2011 Dating & Lifestyle Kickstart Guide Overview (Part 3 of 4). If you'd like to follow along from the beginning, please check out the introductory video, part 1 and part 2 of the overview.
Here is a story of a client who really didn’t want to work with me.
I have friends and other people who will tell me they know someone who could use my services. I always appreciate people who will go to unusual lengths to help out a friend. For those who are serious about helping out their friend, I have them bring their friend out to meet me over drinks and something I call, a “reverse intervention.”
You bring your friend out for drinks and say you’re going to meet up with your other friend, Thomas (me). I come by, and we hang out. Never once do I bring up your friend’s dating life or what I do, until we start to get to know each other and naturally the question comes up about what I do for a living. At that point, one of two things happen.
Your friend either closes up and talks less (rare) or he or she asks more about what I do, why I do it and how it works. Eventually, it leads to their own dating situation and their troubles. I provide advice that can help them right away and leave it at that.
Let me interject my own post and say I LOVE talking about what I do. I never get tired of it. I enjoy giving people advice that could help change their lives. I am passionate about my goals and inspirations and will share them as much as I can, in hopes to inspire others. I may hear the same question a thousand times and I may give the same answer but each person is going to internalize it differently and that’s what’s important. There’s never a need for me to “sell” my services. It’s never a question whether I can help you. I can. But you, as potential client, have to make a decision on your own whether you want to work with me or not.
Back to the story.
At the end of the night, we’re all having a great time. We exchange business cards and I’ll hear from them within a couple weeks, inquiring about my services and wanting to work with me.
Well, this reverse intervention was one of the 2 instances in doing many of them where it wasn’t going to work out - or so I thought. He still asked about what I did, how I got into it, how it worked and all that, but he wasn’t convinced that I was legit (to be read, “someone that can help him”). His friend, sipping a glass of wine asked him, “What are you afraid of?” He nervously laughed, said, “Nothing, it’s just that - ” He bit into his pizza and then finished his sentence.
“I don’t really want to work with you because I just don’t think you can help me.”
To fill the silence, I said, “It’s ok. I’m not selling anything. You either think I can or you don’t. I’m just glad we got a chance to meet.” I took a sip from my glass.
Then, his friend looked at him, put her hand on her hip and said, “I dare you - no, I double dare you. You don’t have the guts. I mean, seriously. What do you have to lose?”
He finished his glass of wine, looked at his friend with surprise, look at me and said, “Fine. I’ll do it.”
The first night we went out to see what he would normally do on a night out, I can tell he was nervous. Most clients are the first night as they don’t know what to expect. But his nervousness was definitely on another level. He was stuttering, sweating and fidgeting all over the place. We haven’t even stepped into the venue yet.
When we stepped in the venue, there were women everywhere. Beautiful women who I knew would find him attractive. This was going to be a good night. We went to grab a drink and I started conversation with the bartender. He gets his drink and his hands are shaking so much, an ice cube flies out of the glass onto the bar. That’s when I knew.
He was having a panic attack.
He said he needed to go to the bathroom. I asked him if he was ok. He said yes and I’ve never seen a person walk so fast. I’m sitting at the bar for 5 minutes, mixing and mingling with people and my phone vibrates. I check it and it’s him telling me that he left. He never gave me a reason why and when I texted him back, he didn’t respond.
There went a good night.
That morning, I get an email from him apologizing, saying he thought he could do it but he just couldn’t. He was afraid of the IDEA of approaching a woman. He didn’t even want to work with me because he knew this would happen; he was just responding to his friend daring him. I responded by asking a question.
“What are you going to do about it?”
He emailed me back asking me what I was doing that night.
We went out again. He had another panic attack. This time it wasn’t because he couldn’t handle what was going on. It was because he got a phone number from a woman that HE appraoched and had a surreal moment. We ended up going out once a week for 7 weeks. Every week we went out, he was getting better at approaching, then it led to holding conversation. Eventually, women were finding him attractive and he was going out on his own, getting dates and had a pretty busy schedule.
That number turned into his girlfriend they dated for three months.
He could have easily given up but that one small push allowed him to meet a future girlfriend. MOST people wouldn’t even go that far.
In the coming weeks, I’ll describe strategies and techniques on how exactly he got there and how you can do the same.
But in the next post, I’ll share what’s exactly coming in the next 4 weeks.