Flakes in dating aren't as enjoyable

So, you’re determined to get “this dating stuff” handled and you’re going about it the right way. You’re going out lots and approaching a bunch of women every day and night. You’re able to get into good, attractive conversations with girls. You’re even starting to get phone numbers consistently.

Then you start following up on these numbers… and they don’t respond. You don’t get call backs and they don’t respond to your text messages. In other words, every number flakes.

How to deal with flaky numbers

When you get to this stage, don’t fall into the trap of obsessing over your “precious numbers”. Don’t be the guy who agonizes for hours trying to construct the perfect text message or structure the perfect phone conversation.

Don’t be the guy who persists for weeks with girls over email, text and phone, exhausting yourself emotionally and mentally to try to come up with ways to “win back” the girl who you thought liked you but hasn’t responded to your last 48 text messages.

I’m not an expert on text and phone game, but I know that Braddock and Savoy have that stuff nailed. If you haven’t already, read their article on phone game to figure out the best ways of following up with women.

But no matter how tight your game is and how strong your follow ups are, you will still never be able to get every girl you take a phone number from to meet up with you again.

Maybe she just wasn’t that attracted to you and you just didn’t read the signs right. A lot of women give out their number because they don’t want to be rude, even if they never plan on answering when you text or call.

As you get more success, you’ll learn to recognize signals of attraction that mean a woman really does want to meet up with you again, instead of passively agreeing to give you her phone number just so she doesn’t come off as rude.

For example, when I set up a date, I make sure she genuinely is interested in talking with me again. If a woman starts telling me, “Oh yeah, you can try calling me and I’ll see if I’m free,” that’s not enough commitment for me. I’ll walk away rather than take a flaky number.

Or she may have been into you in that moment (she was attracted to you) but you didn’t build enough comfort with her. So later on, when you contact her, that spike of emotional attraction is gone and she can’t logically rationalize why she likes you.

There could also be something completely external going on. Maybe an ex-boyfriend got back in touch with her, she met someone else, she’s busy or she lost her phone. Who knows and frankly who cares? There are so many other things that could have happened, why waste your time trying to figure it out?

Obviously you should keep continually working on your social skills and your ability to build attraction, comfort etc. (if you don’t understand these critical phases of the Emotional Progression model, you need to read Magic Bullets). But given all this, you should MOVE ON from flaky numbers.

So long as you are consistent in who you are and what you do, there will be a steady stream of women you meet who are into you. The trick is to focus on these girls and cut the flakes out of your life quickly.

The 80-20 rule

Let’s apply a sales analogy.

In sales, you start out trying to make every sale work. You hang on every phone call and every hint of a potential sale. You chase and follow up everything. You keep chasing until you get a clear “no” from the customer. Even then, sometimes you stay in touch and chase from time to time.

You learn very quickly that you’re wasting a lot of your time. You’re chasing bad leads. It is better to move on quickly, stop wasting your time and spend time finding GOOD leads.

Ever heard of Pareto’s Law? It’s also known as the 80-20 rule. In a business context, it’s the principle that 80% of your sales revenue comes from 20% of your clients. Applied to your dating life, it is the principle that 80% of your successes will come from 20% of your efforts and prospects. If one in five girls you talk to ends up meeting with you for a date, you are doing something right.

Throw out any ideas you have of being a “pick up artist” with a 76.4% close ratio. That stuff will mess you  up. In the real world, you talk to a bunch of women, be the best, most attractive man you can be, and you find women who are into you. You will also, along the way, meet a bunch of women who aren’t into you.

The best guys with women in the world still can’t get EVERY woman. Who the hell wants every woman anyway? Looks aren’t everything. Even if she is hot, if she doesn’t dig your sense of humour or the kind of person you are, do you really want to pretend to be someone else just so you can sleep with her?

Talk to all the women you find attractive, and focus on the ones that you click with. These are your good leads.

As you get better, you’ll be able to filter out the women that you’re not going to click with more quickly and waste less of your time.

Use your resources wisely

So if a girl doesn’t respond to your initial text or phone call, don’t bother chasing her – it is almost always not worth following up. If a girl doesn’t initially agree to meet for a date or seems to be forever “busy”, she is most probably blowing you off but trying not to be rude about it. If after one date she’s flaky about meeting up again, again don’t waste your time.

