Ep. #1 Productivity Applied to Your Dating Life with Paul Janka

[Paul Janka]: That's right, yeah.

[Angel Donovan]: Paul’s been in NYC for a while. He's actually got a lot of attention since around 2007, been on a lot of shows. He's really one of the bachelors’ players here. He's got a big reputation for himself. So, really happy to have you.

[Paul Janka]: Yeah, great. Thank you.

[Angel Donovan]: Alright, so we want to start off with something really to set the frame here of who Paul Janka is, so what is your score, man?

[Paul Janka]: Well, it’s over 200 of actual girls I’ve had intercourse with. There's a little bit of an issue. I used to keep a spreadsheet.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: It arose because in 2001 I was driving cross-country with a buddy and we just started talking about girls we’d slept with. I was about 25. And so I noted a list down on paper. And I don’t know what it was at that time, probably in the 30s or 40s or something, and I’d…oh, and then I remembered another one. And I put it on a scrap of paper and then I transferred it to an Excel document in 2001, and then I just kept it. Like the technology’s changed, but I’ve kept that. And I updated it all the way until I started dating my current girlfriend. And we got quite serious, and we had a period where we were not exclusive, but I stopped the spreadsheet there. So it’s in the early 200s, but there’s a handful more…

[Angel Donovan]: Right, right.

[Paul Janka]: So I don’t know exactly what it is, and going forward I’m not going to document it because I don’t want to have any evidence…

[Angel Donovan]: Okay, no evidence…

[Paul Janka]: It was fine in the early days, but I think I’m at a point in my life where I don’t need to have stuff written down, let's put it that way.

[Angel Donovan]: Okay. Good. Alright, so Paul’s very focused on meeting women during the day, a bit like one of our earlier interviews with Jeremy Soul. You know Jeremy Soul from Love Systems?

[Paul Janka]: I know Love Systems, yeah.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, right. Anyway, one of their guys is focused on the day game too, so, you’ve spoken a bit about that. So what I think would be good is to talk a bit about like where do you meet women, like how does it go, like from basically start to finish…?

[Paul Janka]: Okay, I’ll just take you through a normal template.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: I mean, first of all, when I moved to New York everything changed because anyone who’s been here knows it just flows single women. I don’t know what the ratio is exactly, but I’ve heard it’s like 3 to 1. In Manhattan, for example, if you take all the young man and women, like half the guys are gay, or a third, so they’re out of it, and then you have the guys in relationships. So really there's maybe a third or fewer percent left of straight single men and you have a huge influx of women. It’s a separate thing, but economically the reason is women can live here as often they’re subsidized by fathers and stuff to pay for the rent, and they live like three to an apartment. So even though it’s very expensive, you have an inordinate amount of young women here.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: So if you just walk down the street, you’ll see tons and tons and tons of them, and…

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, it’s incredible.

[Paul Janka]: I mean, yes, you can meet them in bars and you can do online, but my thing was just pick them off the street. That's kind of how it happened. And basically what I do is I get the number very quickly, if I’m running errands or whatever. I might get 10 or 15 numbers a day. And when I coach I sometimes get 25 or 30 numbers or 40 or so numbers a day. And then I go home and I just—there’s a fair amount of text work in here. I just basically hit them all up with like a “Hey, good to meet you” text, and then if I have time that night I start to try and see who’s available that night. And there's a lot of detail that goes into it, but basically you screen and see who’s free, and then you set up dates.

And the great thing, it’s a numbers game with a huge pool that always—there's often a girl on like a quiet Tuesday who’s got nothing going on. Not just one girl, there's probably five. And then in my heyday I used to stack them like 7 p.m., 9 p.m., 11 p.m., so I would have three dates lined up.

The first would show—girls flake, but let's assume that it was solid. The first would show and I’d try to make them move but it wasn’t happening, and then I’d cut her, and the 9 would show up. Maybe I would get lucky and either do the deal, do the deed and get her out and have another one come, or just quickly in the middle of fooling around or whatever, if I knew it was going well, go and text the other one like, “Hey, something’s come up,” the 11 o’clock.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Paul Janka]: So if you live in a target-rich environment like New York…

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: Other cities that I’ve—and last year I went on a tour, the Mediterranean, North Africa and Asia, looking for… New York’s the best from what I’ve seen, but Paris you can probably do this, and London is pretty good.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm. Big cities. Big bustling cities.

[Paul Janka]: Big, and there has to be walking. LA I think would be not good…

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: …because everyone’s in their car. So New York is really, really yes…

[Angel Donovan]: Like you need high traffic.

[Paul Janka]: High traffic. Public transportation helps because you can meet on the train or whatever, yeah. And there are variations, in coffee shops and museums, whatever. I mean, in my heyday I was getting numbers wherever there were cute girls, and now it’s cell phones and texting. I mean, 10 years ago this was a different deal. You had to like call answering machines and stuff.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: And now it’s easy. And I never, almost never ever speak with a girl. It’s all text-based.

[Angel Donovan]: Okay, so like let's take a few steps back and like kind of see how that works in detail because that sounds great, but I’m sure most guys can’t get their head around how it’s possible to just grab a number on the street or wherever it is and all of a sudden be back at your place. So what happens is you’re walking down the street and you see someone attractive, and what do you typically do, like in that moment? Or would you think and…?

