Bootcamp

[Adam_Walker]

Hi everybody. I'm a new college student who was on this board years ago in the middle school and early high school years. I never really applied much of what I learned (but when I did GOD DID IT WORK). I read and reread the DJ bible so many times, but I was just too cowardly (and lacking in basic peer-to-peer social skills; I was homeschooled for much of my childhood, but that's another story for another time) to actually go away from the keyboard and do what I needed to do. I'm now going to start the DJ bootcamp, and I'm posting this thread so that I can record my bootcamp experiences on it.

I am going to do the weeks on a Thurs-Thurs schedule, and post the final write-ups no later than the following Sunday. The campus is an awesome place to do something like this; it has 6.5k undergraduates and although the male to female ratio is about 1, every other girl is absolutely gorgeous (those perverted admissions boards). Wish me luck, and please don't hold back the constructive criticism to spare my feelings. Thanks in advance to everybody who posts on this thread!

PS, here's a link to the bootcamp: http://www.jbspencer.com/djb/Downloads/djbc.pdf, if you want it in word instead of pdf then just look near the top of the dj bible for the link

 

[Adam_Walker]

I have a question about week 1 exercises. Here are the exercises for reference.

Exercise 1
In two separate outings, each lasting one hour in length, you will go about establishing eye contact
with strangers.
A fun way to go about doing this is to walk around in a mall or in a park and look people directly in the
eyes as they are walking towards you. You will find that most people will not look at you in the eyes,
but for those who do look you in the eye, you will want to practice looking in their eyes at least one
second longer than they look into yours, this denotes confidence. To create the impression that you
are friendly and approachable, you will want to match the eye contact with a genuine smile.
You can practice eye contact on just about anyone you see, male or female, young or old. But since
the eventual goal of this Boot Camp is to acquire women, you will want to spend at least some of your
time establishing eye contact with attractive girls.
Exercise 2
A confident person has no problem saying Hi to a stranger, and since the first part of this Boot Camp is
geared toward building confidence, the goal of this exercise is to go around and say Hi or Hello to a
total of 50 strangers during this week. Again, you can say Hi to any person you see, but since
eventually your goal will be to get girls, you will want to practice saying Hi to attractive girls. Also,
when greeting strangers, practice doing so with a smile and have fun.
DJ Boot Camp • • •
26
And to save time, feel free to combine exercises 1 and 2 together, so that you can go about greeting
your 50 strangers during your eye contact outings (e.g. Establish eye contact, smile, and say Hi when
you are within speaking range).

I like the establish eye contact, smile, and say hi method. When people hold eye contact with you long enough it works really well. However, the vast majority of people do not hold eye contact long enough to even see your smile; they look away instantly or never look at all. I knows its probably not cool at all to just say hi anyway when you are in speaking range (seems really shady, the kind of thing that homeless people do when they are high out of their minds; if you don't believe me then try it, I guarantee everyone you approach will be really creeped out), so what do you do about this problem when trying to complete this exercise OR (for you master DJs who never bothered with bootcamp) approaching girls in general?

NOTE: this is a serious problem, I've passed 100s of people this afternoon around campus and in the mall, and I've only gotten 6 legit eye contact/smile/"hi"s. These are not good numbers...maybe you just shouldnt approach strangers who are walking in the opposite direction. I don't have any problems with shyness, and I'm pretty sure that this is what this is about, so maybe I should just skip the rest of week 1 (I've already read everything) and move on to week 2?

 

[Aragon034]

6 out of 100s? you're saying you have a ±6% success rate at establishing eye-contact?

Yeah, i'd say something's wrong and i never bothered with the bootcamp!

Questions:

1: What do you look like? Are you well dressed or running for Frat Brother Modeling?

2: What's your body posture like? (Body Language, you may have heard of it already)


Since this is not about actually meeting up with these people, the exercise you're doing seems to me to be about building your outer game. Clothes, posture, body language, it all plays a big part because you aren't actually saying anything other than "hi"

I'll admit, i NEVER had problems with this. I always dress 'smart casual', almost constantly have my mirrored aviators on (light sensitivity), and i'm smiling almost all the time + i developed my inner game first since my outer game was already decent.

I think if you described yourself a bit better. (Physical, Mental, Emotional) we'd have a better sense of where you could improve.

Good Hunting with your Bootcamp.

 

[Adam_Walker]

Thanks for the reply Aragon!

