First of all, I’d like to self-promote. Given how long (and hopefully helpful) this response turned out to be, I believe this is justified; I just wrote a post on my blog about the absurdity of “scenes”. And the PUA community is a scene if I’ve ever known it. Go ahead and read the post here:
http://www.thesocialman.com/blog/archives/71

Now then, I’m willing to bet that I’ve been around this community for as long as anyone on this board. Juggler was not my first introduction to it, but by random introduction, I got pulled in as his business partner very early on. I’m still in it because I enjoy teaching and believe that I have some good things to say.

Donovan’s site has also been around for as long as I can remember. And in all of my experiences with him, I will say this about Donovan – he generally approaches every ‘guru’ with an open mind. Look at all the other big names who comment here – Ross, Savoy, etc… that says something about his credibility. Its not until a guru does something flagrantly stupid or disrespectful that they begin to get negative coverage from him. And keep in mind, this is HIS site. He’s entitled to his opinion.

The thing that I have a problem with is when guys who don’t know all the facts start to form opinions. Its stock guru worship. When I announced my new thing about a year back, I received a TON of hate mail. But how many people actually know what went on inside Charisma Arts? @sting – do you really know what happened there? IMHO, Johnny Savior was responsible for some of the most important things that CA teaches, but no one *really* knows that, you know?

Now moving onto this notion of new products…

Look: getting good with women is hard. Presenting the ideas behind it is even harder. And here’s where I’d like to disagree with many of you.

Ross, Erik and Wayne conceptualized some good things, sure. None of us would be here if Ross hadn’t come up with speed seduction back in the day and if alt.seduction.fast hadn’t been created as a result. But we live in a market-driven society, and there is a market for information. Ross didn’t own the market for ideas (and Ross, if that really is you commenting, props man – we’re all in your debt in one way or another).

So guys like Erik and Wayne came along with some new ideas, developed a little cult on ASF, and new businesses were born. Erik and Nick parted ways, and Nick is a good business man. I don’t know exactly what TMM is teaching these days, but if people are getting better because of it, then he’s got a legitimate claim to what he’s doing (although continuing to use the ‘Mystery’ name is a grey area). Wayne and I parted ways. I went on to try to create some innovative products and add some new ideas to this cauldron of a community, and well, I’m not exactly sure what Charisma Arts has done except for turn their site into a blog and start charging for access to parts of their forum.

Mehow took some of Mystery’s concepts, expanded on them, and teaches them differently. He has sick production values, great marketing, and presents ideas clearly. If someone buys his stuff and doesn’t like it, I’m sure he’d honor them for a refund. And while all this chatter about him ripping off Mystery is a compelling part of the this little pickup “scene” (again, see my blog post), I’m willing to bet that he’s actually helping lots of guys get better with women.

So let’s use another market for ideas: particle physics. My understanding is that some physicists like to rag on Brian Greene for going “mainstream” with his books. And he certainly didn’t invent general relativity or quantum mechanics. But hey, he’s explaining concepts in a way that lay people can understand. So to hell with the detractors.

My feeling is that if a guru can acknowledge his sources (as I know that both Brian Greene and Mehow do), but present concepts in a way that they are learnable, he’s got a legitimate claim to be teaching things. Erik is a bright guy – I don’t think too many people would deny him that – but if someone can take what he’s developed, expand on it, and teach it in a way that’s helpful to others, well, that’s capitalism, my friend, and there will be buyers.

We’re all entitled to our opinion about what works and what doesn’t. At CA, we made a lot of of our money by being the “anti-mystery” guys. But I say try everything and see what gets you results. Go buy Bang or Revelation or Conquer Your Campus – all these books and products have generous refund policies anyway – and if it works for you, fantastic. If not, ask for your $$$ back.

As for teaching this stuff…

I had a client this weekend who had taken six bootcamps. And on Saturday night of our event, he was still getting blown out. Why? He’d worked with TWELVE coaches in the last few years. He knew every routine. And he wasn’t a bad looking or poorly-dressed guy. What was going on?

