Pickup

A friend of mine (Ricardus, actually) recently pointed me at a new piece of Internet marketing software called Scarcity Samurai. The design is simple enough; you install it on your site, use it with any sales pages or product launches you're doing, and it attaches a countdown timer to the page, and lets you set up a redirect the instant the timer winds down.

People who don't buy within the time limit miss the sale and the deal is closed.

Why would anyone run a deal that closes? Well, because, on average, these kinds of promotions do around double the sales that promotions without a close date do.

That's exciting news if you sell anything online, but - unless you're selling stuff online - you may be thinking, ah, what's that got to do with me?

Well, what scarcity does for sales, it also does for seduction.

Or, you thought women just throw themselves at rock stars the one time they get the chance to backstage because they figure they can come back and grab the guy whenever they feel like it?

In "How to Talk About Yourself on Dates," a reader writes in to ask about dealing with male competition:

“Hi Chase,

Awesome site and truly amazing articles. There was one particular topic I was searching for but couldn’t find it. It's dealing with experience. Since the days before I came across this site I was pretty bad with girls, I have had problems dealing with competition. As soon as there is competition from guys with slightly better game I am rather clueless what to do. It's like I lose all the energy and confidence and hand it over to the other guy. Since in a normal scenario (college or university pretty girls are mostly hounded with tons of guys) this is most likely to happen everywhere and you'll keep losing girls if you don't sort it out. I know the obvious choice would be to ignore the guy and just follow the ways explained on the site. But if there’s a guy with naturally good game aiming of the same girl in front of you I find it impossible to ignore the same. There has to be a way to get around it!!Would be great if you could help me with the same...”

Dealing with other men competing with you in the dating arena can be a big headache. I certainly went through it during my learning curve - it's no fun to lose, but it's a whole lot less fun when not only do you lose, but some girl you liked clearly picks another man over you. In fact, it can be one of the most painful events you’ll experience.

So how do you deal with male competition - especially with men more experienced with women than you are? That's a tough nut to crack... and it's going to depend as much on your calm and your baseline fundamentals as it will on your "game."

In the post on indirect game, Dave asked the following about flirting at work and in other non-anonymous social situations where romance may not be the focus of the gathering at hand:

“Hello Chase,
there's something about indirect rapport I'm not sure you've covered and it might be interesting. Very often and especially with girls whom you're likely to meet again - colleagues, fellow students etc. - it seems to me going true indirect could make sense (while still being sexy that is, but not saying "I'm kidding, I just thought you were cute" which is in fact direct but just delayed 3 seconds) because it allows the girl to pretend she didn't know you were seducing her. She can then tell herself (or her friends) that she's completely innocent and didn't help you or make it easy for you. On the other hand, directness and indirect direct polarize reactions so it can easily become awkward if you have to see them on a regular basis afterwards. Maybe you could add a few words on this.
Dave”

It's a tight rope to walk - how do you express interest and flirt with colleagues and coworkers without being so obvious about it that you risk an ugly rejection or a (decidedly non-professional) label as the office flirt?

I'm going to focus mostly on work situations here, largely because we've already covered the classroom (see: "Cute Girls in Class? Stop Flirting and Start DATING"). As with that article, the topic here is going to be not just how you can flirt with (a modicum of) subtlety, but also how you can actually make something happen.

Because, while flirting is undeniably fun in its own right, taking that coworker you've been flirting with for months for a hot date or a roll in the hay is a lot more fun.

Lately I've been noticing a fair amount of guys discussing difficulty approaching women while looking smooth and effortless. Some of the time, they're ending up not approaching girls they like at all, because they can't find the "right angle" or they're waiting for the "right moment," and that moment never comes.

Approaching girls is a bit of an art, but how to approach a girl is not - that you can boil down to distinct bits, pieces, and learnable, repeatable steps.

However, it's also a topic that's shrouded in a lot of general, generic advice and scads of "Just do this [hard-sounding thing] and the girl is yours!"

