Brad@RSD Samlade artiklar.

[TobiasK]

BY Brad- | August 15th, 2011 at 2:05 PM
My New Sticking Point… Approach Anxiety
Yuck!

I’ve got a serious cold after 25 nights in a row of partying, culminating last night with literally 15 hours of running around Berlin.

Starting at 2PM, pool parties, random open air day time rave in the middle of a field, multiple clubs in the rain, ending in full glory at 5AM, and now I feel like DEATH.

And yet, even with the success of the evening, I’ve learned a big lesson.

I don’t approach enough!

I remember when I was back in Copenhagen, I was talking with one of my newest assistants, Neal, about sticking points, and how they come full circle, and hit on new levels.

His response was, “Ehh, actually I think it’s just the same bad habits, and sometimes you get lazy and they come back.”

WHAT?!

At the time I fought it, but it’s true. When you have a lot of success, and get better and better, it is easy to get lazy at times and forget about the basics.



Create Opportunity

For me it’s been an eternal sticking point that I don’t approach enough.

There are a multitude of reasons why it’s come up at different times in your development.

Early on, before my bootcamp as a client, I relied heavily on booze to approach, mostly because I hadn’t had a lot of experience approaching, and therefore was “afraid” of rejection on some illogical emotional level.

Then I took the bootcamp, and COMPLETELY eradicated the approach anxiety issue.

Then a few months later, it came back.

This time it was because I had started getting some SERIOUS results, but as typically happens, I started developing an ego of being successful with girls.

The problem is then, when I would go out, on some emotional level, not logical, I would be afraid to approach because if the girl rejected me, it would affect my identity of being “good with girls.”

How did I get over that one?

I went out and TRIED to get rejected, doing crazy stuff, basically self amusing, and lo-and-behold, all the interactions went GREAT and I went on another amazing run.

Why did it come back this time around?


Too Much Success

I’ve said before that the problem in developing a skill usually isn’t fixing the sticking point, it is finding out what the sticking point is.

And up until this Euro tour, I had been literally working through the same sticking point for TWO YEARS, but I’ve FINALLY got it to a point where it is completely internalized.

Leading.

It’s the biggest shift I’ve had in my game in years, and completely changed how smoothly the interaction goes down.

I can’t believe it took 2 years, but the main thing that held me back from leading more, taking the risk in escalating quicker, was that the whole time I was trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, how to “level up”, I was still getting better results than ever.

Hotter girls, more girls, crazy adventures, like no one else I knew in the game.

So it was reinforcing bad habits.

I’d gotten so good at the high value, attraction stuff that I would just amp that up so much, that the girl would give ME signals to escalate, or go into man to woman mode, or go for the pull.

I wasn’t doing it on the front end, spinning plates style, I was waiting for her to give me permission, and therefore not take a risk.

Fixing that has totally revolutionized my game and results, and once I’m in the interaction now with the girl, the end goal is INEVITABLE.

Feels good man.

Since I was focused on that sticking point for so long, other foibles in my game were not registering. I was solely focused on the leading.

But, now that that’s taken care of, I’ve recognized a new problem, and this one is BIG!

Approaching more, taking risks, and not relying on approach invitations.

Like I said before, there are LOTS of reasons why I’m not approaching as much as I would like.

What I want to do with this article is pick one reason that seems the most obvious at the moment, and elucidate how to use mental gymnastics to reframe the problem in a way that fits into your reality/identity.

It’s a way to push through sticking points on my own, when I have no mentor, or bootcamp instructor to help me out.

I can think of literally 8-10 other reasons as well, and the goal would be to apply the following process to all of the reasons why you think you have a mental block/sticking point until you reframe it in a way that get’s you what you want.

Alright, here we go…


The Problem

The biggest reason why I don’t take risks on the approach, or wait for an approach invitation, is probably some artifact of teaching "success with women" as a career.

Bootcamp is one aspect, where I HAVE to perform. So every interaction is important in that money is literally on the line for whether I do well or not with a girl.

Yet, 9 times out of 10, the interaction does go well, yet illogically it’s that 10% that holds you back.

Even more of a problem is when I am not on bootcamp, but meet someone that has heard what I do for work.