Well, this guy had a negative and defensive worldview. It was so deep that he didn’t even see it, but women could feel it immediately. I don’t want to give Nick Sparks (who did a lot of the inner game work with this guy) too much credit yet, because I don’t yet know if the exercises he did will have long-term impact, but Nick and I certainly opened the door to things no one else had shown him before. And to that end, helping a guy become good with women is really hard.

Guys who are good with women either have delusional self-confidence or genuine confidence. Every line you deliver hits successfully from that frame. Some guys are born with delusional self-confidence, and others can borrow some from being around a guru for a weekend. But long-term, a guy who has deeper issues will eventually fall if he doesn’t develop genuine confidence. I see gurus who develop delusional self-confidence because they command a big audience on their blog or something (not you, Donovan) or hook up with a few hotties. Are they qualified to teach some men how to approach women? Maybe. Are they qualified to teach all men how to be truly better with women? Well that’s a different story.

The guru with delusional self-confidence is like the derivatives trader who leaves college, immediately jumps into a six-figure job, rides the wave of prosperity into his forties, then kills himself when his positions collapse and he stands to lose everything. His confidence was built on external validation, not inner strength or a true understanding of what made him happy.

Personally, I kept dating hotter and hotter women, eventually dating a few top, top models here in New York, but after four to six months, my relationships would collapse, because I was externally validated. My frame was strong for as long as I had things around me propping me up. There was one night when I was dancing with a new model du jour at at a club, and a former model gf walked up to her and said “be careful, he fooled me too.” I really took that to heart, as I’d not only been fooling her, but myself too.

So look, the guys who are good candidates for bootcamps are the guys who have their shit straightened out to begin with. They come in, learn the right frames, the structure, some techniques, and watch a guru do it, and they’re off to the races. And there are probably quite a few people qualified to teach those guys.

But most instructors teaching this stuff simply haven’t had the life experiences to know when their standard curriculum isn’t working. They know how to pump buying temperature in a way that makes it look like they have good game, and they’ve slept with a few semi-attractive girls. They might be able to pump their clients’ buying temperature too, to the point where the guy is able to go into the bar, recite some lines he’s been taught or merely bring a strong positive energy, and get a number or two.

I have a friend who took a bootcamp with one of the top five PUAs in the world according to Thundercat. The bootcamp was total shit – the instructor did two half-assed demo with wait staff and just kept telling his students to go “open sets”. But because of the reality distortion field around who this guy was (an old term that hearkens back to how Steve Jobs would make people feel), a few of the clients thought they were making progress. Two other clients apparently gave up by 11 pm on the second night, and just pulled out their cheat sheets from a previous TMM bootcamp they’d taken.

So sometime, years back, the market coalesced around the ~$1500 weekend bootcamp. It was driven by the respect – perhaps unfounded – that gurus commanded from their forum posts. They were the leaders – out there in the wild and dealing with uncertainty, risk and rejection. There was a lot of demand for instructors and not much supply. Everyone wanted to see how it was done. But now you can buy mehow’s infield insider or my hidden mic pickups and see and/or hear it.

So frankly, I think that the rate for good instructors is going to go up, and the rate for approach coaches is going to go down. The models of instruction are going to change dramatically over the next few years. The challenge with bootcamps is that they’re expensive to run, both in terms of costs (if you’re traveling) and in terms of opportunity costs. But unless you live in a major metro city with access to good coaches, you don’t have a week or a month to do long-term coaching. It will be interesting to see how the market deals with this.

And hey, some guys will get good simply by going out and doing it on their own. @Thread – good for you for having the temerity to do it on your own. If all men were like you then we’d all be out of business. But a lot of men need more hand-holding, and deeper plumbing work. Don’t make the guys who need more help feel bad about that with your bravado and chest-thumping.

