Neil Strauss Interview: The Game, Mystery Method & The Pickup Artist

We'll use the back of this couch here. This is you.

Are we filming that?

Sure.

I don't even know if it's gonna be worthwhile, but we'll say this. The best way to get about, get started on anything is to be willing to work for free.

Yeah. Internships, like, to me, are the path to anything. And a lot of people come just to hear what they already want to hear, like, codify this into 5 principles I can then apply to my life.

I know so many people who think they're gonna appeal to everyone by being generic and universal, and you appeal to nobody.

He's an American author, journalist, and ghostwriter. He's best known for his bestselling book, The Game, "Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists." He's a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and also writes regularly for the New York Times. He's Neil Strauss, and here's my take on his top 10 rules of success. Rule number 2 is my personal favorite, and make sure to stick around all the way to the end for some special bonus clips. Also, as Neil is talking, if he says something that really resonates with you, please leave it in the comments below and put quotes around it so other people can be inspired as well. Enjoy.

Here's my advice.

Just choose anything.

It doesn't even matter.

Just choose anything. So here's an example. If you— so I wish I could almost draw it, but I'll tell you what, like, let's see, what can I use as a— we'll use the back of this couch here.

This is you. Are we filming that?

Sure.

I don't even know if it's gonna be worthwhile, but we'll say this. This is you. right?

And you're like, I don't know what to do. I'm not sure what to do, and you're just sort of sitting here doing nothing, right? This little white stain, I don't even know what it is. It's Lamar Burton's back sweat. Is that his name?

Lamar, yeah.

Lamar Burton. I don't know who, it could be anyone's sweat right there.

So that's you, that little piece of sweat toiling and trying to decide what to do. But then just choose frigging anything.

Let's just say, oh, I want to be an actor.

Just, who cares?

Maybe you don't, I don't know. Just choose one thing.

So you choose one thing and now you have a goal, right? Just choose a goal, it doesn't matter. Now maybe you're gonna start going to auditions, you're going to auditions. And then wait, you got a job, but it's voiceover work.

Or maybe it's on radio.

You get a little radio gig, right?

So now you're like, oh, radio's fun.

I'm going to be a radio host. And that's your next goal. And then you get a call to do voiceover on a cartoon or something. And you're like, OK, I'll be a cartoon voice. And guess what? Now you're actually moving. And maybe you will end up being the voice of whatever, the next Pixar movie or something like that.

Eugene Merman is the voice in Bob's Burgers.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, along with—

yeah, there's so many good—

John Benjamin, is that his name?

He was also in Home Movies. Anyway, but the point is, like, just choose one thing to move toward, and then just go with the path, and you'll end up somewhere. If you stand here trying to decide what to do, you'll still be here in a year, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years. Just choose something you kind of like and don't hate, and then start moving toward it, and you'll find that the course and path of life will bring you exactly where you're supposed to be.

So you've sort of arrived at these different approaches to writing. What was the first to your mind, like the first writing piece that you did that kind of put you on the map? Where not like I've arrived, but you're like, okay, I actually could make this work. I could actually really be good at this. Or wow, I just got recognition for this piece. I mean, were there any sort of defining moments in your career as a writer?

Yeah, I think, I mean, I don't know, yeah, the things that I remember, I remember like I was like, by the way, the best way to get started in anything is to be willing to work for free. Internships, like to me, are the path to, anything, and I mean, I really think being— there's definitely a lot of people who are entitled. Basically, I have so much to say, but anyway, if you want to live in your passion, whatever your passion is, you have to be willing to not make money at it. You want to do what you love, you got to do— you have a choice. You can choose money or you can choose what you love. Joseph Campbell has a great quote that I always use. I don't know if you guys know this.

Joseph Campbell, so the hero with a thousand faces.

Yeah, the great kind of professor of mythology. But he said the insecure—

have you guys heard this?

The insecure way is the secure way. You guys have heard that quote? And what it means basically is, you know, my parents, and I'm sure like most people's parents say, get a good job, try and make some money, make a good living. And because they think that's secure if you make— go and make money. But if you do a job and you make money and lose that job, then you lose the money and you have nothing. What he says is if you choose your passion, it actually doesn't matter whether you make money or you lose money because you're always going to have your passion and be happy. So it doesn't actually matter.

And that's your safety net.