A girl that wants to see you again will make it reasonably easy for you by agreeing to meet up or, if she is busy, by suggesting an alternative.

It may be worth occasionally touching base with people (sometimes their situation changes, e.g. they dump their boyfriend), but don’t agonize over it or make it a priority. You should focus your time on str onger, more immediate leads.

Good luck, and remember that time is your most precious asset in this life.

Soul

Karma's a bitch

As a dating coach for the premier dating training company in the world, I have the privilege of meeting a lot of successful people. Many of my clients are respected businessmen or people who are otherwise successful in their fields, but just lack the success they want to have with their dating lives (which is where Love Systems comes in).

Getting better with anything in life often involves modelling people who are already successful at it – which is why clients watch us approaching women when we run live dating workshops. So to be successful yourself, it’s important to be able to IDENTIFY success.

At first, all success (in dating or anything else) looks the same. Wow, that guy has a big house, he has a fast car, and he has a beautiful woman by his side! It’s easy to think to yourself, “I’ve got to be like him!”

But dig a little deeper and examine how he got these things. Did he earn them through his hard work and integrity? Or were these things handed to him on a plate? Worse still, did he get them through lying and cheating people.

I like to consider myself a good man, but my ethical behaviour has a purely selfish motivation. If I am good to the world and the people around me, I know that the world and people around me will ultimately be good to me. You reap what you sow.

What happens when you cheat on a woman?

Some time ago, a friend of mine was cheating on his wife. It eventually broke down the marriage, they got divorced and my friend moved in with the other woman he had been seeing. A few months later, that woman left him for another man that she had been seeing on the side. He reaped what he had sowed.

Nick Savoy, widely regarded as one of the top experts on relationship management, makes the excellent point that we should never lie to women. If you start a relationship with a woman by lying to her – about what you do, who you are or who you know (typical things men often lie about!) – you create a foundation for that relationship full of cracks.

That relationship will ultimately crumble, and while you are in it, neither of you will be happy because you feel the strain of those cracks.

This is why most women become disappointed when they get into relationships with guys they initially found attractive. Men that don’t understand the principles outlined in Magic Bullets try all sorts of weird things to impress women, like buying them flowers, taking them out for expensive dinners or offering to buy them champagne in a club.

If a man even does get to the point where he sleeps with a woman after that (and believe me, it doesn’t happen as often as you might think), then she eventually sees him for the weak man he really is. They may date for another couple of months, but the relationship will crumble and she will start sleeping with other men.

Truth always comes out

I see the same thing happening in business as well. Sometimes we see a company being really “successful” even though we know they don’t have the healthiest methods of getting there.

A friend of mine and fellow Love Systems Daytime Dating instructor, Kisser, is a huge fan of Apple Macs. He’s been in the computing industry for a long time and knows for a fact that most of the real innovation (including the mouse, wireless internet and touch screen technology) has come from Apple.

But for a long time Microsoft reigned supreme though its distribution network, advertising, monopolizing and legal safeguarding. Now, in the economic downturn we are experiencing, Microsoft’s profits are faltering and Apple just announced a significant increase on profit from last year. Microsoft has cut thousands of people from its workforce. Apple hasn’t even fired their janitor.

How did this happen? At the heart of it, Apple created superior products and now the world is starting to see that. How m any friends do you know with an iPhone, an iPod or a MacBook? It’s been increasing every year.

It took some time for the harvest to come, but Apple and Microsoft are both reaping what they sowed.

Set healthy foundations when you date women

Don’t be blinded by the apparent “success” of someone or something. Look a little deeper at how it was achieved, and realise that there are healthy and unhealthy ways to achieve it. The unhealthy ways ultimately result in failure and unhappiness.

Here are some actions points to consider for your dating life:

• Pick your dating gurus carefully. Look at HOW they achieved their success as well as their results.
• Don’t lie to women. If you don’t want to talk about something, don’t talk about it, but don’t lie.
• Don’t cheat on women. If you don’t want an exclusive relationship with her, don’t pretend that you do.
• Don’t try to manipulate women into sleeping with you. Become a stronger man so that she WANTS to be with you.
• Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not. She’ll eventually find out.

Jeremy Soul