I was watching a Dan Peña video on YouTube the other day. Between all the extreme Alpha Male 1.0 screaming and swearing he said something that I’ve heard before but had forgotten about. He said, “You are 2000 cold calls away from being rich.”
It made me stop and think. I was taught much the same thing when I was in sales training in my twenties when I was building my first business.
The concept works like this: You make X number of cold calls and track how many sales you get and thus how much money you make. Then you go back through the numbers and figure out how many cold calls you need to make in order to make Y amount of money.
Once you figure this out it’s extremely motivational. It changes your entire view of sales in general and making and cold calls in particular. If you know, based on a lot of stats you’ve been keeping on your own performance, that you’re going to make a $5,000 commission (or whatever) once you make 27 cold calls (or whatever), then all of a sudden you realize you can now make all the money you want.
You just need to make 27 calls and you’ll get your $5,000, at least statistically. Even if 26 of those calls result in people telling you to fuck off and hanging up the phone in your ear, it doesn’t matter, you’ll still get your $5,000. (For you nitpickers and math nerds, I’m speaking statistically here. I’m not saying phone call #27 will literally pay out $5,000. You understand what I’m trying to illustrate.)
That’s what Dan Peña was saying. You can argue with the specific numbers if you want, and that’s fine, but the concept is sound.
This leads me to the most important number you should track in your online dating efforts. Of course, there are several numbers you should track, and I go through all of them in The Ultimate Online Dating Manual. I went from sexless divorced beta male dad ten years out of dating practice to a guru-level online dating expert in less than two years, and I did it primarily by tracking my numbers and focusing on improving them.
The most important number, for online dating at least, that you need to track is this: the number of times you have sex with a new woman per swipes made or openers sent (depending on if you’re using dating sites or dating swipe apps).
Let’s say you set up a profile, do a few blitzes, have five first dates, and eventually have sex with two of those five women. You carefully track your numbers during the entire time.
You go back through the numbers, do a little basic spreadsheet math, determine that you made 1100 swipes in order to nail down those five first dates. (I’m making up these numbers. Don’t take them literally.)
This means your “swipes per lay” average is 550, or 1100 swipes divided by the two times you had sex with new women.
If you want to nitpick the math (and, Jesus, I know some of you will), perhaps you could argue that the real number is not 550, but somewhere between 550 and 1100. Perhaps. The point is your magic number of swipes is well below 1100. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going with 550.
This is exciting! Why? Because the next time you go online to find a new woman, all you have to do is do 550 swipes, and statistically speaking, you’ll have sex. It means that all the flakes and non-responders now don’t fucking matter at all. All you need to worry about is doing those 550 swipes regardless of the result.
Even better, that 550 amount assumes that you don’t improve at all on your second go-round. Likely, the next time you do another swipe blitz, your online game will be a little better, having learned from the experience of the first blitz. Thus, your new magic number will likely be less than 550.
Attitudinally, it really helps to know this number. It takes the sting out of most of the rejection. You don’t care who doesn’t want to meet up with you; all you care about is getting out your 550 swipes.
This really, really helped me back in the days when I was hitting online dating hard. I always knew my magic number of openers I needed to send that would result in having sex with one new woman. Not responses, not dates, but sex.
Sure, I tracked those other numbers as well. They’re helpful too. But they aren’t as important as the big one, the magic number!
You could argue that you can’t make this determination based on one blitz alone, particularly if it’s your very first one. You could have gotten lucky. It happens. I’ve had amazing blitzes where I got laid left and right with just a few openers and on the very next blitz I had shitty results (though not zero; I’ve literally never had a blitz where I didn’t have sex with someone new unless I was testing something new and strange).
This means that you’ll need multiple blitzes to really nail down that number. But, again, that number should decrease over time as you get better at all of this. If it stays the same forever, you’re not doing this right. You’re not modifying your approach, testing new techniques, testing photos for your profile, and so on. You’re not doing all the things I did for so many years.