I don't think the problem is appearance. I have a very short buzz, am clean-shaven, am very fit, have a good looking face (or so I've been told), and I'm wearing decent looking shoes, t-shirt, and unzipped (sorta stylish looking) jacket. I could improve on the clothes a little bit, but I think that they are more than acceptable (and I'd rather focus on myself (my "inner game") than appearance during this). I understand that appearance is important, but as long as its decent looking I'd rather spend my time on other things.

Body language: maybe the problem but probably not. My walk is normal, maybe with a tiny hint of a confident "swagger" but I'm sure that people did not have time to notice anything besides my face anyway. As for my face, I tried normal face, slight smile, and other different intensities of smile ...nothing worked.

I think the problem is simply the head-on approach method (to clarify, you did not see them earlier, you are simply walking down a hall or sidewalk and they are walking in the opposite direction, I think doing approaches on girls in this way might simply be unrealistic, simply because 1) you at least need time to check them out and 2) it seems like you should stop people who are sitting, strolling, or in line or something, not people who are walking somewhere); when someone did hold eye-contact long enough to smile then everything worked well, but most people simply looked away too fast (or didn't look at all). Thoughts, comments, criticisms? Thanks in advance!

 

[Pathgen]

Im in college also first year freshman. Anyhow the point being is that i have noticed that a lot of people our age are not confident themselves yet. Often times I will notice that half the people i pass will not look at me at all. They look down or they, keep looking straight, or give me a quick glance.

I don't want to stereotype, but this is especially true with asians. I believe a lot of it is that they are not confident enough yet to smile at you. Or they are off in their own world thinking about their problems so they don't notice.

I don't have this problem with old people though they always look at me straight in the face and will hold my attention for a long while.

 

[StGeo]

Yes, I did notice most people look away quickly or don't make EC at all. I did say Hi to some of them anyway, though. Some managed to look at me and respond, so that works too. You can't always expect to establish EC before you talk to somebody.

I actually spent a while in a mall and couldn't say hi to anybody. NOBODY looked at me. I had more luck with people in the park, they weren't busy with anything else, just going for a walk, so they had nothing better to look at but me.

I'm on Week 2 now and I'm posting in the original threads. They aren't active but they're still here. I'll post about my first few days of week 2 tomorrow.

 

[macallik]

Hey Adam Walker, congrats on starting the bootcamp. here's my advice

1. Don't always wait for eye contact to say Hi. People are in their own heads when they are out and about and a nice firm hello snaps them into reality

2. When you lock eyes, don't look away and then try and look back when they get close. Stay locked on and your eye contact should rise dramatically

 

[Adam_Walker]

Thanks for all the replies everybody. You guys really helped. I started saying hi without prior EC, and as long as my body language/voice/timing was good, everything was great. (timing is more important than I thought, too far away and you have to shout, too close and they don't have time to see your smile and react before you pass them) If I did everything right, people would look up, sorta startled, but would react really well to a big genuine smile. macallik, you said it really well:

Don't always wait for eye contact to say Hi. People are in their own heads when they are out and about and a nice firm hello snaps them into reality

I was confusing what comes first. I thought the smile should open people up and then you could say hello. The reality is, the smile eliminates the awkwardness AFTER the hello happens.

14 down, 36 to go (I didn't actually go out to try to complete any, these are just from when I was on a run and when I was going to the dining halls to get food. Also, there are a lot fewer people walking around on the weekends. If I don't almost get the rest tomorrow, just going between classes, I will be very surprised). I'll probably start week 2 by Tuesday or Wednesday!

 

[Adam_Walker]

I finished on Wednesday, and I've been working on week 2. Everything went great when the body language/smile/tone of voice were good and I said it nice and early, giving the people time to react. I found that as long as I was loud enough it was almost impossible to say hi when too far away; it just gave them more time to react to my smile.

 

[Adam_Walker]

This is my report for conversation 1/10 for week 2:
Approached a girl before class, today, definitely not a HB, but that’s not the point of week 2 anyway . Conversation lasted 3-5 minutes, talked about the class/professor, her dad’s job as a professor at the uni, ect… What I learned: the conversation went well, but I need to remember to smile more and keep doing the whole active listening thing (paraphrasing and things like that). I think that I did pretty good keeping the convo focused on her and not me. Thanks for your encouragement and advice everyone!