Right. And, but the challenge of that is that it might be 8 years or 4 years before you're actually making a living at it. Yeah. Versus something else. There's 4 things when someone gives you feedback or criticism, however it's intended, whether ill or positive. And so one is not to take it in, but to kind of catch it. I think of it like a catcher's mitt. If you tell me something, you come across this way, I'll grab it and then I'll look at it and I'll think, okay, is it true? If it's true, cool, I'll put it in and learn from it. If I think it's not true, cool, I'll throw it away. No harm, no foul. I'm not gonna dwell on it, right? And I think everybody needs this in this world, 'cause we're all on, most of us are on social media, and we're all getting like, you know, all our thoughts are getting picked apart, you know, all the time. So we really need this more than ever. Then the third one is you get it, and it's a maybe. Well, I'm not sure. You said this about me. I'm not sure. You know, what do you guys think? You know, what do you think? I'll ask my friends, and I'll ask other people, and get some feedback. And if it's true, well, cool, maybe I'll learn from it. If everyone's like, this is total nonsense, I just ignore that, dude.

I throw it out.

But then there's a fourth one, and this is where the real growth is. Do you know what the fourth one is?

[Speaker] I don't.

[Speaker] The fourth one is, you get it, you throw it out.

I'm talking to you, and then maybe later I'm talking to, you know, you.

I get it, and I'm like, nah, that's not true, I throw it out. And then later I'm talking to someone else, I get it, it's the third time it's come back to me, and I throw it out. I'm like, wait, maybe I gotta take this thing a little more seriously, and it becomes a maybe, and then it becomes a yes. And that's when the big growth thing is, because you kept ignoring this thing that was in your face. The best feedback, like where you really grow, is you keep getting the same feedback, you keep dismissing it, at some point you say, wait, maybe they have something. One way I do this is I get together a group of people, and we sit together once a week, and talk about the shit stuff going on in our lives. I find group therapy really powerful, because if it's just one-on-one, I can just say I disagree with you, but when 4 or 5 people are saying, hey dude, no, you're really coming off like that, or you're, really having this problem in your relationship and maybe need to look at it, and 5 people are saying it, like, it's pretty hard to dismiss them.

I know a lot of my friends have written really, really successful books, and even I wrote a book called The Game, which has probably sold like millions of copies. And really, when I wrote it, I thought nobody would read it. I thought nobody would read it, but I thought, this story's so crazy, I just have to tell this story. So these things that seem— you can spend all your time trying to engineer the perfect thing, And the truth is we have no control. We just don't know what's going to work or what's not going to work. So, for example, a lot of marketers say to follow your audience, see what your audience wants. And the problem with following your audience, for those of you who even have audiences already on Steam, it can become a trap because all your audience knows is what you've done in the past. They don't know what you're going to do in the future. So if you're following your audience, you're already trapped. You know, your audience should be following you as you move forward through life. And it gets harder. And again, because I talk to so many musicians, you think, okay, is it true that as musicians or artists get older, they just don't get as good because they're not young and in touch anymore? It's not really true. What happens is they get trapped in their own success, they get trapped in what their audience wants of them, and they get trapped in having responsibilities. So sort of being in touch with you and going where you want to go and not being afraid to leave people behind is what's gonna actually make you a leader.

Here's the secret to life. Don't take it personally. Not just for pickup, but for life in general. Everyone's a jerk to you someday, and when someone's an asshole on the street and bumps into you and says, "Fuck off," it's not about you. It's, you know, he's a jerk. If you have a day and you lose your job, and your girlfriend breaks up with you, and you crash your car, the world doesn't hate you. You just had a bad day. So same thing. It'll make life so much easier if you don't take it personally, which means that as you go in this world, your friends are not gonna tell you the truth about the really things that are really wrong with yourself. So as you enter this world and you talk to guys, you're gonna find out what your problems are and what they aren't. When they tell it to you, don't take it personally. You think about it. And you gotta have this filter inside. I think this is what allowed me to excel. You have to have this filter inside that takes in all criticism not personally and not judgmentally. You take in the criticism, you think, is that true? And you take a hard look at yourself. And if it's true, you work to solve it and change it. If it's not true, you just throw it out and move out. Because you go there, we're here because we're admitting we need something better in our lives. We're here because we're admitting we're a little bit broken. There's something we need to learn we haven't. So as you do it, you want to take in all the criticism that comes in and work on what you need to work on. So don't take it personally.

How do you think of yourself? How do you describe yourself? And I think about this because words matter, and I know that we're all becoming a bunch of hyphens. I call myself a photographer, a director, an entrepreneur. I'm getting tired of it. How do you describe yourself?