The fact that you have that number in your back pocket will make it more likely that you will test these things. If you have no idea what your numbers are (and most guys don’t), then you’re just pissing in the wind. You have only a vague (and likely inaccurate) idea of what kind of effort you need to expend in order to bring a new woman into your sex life.
There are other numbers that I track in my dating life that have nothing to do with online dating such as the number of first dates I need to actually get to sex, the number of women I have sex with who end up in long-term relationships with me, how long they last before the first LSFNTE, and so on. So, this concept extends out to real life dating and relationship management as well.
Figure out that number. Then remember it. Then do it. Then improve it.
Your online dating will be so much simpler when you do.
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Recently i’ve tried asking a girl out from instagram (first one):
the conversation’s boring with where she stays, how she’s feeling etc, and i spoke some of her country language (which built familiarity), and i had few friends from where she worked.
and we moved to whatsapp, it’s the same conversation we had a 15 min video chat.
After that, i traveled 50km (which might be a BIG mistake) one way to see her she’s quite pretty. And she gave me a shit test of me talking to her relatives. I was a lil terrified inside and i was hoping it wasn’t a serious meeting like i’m going to marry the daughter (she’s muslim btw)
and i mildly pass the test, she went all feminine to me from the start…
so the conclusion is, if you’ve a good profile that shows you’ve abundance of girls, i know i don’t have enough pictures to show where i travel, what things i liked to do right now,
but still, i still manage to ask girls out with the least effort (online conversation particularly) as possible.
Great post.
Math nerds like me will actually recognize the concept of a gaussian. Yes, you can sometimes be lucky, but this is unlikely. Yes, sometimes you can be very unlucky, but this is extremely unlikely. Most of the times, you’ll be close to the average, and that’s what’s important.
Old school guy 60 Years of Challenge talks about this in the context of nightgame. He calls it the magic number as well. “What if you knew it took you 25 approaches to get laid with a woman? I think you’d be very excited to go hit on 25 women.” It was a complete game-changer to read this back in the day.
Hey BD, do you think you could help these guys?https://youtu.be/QjLuHxjvMBA
You never meet a girl’s relatives or friends. Ever. Unless you have already been banging her for a while AND want to be serious with her. In all other cases it is a huge mistakes that results in loads of potential problems. If a girl insists on doing things in this order than she is an extreme dominant and or (prob both) provider hunter. If you wanna date alpha style, specially alpha 2.0, then obviously such a girl is not for you.
Yes, in my experience it is usually a mistake. I had many women who traveled happily to meet me for first time. Most of the time I travelled it was noth worth it – stuff didn’t work out AND I just wasted the time and possibly money travelling.
Yes, this is so true! My number of lays skyrocketed when I started putting in the numbers! And if you are smart you don’t even need to waste hours and hours over days and days sending first message openers on women in dating sites when you do a blitz!
Years ago, when I learned that Tim Ferris, who is a big proponent of outsourcing and automating as many processes as possible in his businesses, even tried completely outsourcing his online dating and batching dates, I thought that was a genius idea. I figured out the very first step of sending many openers to many women online is the very most time consuming and boring action required. As BlackDragon wrote in The Ultimate Online Dating Manual, (a great resource if you have bought it yet, do it now!) copy pasted heavily canned messages, but quality, are the way to go. I am kind of lazy in the sense that I hate doing repetitive grudge work, but I love solving problems once and for all. So managed to completely outsource the sending of first message openers to women on dateinasia.com (there is no daily message limit on this fee site – if you have other such dating sites to recommend in different regions, I am very interested by the way) so I don’t have to do it myself manually anymore.
It’s automatic and I can send an opener to thousands and thousands of online dating profiles: it takes zero minutes of my precious time! I call this a Lazy Blitz sending a Storm of Openers, messaging thousands of women automatically for me. I can sit back and relax, do other stuff and after 3 days or so I already get answers from hundreds of women. And new answers usually keep pouring in my inbox in weeks after weeks. I just go through them rapidly and answer only the women I find cute or hot following a heavily canned script which idea I got from reading BD’s awesome book. And since I started doing that, I have so much abundance that I became insanely picky: I turn down women on first dates for such trivial details as their seated height, the down turned shape of their eyes or if their body isn’t exactly as hot as I want.
