The 4 Stages of Street Cold Approach

This is an article about the journey you will experience as you proceed from a man who never walks up to strange women to introduce himself and flirt, to a man who does so all the time, and reaps the rewards, both in terms of women and in terms of how he thinks about women.

If you have read my two previous articles on this website (here’s one and here’s two), you might have noticed that there is a word that I mention frequently (directly or indirectly): and the word is cold approach. In my case, the preference is for street cold approach, though cold approach of any kind is the key.

Cold approach is at the heart of my game; in fact, it is my entire game. When I say it is my “entire” game, I do not only refer to my outer game, but to my inner game as well.

The power of cold approach is so big that I cannot put limits on it. It contains a transformative power that has the ability to change your relationship with women in a dramatic way, on all levels. There is a lot of talking about “inner game”. Well, despite being the cause of your actions, your mindset will also follow the progress you make in cold approach.

Now, let’s make an important clarification: everything is mind and everything comes from the mind. As a consequence, outer game is really a reflection of your inner game. It all starts with a decision, and the decision will happen in your mind. You’ll decide that you are entitled to hot girls, so you’ll go out and talk to them, and then through consistent action you’ll start seeing evidence of your own belief.

Therefore, action is not the cause, the cause is your decision. Action simply follows your decision, and that’s why inner game always comes before outer game. And yet, action is the only way to play this game. Action is born from your inner game, and yet it is the only way to change, improve, sharpen, and expand your inner game. That’s the paradox.

Chicken and Egg: Outside or In?

Let’s make an example. You may think something like “I am a smart guy and I work out; I’m brilliant and have a cool personality; sometimes I am even sexy, so it’s normal that girls will be attracted to me,” and really believe it for a few seconds, but if you don’t take action and get a girl who reflects those qualities to you, you may still feel like a failure most of the time. Your decision to talk to new girls follows the fact that you believe you’re a cool guy who’s got a lot to offer, but you won’t be able to really own that belief until you actually get some girls.

Once you start taking action and getting some girls, now it feels totally normal to you to be an attractive guy. Once it feels normal, your inner game has changed. (Easier said than done, you might be thinking)

This is the process:

1. Inner game 1.0 (“I deserve women in my life”) ->
   

2. Action (cold approach) ->
   

3. Inner Game 2.0 (“Not sure if I want to meet another one or play with my smartphone”)

Inner game 1.0 (embodied by the guy who wants to get good with women but has no experience in the street) can be described as having a generic sense of entitlement to “something better”. This phase is very important because it is at the cause of everything that follows. Cold approach is the effect of Inner Game 1.0, but it is also (and that’s the sexy thing) the cause of Inner Game 2.0. That’s why I love game.

Everything is connected in such a paradoxical way that never fails to amaze me. Cold approach, which was the effect of your initial Inner Game 1.0, becomes the cause of your renewed Inner Game 2.0, which is your new, solid, consistent, successful identity with women. Everything starts from thought, but nothing is possible without action.

Now, for every guy on planet earth (yep, every one) cold approach = facing fear. Therefore, our little scheme could be read like this:

1. Inner game 1.0 ->

2. Facing Fear ->

3. Inner Game 2.0

And here comes the question: why is it so damn hard for 95% of men on the planet to go from Inner Game 1.0 (hopeful newbie) to Inner Game 2.0 (successful Casanova)? Take a look at what’s in the middle of the equation and you’ve got the answer.

STAGE 1 – The BIG Fear

This is the most unpleasant stage of cold approach. In fact, by this stage you are so paralyzed by fear that you are not even approaching. The women in your life are probably limited to those you meet through social circle, school, work, or common interest. People do all kinds of activities and join all kinds of social gatherings to get access to more women, and yet most women seem to be always out of reach. Sometimes you’ll score with one of them and you’ll be happy to date her for a while.

If she’s average, you’ll get bored and quit and find yourself without another sexual partner. If she’s hot, she’s going to get in control of the frame very soon, get bored, and dump you. You really don’t have much choice at this stage of your game, and yet, surprisingly, this is where most guys (of all ages) are standing. This pattern keeps repeating for ages and in most cases it lasts for an entire lifetime.

Some guys manage to find a girl that likes them a lot and somehow manage to establish a decent frame (even by having almost no experience with other women): they marry her and, if their frame is strong enough, the relationship might even be successful in the long term and she might never dump him.