[Paul Janka]: Yeah. Huh, there's so much…it’s so funny, I wrote so much detail on this. Basically the best pickup situation is if a girl’s, say, walking ahead of me…

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: …and she’s roughly my height, so there's no like height differential. Basically, the best pickups are the ones that are obviously most natural-feeling, right?

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Paul Janka]: Anytime there's something that's not natural, she’s prone to put up like a block or a red flag. So in other words, it’s not good energy if a girl’s sitting at…it’s doable, but if a girl’s sitting at a Starbucks at a table and I walk and stand up, I’m like two-and-a-half feet above her, right? So the energy’s a little weird in terms of like…it can still work, of course, but doesn’t feel quite as natural. So the best is that we’re both walking, in the same direction actually.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: She may be stopped, and I’m coming up at or to her side laterally, and I’ll make a throwaway comment like—it’s often very specific to the situation—“Nice boots,” “My sister has that same bag,” or I’ll ask directions or something to get her attention. And the more specific—and it also depends on how inspired I am at the moment…

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: …but it could be something very creative and funny. She’ll usually keep walking, look over and promptly register two things, like, is this guy…what does he look like? So looks, of course, play a part in this. It’s undeniable. But a lot of that when I say looks is like style and body language and stuff, so it’s not like what we’re born with so much. I mean, that plays, of course, a part, but it’s what we do, it’s what we have, kind of attitude.

So she’ll check that out and say, “Who is this person?” and hopefully your look triggers a little bit of an attraction or interest or intrigue.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: And then she’ll also register the comment, like, was that funny or insulting? And then from there it can go any number of ways, but usually, if my energy’s good, I have a little bit of back and forth. I’m confident. She’s into it. And then I transition as smoothly as possible into like, “Hey, you’re fun” or “You’re cute” or “You’re helpful” or something.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Paul Janka]: A little bit of a compliment that makes it as a reason why, because I’m about to ask her for her number.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: And then I say, “We should get together for coffee sometime. That’ll be fun. What do you think?”

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Paul Janka]: And when I’m really on I’m very effective, so a girl would be like, “Oh yeah, sure,” in an ideal state, and I’ll take her number. There are ways to actually get the number if she resists, but we’re talking about an ideal… Get the phone number and then I'll often call her so she has it right there. And then, through the course of a day, it’s easy in New York if you’re confident to get 20 of these.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, right. So in all of that like interaction and conversation, how long is this, like five minutes?

[Paul Janka]: Under two minutes.

[Angel Donovan]: Wow.

[Paul Janka]: Sixty sec—again, part of it’s the city, right?

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: Things happen so fast.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Paul Janka]: It can happen on a subway, and like you can say, “Oh, my stop’s coming up.” And another thing too, if a girl…that works in a big city, is you can say, “This is a nice little moment we’re having. We’re not going to see each other again. Like you want to take a chance?” And it puts it like, plays to their adventurous side.

[Angel Donovan]: That's quite sweet.

[Paul Janka]: And she’ll say, “Alright.” Because there's a little resistance, but also it’s just a phone number. It’s not like her home address or Social Security. So if you can strike any kind of spark with her at all and you can sell kind of, well, confidently, girls often will take the chance. I’ve had situations where I’ve literally 10 out of 10 times I’ve asked, I got the number.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, right. Yeah, this stuff…it works after a while. And I wanted to come back to something I read in your book, Attraction Formula, or you were going to call that…

[Paul Janka]: Janka Method, that's fine, yeah.

[Angel Donovan]: It’s going to be called Janka Method, right? So it’s the same stuff. Anyway, you talk a lot about mojo and you just referred to it with several other things. You said, “When I’m feeling creative…”

[Paul Janka]: Yeah, I talk about that. Yeah.

[Angel Donovan]: “When I’m feeling inspired.”

[Paul Janka]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: In your book you call that mojo and you go into a bit more detail about that. And I know from my experience it’s extremely important, and so it’s great to see that in your book. Could you talk a bit more about, what difference does it make? First of all, what is it, and then what difference does it make to the pickup, like how much of a difference?

[Paul Janka]: Yeah. It makes all the difference, and I’ll tell you what it is. At its core it’s presence, just being very present in the moment. And it’s hard to do sometimes because as human beings we’re worrying and we’re thinking about the future and like what we’ve got to do. And then when we’re looking at our feet when we walk or like we’re angry about something—and now I’m just speaking about myself. Like I can be preoccupied, and one skill that I’ve developed is to be able to like flash mojo, just turn it on if a hot girl walks by. But generally speaking, if I’m in a preoccupied, anxious state about anything, like low-level anxiety or frustration, I’m not at my best, and that's communicated to a girl.

So one way to get rid of, to dissipate all this, especially negative energy, is, first of all, it helps to be outdoors walking, because you get in a high-stimuli environment. You’re going to be present because a lot of information’s coming through. So being outside is good. I often drink a cup of coffee, like caffeine is stimulating, kind of gets me up and out of my—because lethargy doesn’t work either, right?