I am a pleasure of sex, FwBs and MLTRs type of nomad guy, not interested in OLTRs, but I definitely have at least one very solid OLTR candidates in each city I live in, so even if you are the type of guy who just want to have one good girlfriend, putting the numbers is the way to find her. In each city, I have a good 10 women active rotation and I usually like to have sex with 3 to 5 different women each week (and I highly recommend BD’s The Ultimate Open Relationships Manual). I am a low energy, skinny-fat 173cm/5.7′ borderline depressive nerd who doesn’t even go to the gym: if I can do it, anyone can do it. Go hit the dating sites and put in the numbers, it’s worth it! BD is totally right.
Typos in my comment:
*So I managed *free site *my inbox weeks after weeks
BD, didn’t you always say the most important number is the first-date-to-sex ratio, not opener-to-sex, with the justification that for online dating the cost of getting a first date is minimal?
@Lazy Blitz… if you’re always able to be traveling to different regions then you must have a lot of money/free-time to be traveling like that which most of guys don’t have the luxury of doing. Also, you said to use a lot of different sites like dateinasia, but those sites obviously would only work in specific regions as I have no desire to go to Asia, so why would I use sites like dateinasia, you see what i’m saying?…also, what is a guy supposed to do if he has already gone through pretty much all the profiles in his region and doesn’t get anything from it? Probably the only thing would be to wait for new profiles to pop up, but even that is very limited, so I just don’t know anymore?
Mistake #1
Mistake #2
Mistake #3
Dude. Robert Hamburger wrote the funniest shit about ninjas back in the day. Google it.
Yes, that is the most important number, but this article is regarding the most important number in online dating. The number you’re talking about is regarding dating overall.
I will transfer this to the gamestyle im working on. come on lifestyle enhancement!
also love me some Dan Pena. he really does scream lol just need something to cold call about, and im there. will keep this in mind.
I’d like to hold out hope to any other deeply discouraged guys out there who read all this stuff and try all this stuff and just never get anywhere. I started up this mountain when I was 40 and halfway to 48 I’m sitting here with the lingering smell of sweet new pussy all over myself. She was 39 and it was the closest thing I’ve ever had to banging a prostitute, having been married for nearly 30 years to a nearly virginal woman. I was not her first rodeo, and I was so nervous I could barely get it up. She faked it so well. She was a champ.
Why am I bragging about this? Because it’s a real story. What’s my swipe to lay ratio? About 10,500 to 1 at this point. I’m not really tracking it, because there isn’t anything I can do to swipe more unless I move, and my life is quite stable and satisfactory apart from pussy. I might only get a few new girls before I die at this rate, I still feel better about myself than I would have if I had settled for any of the easier pussy I didn’t want along the way. I just kept going until I found and got something I wanted. I wrote a lot of openers. I wasted a lot of time. I went on dates with chicks whose pictures were not representative.
I feel like less of a loser now. My notch count is 3 now. Hey, you know I’m not making that number up. She’s also teaching me how to dance, which is fun. I have my first plate, and I was emphatically explicit about my intention to remain non-monogamous for life. I was also firm about the fact that I do not tolerate drama.
I definitely see why I need to get the next plate going. Especially while I’m on the rebound. I don’t totally have oneitis because I do know other chicks I could definitely hook up with if I took a road trip, but I kind of have oneitis. I need to cure that promptly.
@alphaomega
yes, you’re right i didn’t expect to meet his friends’ relative since she seemed quite opened to meet up in whatsapp chat it was just pure logistics nothing fancy flirting there. And since i’ve reached there after putting my mental effort till there why not i just gave it a try…and since i met some of her friends i’m quite suspicious if i just leave her after banging her what are social consequences to me.
