Ep. #61 Breaking Out of the Friend Zone with Bobby Rio

[Angel Donovan] To start, what I like to do is get a bit of background. I know you've been on the show before, quite a way back, but we didn't really go into your background last time, so I want to make sure people really get to know who you are this time. So, give us a quick background. What did you do before you got into dating advice? And what was the key event, or moment, when you got into this?

[Bobby Rio] I've had an on-again, off-again relationship with dating advice since about 1998. Initially, I was an extremely, extremely introverted and shy guy growing up, all throughout high school, throughout the first couple of years of college. My second year of college was where I hit my breaking point, because I was surrounded by girls. I was surrounded by guys who were not even doing much, and doing really well with them.

I would sit there... And I would say that it was just the kind of people can not care. They can preoccupy themselves with videogames, or they can preoccupy themselves with sports, or something to keep their mind off it. I wasn't one of those guys. I was well aware that I wasn't getting what I wanted. So I started off reading books, more self-help-based: Tony Robbins, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

And then I stumbled on to a Ross Jeffries article in Playboy magazine, and that opened me up to this idea that, "Wow, there are actually guys teaching this." And from there I became like a vacuum, just sucking in knowledge and immediately going out and testing it, because I was in a social scene in college that really enabled me to test a lot of stuff that I was learning out, and like I said, I was coming from a very shy sort of background. So that was the first hurdle I had to get over. And then from there it was getting over one hurdle, enjoying myself for a little bit and then realizing that, wow, there's this whole other level that I don't know now, and I have to go back and go "Alright, now that I can actually talk and start a conversation, how do I move it to a sexual level? Or how do I prevent myself from falling into the friend zone?"

I would be good for a little while, and then I would hit a road bump, whether it be a girl that would kind of send me into... My friends and I in college, we called it the sickness, where you just become obsessed with a girl, and you can't kind of get your mind off of her. I'd run into one of those girls, and that'd bring me back into the learning phase. And even now, I'm in a long-term relationship now, and I still love learning. I've been teaching this now for eight years, but I've never stopped learning. If some new book comes out, or a product comes out, I check it out and always try to learn a little bit more.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah that's great. Obviously, I have the same mindset, and I think you never really stop learning. Relationships get pretty deep. There's a lot to learn about relationships, especially when you're in long-term relationships. So, you're in a long-term relationship. How long has that been?

[Bobby Rio] I've been with her now about four and a half years, so it's been a while.

[Angel Donovan] Congratulations man, that's great.

[Bobby Rio] It's interesting, because you learn a whole other level. Like you said about women being in a relationship, living with them and going to a deeper level of understanding what drives them. I always say there's a social mask that, when you're first meeting a girl, you're both putting it on. You're both kind of pretending to be someone you're not. And then you get into a relationship and you pull it off, but the longer you're in it, the more you really get to see the other person, and you get to really understand the way their mind works. And kind of seeing women in general, how their mind works, is very interesting.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah, and it kind of just goes on and on. Which is good, because it keeps us interested in the whole learning process as well, which is always good.

So, before you got settled down in this, how many dates had you had roughly? Was it a huge number? What were you up to for those years beforehand?

[Bobby Rio] I had a few different phases, and I did have a phase where I was going on a ton of dates, and that was in my post-college, post-bar-scene time. But it was interesting because in college, as many girls as I was with, there were very few dates that I actually went on because you meet a girl out, whether it be a bar or a party, and since you know them from campus, it's kind of like things tend to happen faster, because you're in this environment where you go out, you meet at a bar, you maybe sleep with them that night, and then the next day they're in your dorm room hanging out, and you can actually go months before you go on a formal date with a girl that you slept with.

It's pretty interesting. And the same thing after college. I was working in a restaurant, and I was in kind of in this crowd of people who were working, bartenders, waitresses, and it was very similar. You'd work with them, you'd hang out with them, and you'd be sleeping with them multiple times without ever actually taking them on that formal dinner date. But I had girlfriends in between where I remember in college I fell for a girl, and wound up dating her for I guess a couple of years, and then coming out of that, you kind of get back into it. So, to answer your question, how many dates? I have no clue.

