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Pick-Up Is Not A Viable Business

krauserpua
May 20, 2020

I was having a chat with a buddy today [1] about the history of daygame. He was discussing some of his wing-men who are really into the entirety of daygame both as a means of getting skirt and as an engrossing topic with its own rewards of intellectual edification. For example, consider Nash’s many long scholarly posts. That’s supreme mental masturbation for the pleasure of taking apart the watch and fitting it back together again. I’ve been known to do the same thing myself. It’s fun and helps you understand the topic. If you’re lucky, you can even move the topic forward.

“When I was first getting into daygame, in Prague, I’d watch one of Street Attraction‘s videos every afternoon when I was getting ready to go out,” my buddy said [2]. “I’d listen to all the Daygame.com podcasts, and read blog posts. It really got me motivated to approach.”

Yes, I can imagine it would. He then discussed a couple of his wing-men who have read everything about the history of Game, and who know exactly who was in the Project Hollywood house, who invented what jargon, and so on [3]. As inevitably happens in such discussions, I was asked to elaborate on the circumstances behind Tom Torero getting punched by Richard La Ruina in a Minsk cafe, while Yad egged him on. For some reason, that shot was heard around the world [4] and is now an Established Event in daygame folklore. So, I regaled my buddy with a long, detailed chronology beginning in 2011 that led up to that punch in April 2014.

Daygame history. I knows it.

In talking about Torero taking one for the team, we naturally slipped into discussion about Andy Yosha’s business Daygame.com and then what Andy Aslen Claymore is up to nowadays. I didn’t know, but a google search shows he’s got a Twitter account with 27 followers launching a product that isn’t really explained. The conversation turned to how Andy ran Daygame.com and from there to how Tyler and Papa run Real Social Dynamics, and then on to the PUA industry as a whole. I think the conclusion is something that might interest my esteemed readership, and thus we arrive at the topic of this post:

Conclusion: Most pick-up companies are not viable businesses.
Corollary: To the extent they stay operational, most pick-up companies are cheating somebody.

At first approximation I’d say there are four different business structures in the PUA world, of which three are non-viable/exploitative and one is viable and ethical but severely constrained. Let me list them. I won’t name names, so you’ll have to figure out which hat fits who.

1. Really Systematic Dating
This is the most scaleable of all businesses because it operates as a pyramid scheme. At the bottom level squats a mass of young interns who are press-ganged into completing all the administration and grunt work of the business. College kids will man the cameras, edit the videos, upload the files, answer the queries, balance the books and so on. Their lure is that these impressionable unpaid/underpaid lads get to hang out with the coaches and “live the life” and network etc. The next level up the pyramid are the paid coaches who teach the live events and do the actual fee-earning work. These coaches are on employment contracts and worked extremely hard. To squeeze full profitability out of them, they’ll be flown around the world to coach a boot-camp every weekend. It’s a tough job: crossing time zones, working nights, and the unending high pressure of performing in front of students. By putting these coaches on contracts, you can pay them less than a per-programme fee, say $50k pa, which works out at about $0.01 per hour.

Then at the top of the pyramid are the one or two business owners who take all the profit. Of the entire pyramid, only those guys are making good money.

This business model survives by sucking the blood out of the interns and coaches, then rudely discarding them when they are burnt out or no longer compliant. It requires iron control within the company, high churn of bodies, and lots of internal and recruiting bullshit about what a valuable learning experience they are having by being part of the organisation. The clients don’t necessarily get a raw deal. The product delivered might be just fine.

2. Total Numpty Losers
Whereas (1) is a sprawling organisation with many moving parts drawing its value by underpaying the grunts, this second business model thrives on a different currency entirely: bullshit. So whereas in (1) it’s the employees and interns being sucked dry, in (2) it’s the customers being bled white whereas the staff do really well thankyouverymuch.

Simply, you target credulous customers who are new to pick-up and lack the ability to spot a con. Promise them wild abundant success with women while non-too-subtly suggesting they’ll finally find acceptance in a group of like-minded individuals (use lots of video of group hugs between coaches and suckers clients).

This business model works because the coaches don’t need to have any ability whatsoever, so you can get them cheap. They aren’t the hard workers of (1). They just need to spin a line of bullshit long enough, then gaslight the client on what great progress he’s allegedly made so he goes home with a smile on his face. Given that the coaches have no ability, you’d think it would be difficult to create the marketing material that draws the punters in. That’s where severely dishonest and misleading advertising comes in. Hire hookers to model in “lifestyle” photos. Hire hookers to walk down the street that your instructor can “approach” and get an incredible response. Sell nebulous unmeasurable skills such as “inner game”. Make it woo-woo as fuck.

