As an OG (I’m 38 now) who studied dating skills for the past 15+ years I wanted to share the steps I took to get good with women, especially as a minority in the US. I keep getting the same questions in my DMs, and so I wanted to write something memorable.
I have no other intention than to share my knowledge, but as a disclaimer, you should know that I made a decision to quit my job a year ago to pursue my calling and now I do coach people on relationships and their dating skills, about 40% of my clients are of of Asian decent.
That said, I am also a diplomatic kid who was bullied, called a bunch of names – ratface, crater fake, loser, Asian freak, bamboo branch and many more. High school felt like HELL for me and I remained a virgin until 23 year old. (I never even kissed a girl.)
Being from a diplomatic family, I’ve lived in many different countries and saw the different in social hierarchies from east and west, first hand, and I also eventually in my humble opinion got to the top of the social and dating hierarchy by most men’s standards. When I told an OG internet marketing friend about my experience – he said I’m the only guy who has this type of unique experience, and that I should put it out there in the world.
Therefore, I humbly share my experience with you here.
In this post…I am specifically going to focus on dating in western culture (outside of Asia) and dating freedom – meaning not being limited to just Asian girls or girls of any culture. That said, if you live in Asia, think of these as extra bonuses that will improve your dating life anyway if you implement them.
In other words, my goal is to help you be able to date whoever you want, whenever you want. And to understand the steps to acquire the skill set to do that.
Make no mistake, this is a skill. Just like playing basketball or learning jujitsu, there are steps, building blocks and fundamentals in training that get you into higher and higher levels.
STEP 1 – EGO and PRIDE must go
Take your ego out the equation. She’s not rejecting YOU as a PERSON. She’s rejecting your approach, or her experience of you. While dating is a very “social” skill, it is not one where your identity as a person is being rejected. People are trained to respond to the UI on an online dating app – they are swiping based on pre-programmed intentions on superficial traits, they are NOT rejection “you”, as a person.
Once you practice letting go of your ego and seeing this as a game – like learning how to do a layup in basketball, it gets a lot easier when you miss a shot. Just take another one!
It’s not about you. It always been about her. If you focus on learning social skills based on “what’s my dream girls’ experience of me?” then your skill set will grow by providing the emotions and experience she needs in the best way possible, in a dating context.
When you give, you receive.
You will understand universal rules like this one once as you go on your journey.
Note: this is not a one time thing – continually letting go strengthens your muscle to let your ego not interfere with the process of learning. Always be asking, “what’s the other person’s experience of me? How can I make it better / the best possible?”
STEP 2 – STYLE
When I first got into game in 2006, the gurus were preaching “game over looks” and that your looks didn’t matter. After 2-3 years of practicing game I realized, this is untrue based on my own experience. Over the next few months I researched GQ, all the style magazines that were big at the time and all style advice on the internet. Something was wrong. They were telling me to buy expensive stuff and none of it got to the core of the issue.
I wanted to seek out the primary core principles of visual attraction for men.
The style content on YT these days is better but it can be quite confusing – like, how do you calibrate based on your body type, face type, hair, etc. and what should you focus on? It wasn’t clear and it didn’t get into the real reasons why women found men attractive within the first 10 seconds.
I wanted to replicate that “slow motion” walk into the room beautiful girls get – if it even existed…
So I went into research mode and read all the research papers on being “beautiful” and what that meant to men. There were so many reads but one book that resonated with me was Dr. Nancy Etcoff’s book “Survival of the prettiest” (She’s still teaching at Harvard Medical School as we speak). It was a well written collection of anthropology studies that empirically proved why men and women find certain things UNIVERSALLY attractive.
I won’t bore you with all the research details, but what you must know is that for women, attraction is based on a combination of looks and behavior patterns. Think of it as 50% looks, 50% behavior. Girls that are younger will lean more towards looks. But the thing with women is, the more time you spend with them, the higher % the behavior pattern becomes.
For men, we evaluate a potential mate as first as 90% looks, 10% behavior pattern. This remains unchanged over time unless through a conscious effort, because we are scanning for replication value, not survival value. These are hardwired in our brains – it’s not misogyny or being superficial – it’s literally in our DNA. As conscious beings, we can override our DNA and pre-programming, but I’m just saying, it’s not the default, because…
For about 100,000 to 250,000 years, humans lived in tribal societies. Sexual selection during this time for women made them evolve to scan for behavior patterns more than looks. For men, our brains evolved to scan for healthy DNA replication value. So health indicators like nice hair, symmetrical faces, skin quality – things that indicate a higher % of a healthy offspring. These things can be faked today, but we still respond to it (i.e. lip injections, fake boobs, plastic surgery)
What I learned during this period was that if I improved my style and behavior patterns, I could become more attractive. So I tested this theory. I dressed up, tried MANY different outfits, and here’s 3 things I learned about style:
- Your style is more than your clothes. It’s how comfortable you are in them, and it’s about how you move through the world. When you have good style sense and you move with it in “flow” mode, you’re unstoppable.