My crystal ball says this: the seduction market is going to be like the Linux market. We are all going to settle on a general “operating system” of what works and what doesn’t with women, and this is going to be free or very cheap. it is going to be a hybrid of things that lots of different gurus have taught (more self promotion: I’ve already started hosting lots of free videos explaining this stuff on my site – http://www.thesocialman.com/resources/video01.php – although the site is still in beta), but lots of companies will spring up around implementation and custom solutions.

Or maybe we’ll all just return to our caves and forum posts. As for me, I need to shower and get to a friend’s birthday party. Hope you all have fantastic weekends planned.

Rock and roll,
Christian

Political agenda? Hardly, I give equal air time to everyone. If Savoy did something ridiculous then I would call him on it, he’s a friend, but he isn’t immune.

By the way, havie you clicked those guru links? They aren’t promoting anything, those links are for informational purposes, so if someone wants to know who Ross Jeffries is, they click on it. It doesn’t go to their website. Other that a blog or two.

Christian Hudson was the creative force behind Juggler. That’s the fact. His business was nothing without him and it going down fast. Look at their new website, talk about downgrade. Their grasping at a “new web design” to help their bottom line, as if it’s a miracle cure, and it won’t work, because they aren’t evolving and their material isn’t the best it could be.

Do you know something that I don’t? I love you coming around Sting, but at times you try and play the insider, without basis, because you’ve been around awhile.

Hey, a healthy debate.

But what of the press, such as yourself?

as a somebody who’s interested in having readers, guru’s have different degrees of value to YOU. a well known, established guy… gives your site credibility, while a newcomer doesn’t.

I see links under the heading of “guru” on this site to Ross Jeffries and Mehow – both guys i’d gathered you didn’t think much of. whats going on here?

you criticized Mystery and his company, and reading between the lines, it seemed much of it had to do with just getting attention for the site

you criticized RSD, and reading between the lines, it seemed as though it was partially at least motivated by their ignoring you.

i remember you wrote something in passing to the effect that Christian Hudson was the creative force behind Juggler – an absurd statement, which seems to come from his giving you time, while Juggler doesn’t.

if a guy with a reputation like Mystery, Tyler or Juggler offered to write articles for this site – wouldn’t you accept?
and if you accepted, wouldn’t you cut back on criticizing them?
if so, is your criticism of them based on their what you think of their work? or is it based on your own political agenda?

S.

4) ‘Guru’s’ using their established brandnames as a means of pitching FAKE, non-related, not working products to you only to make more money for themselves.
Lately I’ve seen an increase in the number of guru’s promoting all these ‘Love Potion Number 9′, ‘Alpha Male Cologne’, ‘Grow Your Dick 10 Miles And Thus Become A Guru Yourself’, ‘Which Foods, Drinks And Herbs Turn Her On So You Can Fuck Her Without Saying Nothing’ kind of products that have NOTHING to do with HOW to be more succesful with women and dating. I’m exaggerating right now but these products are solely for making money purposes and NOT about helping you be all you can be with women and dating. It gets me angry and makes me see THOSE ‘guru’s’ as being fake too, although some of them are known for revolutionary products within the community…

Onto what Yuri said about real value, he has a point there.
When you by a book, SURE you learn and visualize it working for yourself, fantasize about how it’s going to be, etc. But only your eyes get a taste. If you go to a seminar weekend (that has an fieldwork part in it)? You have something for your eyes, your ears, PHYSICAL experience, SEEING instead of fantasizing that it works, etc. They stimulate someone into remembering it longer when it comes to sensory stimulation, leaving out the total fascination of the experience! About the price…200$ in ONE payment is a lot, but remember that the good systems out there prive you with payment terms to spread out that 200 or so and so amount of bucks and ALSO have a risk guarantee.
You can’t expect something without giving anything in return for it and frankly, when you DO encounter a system that works and has a lasting effect? It changes your life, and me personally…I’ll pay if it works and it lasts.