Questions with Nick Hoss – Q & A Tuesday
by Nick Hoss
Here are some blunt answers to quick questions I get asked the most.
[quote]Is this your full-time job?[/quote]
Absolutely. I have a couple of side projects/businesses but this is what I do.
[quote]Does you family know about your job?[/quote]
Yes. It’s not exactly something you can hide, nor something I feel the need to hide.
[quote]Do you night game or just day game?[/quote]
Both. I like to have fun on the town with my friends and love night game for that reason. I spend most of my weekends teaching day game, so that is when I do it. Nowadays, my day game is mostly if I’m grabbing a coffee or buying groceries. It’s engrained.
I don’t treat this stuff as a “game” where I wear a fuzzy hat and keep score. I hate that shit supremely and if it wasn’t for SEO purposes I’d never mention the words pick up artist.
I just party or buy groceries and girls just kind of enter the picture.
[quote]How long have you been doing this?[/quote]
Learning, almost four years. Teaching, almost two years.
[quote]Who are some of your influences?[/quote]
LS guys–Braddock, Cajun, Dahunter, Soul, Tenmagnet, (and a little Venture and Vercetti nowadays)
Outside LS–Tyler Durden, Sinn, (old) Vin Dicarlo, Natural Tim, Ratisse and a couple other guys you’ve probably never heard of. Oh ya, David D to start with of course.
Outside PU–David Deida
I picked one method (Love Systems) and stuck to it for the first six months before I even explored other methods so I wasn’t conflicting advice/opinions. Build a foundation first. Not all advice is created equal.
(Check out my PUA Reading List to see exactly what I followed when learning.)
[quote]Describe Your Style[/quote]
I like to open with spontaneous, situational openers if I can because it’s very low-key. If not, I’ll go direct. I usually try a role play or tease to spike buying temperature and then I’m into qualification and comfort. If I get some of those going, it’s game over. A lot of my personality is conveyed through storytelling and just knowing my purpose, but I’ve worked hard to live a supremely diverse life. I try to convey a lot of passion, purpose and understanding of the girl. When it hits, it hits very hard. When it doesn’t, I next the girl quickly.
My style used to involve a lot of PUA date stuff, but now I just gauge by the girl. I usually just meet up with girls if we’re both out.
[quote]Do you use routines? Natural game?[/quote]
I use what works. I definitely don’t use scripted stuff, but I do know where I’m leading the conversation. I like the idea of self-amusement within social boundaries, not doing things for attention to show you don’t care what people think. I keep a mental picture of what the coolest guys in the room would do.
[quote]You’re tall. It must be easy for you?[/quote]
It certainly doesn’t hurt, but it sure didn’t help before I learned this stuff. It’s one less reason to get blown out; you still have to put in the work though.
[quote]How much money do you make?[/quote]
More than any job my English degree would get me. Less than what will keep me doing it full-time forever. A lot of what I make goes to expenses of travel, seminar rooms, etc. It’s more a self-proprietorship than a job.
[quote]Where is your favorite place to meet girls?[/quote]
New York. There could be zero girls there and I’d be happy. I also really like Texas girls.
[quote]Which city has the best girls?[/quote]
Here’s my list:
Hottest Girls: L.A.
Best for SNLs: Stockholm
Best Day Game: N.Y.C.
[quote]Which city is the worst?[/quote]
It’s a tough one between London and San Francisco. London is a very cool city, but the girls aren’t that pretty and they’re bland to talk to. SF girls aren’t my flavor but they can be some of the most interesting.
[quote]I just took a bootcamp. What should I do now?[/quote]
What kind of results do you want? If you just want a girlfriend or to feel like you have control over your dating life, go out and talk to girls every weekend for six weeks, then at least six times per month for two months. Commit yourself to change, get what you need, get out.
If you want to be a PUA Superstar, go out five days/nights per week for three to six months, give up any form of free time and social life, then rebuild it from the ground up, still going out every weekend for a few years.
[quote]What’s the advantage of taking a bootcamp when I can just read some stuff on the Internet?[/quote]
A bootcamp cuts the learning curve greatly and sets you on the right path (if you have the right instructor/company). Instead of paying for a year’s worth of bar tabs learning through trial and error and all of the bad advice out there, you just get a big jumpstart and save yourself a lot of agony.
The very best I’ve met and the fastest learners have all taken bootcamps. Invest in success and you’ll get dividends.
[quote]How much does a 1 on 1 cost?[/quote]
Read my Nick Hoss 1 on 1 page and talk to our program manager Jeremy. A lot of factors go into a 1 on 1, primarily travel cost, availability and duration.
[quote]When will you be coming to [my city]?[/quote]
I’ll serve guys anywhere if my schedule allows. Send me an e-mail if you’d like me to come to your city. (I ended up going to South Africa because somebody mentioned me in a tweet and it turned into a bigger idea.)
If you have any more questions, post them in the comments section.
