INTRODUCTION

      Why Are We Here?

      I didn’t want to write this book.

      In fact, it’s something I thought I’d never do.

      I am as embarrassed to write this as you may be to pick it up. And that’s fine. It means we’re in this together.

      Let me tell you why I’m embarrassed. Then I’ll tell you why you’re embarrassed. And then we’ll agree to move on and recognize that we’re here on the same page for a reason.

      I spent my teens and most of my twenties lonely, desperate, and woefully inexperienced, sitting mutely on the sidelines while women obsessed over guys whose appeal boggled me.

      At the lowest point in my dating career, after a two-year dry spell, I actually started surfing mail-order bride catalogs on the internet—Russian, Latin, Asian—bookmarking the pages of girls I thought I could learn to live with. I believed there was nowhere else to turn.

      But then I had a reality-shattering experience—one of those moments that altered the course of my life. I discovered a secret society on the internet where men reputed to be the best pickup artists alive met to share tips, tales, and tactics learned in clubs, streets, and bedrooms around the world.

      Emboldened by desperation, I disguised my identity, knocked on the door of that world, and it slowly opened. Inside, I dropped prostrate before the masters. I thought they would have the keys to release me from the prison of my own frustrations, fears, and insecurities.

      They didn’t have those keys. But I wouldn’t trade the journey I took for anything. Because it taught me something I never would have realized on my own: that I actually had the keys the whole time. I just didn’t know where to find them or how to use them.

      When I wrote my account of those years, The Game, I thought it was my last word on the subject. I wanted to walk away gracefully. Even though I inadvertently became the top-ranked expert in the pickup community, I prefer to be a student of life, not a professor. I write not to teach but because I enjoy storytelling.

      However, this book is not a story, at least not in the proper sense of the word. It is a how-to book. The story is not mine to write, but yours to live. The pages are turned not by plot, but by your own motivation.

      The fitness and health industries offer thousands of programs designed to help you reach your physical goals. And there is an enormous and well-established self-help industry for women. The pages of Cosmopolitan, the characters on Sex and the City, and countless books, talk shows, and businesses exist almost solely to help cope with the challenges that come with being a woman in this world.

      The landscape for men, however, is very different. Male sexuality is catered to everywhere in society—from the pages of Maxim to billboards selling the good life to the $97 billion porn industry. Everywhere they turn, men are shown images of women they are supposed to desire. Yet there is little advice of substance available to help them learn to attract these women, to figure out who they are, to help them improve their lifestyle and social skills. And considering that our social skills determine the course of our lives—our careers, our friends, our family, our children, our happiness—that’s a big area to neglect.

      So, even though I had no such intentions when I wrote The Game, I started doing a few things in my spare time to help the many guys who reached out to me after its publication, with emails, calls, and letters full of heart-wrenching stories. I coached frustrated teenagers, thirty-year-old virgins, recently divorced businessmen, even rock stars and billionaires. However, the more people I helped, the faster my inbox filled with requests from every corner of the world. Hundreds turned to thousands turned to tens of thousands turned to hundreds of thousands. And most of these guys were not assholes and creeps, but nice guys—the ones women always say they’re looking for yet at the same time never seem attracted to.

      So I decided to bite the bullet. You’re now holding that bullet in your hands.

      The Stylelife Challenge is a simple, easy-to-follow guide to approaching and attracting women of quality. Though it is designed for the hardest cases, it has also been proven to work for men who are already successful with women.

      There is no method, system, or philosophy behind the Challenge. It is simply what works best and fastest. I have now spent five years gathering this knowledge, living it, and sharing it. I’ve tested the specific material in this book on over thirteen thousand men of varying ages, nationalities, and backgrounds.

      The result: a monthlong workout program for your social, attraction, dating, and seduction skills.

      I call it the Stylelife Challenge because it is my challenge to you: Learn the game in thirty days.

      And I’m hesitant to do this, because just that last sentence alone sounds like I’m turning into one of those guys you see grinning from the covers of self-improvement books.

      But if it helps you, then it’s worth it. And in thirty days, we can both get on with the rest of our lives.

      Now let’s move on to your story.