No one likes being sold to.

When I worked in real estate, I cold called people to pitch them on refinancing their mortgage.

Nearly every person who picked up the phone was annoyed. Even when my offer was potentially useful, I struggled to get anyone to hear me out.

I had way more people tell me “Fuck off!” than “Oh yes, I’m so happy you called!”

It’s because people are turned off by “salesmen”. They envision guys with ill-fitting suits trying to convince them to buy something they don’t want.

So where dating is concerned, I tell my clients: “Be the buyer, not the seller.”

This means approaching women with the mindset that YOU are choosing a compatible person for YOU. You should not be acting like a desperate salesman trying to prove that you’re good enough.

Being the “seller” means you value the approval of others over your own opinion of yourself. You worry about their judgment and you work hard to impress them. You’re afraid of losing any opportunity (scarcity) rather than focusing on finding ones that you find fulfilling (abundance).

This is an unconfident, needy mindset. As I’ve written before, neediness is the biggest turn-off for women.

But implementing the “buyer” mindset means raising your self-esteem. I know that’s not easy to do overnight.

What you need to do is change your behavior and develop new habits that breed a high-value mindset. So I created 4 exercises that will help you cultivate a confident mentality of choice and abundance.

Note: If you need help with starting conversations for the exercises, reference my approaching eBook or post here.

1. Curiosity exercise

You might believe that finding other people who like you is next to impossible. You expect everyone to think you’re awkward and creepy. This fear prevents you from meeting new people regularly.

When you do socialize, you try to act cool rather than have genuine fun with the conversation. Then you obsess over every opportunity because you don’t know when you’ll get another one.

We need to trick you into being more social by removing the pressure of performing. We’re going to focus on simply being curious.

Objective: Be more social through exposure to different people. Expand your social circle and develop an abundance mentality. See for yourself that many people will like you for you. Exercise: Head out to a bar, club or social event. The game is to remember a single fact about each person you talk to. That could be their occupation, how they met their friends, or what they do for fun. No other goals. Approach people and talk for 3-5 minutes at a time. This can be individuals or groups – male or female. Once you’ve learned enough, leave to another person or group. You can say something like, “It was nice meeting you but I’m going to go grab a drink.” Or “I’m going to mingle for a bit, maybe I’ll see you around later.” Repeat for at least 30-45 minutes. After that, I want you to return to the people you spoke to earlier. Approach them using the fact you remember about them. For example: “Hello my favorite accountant!” or “It’s the elementary school besties!” or “So what’s the next stop on your ever-expanding travel list?”

This may seem basic but you’re actually doing something powerful.

By leaving conversations to continue mingling, you’re showing that you’re not desperate. You’re also being seen as the confident, outgoing guy in the room and therefore creating social proof.

When you return to talk to the people you left, they’ll see you as more valuable. They’ll show interest and work to win your approval.

Only then will you see that plenty of people will love your company. Putting your best self forward is enough to attract them.

2. Walk away exercise

Too many of you correlate a woman’s appearance with her value. You automatically place hot women (“9’s and 10’s”) as superior human beings. You put them on a pedestal. You’re terrified of being rejected and feel like you have to win these women over.

All this is before you even know who the girl is!

Let me tell you something: hot women are all over the place. Walk down any busy street. Go to a mall, bar, or club. How many attractive women do you see? More than you could ever handle.

Finding people who are beautiful on the inside, however, is much more rare.

You need to get past seeing attractiveness as invaluable and see it for what it is. Feeling attraction is just the initial indicator of whether or not you’re interested in getting to know someone more intimately.

Objective: Stop placing total value on looks and subconsciously seeing yourself as less. Become comfortable talking with attractive women. Get over the fear of losing an attractive prospect — aka scarcity mentality. Exercise: When’s the last time you turned down or walked away from an attractive woman? Probably never. In fact, you’ve likely done the opposite – and tried everything in your power not to get rejected by them. For an entire night, you’re going to remove the possibility of being rejected. How so? You’re going to reject women first. That means you’re not allowed to ask for a single number or try to meet up again. Tell yourself that before heading out, “I’m going to walk away from hot women all night.” When you approach a woman, I want you to act disinterested (shorter answers, no compliments, looking past them while they’re talking). Set a 2-5 minute limit and then walk away from the interaction. “It was nice meeting you but I have to get going. Have a good night.”