- If you get your style sense down right with your “ideal type”, you will save 90% of the work other guys normally must put in. You will literally have a cheat code for the rest of the dating process. For years I obsessed over that initial look women give like “that guy is hot“. You can see it in her eyes, and there’s a way to replicate that with your “look”. Your “look” is more important than your looks.
- The MOST important thing I learned about style is that it’s not about what brand to buy or how much money you spend on clothes. It’s about how you visually hit her core attraction triggers. So I eventually discovered the 8 style attraction triggers. For Asian men, in particular, we generally lack these 3: dominance, elite-ness, and openness. Once you understand this you can tailor your style around the attraction triggers, instead of random style tips designed to make you spend money on brands. If you understand the principles of style attraction, you can go to a 2nd hand store and still look amazing. You don’t need to spend a lot of money and you don’t need to buy designer brands. It’s a fake narrative to get you to spend $$$ on brands.
For more on style attraction triggers and how they work, see my YT vid on the subject.
STEP 3 – UNCONSCIOUS SOCIAL BIAS
With my new style, my results tripled. Dates once a month now turned to 1-2 dates a week!
Eventually I would get into fashion week and date models as my style sense continued to evolve, but more on that later.
As I was talking with girls I realized, especially in cities that have a little bit of the “closet racism”, that girls have a little hesitation when it comes to Asian guys.
If my dad wasn’t a diplomat, I may have never figured this out, but this is a SUPER KEY factor. In fact, this is the most important thing for Asian guys who aren’t getting anywhere who feel STUCK.
When humans see someone who looks like they are from another tribe, there’s a natural, automatic fight or flight response. It’s hardwired.
The key is the let this happen, or prevent it from triggering. At some point though, it’s going to happen, so you need to learn to deal with it.
Imagine there’s a super hot alien girl. She looks weird, but hot. Well, as men we’ve probably still find her sexy but anyway…. wouldn’t you feel a little weird at first? That’s the same feeling girls get when she hasn’t dated a lot of Asian guys before.
The way you get past UNCONSCIOUS SOCIAL BIAS is through familiarity and recognizing the difference verbally. For example, a great opening line is “I know we look like 2 completely different people, but wouldn’t it be interesting to chat a bit?” – this line I learned form watching kids in an international school bond and it works great if you live in a mostly white town.
You’re acknowledging the awkwardness and preventing it, or letting it ride out… and in today’s PC world, it’s almost a negative social consequence for her if she doesn’t stay and talk to you.
The 2nd step is familiarity – you must make her feel comfortable – you know that feeling of safety and something familiar whenever you hear a song you like? Or that feeling of walking into your grandma’s house and smelling her cooking? That’s what you want her to feel in the conversation.
For Asian guys, proper comfort > attraction, in the first 1-3 minutes of an interaction. If you don’t understand this, you will be limited in dating.
The 3rd way to pierce UNCONSCIOUS SOCIAL BIAS is through the use of Connection Triggers. This require another post to explain but you need to learn how to ground your stories in a way that gets her to really know your story as emotionally efficiently as possible. Like a great comic, you must get the maximum amount of laughs in a limited time. As minorities, our game must be precise, and emotionally impactful… because of our margin of error is lower. Grounding sequences work amazingly well with eliciting values – a way to ask her connection questions that make her feel understand and close to you. (See Dr. Aron Arthur’s “36 questions to fall in love” experiment on my blog at High Integrity Skills)
I also learned some girls will NEVER date an Asian guy, and I developed what we call a “Variety Score” based on 3 questions to ask her to determine this quickly so you don’t waste time on the wrong girls. This is also on my YT in detail.
STEP 4 – ATTRACTION TRIGGERS
There are a lot of courses that teach attraction triggers. Hell, I studied all of them. From the original OG Casanova to Ross Jeffries to Mystery. But as an Asian guy, in order for this to work, you must understand the Western idea of dominance. Dominance is that “edge” that women look for, the reason why girls say they like “bad boys”.
This idea of dominance is NOT the same in the west compared to Asian culture, despite the K-pop invasion. Relying on K-pop fans is a recipe for disaster bc these girls don’t represent the norm nor the majority of women and you will get type-casted and fetishized. Trust me when I say this.