[Angel Donovan] Alright. Do you have any idea of how many relationships you've had, or how many women you've slept with? Rough numbers?

[Bobby Rio] Relationships where I was like, "I love you," type relationship? I think I've been in about four or five of them. Dated casually? More than, lets say, between three to six months? Eight or nine girls? Ten girls? I've no clue.

Slept with? I'll say over fifty, but I'm not going to give a number just because I think it's kind of tacky to say how many girls I've slept with.

[Angel Donovan] Great, great, and to give guys a bit of context, how old are you now? Where are you based?

[Bobby Rio] I'm thirty-five years old, and I live right outside of Manhattan in a city called Hoboken in New Jersey.

[Angel Donovan] Great, great. And going forward, are there any changes over the last couple of years that have been taking place we haven't already spoken about, or anything you're looking forward to in the future? Have you got ideas going forward about how things are going to change your dating, relationships and so on?

[Bobby Rio] No, you know I'm at the point now where I'm enjoying myself. I'm not in the mentality of going out and banging non-stop. I'm in the mentality where I want a child. I want that next step. I'm at that place, and I'm fortunate enough to be with a woman that I'm in that phase with, and that I enjoy, and that I'm in love with. So it's pretty cool, it's a pretty interesting time.

[Angel Donovan] Okay, so let's jump into the main topic. This is turning girls you already know into girlfriends. So, what kind of situations are we talking about here? What does this apply to?

[Bobby Rio] What this whole new program that Rob and I came out with started as a direct response to the fact that we both coach guys, whether it be through email, whether it be through phone coaching. Rob does live coaching. And what we realized was that almost ninety percent of the questions we were getting from our private coaching clients was, "There's this girl that - insert whatever's going on." It's always, "A girl that's in my class, she's friends with me, we're kind of flirting, and now she's not talking to me." Or, "I was dating this girl. We went on three dates. I really liked her, I thought everything was going well, and then she pulled back and I don't know what's going on. Or, "There's this girl, and I'm in the friend zone, and I want to get out."

It was always that one girl, and there was always a roadblock to getting her. Like I said, it could have been that they had her and she pulled away. It could have been that they got the friend zone speech, because they kind of messed up too early. A variety of reasons. This methodology that we had been perfecting with our coaching clients for the last two years, and then releasing publicly in March... It's not, "How to go out to bars and meet girls," it's not, "How to approach a new girl every day," it's "You've got a girl in your life. Things are not where you want them to be with her. What strategy do you take?" Because most guys are clueless, and unfortunately, just like most things in attraction, it's very counter-intuitive what works, and what your emotions tell you to do in a situation.

Your emotions generally will give you the most absurdly wrong advice, but it feels right in the moment, and that's why so many guys mess up, myself included. Everything that I've learned, and everything that I'm teaching here, I learned through personal experience. I did not figure this out the easy way, I learned it the hard way.

[Angel Donovan] Excellent. So yeah, it's often these girls you've known for a while, but they're looking at you more as friends or as a past kind of romance situation. So, what's different about these situations? What's the most important thing that guys have to deal with to turn bascially this back into a situation which is more romantic, is more dating and so on, what they really want?

[Bobby Rio] Well, the most important thing generally, and this is no matter where you are... I'm going to give you a few different scenarios. This could be a girl that you have class with. It could be a girl that you work with. A lot of guys work with the girl they have a crush on.

Right now, the difference is that she links you to her mind in something. She kind of created a frame that your relationship with her takes place in. Maybe you're the quiet guy, maybe you're the creepy guy, maybe you're the friendly guy. The one thing you're not is the guy she is sleeping with.

If you're not sleeping with her, that's not how she's viewing you. She's viewing you in a way that is not conducive to a romantic relationship, and that is not an obstacle you have when you go out to, let's say, a nightclub and you're meeting a random girl. You can learn a technique, go out, and try it on a random girl, and you're not battling her perception of you.

Whereas, when you're going for a girl that you've known for a little bit, she's got a perception of you that you don't necessarily have control of what she thinks of you previously. You can change that perception, but you're battling it, and you have to be aware that you're battling it. And I think a lot of guys, they may have a crush on some girl that they've known for three years, and they go out and they buy a book on how to flirt, and then they go out and try to use these new techniques on her, but they don't realize that she sees them in a way that's not going to work without first changing her perception.

