Hey seddit! I've been lurking on here for a while, but this will be the first FR of many hopefully. After being on seddit for a few months, I finally decided to take the leap and start getting out there and putting it into practice. For me, the best step was to reach out and look into coaching, and when I saw Kumar and Heckz's post about coaching in the bay area, I took the leap.

So we met up last monday for a little get to know you section. They just went over a few basics and tips about what would be going down on friday. Lurking on seddit for so long, I figured they would be talking about things I already knew, but lots of the information was new to me and definitely got me psyched for last friday when we would be going out.

So on comes friday, we meet up in the Mission along with another one of their students, and immediately it's all about opening sets. We were both given the assignment of opening sets to try and find out the location of the first bar we were headed to. This involved talking to random strangers on the street. Once we got to the first bar, Elbo Room, they just pushed us to approach as much as we could. Now, before friday, I'd never spoken to a girl in a bar who wasn't already in my social circle, so that night was almost like trial by fire. Kumar and Heckz would say "hey go talk to that three set" and I'd go. My biggest hangup of the night I'd say was hesitation, which I imagine a lot of guys might go through when first starting out. You walk over, hover for a bit, waiting for the right moment to talk. Our coaches quickly let me know that I should approach with more confidence and start talking immediately, even if it means interrupting, it's important to approach aggressively in that setting. Later in the night, as I tried consciously to improve on this, I could definitely notice a difference. I remember a particular HB6 who was with a large group of friends. I approached her from the back and gave kindof a soft "Hey how's it goin?" completely blew me off. Then there was a HB8 later that night, who I approached from the front/side and immediately said "Happy Birthday!!" in my sincerest loud tone, and she was actually really receptive to it. This brings me to the second lesson I learned that night: you can say almost anything and the girl will probably be receptive to it, given it's not overtly creepy. And shit, even if it is overtly creepy maybe if you have enough confidence, it could work as well.

The most successful sets were on the street with my fellow student, YeArea. The first happened outside Elbo Room. We approached these two HB8's by apologizing for one of our friends being an asshole. Believe it or not, it totally worked and were talking to these girls for a long while, ending with hugs goodbye. The second was outside Cassanova, when we met another two-set smoking cigarettes. Again, we just had a decent conversation with them, building up a decent rapport.

Overall, that night, I didn't get any numbers, didn't get laid, but for me, the night was a huge success. Approaching 10+ sets in one night really did a lot for my confidence and made me want to go out and start approaching more, even if it's just with my own friends. If any of you have been lurking out there for a while, I highly recommend coaching. Even if you think you know everything about approaching, I found one of the greatest benefits of coaching is to just have someone to push you into every set, when you would regularly find an excuse not to approach, and also provide a base to kinda debrief between every set. This post turned out to be a lot longer than I had planned, but if anyone has questions I'll be happy to answer. Hopefully, this is the first of many FR from me.