And then, I can be a pretty intense guy, so I just…like part of it is just going through the motions. Like I could talk to a few girls and be not that…be kind of flat. But like when I’m coaching, once I get warmed up I start to get pretty laser-focused. And when my mojo’s at the best, it’s just I’m totally present. It’s just me and the girl and we’re right in the zone. It’s like nothing else matters, the cars, the traffic, the light, the noise. It’s just we have like an intense like one-on-one lock-on.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: And I’m not talking about freaking out. It’s just like she totally feels me right there. She has my undivided attention. And it only has to last for a minute to get the number, but it cuts through all the other fog that she has during the day.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: So that's why it’s so important. It’s like a knife. And it also keeps…I’m clearheaded during that moment, so I know what I’m doing. And also, it brings all my resources to bear, like all my humor, my sense of irony, my creativity. I surprise myself often when I’m really on because I’m particularly funny or whatever. And it’s very commanding, that energy, as we talked earlier.

[Angel Donovan]: It’s very strong.

[Paul Janka]: Yeah, I feel very in command of the social scene. I can even bring other people in.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: Which turns a girl on, because it’s like it demonstrates…it’s like a warrior state, almost. And there was one thing I wanted to say about that. Yeah, I’m the same guy, if I can bring like flat energy, the same girl, and she’ll be like creeped out or like, “Stop bothering me.” Or I can be totally on like this, and she’ll give the number like with no effort.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Paul Janka]: So it makes 100% difference. And, I mean, one way to get there is to just go out and practice and practice. You’ll get a glimpse of it after you’ve talked to five or six girls, and just try to reinforce that feeling.

One way to sort of jumpstart this is I tell guys, guys I coach, to take improv classes, because it teaches you to be like present with two other people and like, however it works, they hand you an idea or a story you’re supposed to complete, and you’re right there real time. So I tell a lot of guys, take improv classes, here in New York even. It’ll improve your street game. Because in a way it’s acting, right? We’re called pickup artists. We’re acting when we’re there. You have to be on. You’re watching a movie, the actors, a good performance, he's really into it. He's not thinking about his mom or the rent or whatever.

[Angel Donovan]: That’s right. Okay, so like, yeah, even in the book you talk about, like you say, if you don’t have that state, sometimes you aren’t approaching the women because you know it’s going to kind of be like not so good. It’s just not going to create the same effect with her.

[Paul Janka]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: So you’re like, well, I’ll leave it till a bit later in the day or whatever, when I’m feeling my mojo.

[Paul Janka]: Yeah, that's I what I do do. I remember when I was living on 68th Street I would go to get coffee at Starbucks and often I was tired, like I was groggy…

[Angel Donovan]: [Laughs]

[Paul Janka]: And then I’d get the coffee, on my walk back sometimes the same group of girls or whatever would be standing around sometimes, because it was by a college, and then I would take the shot because I’d be more awake and more present. Yeah, without that sense of presence and that mojo—because basically women want to connect, and that energy gets people to connect. They feel it.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: When it’s flat, you’re just something and standing in front of them like asking them for stuff, it’s very easy for them to say no.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, yeah. I guess that something like guys should realize is their…say they approach a girl and it doesn’t go very well, but they weren’t feeling in such a good state, maybe they shouldn’t blame themselves so much and kind of realize that connection between how they’re feeling at that time and how it goes with the girl instead of like always blaming themselves, “Ah, I’m just not good at this.” They could be thinking a bit more about that.

[Paul Janka]: I agree. I think also too, like anything, this just takes practice. You could take any guy and if you force him to like approach 500 girls, he's going to get better.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: I mean, I could take anyone, no matter how bad they are, and improve their skill just by forcing them to have these interactions.

[Angel Donovan]: So you get 20 numbers in a day, like how do you manage to do that? I mean, is it because you’re not working and you have more time than people or is it maybe that quick? Can you give me an idea?

[Paul Janka]: Yeah. I was a tutor, so I work nights. I have my days free. And yeah, I think for a guy…it’s much harder for a guy in the suburbs who has like a typical job because he goes, he's at work, and then he drives, and he might be lucky to get two numbers a day.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Paul Janka]: So, I mean, the short answer to that is if you want to fuck a lot of girls, you have to move to New York [laughs] basically or a similar city, because it’s just, you don’t have the supply and the anonymity.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: A big part of this is the anonymity. In other words, girls are horny, but they have—a guy wrote in one of these books, I thought it was very good, he said, “Social safety is a huge, huge issue for women,” in other words, what their friends are going to think of their behavior. But in New York it’s less of an issue because a girl, you meet a girl briefly, she’s alone, right, on the bagel line or whatever, and she might be horrified to be a slut amongst her friends, but she can sneak over and no one’s going to know about it.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah. Girls can have like kind of many lives here without all of their friends knowing or some friends knowing some and other friends not knowing all of it.

[Paul Janka]: Yeah. Or they don’t have to hide and it’s like, this is a very like open city now. Do what you want, who gives a shit?

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah. This is good. So live in a big city where there's anonymity, and then with regard to work…

[Paul Janka]: Yeah, I mean even if you work full-time in a city like New York, you can still get it done. But the reason I was able to have so much sex in such a short period was because I wasn’t really working during the day. I walked a lot in Manhattan and I had the balls and I knew what I was doing to pick up chicks.

[Angel Donovan]: Yup. Mm-hmm.

[Paul Janka]: So, basically, if you pick up 20 girls a day consistently, there's just a lot of numbers so I can… And then at each step, we can talk about all the phases, but like I perfected the model so that I lost as few as I could along the way.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah. So another thing you bring up in the book is like, so some of your friends are in investment banking and so on—I kind of get that because I was in a similar industry—and your days are really long and you seem to be really tired in your free time, and so that's very different compared to your lifestyle where you’ll have free time. And so like if you’re in that kind of job…

[Paul Janka]: Girlfriend. Just get a girlfriend. [Laughs]

[Angel Donovan]: Right, right. So you’re not going to have the energy. Is that really going to get in the way?