Hey Nick,
Thanks a lot for this stuff man! Great advise (and very good explanations)
Quick question:
How do you share this stuff, the Love System method, with your friends?
Wouldn’t it look weird to some if you just come up and give them magic bullets?
There are many friends in the same place I was, and I would love to help them, but I’m not sure how they would take it!
Not too uncommon of a question actually and one I wondered myself when I first took my bootcamp.
The old dogma was “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Don’t tell anybody about Fight Club.” For the most part, that was pretty good advice when guys were running around in costumes doing magic tricks. That’s not the case so much anymore.
However, many–not all–of your friends will be put-off if you just say, “Hey, I found this company that teaches these secrets of how to pick up girls.” It’s just a little too much too fast.
The best thing to do would be to actually show them in a natural setting. If you’re in a bar and you do a good approach and bring the girls over. That way, your buddies can see that it’s not some unfathomable concept. The evidence is right there. They also have a platform to ask, “How did you do that?” and then you’re just telling them. It’s kind of link ‘you asked, so I told’ kind of thing.
Another method is to send over a newsletter, article, link to twitter, etc. that is pretty basic and tame with some practical, non-woo-woo PUA advice in it. That’s why we write these things after all. (You may be surprised at how many actually have heard of this stuff in passing already too.)
In other words, if you want to introduce people, warm them up to it. It’s like ‘boiling a frog’.
Thanks for getting me on your newsletter, Nick! I gotta say one of the best things I got out of it was leaning against something in a high traffic area and pulling girls into you! You’re a gangster. Look forward to more newsletters!
Also what happened when your friends at home learned you were a Pickup superstar?
- DJ
Thanks man. I’m glad you like it. It takes forever to write because it’s so long! That’s an interesting question.
My chill friends think it’s cool as hell. For other friends, it kind of blows their reality that something like Love Systems can even exist and they just kind of smile and nod–some write it off immediately, but they’re not the ones travelling the world every weekend. I usually don’t make a big deal out of it.
I did, however, meet some guys I went to high school with and they had actually found my blog and connected the dots through another buddy of mine who teaches and they thought it was hella cool to see how I totally transformed from the guy I used to be. That was really cool.
The ones I opened yesterday were mostly moving. I always approached head on – to avoid the weirdness of chasing down a stranger with “I’ve just arrived here…what should I go to see?”
Basically I have found that indirect works. Direct doesn’t.
Yesterday I hit a load of sets and 95% of them hooked (vs 95% didn’t with direct).
My tactic was open with anything functional – “Where’s the metro?”, “Where’s the best place to get coffee?”. Whatever the answer was I’d look at the suspiciously and say “Can I trust you? I was in Porto last week and they said never trust anyone from Lisbon”…sometimes I’d follow it up with “They also said Lisbon people aren’t nice” which made them qualify to me right away.
I’d bring up the idea of a date by saying “You speak good english…we should meet up so you can teach me Portuguese”
One thing that also made a big difference is that I stopped asking “Do you speak english” before my opener…I’d just go straight into it…made things a LOT less awkward.
Any thoughts welcomed.
Ya, we call those functional things pre-openers. That’s a good call to use them in those situations. I’m curious: we’re these moving sets?
Hi Nick
Loving your work. Is there any chance you could make your tweets appear on fb? I never bother logging into twitter but I would like to read what you’re saying.
My question…do you think there are countries where direct game doesn’t work so well?
I am in Portugal and have been trying to run direct daygame – with very little success. In 15 or so approaches over two sessions only one set really hooked. The great thing is it really forced me to take stock of what I was doing and look for ways to improve
Now I’ve started trying going indirect (“Hey, just arrived in the city what stuff should I see?”) and seem to be getting much better results.
I love direct and had great success with it in Spain and the UK but I think people here are more conservative or ‘the girls pretend to be prudes’ as one local pua put it. I don’t think the language barrier helps either.
Would appreciate your thoughts…
Hi G,
Thanks for the props. I’ve considered running my tweets through to my Facebook. I autotweet about 5 times per day AND live tweet sometimes 10 times, so I don’t want to spam guys. I do run my Tumblr through there though, and that goes to both.
Portugal is a country I’m really not sure about. I know it was a little tougher daygaming in certain parts of South Africa when I was there, not due to culture but more because it’s a society where going up to a stranger means you could get robbed. It was just a culture where strangers don’t really talk to strangers. I’m not sure what to tell you because I’ve never been to Portugal, but I don’t want guys in countries outside NA or UK thinking “Oh, this won’t work for me.” I would say, however, it may require you to alter your approach, as you seem to be experimenting with. I know my buddies and I had a tough time in France because of the language barrier but Sweden wasn’t a problem. I’d really like to hear how you solve this problem
It certainly doesn’t seem to have the same effect here – the compliment seems to be ignored and off they go…
I will post back here when I get it sussed
Can’t say, never been to Portugal, haven’t seen you in set. Let me know!