Yet, I bet he will sometimes go to bed at night and wonder how it would be exploring other girls. Whether you win or lose, there is no abundance whatsoever at this stage. You either keep around this girl that “destiny” gave to you in December or January… or you won’t get laid again for a while. God knows when. We’ve all been at this stage at least once in our life, it is the most depressing stage, but it is necessary as it is the environment that gives birth to a new decision: “Let’s get more women”.

Of course, you have no idea how to do this. It’s too weird to go into a public place and just talk to a few girls. You’ll try online dating for a while and you’ll get some success, but it is too slow. Hours and hours of chats leading nowhere just to get a few chicks out? You’ll get laid occasionally, but with most of them it seems to be hard to even take them out for a date. No way.

After a few weeks/months, you’ll burn out and decide you are not going to waste any more of your time. If a chick is going to reject you, she’ll have to do it very fast. She’ll have an opportunity to look at you in the eyes and decide if she’s up for it or not. No big deal anyway, but everything will happen fast. And it will be fun.

All of a sudden, the idea of talking to a chick in the street doesn’t seem so weird anymore. You realize it is the only thing you can do to change your life with women. A hot chick walks past you and you can’t say a word. You are so pissed off at yourself. Another chance is gone. You know that online dating and yoga classes are what you’re left with if you can’t put your balls on the line. “No more of this cr*p, this is the last time this is going to happen.” Before you know it, another hot chick gets in the neighborhood and you jump in. Super awkward, blown out. But you did it! Congrats, you just made your first step on an incredible journey.

STAGE 2 – A Beginner’s Journey

This is worst stage of cold approach, but still better than not approaching at all. This stage is full of awkward silences and a general misunderstanding of what is going on in set. When you open, you are so excited about opening that you might come off as try-hard, and anyways, you don’t really know what to do yet. The very fact that you can talk to a hot girl on the street is “so amazing” at this point in time that this energy of wonder will supersede any sexual desire you might have.

Enjoy this moment for what it is: a starting point. It seems all easy and good, but in the reality it is the hardest moment I can remember. Think about all the challenges that you have to face. You have to do something that:

1. Almost no one does (and your mom is not encouraging you to do)

2. You have no idea if it will work or not

3. You don’t feel like you have enough skills to do yet

4. People might look at you and observe you are failing at it

This is enough for most people to quit after a few sets of failure. I “failed” my first sets too, but I knew I had no other choice than success if I wanted more women in my life. I knew I was able to get women under standard conditions (social circle) and escalate in a very natural way, so there should be a way to translate that skill to the street as well. Soon I got tired of going for numbers and decided to escalate more physically. And as soon as I did that, I got my first lay from street cold approach, and after that I was pretty much sold to day game and could not call myself a beginner anymore.

ADVANTAGESof this stage:

• It’s okay to open

• Girls enjoy some attention

• Gets you laid!!

DISADVANTAGES of this stage:

• Often skipping girls, too much time between interactions

• Not being able to always read a girl’s subtle signals

• Lack of reference experiences

• Poor or fluctuating verbal game

• Lack of leading; escalation too slow until you realize it

• Flakes

CHALLENGES: Keep going even when you have zero results.

STAGE 3 – Intermediate Excitement

After getting the first lay, you have solved two big problems. The “I have no idea if it will work or not” and the “I don’t feel like I have enough skill to do it yet” part. No one can tell you that this is not possible, because you’ve already done it. Also, you did it all alone so you know that you’ve got the skills to do it again. The big question is: “Will I have the luck to create a similar situation again?”

In other words, this stage of game is characterized by a general confidence mixed with feelings of uncertainty. You’ve just won Wimbledon and you know that you trained well for it, but you don’t really know if it was because of your skills or if the stars were just aligned. You suspect it was a mix of the two, but anyway, you are scared that the stars might not align again.

You keep putting yourself out there to prove yourself, and every make-out and sexual adventure that you get gives you more confidence, because now you can start relying on your numbers and statistics. You start getting compliments and validation from women, but you might still be a bit slow at reading her signals and spend too much time in pointless interactions.

You pile up a few more lays and feel like a hero, but your game is still imperfect. At this stage, your (positive) forward attitude might emphasize too much the “pull” part of the famous “push/pull” technique. You feel like you can improve a few little things here and there. Still, you are getting laid and having lots of sexual adventures, so you just can’t stop opening new prospects.

Approach anxiety is gone, not to come back anymore. (It never really goes away, but now it feels more like excitement. You know that the right thing to do is open.) You have many reference experiences now. In my case, this wonderful stage happened in the months between set number 200 and set number 600/800.