[Paul Janka]: It depends what you want…like there’s probably a number of reasons I chase girls. One is it gave my life some meaning, right? It was the thrill. It was the hunt. And it gave me self-esteem in the sense that like fucking a couple of chicks a day or one a day or whatever, because I didn’t have much going on careerwise, right? And I had the time.

A guy who’s got a high-powered career, he gets his self-esteem from his job. He doesn’t need to be banging a lot of chicks, generally. He's like he's doing important work, and he probably come—I have friends like this, who’ll have a ton of money and you’d think, “Oh, they could fuck with…” Reality is, they come home, they’re tired, they want like a nice girl there to like maybe have a meal prepared or like snuggle up with them and watch a movie or like give a massage and go to bed, because they don’t have the time for this nonsense, but it depends how high-powered of a career they have.

So any guy who’s got serious stuff going on, I would say, screwing a lot of chicks in this model is going to be too time-consuming. I mean, if you have a lot of money, obviously you can hire girls, or you can go, I don’t know, there are other things. You can go to like charity events or parties and stuff.

[Angel Donovan]: There's also the fact that just having a lot of sex is pretty damn tiring, right?

[Paul Janka]: On top of it, yeah.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: I mean, see, I didn’t work either, so I could be banging till four in the morning and like sleep in.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, yeah.

[Paul Janka]: Generally speaking, a guy with a pretty heavy-duty career, it’s not his focus. I mean, maybe he would like to, but it’s not his focus to be fucking chicks.

[Angel Donovan]: Right. He's always going to be distracted by some higher priorities and his career life and so on, so it would be hard to kind of keep this industrialized. I mean, you mentioned your method in a book and you call it a bit industrialized.

[Paul Janka]: It’s very industrialized. The 11% rule.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: I kept a spreadsheet of all the girls. I had actually two spreadsheets for a period. One was all the girls I’d picked up, right, so it was tons and tons and tons of numbers, but a lot of them didn’t go anywhere, or many of them. And then there were the girls I actually had intercourse with. And I didn’t include like blowjobs or make out. It was just like real verified sex.

[Angel Donovan]: Verified.

[Paul Janka]: And what that ratio was, and I found it was only 11% of the girls that I met on the street I actually had sex with. That means, for example, if I got 100 numbers quickly, over five days, say, when I was really…I would have sex with 11 of those girls eventually.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Paul Janka]: Now, you might say, “Oh, that's not a high number,” but that’s sex on my terms. That means spending no money, not leaving my apartment, not wining and dining, and like basically either pay or get out of my face, like very, very rigid rules. So because in my 20s I spent time trying to cater to their needs and I spent a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of frustration, and got laid periodically but it wasn’t…

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: So I realized it was like…part of it is discipline of the system, is to be able to turn away very hot girls if they’re not compliant.

[Angel Donovan]: Do they come back afterwards or…?

[Paul Janka]: Some do. Actually I can think of a number of them that…because at the end of the evolution of this game, basically I would get these numbers and I would just sit in my apartment and have girls come by and try and basically trick them upstairs, and either they would be like, “No way,” or they would come up and I’d try to fuck them.

But a handful of them, where we had that moment on the street where they refused, like I had a lot of male strength in my person. It was like, “Alright, well, this is what I’m offering you,” a handful would say no, and then they would reconsider, because there was attraction and they were…I had passed their test. And actually, there was always respect…was maintained. In other words, even if I pissed a girl off, at least she…I don’t think girls respect guys who basically overly comply. A hot girl who says “Do this, do that, do this, do that,” and a guy does it, first of all, he's not going to get anywhere, really, but also she loses respect. So sometimes there was like no deal. We would come together and she was like a prized female with her agenda and I had my agenda…

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: It was like there was no overlap, so there was no deal, but there was still respect, too.

[Angel Donovan]: Right. So it’s pretty rigid, right? Either she comes on your terms or you just say, “Alright, it’s fine.”

[Paul Janka]: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, you know, I was able to do that because I had a lot. It’s all about abundance. I had so many girls it was like, “I’d like to, but there's a queue behind you.”

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[Paul Janka]: And I got laid enough. And the other thing, I had no money at that time. I mean, not no, but very, very little money.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: So, generally speaking, 10 dollars had a lot more value to me than a naked hot girl. Can you believe it?

[Angel Donovan]: [Laughs]

[Paul Janka]: I have a lot more money today, but I don’t get laid nearly as often. But it was like, it was a system designed by a guy who was essentially broke to be able to fuck hot girls without getting walked all over.

[Angel Donovan]: Okay, just this is kind of like a tangent, but it’s something I’ve seen amongst kind of a lot of guys, and I may have seen it one time in myself as well, is this like seeing lots of girls and it takes up a lot of time in your life, did that have anything to do with your financial situation and time or…?

[Paul Janka]: Yeah, of course. I mean, it’s a chicken or an egg. Did I have a lot of time and I filled it chasing girls, and then at a certain point I liked the lifestyle so much I was reluctant to like take a job that would eat into my chasing time and my fuck—? Is that what you’re getting at?