I mean, if I had to say like one thing, maybe it would be a storyteller. I just like to tell really great, compelling stories that if it's a book, you can't put it down. If it's a movie or TV show, you can't turn it off. So to me, it's the art of storytelling, which I think is probably one of the oldest It's one of the oldest human art forms there is. Yeah.

Caveman times. Sitting around the fire. And even, like, that's what cave paintings are, right? They're scratching out a story.

And I always encourage people, and this is probably true for people listening right now, that people love to read nonfiction. They want to get a book that's going to tell them what to do and a bulleted list of what they are supposed to do. But I really believe that the mind learns through metaphor, right? The storytelling is to learn. How do you learn the rules of your tribe or your culture or the world? World or about being a human being, you learn through metaphor. And I really think we undervalue storytelling in this, like, quick-fix culture. When Tim said I'm a, you know, I'm very methodical about time management because it's so hard to do. So the first thing I can— I'll give you a couple important life-changing tips for anyone trying to do something creative on the computer. So number one thing, there's a— is no email in the morning. Like, number one thing is there's a program called Freedom. That I downloaded, and it says— I love the word freedom because that's really what it is. It says, how many minutes of freedom do you want? You say whatever it is, 90 minutes, and then you cannot access the internet for 90 minutes. There's no unlock code. People are gasping. You're all going to use it. There's no unlock code. So the first thing I do is phone, I give it to someone else or put it in a drawer somewhere. It's best if I give it to someone else. Internet goes off, and I commit to that amount, a certain amount of time. So my thing is that it's compartmentalized.

Prioritizing.

That if you're going to check your email, check it from 4 to 5.

They have— someone wrote a book which I never read, but it's called Never Check Your Email in the Morning.

You don't—

I don't know if you need to read it or not, but just know the title and it's really great. It's great advice. The thing is with time is to become proactive about time instead of reactive because I know so many people, you can't do anything because you're getting a message on Facebook and then you're getting an email and then you're just reacting to that because it feels like you're getting think you're getting something done, at the end of the day you got nothing done. So what my thing is, I'm really, and everyone knows that I'm proactive about that to the degree that, by the way, I have Facebook and Twitter blocked on my computer. What I did is I downloaded Intego Content Barrier, whatever it is. There's NetNanny.

RescueTime can be used.

Yeah, NetNanny. It's to block specific sites. Yeah, and I had someone else put in their password for those sites, so I didn't even know the password, so I couldn't get to Twitter or Facebook Tried. So finding those things that are those and putting walls between you and them or limiting them in certain ways. There's one other thing I was gonna say was, oh, which is friends can be a pain in the ass if you're trying to be creative. And if you have more than 7 friends and everyone wants to see you one day a week, what do you do? So another thing I wanna say is that I do a Wednesday night dinner party. So if my friends wanna see me, I'm like, great, Wednesday. If someone wants a meeting who I'm not sure about, Wednesday night. So Wednesday night, we all go to a restaurant and basically, Whoever I wanna see or catch up on, I'll see them there, and then maybe afterward I'll break off with my closer friends. But that way I can see everyone, people who I wanna meet with but I don't wanna really take the time for a lunch or meeting one-on-one. I just bring them there. If I like them, I talk to them a bunch. If I don't, I put them far away.

Humility is the most important thing you can have for change. If you really wanna have a big change.

A lot of people come just to hear what they already wanna hear. Codify this into 5 principles I can then apply to my life. You know, codify is the word, and I'll codify I'll codify some self-awareness for you. But humility to recognize, you know, what got you here won't get you there, as the saying goes, right? And to say at some point, if you really want to change and are really stuck, I know nothing, I'm letting go of everything, and I'm sort of gonna relearn with a childlike mind.

We treat ourselves horribly. We talk to ourselves in ways that we wouldn't We would never, ever allow a stranger to talk to us, right? If somebody here walked up to you and said, "You're not interesting, you've got nothing good to say, you're not enough, you know, you're not attractive," you'd be like, "Fuck you, let's fight." Right? So why do we allow ourselves to talk to ourselves that way?

Right?