I don’t want you to do this to hurt a woman’s feelings. I don’t want you to be rude or insulting. And this isn’t going to be your long-term strategy.

But I do want you to realize that hot women are common. It’s not a big deal to speak to them. If you don’t click with one, there are a dozen more you can immediately talk to. We aren’t running out of them anytime soon.

3. Friend zone exercise

Now that you’ve gotten used to speaking with attractive women, you need to see them as people, not just conquests. You need to break free of that “must win every hot girl” mentality.

Do you have any attractive female friends? I’m not talking about the girls you hang out with that you secretly desire. I mean true, platonic friends.

There’s a good chance you answered no.

Again, physical beauty does not mean you have to be with that person. There’s this tiny little thing called compatibility.

You need to be okay with women not being attracted to you in that way. Being considered “just a friend” is not a personal attack on you. It doesn’t mean you “lost”. And it doesn’t make you less of a person.

Objective: Remove your results-based mentality. Stop needing to prove yourself to every beautiful woman. Be happy with some connections not being romantic. Exercise: You must intentionally friend zone every attractive woman you speak to for a night. You don’t have to worry about success because you’re not pursuing anyone romantically. I want you to use the word “friend” explicitly in conversation. Make statements like, “I knew we were going to be best friends.” Or “Look at us, we’re already friends.” When you ask for her number, express it under friendly intentions, “You seem like a great friend to have, we should hang out some time.” If a woman responds to a number request like, “I’m sorry but I have a boyfriend.” you reply with, “That’s okay, I’m just looking to make friends. Nothing more, promise.”

The key to this is that you have to mean it. You have to legitimately be her friend and nothing more. No ulterior motives allowed.

This exercise will not only reinforce gorgeous women as people but it will also provide new, meaningful friendships. And as everyone knows, having attractive female friends comes with some great benefits:

1. Walking into any social setting with beautiful women improves your social proof. Other women will see you as more desirable. Also, girls make amazing wingmen.

2. They will introduce you to their other attractive friends.

Having female friends is always a win.

4. Qualification exercise

We’ve worked on being more social. We’ve taken hot women off the pedestal and forced you to see them as everyone else. The final step is internalizing your own value to truly embrace the buyer mentality.

High value people have standards for themselves. They know who they are and what they want. They don’t just chase anyone – even if they’re hot, powerful, or wealthy.

When they meet someone new, they think, “Who is this person? Do I want them in my life? Why or why not?”

If you’re focused on selling yourself and convincing people of your value, you’re not building real connections.

You won’t be listening well. You’ll constantly be in your head trying to say the right thing. You’ll be performing rather than trying to get to know others. It’s an insecure, self-centered mindset.

We need to shift your objective from proving yourself to seeing if someone meets your qualifications.

Objective: Become genuinely interested in discovering who people are. Critically evaluate if they match what you’re looking for. Develop a mindset of choice by screening people and thus recognizing your value. Exercise: Write down a minimum of 5-10 qualities you find attractive in someone and 5-10 qualities you consider turn-offs. For example, you might write… Like – Ambition, respect, strong family ties, open-minded, socially liberal, traveler, can have intellectual discussion Dislike – Cynicism, negativity, dishonesty, lack of career goals, no political or world interests, can only hold thin conversation Then, I want you to approach women and ask questions that filter for those qualities. Use questions from this article for ideas. From the start of conversation, I want you to put women on the spot and make them prove themselves to you. Challenge them. After they answer a question, I want you to follow up with another, and repeat. Even go overboard on the questions. Within 5-10 minutes, you must honestly decide whether or not you should continue speaking with them based on their answers. If they don’t meet your standards, move on to someone else.

The idea is to break the “I need everyone’s approval” mentality. You should want quality people, not just need anyone.

This also flips the script on women. Most guys they talk to never qualify them or make them work for their attention. By doing so, you immediately stand out as a catch with options. And they’ll be more attracted to you because of it.

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Want more options and control in your dating life? Have a free consultation with me.