No, no, no. When you run out of profiles, you delete your account, change something (or on some more simple things like Tinder just start over with exactly same stuff) and you hit them up again. You have no idea how many times I got fresh matches I did not have before by doing that. You are talking like as if you are assuming women are organized and go through all the profiles carefully and make a carefully constructed rational decision based on each profile. It is about whether she has actually seen you (often not the case at all) and what emotion she was feeling back then. Sometimes something small like changing the order of your pictures or changing the profile description (yes women definitely read these) makes a huge difference and you will match with women who you didn’t match with before. Happened to me so many times.
You mean pure bad logistics?
Yes, what are the consequences to you? They are her friends not yours? So strange how you think.
I’m doing that in the near future. Even made an appointment with a professional photographer to get new profile photo’s taken. At first this purely for taking some great pictures for my business profile, but it turns out he also specializes in dating profiles.
He took a look at my current profile and exclaimed: ‘Jeez! How are you even getting any luck with those!’
I answered that the competition is even worse.
There is a very big difference between how men use dating apps like Tinder and how women use dating apps. I remember BD saying multiple times that women will find only 10% or 20% of the men they see on Tinder attractive.
It’s both very educative and entertaining to see female friends and family member scrolling through Tinder and dismissing almost every guy they come across. One cousin of mine even dismissed a former professional football (soccer) player who used to play for our national team. I said: ‘You know, that guy is millionaire!’
Sh answered: ‘Meh, I don’t like his sweater’
I’m an older fart (late 40s) new to online dating, and BD`s Ulltimate Online Dating Manual has been a great resource. One thing I’d love to get some tips on is screening for obesity before I waste time on the initial meetup. I live a little outside of the core population and good coffee shops / bars in my area so this adds to my investment in the first brief date unless I happen to be running an errand.
Women’s photos are sometimes vague on body depiction, or a turn out to be decade+ old. While face closeups only are often, but not always, a sign you may be encountering a non endangered species of whale, photos vague on the body can go either way.
I should add that I don’t mind some extra curviness on a short woman. I also try to build up a fun comfortable vibe in the online messaging, and move it fairly quickly to an in person meetup. Bringing up height and weight seems detrimental to the vibe, especially since my height could be a deal breaker on screen (but not necessarily in person).
Any tips, or do I just need to suck it up and meet up with some fatties?
If there only were a magic pill that made obesity attractive, then everyday life in the US would be like living in the playboy mansion.
No need to separate the two. Unless you are going for some very unusual business profile your best business photos will be awesome for dating site anyway. Most women love this style and for both you need to look good, well dressed, trust worthy and the picture needs to have great colours and composition.
Yes, men mostly swipe yes on almost everything which doesnt mean they like the girl but it means the women need to be super picky whether they want to be or not and then most men have to swipe the way they do because of how women swipe. Its funny because its a vicious circle but that is how it is.
Its neither interesting nor educative because it is completely obvious and expected based on the simple argument I gave above which has been true for as long as online dating existed and is still true in exact same way. Nothing new or interesting there. Just pure logic.
This is because every swipe yes for most women is a match so they need to screen somehow. Instead of just swiping a few times which is what they should do and dating those men they are excited about the prospect of the next guy being even better and keep swiping and then they get overwhelmed by choice (which women usually don’t know what to do with correctly anyway) and then they are surprised they have difficulties dating / finding the right guy. It is all obviously expected and unsurprising. If you stand above the rest and hit the numbers you will have easy time.
This is also why adding a cool profile description works very well because most women read it and it is huge part of they’re decisions.
Very easy. Unless she is lying with her photos (showing photos from years ago where she looked very different) you can clearly tell most of the time. If she has only pictures of her face and her face looks round / chubby then chances are overwhelming she will be fat.
Another thing that works is when in doubt ask to connect on Facebook or something (and sometimes you can find her on social media anyway…). Actually nowadays many women will say on they’re profile that they are fat or will tell you pre date because they are starting to realize it is to her own disadvantage to hide it (wasting time, getting through rejection..).
Unless she still looks (almost) exactly the same that would be a grounds for immediate termination on the spot. And a very justified one. If you combine with errands like you say then this would cost you no time at all. It may seem harsh but realize in this case it is totally justified.