So there's sort of a message biggest message I can give you guys today that's going to help you get over approach anxiety is start treating yourself the way you want that person you're approaching to treat you. Right? If she said this, she's not going to say anything half as mean as the shit you're telling yourself. You know? So you've got nothing to fear anymore, right? Because you've already given yourself the worst of it. If I could give you like one thing this whole weekend, it would be to stop talking to yourself this way. So every emotion has its corresponding action. You may feel a fear of rejection, right? But where is that coming from? If you were saying, like you were saying earlier, if you're giving someone more worth and value and higher status than yourself and you're less than them, what is that saying? That's shame. Shame about who you are. Shame that you're not worthy to talk to this person. Shame that this person somehow is going to have some power over you or going to hurt you, that you're not enough, that you're not good enough. That you're not attractive enough, that you're not rich enough, that you're not socially comfortable enough, that you're too awkward, whatever it is, that shame about who you are. And what happens, right? Your shame when you walk in turns to joy. So the overall idea is if you can approach from a place of joy, if you go from a place of joy instead of a place of shame, you will have no approach anxiety. That's what we call, what I call, what they call back in the dating days being being in state.

You know, being in state is just what really, just having joy.

So the overall thing is if you walk out and you're like, okay, alright, there are all these people and they're going to approve of me and if they approve of me I'm going to feel good about myself, but if they don't approve of me I'm going to feel shitty about myself and I'm going to go out and put my self-esteem in the hands of every stranger I talk to, you're just setting yourself up for trouble. You know, you can push past it using a lot of the stuff we might talk about, but you're starting off with an a giant, giant handicap. Don't hold anything back. When someone asked Heidi earlier what had really worked for her, she was like, I think you said like sharing my feelings. Is that what you said? And I find that so many people, when they're gonna write, they just wanna show like a glorified side of themselves that everyone can relate to. There's a quote from Carl Rogers, the psychologist, who says the personal is the universal. I know so many people who think they're gonna appeal to everyone by being generic and universal, and you appeal to nobody. But if you talk from your heart and you say the most personal stuff, the stuff you're scared, by the way, the only reason my books I think are successful is 'cause I say the shit that I'm too scared to tell my friends or tell people. Somehow I can write it, and when you write it, people read, oh yeah, I relate to that. No one's said that before, but that's exactly what I'm going through. So don't hold, don't, Don't hold back. There's a difference between just vomiting emotionally all over the page. You still have to follow the number one rule of being interesting, right? But the stuff you're too scared to tell everyone, that's the stuff you should be writing about and sharing. And that thought that you think maybe is gonna get you unliked, and it's a scary time right now in the culture because shit, everything, we get instant feedback on everything, right? Everything we write, we get instant feedback, we know everybody's opinion, which if you don't have a rock-solid sense of who you are and what you're doing, can lead to just trying to conform and be liked. And I promise you, I wrote a book called Everyone Loves You When You're Dead, and the reason it was interviews with celebrities, because when you're dead, you're no longer competition. As long as you're here, right, if no one doesn't like what you're doing, then you're probably not doing anything interesting, right? If everything is getting only positive feedback, then you're probably not doing anything new or interesting. Right? So let some negativity be a sign that, okay, good, I'm actually saying something new and something meaningful.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because James Estler asked me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know what did Neil say that had the biggest impact on you? What lesson did you take from this video that you're going to immediately you can immediately apply to your life or business, leave it in the comments and I'm gonna join in the discussion. Finally, I wanna give a quick shout out to Fantamedia. Thank you guys so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and posting that great picture to Instagram.

I really, really, really appreciate it.

So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, I'll see you soon.

Number 1 rule of writing is this: nobody cares. Nobody cares about you, they don't care about your thoughts, they don't care about your ideas, they don't care about what you have to say, what you did yesterday, or anything. They do not give a shit. And from there, can you make them care? Everything I write, I assume that nobody cares, that they have no interest. And if I start from that perspective, and if I can draw you in, through the writing, that's where the story begins. So just assume, start by assuming nobody cares, and how can you draw them into your story or your point? Number 2 then, one way to draw them in is something called open loops. Who here knows what an open loop is? Cool, has anyone seen the new Doctor Strange movie? Anyone seen that? Cool, a couple of you saw it, so is it good? Okay, by the way, that's an open loop. An open loop was, I asked you what an open loop was, and then rather than explaining it, I went on to another subject and talked about Doctor Strange or something. So an open loop is, if I can start with something that captures your attention, and 98% of you didn't know what an open loop is, you're probably curious about it by now, because I've been talking for 2 minutes and still haven't explained it yet, right? An open loop is at the top, can I tell you something that you're interested in, and you want to know the answer to, and wait till the end? How many times have we just stayed through a really shitty movie, just because we want to know what happens at the end, right? You know, it can be the worst movie ever, but I want to know how that happened, right? So one is to use the idea of open loops. And it's true in relationships. You meet somebody you have a lot in common with, you start telling all these stories, you want it to continue. So an open loop is a great way to create intrigue, 'cause we're creatures who love storytelling, right? Early, early, storytelling is part of our DNA. So creating open loops at the top of a post or in a book is really powerful.

