Pickup 101 – Art of Rapport Workshop Excerpts

Pickup 101 – Art of Rapport Workshop Excerpts

Arichive : Pickup 101 – Art of Rapport Workshop Excerpts

Pickup 101’s Art of Rapport workshop is designed to help guys improve their day game and their rapport. Pickup 101’s approach to daytime gaming is unparalleled. There is no one in the community teaching it better than these guys. It is their signature piece, in my opinion. And their teaching of rapport is solid as well, although I felt there was one important aspect of rapport that was left out.

(Note: This review was written right after I took the workshop, before I was a Pickup 101 instructor)

Pickup 101 has two main workshops. The first workshop is the Art of Attraction, which focuses on the first three minutes of the interaction, including banter, body language, kino (touch) and improvisational skills.

Their second weekend workshop is the Art of Rapport and focuses on both daytime approaches and rapport, the next step of get-to-know-you that should happen only after you’ve built attraction with the girl.

At first it seemed a bit arbitrary that day game was thrown in together with rapport training. The reason, it turns out, is because when approaching women during the day, you can go into rapport much quicker with her.

This is in contrast to approaching a woman in a bar at night, where you might walk up to her and banter with her for a few minutes without revealing any personal information before going into rapport.

In AoR (Art of Rapport worskshop), we first worked on rapport. They taught some excellent techniques to improve your personal storytelling. The students were instructed to come with a personal story. The instructors helped you refine that story to make it more poignant. We also practiced getting to the underlying issues when talking to a woman. For example, if you find out where she’s from, keep digging deeper and find underlying issues of why she moved from there, what her family situation is, and her other personal motivations.

On the second and third day, we worked on different techniques of approaching women during the day. There were several workshops led by multiple instructors where the students got to do practice approaches on one another. You got to feel what it was like to approach a person and to be approached. There were several types of approaches including single and double women standing and sitting, and stopping a woman walking in your direction.

Lance Mason is brilliant and has pioneered what is, in my opinion, the best way to approach a woman during the day. A woman shopping alone in the supermarket is in a non-social mode. She’s thinking about the produce and what she’s going to have for dinner next week, instead of engaging in meaningful conversation. Pickup 101 teaches to first engage her in a social situation such as asking her what aisle a food is in, asking for directions, or asking if she knows what time it is.

After engaging her in a social situation, you can then either banter with her (“You don’t know what aisle the scooters are in? You are so fired as my personal shopper!”). Or you can be more direct and say “Actually I was kidding, I just wanted to say hi to you. My name is Eric.”

Pickup 101 has also pioneered what they call the “Movie Moment” approach. This involves a super-direct approach where they teach their students to actually try to get more nervous and harness that nervousness to create a powerful approach. It is as direct as you can possibly be. This method is amazingly powerful.

On Saturday and Sunday of the workshop, the instructors took the students out in the field to approach women. I approached around 40 groups of women. I got into meaningful conversation with about 20 of them, and exchanged e-mail/phone numbers with 7 of them. I went on an “instant date” with a very cute girl that invited me out for coffee. I was amazed at how easy and receptive women were, especially compared to doing approaches at night where it seems women are so easily bored by so many men approaching them.

Two women whom I approached using the Pickup 101 method actually said to me ‘that was pretty smooth the way you came up to me.’ Another woman said ‘Wow, that was ballsy,’ after I used a direct method of opening.

I finished the day sitting in Union Square park with this hot red-head artist girl. It was raining and she invited me under her umbrella and showed me the pictures she was drawing. Towards the end of our conversation the sun started to shine through the rain and we began looking for rainbows. Pretty romantic.

Lance Mason, the head guru at Pickup 101, has some mind-blowing theories and there are reasons why they call him “sensei.” He describes the difference between direct and indirect approach as:

direct = intense and sincere

indirect = playful and flirting

Direct, he says, should be used in quieter situations, like places during the day, where there is less ‘social noise’ to overcome. You just having the cajones to walk up to her will generate attraction. Indirect is more appropriate for busier situations where it may take some more time to generate interest.

In terms of rapport, he defines it as the man overcoming intense obstacles to find such unique things in a woman that he decides to make himself vulnerable to her.

These are some huge concepts to think about, but also some very good ways to frame learning about approach and rapport.

There was one area where I felt Pickup 101 fell short in terms of teaching rapport. At one point in an open discussion, I asked the question “At what point in the rapport process would you want to kiss a girl?” The answer to this question is not trivial, in my opinion.

While they did answer the question in a way, they also missed an important opportunity to discuss something which other gurus in the community teach.

The answer to my question came a week later while listening to a Juggler podcast. “If you’re standing in a bar with a girl you’ve just approached, at what point do you ask her to go sit down with you alone and talk more? At what point do you show interest? At what point do you state your interest in her? At what point do you say ‘we should go out on a date.’? When do you escalate the interaction?”

The best time to escalate with a woman is at the high point of the conversation. But not the high point where she’s laughing at one of your jokes, or she shows interest in you or what you’re saying. The high point to escalate is when she reveals personal things about herself, when she demonstrates that she’s valuable.

If you were introduced to another guy through your friend and 15 seconds later you said “wow, you’re pretty cool,” the guy would be freaked out a little.

But if you talked a while and he revealed something personal about himself, like maybe the fact that he races motorbikes and you said “wow, you’re pretty cool,” it would be taken entirely differently.

Mystery describes this process as bait-hook-release. If a girl shows interest in you, for example, compliments you, this is not the time for you to compliment her.

You need to bait her into revealing something personal about herself and then compliment her. The release part is showing some disinterest right after the interest so that she is released from the pressure of being hit on.

“Seriously? You’re a film-maker? No way!! That’s so awesome. Oh my god, I can’t even talk to right now.”

This is what I was looking for in terms of escalating rapport with women. My rapport had somewhat flat-lined, even though I’m decent at getting to know someone.

While I feel Pickup 101’s teaching of rapport was super-helpful in a lot of ways, in terms of this escalation process they fell a bit short.

Overall, the weekend was worth every cent. The guys in Pickup 101 are amazingly cool guys with a non-creepy vibe. They are closest to the type of pickup artist I strive to be. I don’t want to be a nocturnal club-going dandy manipulating coked-out ditzes into one-night-stands. I want to be a powerful and developed individual with my own style and an ability to approach and escalate interactions with any woman anywhere.

Other than the guru Lance Mason, there are three instructors at Pickup 101 who are superstars in my opinion. Sean, who I worked with in Art of Attraction, has some brilliant insights and runs an amazing forum. I almost can’t believe how quickly he responds to every single post. His responsiveness and amazing insight got me to sign up for Art of Attraction, not a small step for someone who had never been to a workshop before.

Daniel is also a superstar. He has an ability to control frame, to be funny and still tell the most amazing, heart-warming stories. Signing up for the Art of Rapport includes three months of coaching calls and Daniel’s coaching is excellent. He is a true PUA.

I also admire Dennis. He has excellent form and knows how to gently push and work with guys. When we were sitting down having pizza I saw a girl walk by outside.

He sees and tells me to go approach her. Half a block later I saw she was on the phone. I came back and said she’s on the phone. He said to open anyway. I go after her and about 8 blocks later I finally catch her and use a direct opener. I ended up getting the girl’s number. Such is the power of Dennis.

The Pickup 101 crew will not disappoint, particularly if you are looking to improve your pickup skills in every day life. I highly recommend them.