Whereas (1) is run like a slave plantation, (2) isn’t a pick-up business at all. Much as Britain’s National Health Service is really just a job creation program for incompetent Labour voters (and if some patients get treated along the way, that’s an unexpected bonus), this business model is really just an engine to fund the hooker-and-blow addictions of the instructors. It’s an endless circle of: pay hookers for marketing -> to draw in punters -> who pay for your hookers and marketing.

Only by the wildest chain of coincidences will a client actually learn any game.

3. Young And Disorganised
We started with a big complex business model (1) and then scaled it down a notch to a little boy’s gang (2), and now we come to the sole trader. This business model will suit any coach who can put forth a reasonably convincing effort on the streets but who doesn’t really have the discipline to write a book and speak coherently on a video analysis. This model replies primarily on (i) identifying individual rich suckers, and (ii) shamelessly bullshitting them on the progress they could make with you. Don’t play the ball, play the man.

So, try to spot someone with more money than sense. If they are an affluent brown man with an inexhaustible thirst for white girls, you are onto a winner. Saudi lawyers, Indian tech engineers, Turkish entrepreneurs etc. So give them the spiel, “yeah, baby, I fink that what would, like, really work for you bro is if we did a ten-day program in Minsk, yeah.” Take the money, sponge even more on accommodation (“so, like, if you really want to maximise your closing rate, like, you need to be in an impressive apartment, where you have twenty-four-hour access to my coaching, yeah?”). Then when the coaching has finished, pitch them on the next residential program (“You are making really good progress man. I think, like, the best way for you to push on through to the next level is a two week trip to Romania. Oh man, those Romanian girls are so sexy. Mmmmm! And I’ll tell you what, right, there’s a Romanian girl I dated- a model, like- and she told me girls down there just love Saudi/Iranian/Indian lawyers/doctors/architects”).

This business model is not inherently dishonest, but it works best if you keep reselling additional coaching that the client simply doesn’t need. It also scales best if you accept clients that really shouldn’t be doing daygame at all. Then you’re just mugging them, selling impossible dreams you can’t possibly help them fulfil.

4. Mostly Ethical
This is the only way I know of running a profitable PUA business without scamming anyone [5] and it’s mostly run like (3) but with two important limitations. First, you screen all prospective clients to figure out if you can actually help them. So, perhaps you’ll respond to their first inquiry by emailing a series of pertinent questions (e.g. age, race, lifetime lay count, cumulative approach count, successes etc) and then proceed to a video chat- mostly to check if they are deluded, autistic, or will be a nightmare to coach. Explain realistic expectations and then- if you are both agreed- only then do you take the money. This means sometimes you have to turn down clients (and thus cash) [6]. Not everyone is cut out for daygame. That drastically limits scaleability because there are only so many coachable clients out there.

Second, once you’ve taught them everything you can…. STOP. Don’t sell them any more coaching. They need to go away for a year and implement all that new knowledge. Intensive in-field daygame coaching is not a recurring expense. Or at least it shouldn’t be.

Like (3) you have to do the coaching yourself, for quality control. It is theoretically possible to hire help but I’ve yet to see a PUA business that can sustain such a system. Yes, their marketing will tell you they have “hand-picked coaches I’ve taught myself and who I guarantee are at the pinnacle of game skill” but this is always a flagrant lie. They are clueless interns. The reason is that managing skilled players is like herding cats. Most skilled players don’t want to coach, so you’re beginning from a tiny pool of skilled available labour. Then you simply can’t keep them. As soon as a good coach gets experience and a name, there’s nothing stopping him opening his own business. And, historically, that’s exactly what has happened

…. and thus we come full circle to one of the reasons why Torero got punched in Minsk.

If you’d rather just buy Daygame Overkill, then you may wish to buy Daygame Overkill here.

[1] An argument, really. But don’t worry, I was right about everything whereas he was sadly mistaken on all points of variance.
[2] Sadly, we can’t do that any more. RIP.
[3] Presumably they’ve read the official history of daygame beginning with Balls Deep and ending in Last Man Banging.
[4] To the extent that being punched on the ear makes any sound at all.
[5] Yosha tried to run Daygame.com like (1) but with genuinely able coaches and far less exploitatively. I think that’s a big reason why the company went bust. It’s too expensive a cost base.
[6] Something which may have only happened on a handful of occasions in the history of the PUA industry.

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Post Information
Title Pick-Up Is Not A Viable Business
Author krauserpua
Date May 20, 2020 8:28 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Blog Krauser PUA
Archive Link https://theredarchive.com/blog/Krauser-PUA/pick-up-is-not-a-viablebusiness.26996
https://theredarchive.com/blog/26996
Original Link https://krauserpua.com/2020/05/20/pick-up-is-not-a-viable-business/
You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.

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