Then it’s like, “Oh, I hear you’re good at this shit. Show me!”

Even if they don’t outright verbalize this, I know on some level it pops into their head, so I feel like I have to perform for them or something.

It’s never just a fun night out of chatting up girls, I’m always on display, always have to perform.

Yet I like this. It’s what motivates me to be the best. When people are around I perform better anyway.

But that tiny 10%, that fear of failure creeps in, and holds me back at times unless I can tell it's going to be an easy approach.


Look to Your Mentors as an Example

Tyler used an interesting approach to this dilemma, that resulted in one of the biggest most revolutionary new concepts we teach at RSD these days.

I remember back when I started teaching, and Tyler had just gotten back from Hawaii after like 2-3 years in the sticks. He had been heavily involved in content creation and the business infrastructure, and wasn’t going out regularly.

After working 12 hour days 5-6 days a week, it’s pretty hard to turn on the social flow the moment you get into the club.

So I remember he started saying, “Alright, I’m not in a social mode yet, and need to warm up and build momentum, it might literally take me 2 hours! To get into social momentum.”

This was the start of us teaching momentum, and now it’s something that Tyler demos with regularly in the hotseat and on some bootcamps.

At the beginning of the night he says, “Alright, I just got into the club, let me tell you where my reticular activation system is keying into. I’m looking at that girl, and thinking she probably has a boyfriend, or this isn’t going to go well. But oh well, let’s go creep her out!”

When you do not have social momentum, your RAS literally keys into all the negatives, all the bad things that could happen.

Then Tyler would go in, and creep out the girl.

Do it again, and again, and the momentum starts to build, and your RAS changes.

Slowly you only start to recognize the best possible outcome of the interaction and completely forget about the downside.

All you have to do is look at Tyler’s results, the hot girls he gets, to see that it works.

But I guess I’m weird.

I think it’s because, even though I know momentum works, I don’t want to RELY on momentum.

It’s a crutch like anything else. Alcohol, situational confidence, etc.

You see that hot girl during the day and think, “Oh damn… If only I saw that girl at night, after a few drinks, I would totally mack on her.”

Change it to momentum, “Oh damn… If only I saw that girl after talking to 5 other girls, I would totally mack on her.”

It’s relying on something external to get in the flow.

Am I being a bit idealistic? Of course. But I think there is a way through it.

Change the frame, and fit it into my current view of the world.


Michael Jordan

I woke up today, and the recent mental gymnastics going on in my head were focused on, “What would Michael Jordan do?”

Why Michael Jordan? Cuz he’s the best.

Yes, he still has to warm up before the game, he’s on the court shooting layups and stretching like everyone else.

But I don’t view warm up approaches at the beginning of the night as lay ups before the game, it’s like you are already in the game.

But then I framed it another way. Move the line the other direction.

I’ve used the distinction before of separating the beginning half of your night, and the later half of the night into two separate gameplans.

The beginning of the night is social time, whereas the end is “game time.”

I Have Horrible Social Skills.

What I realized is that my game is completely tailored to “game time”, and I am neglecting the beginning social aspect of being out.

Mostly I think this is an old artifact of me living in a small city, Milwaukee, and not having the luxury of a large number of girls in a venue, I couldn’t build momentum.

I would be lucky in a given night to meet 3-4 girls that were attractive and that I hadn’t met before.

Therefore, I built my game in a way that it was “one shot kill.” I’d find my girl, and make it happen, because there wasn’t likely to BE another girl.

But then as I’ve moved on to bigger cities the last few years, I kind of adapted the same style.

I’d just chill around with my buddies for the first couple of hours, wait until an hour before closing, use my intuition from throwing hundreds of students into set and knowing what would go well, find a girl, and make it happen.

I’ve done this MANY times.

But it keeps reinforcing bad habits of not approaching earlier in the night and missing out on opportunities.

So back to the Michael Jordan example.

On the court he motherfucking performs.

But, as stated in his book Driven From Within, what about before the game?

There is a chapter where a journalist explains an experience he had with MJ prior to one of the biggest games in Michael’s career.

