externally in your physiology. When this happens people generally respond well to you and are attracted to you. You will be like a magnet because people enjoy being around people that are fun. I believe there is a lot of truth in the saying “there is nothing as attractive as a happy man.” This is only natural because your environment helps to determine your reality. If you are in a good mood this tends to rub off on others in your environment. Similarly, if you’re in a bad mood or have a low energy level, are down and depressed, serious, boring or in your own world – people will not respond well to you.
How do you rev up your own personal magnetism? I have a ritual that I go through that helps to get me into the right state. I listen to music that gets me feeling good and happy (for me I listen to the Top Gun and/or Rocky soundtrack). Find out what works for you. Do this before you leave the house.
Another way of getting yourself into a playful and fun state is to use what Tony Robbins calls Power Moves. These are very simple movements that you can do with your body that automatically get you into positive, fun and playful state. Using your physiology is one of the most powerful ways of improving your internal state. There are lots of moves that you can do. One example is to raise your hands above your head at an angle and say “yes”. When you do this, do it with enthusiasm like you just won the gold metal at the Olympics and you are the happiest man in the world. Celebrate. Don’t hold back. Do this several times. It is impossible to do this and not get into a positive state. Do this right now to get an experience of how it works.
Once you’ve gotten yourself into a good state of mind you will be ready to do some warm up exercises. The best warm up exercises are simple. It can be as simple as saying something (anything) to the first person you see as you walk out of your door (“good morning/afternoon”, “what time is it”, ask for directions, say Hi or Hello and smile, do a quick opinion opener, high 5 them, etc.) If you repeat this several times then you will get warmed up really fast. This technique is great for getting shy people into a more conversational and outgoing state.
It is best to practice all of these techniques to get into the right state for approaching women. If you do, you will notice a big improvement in your results.
Rule #2 – Develop Precise Body Language Communication
If your body language is weak when you open a woman walking towards you on the street she will oftentimes just continue walking. I believe this is one of the biggest problems guys have when doing street approaches. Contrary to what some people think, women don’t do this to be rude or because they are bitchy but because they have a life. They have things to do and there is not enough time in the day for them to stop and talk to everyone that wants to talk to them.
So, opening in a powerful way is critical. The three components to doing this are:
1) Using the right energy levels
2) good timing
3) the right kind of body language that will stop them in their tracks but not make them feel threatened.
A few months ago I was in a mall with my wingman and he was opening sets. He approached about 5 sets of people and couldn’t get them to stop and talk. He said it was probably because the people in this mall were not friendly or it was too late in the day and people just wanted to get home. So, I did a little experiment. I used the same opener he was using and did it about 3 times in a row and all 3 went really well. The only difference that I was able to notice was that I was using the right amount of energy to open them, I was opening them at the right time and I was clearly communicating to them (through body language) that I was intent on talking to them (in a friendly way).
Communicating powerfully with body language is all about calibration. This starts before you even begin the approach and it only takes a fraction of a second. All you need to do is calibrate how much energy is needed to effectively open her. If it is a loud or fast moving environment then you need to use a lot of energy (speak louder and be more animated). If it is a quieter, slow moving environment then you need to use a lot less energy (speak softly and be less animated). If the woman you are stopping is walking really fast then you will need to use more energy, speak louder and be more animated. If you use too much energy you will weird them out and she will want to leave. If you use too little energy she will not want to continue talking with you because by doing so she would have to drop her energy level down. Ideally, you want to go in with just a little more energy than they have. This will take some practice.
Timing is also important. If you wait until she is right beside you then you’ve waited too long. A lot of times she will just keep walking and it will be infinitely more difficult for you to stop her once she has walked past you. It can be done – but why make things difficult. If she is walking fast you will need to stop her sooner than if she is walking more slowly. It will take some time to learn the right timing.