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: Yeah. I mean, sure. Also, independent of women, I’m not a corporate type. Like I like to sleep, get up when I get up, and all this. And now I have a good lifestyle to do that, but I think there is very much a correlation. In other words, this guy I mentioned earlier who had slept with over 400 girls, his dad supports him. And he's like 36, it’s pathetic, but…

[Angel Donovan]: Wow.

[Paul Janka]: Basically, and in a nice apartment in New York. But because of that he has no responsibility, so he actually has time to chase girls. Because there's a lot of red herrings. A lot of times it doesn’t play out and you could waste hours.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: So you need to have that time. I mean, I try to make it as most efficient as possible, but even so, girls don’t just…you have to earn it. They don’t just…

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: It’s work however you cut it, and you need to really want to fuck a lot and you need to know what you’re doing, and even if you have the time.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, like in your book you talk about having the clarity about what you want, right?

[Paul Janka]: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[Angel Donovan]: And this is something I’ve seen a lot of guys have and not have, and for me it could make or break the deal, whether he's going to go through with what he needs to do or he doesn’t. Could you talk a little bit about where did your clarity come from, did it just kind of pop up one day? You said earlier on in your life, 20s? How old were you actually when you kind of started getting into this a bit more hardcore in New York City?

[Paul Janka]: Well, I moved to New York in ’02, so I was 27, but I had already started fucking a fair amount in Boston. But it was harder there somewhat, but I did alright. I’ll tell you about where the clarity came from in a second, but I wanted to—you know, I read recently the average American male has seven sexual partners in his lifetime, right? And I’m 35, so my life’s not over, and I’ve fucked over 200 women, well over 200 women, and the only way you can really…

Like the only guys who really crack 100 or 200 women, there are a few types of guys. There are like celebrities, movie stars, musicians, and athletes. But they have a lot of money and they have celebrity. They have unusual work patterns, so they have free time. And then guys like me, like guys who basically sacrifice or don’t have certain blocks…not blocks, obligations in their life, and they live in a city where there’s flow.

But the reality is, for most guys who live in a smaller town and they have real commitments, they’ll be lucky to fuck 30 girls before they get married. It’s just how it is. I mean, you have to make choices. It’s not easy to do.

I wonder actually how many men alive today have had sex with over a thousand girls. Very few. You know, Fidel Castro used to have his officials go to the beach in Cuba and pick up girls and deliver them, one for after breakfast…

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah. Oh, right. Well, that's a system.

[Paul Janka]: …one for after lunch and one for after dinner, but he…

[Angel Donovan]: I know there was Mao Tze Tung, right? Like he definitely had a lot…he had the whole of China.

[Paul Janka]: So the short answer is become a dictator in a large country and you can have as much pussy as you want.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: So it’s relatively few men who can put up like triple or quadruple digits. To your question about clarity, because one time I just was visiting Boston. I had some friends in Boston who were very good with women, and actually in LA too, where I grew up, some serious playboys, but these guys haven’t even cracked a hundred because they’ve had long-term relationships, as have I, I mean I’ve had serious relationships, but they basically live in environments, smaller towns, and they have work, they have careers. And so no matter how good they are with women, they’ve even told me they’re like 75 girls, maybe 80 girls, which is huge, but you need certain circumstances to be able to fuck a ton of girls.

And the clarity came…I went through a hard point. I had a business in 2000. I was kind of irresponsible, very irresponsible, growing up, and I went to a top university and had a lot of chances, but didn’t have a lot of personal discipline, and that bled over to my finances too. So basically I was a CEO of a business when I was young, but we lost the business and there were all kinds of money problems. I was essentially bankrupt.

I moved to New York in huge trouble in terms of like owing more money than I could ever pay, and my only solution was to like get very, very deliberate with all my actions, like every dollar I spent, every—I had to all of a sudden get very disciplined and very focused on like, “Is this the right thing to do?” And that clarity in my mid-20s, my lifestyle has improved a lot, but I haven’t really lost that, like, “What’s happening here? What’s the situation? Can I afford this? Am I losing time? Is this girl wasted? Is she full of shit?” In other words, cutting through all the nonsense, because there’s so many…

A lot of the dating scenes, I’m sure all the guys who are listening to this will agree, people can go out and socialize and be pleasant and have meals together but, so like if you want to fuck a girl, it’s like A to B, it’s a straight line, and there’s a lot of bullshit that can get in. So it helps to know what you’re…like I had the mindset always like, “What’s happening here? What am I doing here?”

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: And when I would spend any money I’d be like, “Alright, there's outflow of money, but like what am I getting in this?” So it helped me really, really see the dynamic.

[Angel Donovan]: It sounds a little bit like business, like any good businessman will know when time is being wasted versus there's actual progress and it’s worth his while being there.

[Paul Janka]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: So would you say it’s actually something…that this kind of discipline is actually healthy for your life in general?

[Paul Janka]: Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

[Angel Donovan]: Like maybe it’s transferrable from your business life.

[Paul Janka]: Oh, 100%, yeah. In fact, there's a good book called The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: I actually modeled the outline of my book from his. His first line says, “Life is difficult.” He's a psychiatrist.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, I’ve read his book.