It was game six of the finals, and a few hours before the game, Jordan decides to take a detour on the way to the stadium to hit up the ghetto of Chicago to sign some autographs.

He’s completely joking around, having fun, not a care, no stress.

He enters the arena, and while getting his ankle taped up, someone comes over and asks where all of his guests want to sit for the game. He personally picks out the seats, joking around, with full knowledge that he has been training for this night for YEARS, why worry?

Then, once the game starts, it’s on!

The distinction is when the game starts, and when to be social and have fun.

I was completely neglecting the social aspect of pick up, because on some level it is superfluous, but it is also FUN!

I looked at guys running around the club, hitting up set after set, and thought it was try hard, but that is because those guys WERE trying to get laid.

But if your frame is to be running around the club, signing autographs, shaking hands, (not literally, figuratively here) then it all comes into alignment.

You are just out, making the rounds, getting social, having fun, using stupid openers, and joking around, for no other reason other than because you can.

Then if one of those interactions ends up having more potential, you can turn on the game face.

Otherwise, as the night heats up, you're ready to rock KNOWING that the years of experience and hard work will get it done.

The training takes over.


Let’s Tie it Up!

So this is only one of the many reasons that are slowing me down.

Everything from state preservation, time management, relying on amazing assistants and wings, and being lazy all factor in as well.

It’s trying to find a way for it to CLICK into your head so that you automatically do what you want.

Then as you get more positive reference points, it internalizes, and gets reinforced, where (hopefully) you get to the point where you have so many positive reference points, you only see the upside.

-Off to Lisbon in a few days, and then ending up in Dublin for my last 2 cities of the Euro Tour.

Then...

VEGAS!!!

Brad Branson
Lessons in Lifestyle Development

[TobiasK]

BY Brad- | September 5th, 2011 at 10:15 AM
Forcing The Fun Factor: How to Dominate ANY Party
Even though I’ve taken the last 2 weekends off, it seems like there is never enough time in the day.

The traveling lifestyle literally STEALS hours from your day.

On the one hand, you have the dead time spent in airports, airplanes, taxis, and lines that you could normally spend being productive.

But you also have the added complexity of being in a different place all the time, with different friends/colleagues, and WANTING to spend time with them because you see them so irregularly.

Yesterday’s quagmire was a perfect example.

I stayed up until 6AM working on the newsletter and other internet ventures, knowing that my family was going to the zoo at around 10AM the next day.

10AM rolls around, and my niece comes knocking on the door. I have 3 options:

1. Sleep some more

2. Wake up and start working again

3. Go to the zoo with the family

I chose the zoo.

Not because I was lazy, I actually kind of preferred to start working on shit, but I figured it was probably the only time I’d be able to bond with the fam over the next few months.

Time well spent, then went straight into a 2 hour meeting with a friend who was starting an internet business, straight to driving 2 hours to play keyboards with my old band, straight back home…

And then I started to work again.

Ay! I feel like every day is like this.

I couldn’t imagine if I had a 9-5 job.

HAHAHAHAHA!

Oh yeah… I have a job. Might as well get into that topic for a bit, and bring out the PARTY!

Dominance

A ubiquitous RSD buzzword.

What is dominance, how do we cultivate it, what mindsets ultimately create the most dominant frame?

Well, you might have realized that over the past couple of weeks, I’ve started emphasizing self amusement more and more.

I’ve noticed how much I actually sub consciously utilize self amusement in my everyday conversations, as much as when I’m chatting up the random girl…

I’ve said it before, but whenever a guy is having issues with his conversations not being playful enough, it’s always a matter of shining the mirror back onto himself and finding out what is FUN FOR HIM.

Like always, it’s nice that it’s under your control.

You have fun, so will the person you are talking to.

So how does dominance correlate with self amusement?

If you look at dominance from a fundamental level, most people view it from a superficial perspective.

They try to be dominant by cultivating dominant “traits.”

They take on the attributes of a pimp, or a caveman, or whatever alpha stereotype seems to be an example of a dominant man.

But ultimately there is only one thing dominance comes down to…

Your frame of reality.

I don’t like calling it a battle, but basically every interaction you have with someone is a battle of frames.

