The second you make eye contact with a girl, you must open immediately. Looking away, hesitating, and then circling back completely destroys your momentum and looks incredibly weird.
You need to step squarely into her field of vision and get her attention cleanly with a sharp “Hey, excuse me,” ensuring she is actually looking at you before you deliver your line.
When you deliver that opener, keep it strictly in the present tense. Never say, “I thought you looked cute.” Speaking in the past tense implies that the interaction is already over or, worse, that you’ve been standing in the corner premeditating the approach like a creep.
Start by assuming that she is automatically going to like you, stop for you, and give you her name. If she says hi, don’t rush to talk over her. Relax, give it a tiny pause, and let her present you with a conversational gift.
Once you’ve established your man-to-woman premise, stop opening. The opener is the most try-hard, awkward part of the entire interaction, yet guys constantly loop back to it because they are nervous.
Instead, look at yourself as a highly attractive guy whose value only increases the longer she stays in your presence. Moving quickly to grab a phone number after ninety seconds is just opening with a close—it forces her to judge you purely on your appearance before your personality has a chance to enhance the package.
I watch footage of students constantly, and there are two distinct moments when a guy suddenly becomes charismatic and normal.
The first is when the girl mentions a boyfriend, and the second is right after he secures her phone number. In both moments, the guy realizes he has nothing left to win and nothing left to lose, so his anxiety evaporates.
You need to channel that exact relaxed energy from the very first second of the set.
No single interaction with a woman is going to determine your ultimate social success or failure. This is simply one of thousands of approaches you will execute to screen out the masses and find the very few women who are actually right for you.
You aren’t out there to impress a stranger or validate your ego; you are out there to discover if she even qualifies to be in your reality.
Flip your internal script completely. Drop the needy desire to be liked and adopt the frame of a man who is evaluating a candidate. She caught your physical attention, but keeping it is a whole different matter.
It is her job to impress you. Assume your value is entirely unassailable, maintain your frame, and find out if she is actually worth your time.
—Todd V