[Paul Janka]: Yeah. And that's why my first line in my book says, “Sleeping with multiple women is difficult,” or something like that. And the point is, it’s like, success is not easy in anything. And people think, “Oh, I’m entitled to…” I’m just kind of, “No, way.” I mean, life is much, much harder than people realize.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: And so while they’re trying to fuck chicks or making a million dollars or do this, it’s like, most people are fools and they get crushed. It’s the self-aware discipline guy who stands out.

[Angel Donovan]: People get distracted, right?

[Paul Janka]: Yeah.

[Angel Donovan]: Away from what they’re doing, and they put things in the way, reasons and so on, and they let other people influence them, right?

[Paul Janka]: Yeah.

[Angel Donovan]: So if the girl wants to do something else, he's like, “Yeah, well, why not?” right? Kind of gets sucked…

[Paul Janka]: Yeah. The other thing in clarity, there's a huge difference—it’s obvious, but I think guys need to hear it. There's a huge difference between hanging out with a hot girl and actually fucking a hot girl. A hot girl, she’s used to having a whole orbit of people around her, right?

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: Do not confuse spending money and time and all that—like she lets relatively few men put their penis inside her vagina. That's a very discrete act. All the other stuff’s bullshit, so you’re not getting brownie points for…that's all a waste of time.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Paul Janka]: I mean, it’s a little cynical to say that, but basically, the point is if you see a hot girl and you think, “I’m interested in her sexually,” make sure that the time and money you’re spending is not a distraction. I mean, because she’s playing that field very, very well.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, and there are guys that can get sucked up in…

[Paul Janka]: Exactly. I mean, that goes on. It’s the story of life.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, right. Alright, well, going back to basically your process, right, so you’ve got the phone number, what kinds of things do you text or do you call her?

[Paul Janka]: Never call her. Text her. Usually right after I meet her, within an hour or so I’d send this very specific, unique text, like, “Hey babe, I hope that sweater fits,” or like, “I hope you’re quitting up after that cute pooch,” if she was walking a dog, or like, “I hope you found the sushi,” whatever. So she knows it’s me, because only I could have written that text.

[Angel Donovan]: Sure.

[Paul Janka]: It has to be unique and it has to be like a friendly followup. And then 99% respond back, or 90%, “Hey, sure, da da da,” and then carry from now or maybe a few hours later like, “What are you up to tonight?” something very simple.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: Or, “What’s going on?” And then…we’re about to release a whole text game product actually, it's getting added to the product with this new launch, so if I go through this, but…

[Angel Donovan]: Okay.

[Paul Janka]: And then there are kind of two schools of thought. One is that you keep it all neutral and friendly to get the date and get her over, and then you all of a sudden like blindside her with like your sexual interest. In other words, it’s like, friends, hey, da da da, nothing sexual, and then…which my friend does with a lot of…it’s very effective. And it might work particularly with American women because there's like a sexual repression or a huge disconnect here in this country, like if you mention anything overtly sexual it’s like, you know, the girls are all so hot and fuckable but you can’t like—we’ve driven a lot of that underground with the Puritanism. That's a whole other soapbox.

But basically that's one approach, is to be like friendly, and then once you have her alone, then start making the move. Or, my approach more is to sort of suss it out, be a little bit more sexual, and like do some of the screening upfront, because I don’t want to waste my time. And I play with the line there, I mean it can be very sexual and like alienate 9 out of 10 girls, so that, “Fuck off, creep.” I mean, you just met him on the street, right?

[Angel Donovan]: [Laughs]

[Paul Janka]: Or you can be slightly playful and flirty and once they come over, once I meet them, it’s already a little bit on, because we’ve already…

[Angel Donovan]: Right. Right.

[Paul Janka]: So there’s a debate about that, but I tend to go with a little bit more flirty…sometimes I can’t just help myself because of whatever. And my old model was I would just line them up at a lounge here and…it’s very easy. I mean, they gave the number, there's often some attraction, and then I say, “Let's have a drink.”

And also, a drink is great because it’s like, a girl can have a drink with work colleagues and her boss or she can have a drink with her lover. Like it’s a pretty broad umbrella. Like so for her to agree to a drink, oftentimes it doesn’t take a lot of selling, like she could be not even interested, but she’s, “Alright.” So you know, she’s up for a drink.

And then while there, all those processes of trying to get her turned on and get her back to the place, in my later stages I didn’t even want to spend that 40 bucks in the cab because I didn’t screw all those girls. I mean, I had a pretty good close rate, but that's still a lot of money if it doesn’t work out.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: It’s so frustrating. So I did the bait and switch where she would come by my apartment and I’d be like—I outlined this in very…it takes some finesse, but in a very detailed way in my book, but basically get them back to the apartment and pour her a drink there, so that before she knows it we’re actually having the date in my apartment. It still may not work out, but I haven’t spent money…

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: …and we’re private.

[Angel Donovan]: And does it work out about the same, 11%? It kind of fits with your 11% rule?

[Paul Janka]: Yeah, I would say. I mean, look, 11% is 1 out of 9, right?

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: So there are so many…this doesn’t really happen that often, but in theory she can give the fake number, right?

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: But usually that's not true. I’ll just break it down, what happens. I get nine numbers, right? And I send out a text. Eight reply, so one’s already gone. Of those eight, da da da, we go back and forth, maybe two is just bullshit, like they never agree to plan.

So now we’re down to six. Six seem up for meeting. One moves or something, so we’re down to five. So now it’s like five girls. This is New York. It’s transient. People come and go, whatever, or gets a boyfriend, let's say.