Each of you comes with a certain idea of how you view yourself compared to the other person, and then whoever’s frame is stronger, usually wins out.

And I’ve found one frame more than any other creates MASSIVE amount of social value and literally attracts people to you like moths to a light.

Force the Fun

Be the party. I’ve just decided that NO MATTER WHAT, I’m gonna make shit fun.

Everyone hopefully knows someone that is this type of person.

You know the guy that is always the life of the party?

The guy where you could be tired, or with a friend, and the moment he shows up, the whole vibe changes.

You start getting excited, laughing. It’s just fun.

What creates this characteristic inside someone?

It’s just a really strong frame of positivity.

Everything is awesome.

Lower Your Fun Factor

Most people set the bar so high for happiness. They need an amalgam of things to be great in their life before they can feel good.

But as always, positivity is a choice.

Just DECIDE to have fun.

And by knowing that the stronger frame wins out… FORCE IT!

Force the fun. In everyday life!

Of course this is highly potent in the night club environment. You have to be having fun there if you want to accomplish anything.

But even during the day.

There is No Daygame!

I had an epiphany a few weeks ago.

I realized there was no such thing as daygame.

I was in Stockholm with a bunch of friends, and we were just joking around, laughing, having a good time walking down the street.

A bachelorette party walks past, and my buddy Ruben laughs at the girls, goes over to the bachelorette, PICKS HER UP, and carries her off literally 200 meters away.

At first the girls were screaming and laughing, and as he got further away, they were less enthusiastic, and started to get confused. Haha.

But the crew we were rolling with was laughing UNCOTROLLABLY. It was hilarious.

It doesn’t have to be some serious, serendipitous moment when you meet a girl.

Be laughing, be joking around, be a FORCE! A MAGNET!

Make the choice to have fun in EVERYTHING you do.

Again, it’s a complete choice.

Enjoy life and people naturally will want to be around you. Make the decision, don’t wait for someone else, SOMETHING else to pump up the fun.

Why Don’t We Always Have This Fun Factor?

Well just like being social, forcing positivity and having fun requires ENERGY.

It’s easier just to sit back, chill, and be all introspective.

It takes WORK to force a smile, to start to laugh, to embrace life and not make excuses.

Tyler talks about this in the Blueprint Decoded. How if I were to ask you… As you read this… “Do you want to be the party right now, have fun, and be happy?”

Of course you’d answer yes.

But in reality, it’s so much easier just to chill back, and get all introspective, keep surfing the web, or reading your email…

You can’t ping off the environment!

Force the fun, and become that extroverted, social, positive force of nature.

---

Not to say I’m there yet myself. But I’m pushing more and more to just be fucking fantastically fun all the time.

It DRAWS people in.

It creates this aura, where people are just attracted to you. They want to be with you, be like you.

The warm end of the pool.

Fuck yeah, I’ll be forcing the fun in Manhattan this weekend. Haven’t been back in a long time.

I had to get a haircut so I didn’t look all hipster in the Lower East Side. Now I’m smooth like a sleek moose and gonna tear shit up.

Have a good weekend.

Oh! And are you enjoying my new articles in the RSD Newsletter?

I’m hammering away at em, should have another 10 or so done in the next week, DESPITE this travel schedule…

[TobiasK]

BY Brad- | October 5th, 2011 at 6:11 PM
Be Nice, Get the Girl: Why it’s Alright to Be Nice
Whatup Sir

Gotta give luv to the girls on here too.

It’s good being back in the US after a few months in Europe. I was literally eating like crap everyday.
Pizza, McDonalds, the McDs rip off Max Burger in Scandinavia…

No good.

Now it’s organic berries, grass fed beef, sushi, and smoothies on the regular, and I can feel the increase in productivity already.

Oh yeah!

So today I want to bring up a topic that came up recently on one of my bootcamps.

There was a student attending that had previously taken a few bootcamps with other RSD instructors, and he noticed something different about me…

I’m nice.

Haha, well I guess compared to guys like Jeffy or Ozzie, I probably do seem like a nice guy. Must be my
Midwestern values, hehe, I spent the first 25 years or so secluded in the middle of Wisconsin. That’s near Chicago for all you international folk.