ADVANTAGES of this stage

• Increased consistency

• Increased understanding of what is going on

• Verbal game improved

• Fast escalation improved

• Better at reading girl’s signs

• Make-outs

• Lays and dirty stuff

DISADVANTAGES of this stage:

• Often skipping hotter girls

• Giving too much attention to time-wasters

• Flakes

• No clear understanding of R-Selection/K-Selection dynamics

CHALLENGES: Letting the girls invest more, sticking to a solid opening schedule, improving the details of your game, managing multiple dates.

STAGE 4 – Advanced Horizons

Once you’ve found some consistency in the number of lays you get from day game, your game starts to have some degree of predictability. Once you are able to determine how many sets you need to open in order to get laid (numbers may fluctuate from time to time, but that’s it) you are an advanced player.

The shift form intermediate to advanced is so smooth that it can barely be noticed, and, after all, these are all categories that have not really a solid reality. And yet, something changes in the Inner Game and the advanced level when you make the final shift form Inner Game 1.0 to Inner Game 2.0. The number of monthly lays might or might not increase; generally speaking, you will obtain more by doing less, but you might also open a bit less and the final number of lays will be always influenced more by how many sets you open than by your skills.

What really happens is a dramatic shift towards R-Selection mindset, meaning that you really start going for those “one shots” and naturally presenting yourself as a guy who will offer nothing more than a sexual adventure to the girl. As an intermediate, fast escalation will already present those R-Selected qualities to the girl, but you might very well mix your vibe with some K-Selected stuff that will just freak the girl out. Now, there is nothing wrong with mixing R-Selection with some Boyfriend-Girlfriend affection if you are doing it on purpose, as an experienced and advanced player will do.

Once you are able to do that consciously, you are going to give to her the most amazing experience ever and the girl will usually fall crazy in love with you. But, as an intermediate you don’t really know what you are doing. The intermediate’s plan is to bang a girl as fast as possible and then keep her around in order to bang her again as many times as possible. Being still relatively new to game, the intermediate is looking more for friends with benefits than one-night stands. Or maybe both of them. But the operative frame is still “keep girls around”.

That’s why you get guys asking “I got laid but how can I keep her around?” This very question is revealing that the “final” shift to a deeper Inner Game is not happened yet in the guy’s mind.

As an advanced player, you have no desire to “keep girls around”. You enjoy their company if they do remain, but you understand that the best moment is always the fresh new lead. The fresh new notch. The thrill of the new conquer. If a girl doesn’t stick around it’s okay, because it means you have more time to pursue new prospects.

Ironically, when you start operating from this paradigm, they pretty much always stick around. The less you need them, the more they wanna be with you. After a few repeats, you start getting a bit bored of standard sex, and a new quickie with a new prospect in a stimulating place might be way more exciting than an entire week of regular sex. The priority is always the new adventure. If you get to repeat with a cool girl, that’s a bonus. The beautiful thing about this seemingly cold and detached mindset is that it is completely authentic. You really want to pursue new women (instead of looking for a girlfriend), so you are really not needy by nature.

You are someone who’s running somewhere, and women feel like they want to chase you and get you all for themselves. Since they are working hard for your attention, it is easy for you to also give them your affection, if you so wish. As bad and counterintuitive as it sounds, pursuing other women seems to make the relationship with a specific girl blossom, instead of diminish. It’s up to you how far you want to take it.

ADVANTAGES of this stage:

• Less effort, more results

• Great understanding of what is going on

• Epic verbal game

• Natural fast escalation

• Experienced at reading girl’s signals

• Make-outs

• Lays and dirty stuff

• Good relationships

• Clear understanding of R-Selection

• Opening hotter girls

DISADVANTAGES of this stage

• Flakes

• Occasional boredom

CHALLENGES: Managing a lot of girls at the same time; time management.

As you can see, the only thing that does not change during the 4 stages is flakes. You’ll get them as a beginner, as an intermediate, and as an advanced player. No matter how good you get at game, some chicks will flake for some reason or another.

The good news is that, as an advanced player, you won’t even notice that. As long as you keep opening new prospects consistently, your day will be so full of girls blowing up your phone, that you won’t have much attention for anything else. Your biggest issue is not so much what you are doing with girls, as much as time management.

Of course, if you stop opening and introducing new leads you’ll also stop experiencing many of the benefits of the advanced player’s mindset. The engine of the 4 stages will always be cold approach; you never stop opening to keep playing at high levels. Just like football players stay fit until they are competing, while they soon get fatter after stopping competitions, if you stop hitting the streets you won’t lose your reference experiences, but your skills will quickly decrease and your results with women will change accordingly.

Until the next time....

Francesco