It took me a long time to, for example, get rid of a head nodding tick, and blinking too much. I didn’t even realize I was doing it! Watching my own videos talking to women, I FINALLY realized that no matter how good my verbal game was, it doesn’t matter if my non-verbals who honest signals of low dominance. This is what we call a BLIND SPOT – and a coach (a good one) can quickly identify it.
An “honest signal” is a nonverbal cue – like a flinch or a sudden look that betrays, or reveals, your true “VALUE” as you believe. When your honest signals are too low or incongruent, girls of high “value” will find you more and more unattractive as time goes on. These cannot be faked, thus the term “honest signal” and to get over this, I spent 6+ months on “inner game” – which is kind of like self-directed therapy work. The other part of getting over it is just to get the real experience of dating girls I thought were “out of my league”. With additional reference experiences, hot girls became the norm. It’s like the rich guy who’s used to making 100k profit a day in his business for the last year. He no longer finds it a big deal.
The third part of getting my “honest signals” fixed is tactical…
So… when to smile, and when to laugh, and how I laughed – all of it had to be slightly calibrated. It feels super natural to me now, but you would be surprised at the number of girls I lost bc of these little habits. Not all of them are “Asian” in nature, but you can behave like this and still get girls in Asian but not for example, here in the states. This is not PC, but it’s the truth. Until you fix your nonverbal cues that signal dominance/high value, the attraction triggers you learn from dating courses created by non-Asian guys simply won’t work for you. At best, they will get you a number that flakes or a date that isn’t truly attracted to you.
Please note the 3 phases of mastering honest signals in order of importance (really important!):
- INNER GAME
- REFERENCE EXPERIENCES
- TACTICAL CHANGES
When you fix your honest signals, over time these signals become super attractive. In other words, instead of “betraying” your value you are now constantly exhibiting high value honest signals that cannot be faked, and women pick up on this subconsciously.
It’s the reason girls say, “I don’t know why but I’m attracted to him” and “he’s got that edge I like in guys” regardless of how the guy looks, or how much money he has.
STEP 5 – NEXT LEVEL GIRLS
About 7 years into this I hit a critical tipping point. I was still driven by the trauma from my high school to “get the best girl” (my prom date went home with my bully and I was beat up… another story for another day).
In my pre-programming from this life changing event high school event (which in a way is a bit sad… but it gets happier I promise)… I realized that there was another level.
At this point… I just started my modeling career and realized there are these girls – stunners, turbo girls – girls who can’t even install tinder bc their app crashes from too many messages. Girls with Instagram with tons of DMs. Not like, the typical Instagram girls with fake lips and fake everything – I mean… the truly… real stunners. Think Claudia Schiffer or Adriana Lima in her modeling days minus the fame. For me, that was the model-esque, classy, educated and down to earth beauty and 99% of normal, non-famous A-list men are fighting over.
Behind fashion shows and backstage, I was fortunate enough to befriend them, and over the next year I learned all of their dating habits and secrets. Most of you may not desire to reach this level – you just want to date cute girls you feel like you don’t have to settle for and…. well… that’s healthy! I was driven by an unhealthy trauma and obsession. But the good news is I learned how to do it. This again is another post but these girls require a different attraction cycle. The formula for Asian guys to date these type of girls consistently is:
Familiarity / Pre-selection / Challenge
The key to dating “high level”, high competition girls, is to realize how many times they get approached with the same methods from a hoard of clueless men. Imagine being in a 3rd world country and seeing a beggar. The first time you will give some money to a few, but after a month you will become desensitized to it. That’s how these girls feel. They have NO CHOICE but to create a barrier, an exclusiveness to their inner circle of male friends. We call this the “beauty bubble”
I talk about how to pierce this beauty bubble in detail in a separate video, just DM me if this is your goal and I’ll send you the link.
STEP 6 – RELATIONSHIP OPTIONS
By this point, you’ve taken your ego out of the equation. You’ve learned to master your style sense. You understand unconscious social bias and how to bypass it, or manage it to the best of your ability.
You know how to create, hit and simmer in the super powerful effects of attraction triggers, now that WORK because you understand the idea of high value dominance in western culture.
You may have considered going to “next level” or however competitive you want to get in “society’s hierarchy”
Now, what you will find when you have at least Steps 1 to 4 down, is that you’ll start getting a LOT of options. Literally, in all Asian circles, you’ll instantly attract most of the single girls (and some not so single, which is a problem!). Other Asian guys are 0 competition. In non-Asian circles, you’ll not get EVERY single girl, but you will win more than 50% of the time, and that’s more than enough.