Anyway, how can I get away with espousing niceness as a life value when it seems like being nice is one of the first things “gurus” in this industry condemn?

Well, it’s because most guys are pussies around girls.

What?!

Now I’m confused?

It is a little confusing, so let me break it down.

The problem most “nice guys” have is that they try to be nice to GET THE GIRL.

They buy her flowers, act as a shoulder to cry on, do all sorts of gay things to try and get the girl.

You see, I am nice, but NOT TO GET THE GIRL.

Now if I start talking to the girl, and she breaks her ankle, my natural inclination is to help her out. I’m a nice guy, no need to see someone in pain.

But if I’m trying to GET with her, and she’s not writhing in pain, I know that niceness is not the way to get there.

In actuality being nice is probably one of the most manipulative approaches towards getting anything.

“Ooh, I’ll just be nice, and then maybe I can get with her! Hehehehe”

It’s half in jest, because most nice guys just don’t know what else to do, and TV, magazines, movies, and your mother have taught you to be nice to girls.

But you see how there is a disconnect? What makes you think niceness is going to lead to the girl.

So the distinction needs to be made about what your end goal is.

Being nice is a life value of mine, I just don’t feel right being mean. But I also know that if I want to get the girl, then being nice is not the answer.

This doesn’t mean I need to turn into a dick either, you just need to know what a girl responds to.

Back to the old high value, leadership, authoritative attractive values front. The main things you want to convey to the girl is that you’re able to handle yourself as a man, you don’t take yourself too seriously, and are a man of action.

So as an example, lets show one aspect where instead of being nice, what the girl really wants is for you to assert your value.

I remember having a guy on program, and he was talking about his ex-girlfriend. He just didn’t understand why she repeatedly accused him of cheating on her, his response:

“Baby, of course I’m not cheating on you, why would I ever do that. I don’t get it, why do you think I’m cheating?!”

And he proceeded to buy her things, cuddle with her, and try everything possible to get in good terms with her and rebuild the relationship.

But what he didn’t realize is that all his girlfriend really wanted was for him to assert his authority, his dominance. For whatever reason, some girls need more of this than others, and it’s just another way of her testing to make sure she is with the right man.

How should he have responded?

GIRL: You’re cheating on me, I can’t trust you.

ATTRACTIVE MAN: Hey! That’s enough girl! I don’t want to hear anymore about this shit!
You know I’m with you, and I’m sick of you bringing this crap up!

Now I’m not saying get all angry and start yelling at her, but you need to have a line that people don’t cross.

Me being from the Midwest again, my line is probably further than most, I’ll put up with a decent amount of crap from someone before I feel the need to assert my authority. But once that line is crossed…

It’s a HARD LINE.

Don’t let people push you around, show that you will not just bend over backwards to appease everyone.

So in summary, being nice is good, but you still need to have standards for what you put up with. Have boundaries for how people interact with you and a line that IS NOT TO BE CROSSED.

And as a good example of someone with a much shorter line, how about I give you none other than Jeffy in his DVD/audio product, The Jeffy Show.

Haha, I love this product because you get to see Jeffy in his full awesomeness, all the stories, scaring women out of his house with a garden hose, 3somes galore, and everything that it takes to “Get Laid or Die Trying” as he’d put it himself.

So check it out:

http://www.jeffyshow.com/

And as always, Enjoy!
Brad Branson, Executive Coach
bradbranson.com
REAL SOCIAL DYNAMICS

P.S. Have you checked out the success stories on RSDNation lately? Oh my god, there have been some good bootcamp reviews. I like reading them because they take me back into the bootcamp experience, and you can learn a lot from reading how other people learned on the program. Check out some of the success stories at http://www.rsdnation.com/forums/success-stories

[TobiasK]

BY Brad- | January 3rd, 2012 at 6:56 PM
Go For Your Girl- How to Prevent the "Drag-Away-Girl"
There is something about being back and having a little bit of normalcy. I could tangibly feel a sense of relief when I was driving around today running errands.

Recharging my supplements, I know where that is.

Buying some organic food, I know where that is.

It’s nice compared to the constant low level confusion of being in a new city and never knowing where anything is.