Now we’re down to five. Five agree to meet in the next week or so. All five meet, let's say. One refuses to come up. That means four come up to my apartment. One is nervous because she’s alone with me and I can’t even get like a kiss or anything.

So that leaves three. All three kiss. One just kisses, right, and she’s like, “No, no, I don’t do that, da da da.” Say that one that just…I’m not that into her for a second date, for example, I don’t know. Two fool around. They both give me head but one won’t fuck, and then she leaves and is like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I did that.” I can never get her on the horn again. And then one actually I fuck, and maybe I end up fucking her for a few months. That's kind of how nine street numbers whittle down to one.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, right.

[Paul Janka]: Any guy who says more than that is full of shit. I mean, I’ve run with a lot of players and I know guys who fuck chicks. It’s not that easy.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: And yeah, okay, you can meet…the guy says, “Oh, I’m 100%.” Well, yeah, you meet one girl and you’re like on her tail for months and flowers and like she really likes you. Of course, I mean, I’ve done that too. But to approach anonymous girls in high volume and spend no money and very little time, I just don’t believe it.

The guy who’s fucked over 400 girls, he has an even lower rate. I have 11% based on a pretty large sample. He has a 10% close rate. So in other words, out of 10 numbers he gets on the street, he’ll fuck one.

But still, it takes me a minute and a half to get a number, so on a given day I’m fucking around for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, getting numbers, and I’m going to fuck one or two of those girls with no headache.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: That's pretty fucking good.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah. Yeah, good. Alright, so like I’m sure a lot of guys are wondering, like saying, okay, industrial approach. Sometimes the girls don’t like it. What are kind of the worst pushbacks you’ve had, to give a guy an idea? And then also give us your take on how you dealt with it, like if that kind of rejection or pushback affected you or how you deal with…

[Paul Janka]: Yeah, I don’t…this whole idea of rejection, I mean, look, you’re trying to sell stuff, right, just like a Hare Krishna or whatever.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: You’re going out trying to sell. Like some people aren’t buying, so the way I look at it is deal/no deal. I’m trying to sell my bullshit and some girls are like, “You know, I’m full of bullshit, I don’t need any. Thank you very much.” So in other words it’s like it’s deal…now, this rejection, what is rejection? I mean, you have to know some pretty well and understand exactly to be like, “I’m personally rejecting you at your core, motherfucker.”

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: I mean, these women don’t know me. So they’re not interested in how I’m selling. So that's kind of how I don’t take it personally. Plus, I’ve talked to thousands and thousands of girls. There are a hundred reasons why they’re not interested. And basically, if you did this enough, you get in the mindset, it’s less about ego and more about like you want to fuck them, so it’s like, “Alright, get out of my way,” like, “I’m not going to fuck you, clearly, so can you step aside?” Like you’re trying to search out the ones who are going to give it up.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Paul Janka]: So basically what happens mentally for a player at this level is he's less concerned about the no deals and he's more like just desperate to find the girls who want to fuck, who’s horny to fuck.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: So he's not really concerned. It’s like when you order at a restaurant and you order steak, you want your steak to be good. You’re not thinking about all the other things you didn’t order, right? The steak, I’m not thinking, “You know what? I skipped the chicken. I wonder…” You’re like, “Oh wow, I hope this steak I’m eating is good.” That's kind of an analogy.

Oh, the worst…no, no. Usually, I mean, girls get angry, because they get all dolled up. They get all dolled up and they make time in their schedule and they maybe take a cab there, and then I come down in my slippers and my T-shirt and I’m like, “Oh, I’m not ready. Pop up.” And they refuse to, and then they just wasted all this time, so they get angry, fucking women, but whatever. I’m a disappointed angry man too.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: So I did have a girl once, she tried to fuck me over. Not fuck me over but hustle me, which I’m very sensitive to. She said, “Oh, I only have 10 bucks, so like I’ll come down to you by cab. Can you pay my cab back home?” I said, “Alright, that's fair.” So she came down and she said, “I don’t know what happened. I thought I had 10 bucks.” And I’m thinking, “That's a lie.” You might say, “Oh, I thought I had 100, I have 60 in my wallet,” but you just have 10 and…that's such a specific number, like you either know you have it or you don’t.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, right.

[Paul Janka]: So it’s a lie. So she shows up with the cab with no money, but I wanted to see what she looked like, so I paid the 10 bucks. And she came up and it was nothing, it was totally flat, and I was like, “Alright, well, this isn’t going to work. Let's go.” I just ushered her out. I’m very dismissive. “Alright, wrap up.” It’s kind of like class is over, like if this isn’t happening, like my time is…

She walked down and then she didn’t have any money, but I had already fulfilled my 10 dollars I said I would pay on her ride, which I had done. And then she’s like, “Aren’t you going to pay my return cab?” And I was like, “What are you talking about?” and she got furious. And I just walked away and she jumped on my back and started scratching my neck.

[Angel Donovan]: [Laughs] Wow.