It is irrelevant what you mind or don’t mind, what matters is whether you still find her bangable = she turns you on and you can imagine banging her and having a good time. Most of the time it is a simple yes or no answer.
Yes, you never, ever, bring up those numbers pre date or at any point unless she asks then you can tell her (and add a few cm because that will be your height wish shoes on anyway – especially high boots). Only time you advertise your height is when you are clearly among the taller people in your area. Otherwise if you are simply taller than most women (but not that tall) – you can just say “taller than you”.
Then obviously dating fatties wouldn’t be easier. It’s like saying what if we could make gold from thin air – then the price of gold would be almost zero.
@Hugh Jazz what you need to do is ask for a full body pic before meeting up. BD has talked about this and it works, but usually you know the answer already because if a woman has a halfway decent body and is mentally healthy she’ll put up some picture that shows it and if she has a good body by any stretch she’ll almost certainly post a bikini pic.
For me, even if she has a decent body but lacks the confidence to post any sort of pic showing it I take that as a big red flag that she will be unpleasant for me to interact with as I tend to like more confident women and women with big self-esteem issues annoy the hell out of me.
(Well, that was unexpected. Guess you really were a computer nerd, heheh…)
BD:
This is a great article that explains how “numbers game” work. The trick is how to identify what events in life are numbers games and approach them accordingly. However, you have to do your own math.
I had some sales training about 25 years ago from a vendor where they preached 10 calls : 3 quotes : 1 order. Which worked until 1979 and the business got competitive. All the sales management came of age in the industry came of age about that period of time, and when things got competitive, it stopped working. I went through the quote history and the ratio was closer to 150 calls : 10 quotes : 1 order. The functional problem was we were having issues with a vendor and it wasn’t inside of my control. Management was convinced the sales department was lazy.
I changed industries to something with larger margins, and eventually management cut itself to profitability by going out of business.
Just remember – always do your own math.
And…
Classic example of incompetent management who doesn’t understand stuff and makes poor decisions. Sometimes they understand very well and do it on purpose – to fill own pockets at expense of the company.
I disagree. I think they understand fine.
Yep. Exactly this. Or maybe the companies pockets.
My point is you have to be self aware to 1) what your number is and 2) is it reasonable to your goals to hit it? and 3) if no re-calibrate.
I didn’t know who is Dan Bilzerian before, but in this interview, especially at the 47min mark, he talks about his women life and it’s like he is doing everything BD preaches by the book: putting in the numbers, honesty, no jealousy, no marriage, etc… The guy seemed kinda dumb in the first minutes, but as the interview goes deeper with psychology, psychedelics and happiness, he’s actually had a bunch of interesting stuffs to say.
Problem with Bilzerian, is his dad was/is a convicted fraudster, he bullshits about his professional poker playing, he failed to become a Navy SEAL, plus he embellishes a false, bullshit Instagram lifestyle, when he’s probably living off his dad’s trust fund, so I don’t trust the cunt.
Someone like David Goggins – who really is a real, former legit US Navy SEAL, who’s written a book as he used to be overweight, who’s now a motivational speaker and who BD should have on his 2.0 podcast, to me is much more legit. To be a US Navy SEAL doesn’t just require extremely high fitness physically, but also psychologically.
“To be a US Navy SEAL doesn’t just require extremely high fitness physically, but also psychologically”
Probably not. It probably requires psychological imbalance….the job after all requires one to be able to kill with impunity merely on the basis of ‘orders’. Goggins looks like a masochistic nut job….hence his emphasis on enduring pain as being pleasurable.
Not saying that he doesnt have anything important to say….but his love of the extreme suggest psychological imbalance.
Could you give us a link to the YouTube video where Dan Peña talks about “You are 2000 cold calls away from being rich.” ?
Thanks BD
Do people still do calls? Sure for some industries and niches it works or is a must but in many cases nowadays you cannot even find the phone numbers. If the company does have a contact phone number it is picked up by some secretary who says they will call you back later or something.
From what I see nowadays you need to know someone who can introduce you or already know the right people who can make the business decisions directly.
Do people still cold approach girls in the streets and sleep with them later?