Well, so much for normalcy, I leave in 2 hours for VEGAS!

I’m meeting Alex at the airport and we are going straight at it when we get in. Probably going to hit up Surrender tonight…

Anyway, I thought I’d dig into some of my seminar, and find some of the old school stuff that still seems to come up on most bootcamps. Standard outer game techniques that will make your interactions go a little smoother.



Open YOUR girl

This goes against the old school mentality of opening the whole group on the approach. The power of the direct approach is so strong, literally, if you open hard, attraction is like a light switch. DONE!

The problem is that if you try to open more than one person in the group, you dilute the power of the opener. Again, the power of the direct approach and going in strong is that it conveys a SHIT TON of value if you do it right. And when you approach multiple people in the group, or the whole group, you are spreading that value amongst all of the people instead of your desired girl.

What about the friends?!

I’m willing to compromise the friends, even piss them off to first convey that value to my girl. The thing is, usually when you open strong, the friends won’t even get mad. Sure, by opening hard, you will get their attention as well, and they usually look at you dumb-founded at the start. But by focusing attention on your girl, and being comfortable with the social pressure of having multiple people’s attention on you, and you being cool with it, it actually builds even MORE attraction.

Think about some of the highest value people, like a celebrity. The focus and RAS of everyone in the room is on them, so people inherently view someone who is comfortable with a lot of attention/social pressure as high value.

Again, usually when you open strong, and draw everyone’s attention, even though you aren’t talking to the friends, they won’t drag their girl away.

They are usually thinking, “Damn, I wish that hot guy would have talked to me instead.” Then they just go back to talking amongst themselves.

Talk to your girl for a bit, and then within the first few minutes, have her introduce you to the friends. Because you have already conveyed a lot of value towards her, and built the attraction, she will be happy to introduce you to her friends, and they will realize she likes you, and WANT you to stick around.

Troubleshooting

If you are having problems with the friends dragging the girl away right after you start talking to her, most likely it is a body language issue. Make sure not to lean in, don’t be too focused on the conversation, and of course GO IN HARD!

Good eye contact, make yourself vulnerable and go in face to face (no over the shoulder bullshit), and use a good commanding tone of voice.

What about if it’s only 2 girls?
This type of approach works best when you approach a group of more than 2 people because usually you go in and talk to your girl, and everyone else just starts talking to each other, and a bubble of joy forms around the two of you quickly.

And I used to teach guys that if it’s only 2 girls, just open both of them, and whichever one is more receptive, the one that is paying more attention, start focusing on her.

But lately, even when there are just two girls, I’ve found myself going in specifically on the one I want, knowing that quickly I’ll have to switch and get the friend involved otherwise she will get bored real quick. (Yet, I’ve realized that if you come across cool enough, even though the friend is bored, she’ll give you a lot of time with her friend, because she can tell you are the shit, and wants her friend to get with you.)

Why You Talking Outer Game Fool?!

Minor tweaks like this come up all the time when I’m teaching bootcamp. Sometimes a guy comes on program that has some decent experience, he’s gone out a lot, but reached a plateau.

Usually if a guy has been exposed to a lot of the RSD concepts, and is successful enough to have the time and money to afford a bootcamp, his inner game is pretty solid. It’s not like he has severe depression, or negative beliefs, although everyone has some self doubt and can increase their self esteem further.

A lot of the program for these types of guys is me tweaking little things like tonality, and how he interacts in groups, dealing with logistics, screening for the right type of girl, and reinforcing a lot of things he is ALREADY DOING.

This is one of those types of concepts. It’s not going to get you the girl, but it can help out and make you more consistent in dealing with larger groups.

Try it out and get back at me.
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God damn I’ve been killing it lately. Life is good, I’ve got so much to do, and am pushing things hard!
Getting back in the US I’m going to start on the consistent paleo-style diet again, start working out more, and hit the BUSINESS SHIT like WHOA!

I increased the traffic to bradbranson.com last month by 2000 unique visitors, and my goal is to DOUBLE my overall traffic within the next 3 months. I should be over 150,000 unique visitors a month by next month, we’ll see.

ENJOY YOUR WEEK!