[Paul Janka]: She was like screaming, crazy. I had to like run away. I didn’t want to cause a scene, so I kind of got…

[Angel Donovan]: [Laughs]

[Paul Janka]: Anyhow, nut job. But generally speaking, they’re just angry. I mean, a guy doesn’t fuck hundreds of girls without pissing off a lot of them. I mean, that's just part of the…

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: Because they have an agenda. The whole thing is women have two things. They have entitlement and they think...I saw a girl with this shirt. It said, “I have the pussy, I make the rules.” Alright, well, you can live like that but I don’t want to live in a world where I have to constantly comply to every stupid chick’s thing.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: So I have an alternate agenda, which is in conflict with theirs. So I’m going to constantly piss them off. I want to fuck them and give them nothing, basically.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Paul Janka]: So we’re going to issues.

[Angel Donovan]: Great. Alright, so you’ve been a pretty big player for a while. You’ve fucked a lot of girls. What kind of backwards perspective has this given you, like the whole game and relationships, like kind of where are you at now? Like are there some kind of ideas you can give like people who are looking for some kind of enlightenment for this part of their life?

[Paul Janka]: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think there are some takeaways. First of all, I’m always surprised when guys—I know it’s true but it’s not my reality. Guys enter into long-term committed relationships primarily for access to vagina. That's what I’ve heard. Like in other words, “I’m going to make her my girlfriend so that I have—I have a hard time getting laid, but if I get this one and make her my girlfriend, I’m going to have green light to pussy.” Well, I think that's the worst reason to get laid. I mean, to get…

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: A strong man should develop the ability to get laid…okay, maybe you need some pipeline, you need some time to pipeline the girls, but basically I know I can go into any city and within two weeks, three weeks, a month, I can have at least enough, a steady flow of pussy.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: A guy has to know that or else he's vulnerable.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: So I would say, look, you don’t have to go out and fuck hundreds and hundreds of girls, but I do think the strongest men always have the perspective, even when they’re…like I’m in a relationship too, but it’s not about the sex. Like I can get more and variety and in some ways hotter, different types of girls outside my relationship if I wanted. My girlfriend knows that, so it keeps her behaved. Like the worst relationships are the ones where the girl knows the guy’s like a loser and can’t get laid anywhere, and she manipulates because she’s the only access he has. That's a terrible dynamic.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: So I think a guy always has to have…he might stay in a dysfunctional relationship out of fear, so I think a guy to the best of his ability should develop the skills so that he always says, “You know what? If this thing ends, I can go back and hunt, and I’m fine.” In other words…and she’s great and all this, but like there are other women out there.

To just know, to have a sense of the marketplace, it’s just like anything, like hunting for food or whatever. The ability to get what you need, even if the relationship breaks down. That would give you a lot more internal strength and it’ll just be evident in the relationship. Girl’s going to be on better behavior. And you’ll attract higher-quality women because they’re not going to sniff out weakness.

So that's true. I would say on the flipside, being a good hustler makes commitment harder, and also, temptation, it’s like if you know…like I just told you the rule, the 11% rule, but basically I generally have the attitude when I walked in New York, if I see a lot of hot girls, like not every one of them, but I have a fair chance of screwing many of them. And to walk past them without taking a shot, there’s always a bit of kind of like a sense of lost opportunity or frustration. But I’m in a relationship now, so I don’t do that that often. So basically the hard thing is to turn it off. My libido’s a little bit waning, but generally I’m still horny and stuff.

[Angel Donovan]: That's an interesting thing. Do you think age is affecting libido or…?

[Paul Janka]: Yeah, definitely.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: I mean, we’re all prisoners to sex in a way, and there's a part of me that is looking forward to older age when it’s…

[Angel Donovan]: [Laughs]

[Paul Janka]: …you know, grandfather stage, but I don’t give a shit about it really.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Paul Janka]: But because it’s…I was just taking a train uptown, sitting across from this attractive girl, and she was checking me out, like she was giving me a vibe across…

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Paul Janka]: I don’t know, she was like ethnic. I was like, wow. But what am I going to do? Yeah, I can cheat. There are options, but it’s just like…and I was intrigued and attracted to her but it’s like, it’s distracting. Basically, sex can be very distracting.

[Angel Donovan]: Right. At a certain point it’s not adding to your life in some ways.

[Paul Janka]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: Is that what you were trying to say?

[Paul Janka]: Yeah, and if you’re good at picking up chicks, it can become a handicap a bit because it’s going to…it’s hard to exit from that life. I wrote a whole thing for Cliff’s List of top 10 reasons to get out of the game.

[Angel Donovan]: Oh.

[Paul Janka]: It’s a very interesting article. Guys loved it. It was their number one post of all time, Cliff says, or one of the top. And it counts down by number to the most important, it’s like Letterman, 10, 9, 8… So the number one reason is sleep.

[Angel Donovan]: [Laughs]

[Paul Janka]: When I was screwing a lot of chicks I was constantly tired because, first of all, bringing them back and seducing them, and then fucking them and then waking up, and it’s also just not that relaxing to sleep next to a stranger. And then the other one’s STDs, staph. Girls can steal shit. I’ve had strange girls in my apartment. And the more…I’m doing better in life now, I have expensive shit. I’m like, do I really want a knucklehead chick that I don’t really think about in my apartment…?

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

[Paul Janka]: And there were 10 really top reasons why. But it’s just harder in a way to get out of the game. It’s like a guy who likes pastries but he still has to go through the pastry stop and he's trying to be on a diet. It’s harder.

[Angel Donovan]: Okay. Thanks for this interview, Paul, it’s been great.

[Paul Janka]: Oh yeah.