Before we get into the mechanics on how to approach a girl, a few articles to recommend checking out if you haven't already done so (or, are in need of a refresher):

• Overcoming Approach Anxiety (combatting nervousness prior to approaching)

• Move Faster (a basic but under-discussed tenet of good game)

• Reactions vs. Results (a mistake loads of men make - confusing reactions from women for results with women)

• How to Get Girls: The Last Post You'll Ever Need (a broad overview of the mentality you'll need to have and the situations you'll run into in the modern dating environment)

• The Law of Least Effort and Sprezzatura (the big impact that the appearance of effort has on how attractive you are to women and the kind of results you get)

We'll be using and referring to these principles here - if you're vague or unfamiliar with any of them, make sure you give these a look.

That in mind, let's get you armed up with a process for approaching that takes advantage of the situation and the environment and has you meeting girls as easily as possible, as smoothly as possible, and with the best end point possible (the girls you meet wanting to meet up with you again and exchanging contact details with you - or better).

And we'll do all that with the 4 big mistakes that men make when approaching - and the 10 steps to take to have a near-perfect approach.

Today I want to talk about a strange and confusing topic for a lot of guys - namely, getting mixed signals from a girl.

You know what mixed signals are: one moment, she's flirty and warm with you, and you get excited, thinking you're getting somewhere with her. The next moment, she's cool and aloof - and you're really not sure what happened.

Then, out of nowhere - BAM! You're back get warm, flirty behavior from her.

So does that mean she likes you, or does that mean she doesn't?

In 2001, I set foot inside a nightclub, just off the seashore in Ocean City, Maryland, for the first time in my life. It was senior week, the week after graduation from high school, and I was 18 years old... and my efforts to get my life on track were sputtering out. I'd tried everything else I could think of to learn social skills, to make friends, to get girls; but none of it had worked. I was liked, in my way - most of my classmates thought I was cool, or a curiosity... something of a high school legend. But I had no friends to speak of. I kept everyone at arm's length, fearful of substantial social interaction. I didn't even know how to hold a conversation with people. And unlike almost everyone else in my graduating class, I wasn't going to college come summer's end.

No one understood why one of the best students in school wouldn't go to college, with no job, and no backup plan, but how could they. They had their normal lives. Friends, girlfriends, parties, fun. Walking into a nightclub alone - an environment I'd never been in in my life - and walking out with a girl was my last resort. While the rest of my classmates drank and laughed and talked and partied with their friends and hookups and paramours, I struck out into the night on my own, driven and determined, on one last, hubristic, quixotic quest that was only ever going to end one way.

One of the older pieces of writing of mine still floating around on the Internet is a newsletter I wrote for theApproach back in 2007 called "Becoming a Great Storyteller." Because I already wrote something on it back then, and because much of the emphasis I've placed on Girls Chase is on getting others to tell you their stories more than it is to get you telling yours, I never took the time to get a proper treatment up for how to tell a story.

If you've read through the other articles on this site, you've no doubt come across some of the more story-driven pieces here - one of the more classic examples of this being "Can't Stop Thinking About Her?" Storytelling is a key component of most things involving people - whether that's writing, teaching, or speaking; building connections with others, delivering speeches at political rallies, or shouting on high from the pulpit.

The best actors are storytellers.

The best bosses are storytellers.

The best authors are storytellers.

The best seducers are storytellers.

The best salesmen are storytellers.

The most powerful, compelling, magnetizing people from all walks of life are storytellers.

And if you'd like to join their ranks, to hold that candle up that flickers light onto the damp and dusty walls of intrigue and enchantment and fantasy and allure, to attract the minds of those trapped in lives of boredom and normality and sameness and deliver them a wake up call that snaps them at once to attention, then, to do that, you must know how to tell a story.

In the comments section of "Are You Smart? It Doesn't Much Matter Either Way," on how viewing and talking about yourself as smart actually impedes progress in your endeavors, a reader named Al made the following request:

“Great Article, Chase this is an invaluable mindset for so many areas of life. I want to see an article on how to tell good anecdotes and speak about yourself. I know this goes against deep diving and LOLE but when conversations do start to become a question and answer session i often struggle to make an insightful or interesting comment.”

Al's right - while there's a great deal on this site about how to get other people talking to you, there really isn't a whole heck of a lot about how to talk about yourself.

So, in order to change that, I've put together a two-part article series on the subject: the first on talking about yourself, and the second on telling great stories.

Let's kick this two-parter off then, and have a look at how you ought to go about talking about yourself with women to achieve maximal results.