I don’t remember it. Just go to his YouTube channel; he’s got tons of videos there and it’s one of the more recent ones within the last two weeks. Just be ready for the sheer amount of screaming and anger you’re going to see. The guy is probably the most angry man on the planet.
I have an entire company based around it, so yes. Mostly B2B though; B2C would be difficult.
I’m 50. Just turned. Most men can’t get past getting lost in a single girl let alone tracking how many failures before they have a success. One thing I’ve noticed is that men in this generation are hopeless slaves to onitis and too emotionally soft to put up with documenting 100 failures to one success. Which is sad because to me it is a what makes a man a man.
I enjoy this process. You have to learn how to be rejected and seemingly fail, to be successful and happy as a man. You go try to lift that weight a dozen times over a dozen workouts before you finally succeed. In the end the actual workouts where you failed to lift that weight is in themselves really micro-successes. you’re a man. You go on 1o dates before getting laid. You fail to get laid but in the end the actual dates are micro-successes. You’re a man. Sure some men will be more natural or better than you but who cares. This is about you. Making yourself better. In the end you learn to become more efficient, improve, get stronger in what you do, and pass on that knowledge as time goes on to other men. Some who might actually listen.
I used to work in industrial sales and do 10 physical calls a day in the mid 1990s. There is no way you could do it today. Between the consolidation of accounts that are large enough to merit national accounts interest, and the physical barriers that exist to getting past the guard, it doesn’t exist, not like it used to anyway.
I’m not convinced it’s that, so much as they’ve been sold this line of Societal Programming/Disney that says they are doing something wrong by putting in the numbers. It’s totally pervasive and sad. Goes for both sexes too. Tell a woman past 33 you aren’t dating that you are casually dating multiple women and watch her melt down on you.
No arguing that the secret to numbers games is to put in the numbers. Just be sure to keep your mouth closed about it.
That is what I thought and reason why I asked. It seems to me it is near impossible to do cold calls nowadays unless you are going to do B2B AND work with very small companies only.
Not just this generation. It is normal for a male biologically to do that. This is what most men and women fail to understand. It is completely normal natural male behavior. It may not be desirable or ideal but it is the normal default when having just one woman he really likes. Realistically for most men to not be like that it is possible only if he doesn’t really like her that much or has multiple partners. This in my view is the number one reason why a man being non monogamous is very good for the woman.
Men need to get over the wrong idea that they just “should be themselves”. This works if you are at the 2% in terms of looks in your area or are a superstar / obscenely rich. Otherwise, no, not really, not without the numbers. Not counting the above extreme ultra rare exceptions the difference between the guys who get loads of girls and the guys who don’t is the guys who get the girls do ask many women out.
The wrong ideas of women are that she thinks she has time to figure things out and get the right man. Well when she is 18 then yes but when she is 25 or late 20s then no not really. Once she hits 30 then good luck unless she is some unusual exception or wants to date men in 40s or 50s. Also the above mentioned fact that they think a man who is fully committed to her and her would not be needy. This shows fundamental misunderstanding how things work. She needs to either go after needy men or players / men who date multiple women.
I do tell them that. It is great for my personal entertainment. Many just get silent but the ones who think they can convince me my ideas are bad then this is where I say to myself this is where the fun begins! I will then lecture the hell out of her and / or tell her why many women nowadays are not suitable for monogamy because of how they think and behave. After that they usually get speechless. It is my guilty pleasure.
Disagree completely. Maybe with family if they are ultra conservative, but my family knows what I do and they accept it. Also with friends I would say you should always be fully open about this because if you cant be then you need different friends because they werent real friends by definition then. I even told people at work in the past. Its great, usually they either laugh and say you wish and leave it at that or they smile and think it is really cool that I manage that. Either way they stop asking you stupid questions about your private life which I do not want to discuss at work anyway.
Clearly you like drama. I do not.
OT: Whatever happened to that dominant argumentative mid twenties lady who was all set to traditionally marry her alpha-yet-submissive love of her life? Haven’t seen her in a couple of months, miss the trolling.
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