So yeah, I'd say the best advice for anyone who wants to write a book is literally, The best way to write a book is to have a looming impending deadline with hard real world consequences for missing.

Stakes, remember stakes guys?

Did you talk about stakes?

Yeah, you need stakes.

Like steaks to eat?

I talked about it with diet.

Paleo diet, or S-T-A-K-E-S?

Oh yes, yeah, not stakes like vampire stakes, but for consequences. Yeah, and I think that, something that a media coach said to me recently, they're like, you gotta, You say steaks and you have a book called The 4-Hour Chef, they're gonna think you're talking about steaks.

Exactly.

I was like, ah!

But I think if you can't do it, you manufacture it. You talk about stick.com and things like that. But I really know that literally, Tim will be calling and I'll be calling Tim saying, I gotta get this in, I got like 3 months, I can't do it. But literally, if we didn't have those deadlines, you wouldn't have written 3 books in this amount of time.

It would never happen.

Yeah.

So you have to. So I'll do that if a friend of mine wants to write a book and they want me to proofread or take a look at it. I'll say, I'll take a look at it, but what date are you gonna get it done by? 'Cause I'm gonna hold you to it. And they'll say January. I said, if it's not done by the end of March, I'm not gonna read your book at all, no matter what. So I'll give consequences and deadlines to my friends. So it's a good way to write is to really, if you don't have a publisher or a deal or something like that, to find some real consequences that's externally imposed.

You have to learn from your mistakes. No sit— I have this attitude that no situation is impossible. There is nothing impossible. There are just contingencies and obstacles to get around. So if I went out and, uh, I'm just trying to think of obstacles. Let's just say you did an opener and she'd heard it already. You did your lines, she heard it already because your friend just approached her with it 10 minutes ago. Do you run screaming? Maybe that happens the first time. The second time you say, "If that happens again, what do I do?" You say, "Oh my God, you must have met my friend. That's really funny. We were just talking about that." Bam, problem solved. Whatever it may be, say you— any problem has a solution. So I kind of had that attitude. You know, what if she's with 8 guys? What if, you know, she is on her way out the door? Any problem is gonna have a solution. So you have to have that attitude. And if something goes wrong, and I'm saying this in a positive way, not a negative self-esteem way, but if something goes wrong, it's always your fault. That's what I feel like. Without being hard on myself, if something goes wrong, It's never her fault. She's not a bitch, she is not mean, she is not uptight. I did something wrong to make her uncomfortable. So for example, with the openers, I would start walking up and saying, "Hey guys, I wanna get an opinion on something. I got this question I'm trying to ask." And I'd start asking it, but I noticed they weren't really listening, they were tuning me out, they were kind of giving me bad body language. So I realized, what are they thinking? Why is that happening? Well, it's happening because I'm standing around, they don't know when I'm gonna leave. So I added what's called a time constraint. I'd walk in, I'd say, "Hey guys, I wanna get a quick opinion on something. By the way, I can only stay for a second 'cause I gotta rejoin my friends over there." Problem solved. So anytime something went wrong, or was I coming off— maybe I would do everything and I felt like I was doing it perfectly, but people weren't interested. Well, I was doing all the right things, but I was doing it in a very needy way. A lot of people will read the material and they'll say, "This doesn't work." Everything works. What I say is gonna be different than what Zan says, and different than what someone else says. It all works, you just have to do it right. So for example, the opinion openers we're talking about. An opinion opener is how you start a conversation. If you go and you say, "Can I ask you a question on something?" And then they say, "No, we're talking, get lost." Well, the opinion openers don't work, you just did it wrong. You walk in, you say, "Hey guys, I wanna ask a quick question on something." Now you haven't asked them a yes/no question, and it's gonna work. So there's so many little subtleties. Did that make sense? Okay, so there's so many— I saw someone looking at me strangely. So there's so many little subtleties that you have to work in, and it's always, always gonna be your fault if it's not working. Not in a negative way, not in being hard on yourself. It's feedback so you can improve yourself. That whole idea that there's no such thing as failure, there are only learning lessons.

So that's what I did.

But you know what?

I'm a guy who's hard on myself, but I'm hard on myself because it makes me excel, usually.