I literally have to consciously tone down my attraction triggers, bc they are so natural to me now, I do it unconsciously. This created some drama in Asian circles where men felt threatened, and it was a bad experience. Now, whenever I am in Asian circles or social circles with large couples, I literally have to make an effort to BETA myself to avoid trouble, until I know they are real friends and are secure with themselves in this area.
You’ll remember the 4 levels of mastery:
1) unconsciously incompentent (you don’t even know you suck)
2) consciously incompetent (you know you suck)
3) consciously competent (you can be good if you try)
4) unconsciously competent (you are good without trying)
This is how the progression goes with each step!
Isn’t that exciting?
At this point… you’ll have options. You’ll be able to choose which girl to take out on a date. You’ll choose, over time, which one is right for you, compatible long term if that’s your choice. You’ll no longer just settle of fall for the first “hot” girl who likes you. You won’t be regretting your decision 10 years later with 2 little kids and half your net worth.
EXTRA STEP 7 – ONLINE DATING
I mastered online dating after I fixed these 3 things:
- My style
- My photographer hiring skills / your photo taking and editing skills
- Your poses (how to model / take good pics)
- A trailing 4th which is a non-factor if you don’t have to top 3, is how to write a compelling profile that is CONGRUENT to your pictures.
Online dating is a very precise funnel. It’s like an online marketing funnel. Very scientific. You have to understand the exact triggers and variables at each step to win.
And if you’re an Asian guy or you’re short or bald or have some type of attribute that lowers your “value” according to the general consensus of “society’s beauty standards”, you need to hack the rules. For example, a guy who isn’t traditionally good-looking should have less pictures but one ones. Sometimes even 1 picture out performed 3 pics.
You can make your profile super funny, or just have a unique angle unlike most people’s “love the travel, must love dogs, love food OMG” posts.
I have always used online dating as a supplement to the rest of my efforts – bc I meet better girls in person. It’s good as a lead source once you master your social skills but don’t use it as a way to hide from your fears of going out there and actually getting good at this.
FINAL THOUGHTS
These are the broad strokes. Within each steps are mini-steps and techniques that will fit your personality and learning style.
For those of you with objections I will pre-answer them here:
“but you’re good looking – I mean you’re a model. This won’t work for me”
One thing I learned from my business mentors is to train your mind to be happy for others’ success, and to take from them what you resonate with. If you don’t resonate with me modeling, that’s fine. Take my lessons that apply to you. Maybe you agree that improving your style can help with your dating, right?
Most people spend their energy and time coming up with reasons why someone “got lucky” or “did something shady” or “they were born with money/good looks/intelligence but not me” bc that’s how our brains work.
Guess what?
You can retrain it to ask “what can I learn from this? What’s cool about it?” When you rewire your neuro-connections to praise success, you train your brain to reward itself and look for signs of how you can succeed too! You literally move from blame and victimhood to growth and fulfillment.
“but you tall for an Asian, won’t work for me…”
Before I became “cool” I was the same height, but I was ridiculed and girls literally walked away from me. I was the exact same height when I got into modeling. What changed? All the steps I outline in this post. Yes, when you have these things AND you’re tall, it’s like the sum equals more than the parts.
So let’s say originally its 2+2+2 = 6
Now it’s like 2x2x2 = 8
The “value” exponentially grows the more factors you have that fit the variables of this game.
That means, it can grow for all of you because there are multiple variables> As I stated in STEP 2, women evaluate men more on behavior patterns. Be thankful we are men, bc as a woman, the evaluation curve for replication value is a lot less elastic (see “price elasticity” concept in economics if you don’t get this reference)
“this is fake”
DM me for photos and proof. I have no reason to lie.
“I don’t have any money though”
It’s important to be financially stable first I agree, just know that when I was learning this, I was living paycheck to paycheck as a 23 year old. I felt alive though… bc I was learning new stuff… stuff that I knew deep down was important for my life. I hope that you can find the same for yourself from the right knowledge source. A lot of it is free online and on YT. Just screen for the right people.
“Why try so hard? Just be yourself”
“Being yourself” is the worst advice you can give a guy who isn’t getting any romantic interest. He’s been himself for 23+ years. It’s a lazy way of saying you don’t care about him.
It should be “find an efficient way to learn how to express yourself attractively so you win the dating game / consistently attract the right girls”
There you have it. 10+ years in-field and coaching in ONE post. Obviously there’s more to each step…. and the journey will be different for each one of you depending on where you are. But if you found this useful, I did my job. The reason I became a coach (and plan to retire in 2 years) is to share this knowledge, this type of “game” I learned so that everyone can benefit from it. To be the coach I wish I had when I was a lonely, socially isolated 23 year old virgin.