Lastly, strong confident body language that communicates that you are committed to talking with them is very important. This can be communicated very easily by taking a small step in front of them (not blocking their path but rather stepping into it slightly) and putting your hand out in front of you at about waist level with the palm facing down and pointing in their direction. If you step too much in front of them you will scare them and they will feel threatened. Don’t do this. If your hand is too high you run the risk of making them feel a little threatened as well.
Finally, you deliver your opening line – “Hey guys…”
Rule #3 – Pull her into your reality
A new problem seems to reveal itself when you start to get good at doing street approaches. The problem seems to be twofold. For me about half of the sets that opened well were really short interactions and the other half turned into really fun and somewhat lengthy conversations. However, they all had one thing in common – they all came to an end too soon. I wanted to continue talking with them and I could tell by their body language and how they were responding to me that they wanted to continue talking as well. It was like there was some kind of social pressure to end the interaction immediately after they answered my question or gave their opinion. There was usually an awkward pause which was followed by them excusing themselves (we have to go, nice talking to you, hope that helps, etc.).
The solution is so simple and easy to do that I would have never thought of it. Now, I think it’s one of the most powerful techniques in my arsenal for street pickup that you can use in the first 60 seconds of your interaction. The solution is to distract them out of their reality and pull them into your reality.
Here’s my theory on why this works and how to do it:
When a woman is walking down the street she is generally focused on getting to some destination. In our example, let’s say she is going to the mall. If she is walking towards the mall and someone stops her and asks for the time, she gives an automatic response. It takes no thought to look at her watch, answer the question and continue walking towards her goal. When someone asks her for directions, she stops, give directions, smiles and continues walking towards her goal. It is such an automatic response that she doesn’t even have to think. I believe that it is this automatic conditioned response combined with social pressure which almost forces a woman to excuse herself after a few minutes. It will happen the majority of the time – even if she is really enjoying talking to you and wants to continue doing so.
The solution to this problem is to pull her out of her reality and bring her into yours. I do this by simply turning her body 90 degrees or more. This does 3 things simultaneously:
1 – It interrupts her thought process (of going to the mall).
2 – It takes her focus off of her goal because she can no longer see the path that she was on
3 – It changes the dynamic of the interaction so that she is no longer running her automatic program of “answer your question then go”. Now instead of giving a quick answer to your opinion and continuing on her way, she is now in a conversation with you and her attention is no longer on her goal. It is also like you are pulling her out of her reality (going to the mall) and pulling her into your reality.
So the obvious question is “how do you turn a woman’s body (especially a complete stranger) and pull her into your reality?” There are lots of strategies for doing this. I made it simple on myself and built this right into the first story of my routine stack. It now flows really naturally so I don’t even have to think about this step anymore. A really easy way for a beginner to do the body turn is to do it right after your opening line just after you start telling your first story. I do this by taking a few steps around her and to the side so that she has to turn her body about 90 or more degrees to face me while I am telling my first routine/story. This is a really easy and powerful technique for people to master. Unfortunately, its a little harder to convey how to do this explaining it through text. We teach lots of different ways to do the body turn at our workshops at Project San Francisco. Right after you get into the first story is the best time to turn her body. This is because it is socially unacceptable and rude for people to cut you off when you are in the middle of telling a story. A lifetime of social programming forces them to turn to face you while you tell them your story. Anything else is socially uncomfortable. Have you ever got stuck listening to a long- ass boring story that you absolutely did not want to hear from a person you did not want to talk to but you stayed there and listened anyways? That is social programming at its finest! Now you can use this social phenomenon to your advantage. Of course, you will want to make sure your interaction is fun for both you and them.
In case you are curious, my success rate for opening women in the streets on the days when I apply all three of these techniques has been as good as 62%, of which 80% would lead to getting her phone number and 75% of those would lead to a date. So the end result has been about 37% of my cold approaches would lead to a date or roughly every 1 out of 3 women I approached in the street (or mall). If you want to dramatically improve your results in street pickup just take a few minutes to turn on your own personal magnetism, use precision body language and pull her into your reality.