And that's something we realized, that in order to make anything work, step one is you need to change her perception. We call it, "Interrupt her pattern," because she's got a pattern of thoughts about you. When you come over to talk to her, when you hang out with her, when she gets one of your texts, there are certain things that go through your mind that create a pattern of not leading to romantic relationships. And I realized this from being in the friend zone with a girl. It was almost impossible to get out, because our interactions every time we hung out fell into a certain pattern. And it just wouldn't allow me to now change and bring things to that intimate, sexual level. So, that's the biggest difference.

[Angel Donovan] What happens if, say, a guy has learned some of the attraction techniques, or he's learned how to attract girls, and he goes back to this girl who has this existing perception of him, and he tries to flirt, and he tries to be playful and tease and so on... What would happen if she's got the wrong perception?

[Bobby Rio] It's going to come off weird. It's like her defenses are up. It's like if you're watching a TV show that you've watched over and over again, and this show was a completely realistic show. But then, one day, an alien lands on the show, and it doesn't match the reality of that show. It's like, "What is this? This doesn't make sense," and that's what's going to happen to her, because her reality is you're not the kind of guy that flirts with her, you're not the kind of guy that hits on her.

Maybe if you have flirted with her or hit on her unsuccessfully, maybe you're the creepy annoying guy, and her instinct is to just ignore you, to turn you down, to reject you, to kind of laugh it off like you're not serious. It depends on how the guy's previous relationship is with the girl. But her mind is not going to take whatever you're doing seriously.

Now, I'm not saying that it's impossible to go out and learn stuff, use it on a girl, and it works. It depends, but the guys that are unsuccessful with a girl, I generally find you need to do some kind of pattern interrupt, some way to reset her mind.

[Angel Donovan] So, are there grades of difficulty? Because it sounds like these are different situations. If it's a girl that you met before, and say you made a really bad first impression. And then you try to approach her again, and you mess it up again, and now she's like, "Really, no, no. Just friends, nothing else," and she makes it pretty clear.

Maybe that's a bit more of an intense situation which would be more difficult to come back from, versus another situation where, maybe you've just been hanging out in the social circle of a girl for quite a while, and she doesn't see you that way because you've never acted that way towards her, and she's put you into this other box.

[Bobby Rio] Exactly, and that's what we talk about in the program. There's a big difference. If you've been friends with a girl for two years, and you talk to her every day, she tells you about her previous boyfriends, and you're in the friend zone. It's more intense, and there are more things you need to do than say, this girl, you see her at parties, and you never really hit on her, but she has this perception of you from seeing you around. You don't have as much work to do in that situation. So, like you said, definitely different grades.

[Angel Donovan] So, where would you start? What would be the first step to start changing this perception? In the worst situation, if it's a pretty difficult situation. She's got you in this crystal clear box that isn't the right box for you. What would be one of the first steps you can take?

[Bobby Rio] One of the first things that I tell guys to do is, you've got to understand that in order for a girl to feel attraction for you, girls need to feel like you have the upper hand, or the power in the relationship, in the interaction. And the problem with a guy in the friend zone is she knows she holds all the power. And I hate the word "power" because people tend to take it the wrong way, but it's human nature. Girls know it. If you talk to a girl, they're like, "He gave me all the power too fast."

It doesn't mean power like "dominate", or anything like that. It just means that in every relationship, one person holds the upper hand. It's never a hundred percent equal, and it's very hard for a girl to be attracted to a guy when she clearly knows she has the upper hand. The more she feels like he has the upper hand, the more attracted she's going to become to him. So one of the things that we say to do is you first have to realize all the ways you're giving her that power.

A lot of times it's the subtle things. Let's say you work with the girl, let's just use that as an example. Do you always walk in, and are you always the one to say "Hi" to her first? Do you always walk up to her and say "Hi"? When you're around her, even if you're in a bad mood, do you always try to be cheerful and be in a good mood?

If it's a situation like where I used to be where I was waiting tables, a lot of times you can do favors for each other. So one of your coworkers might come up to you and say, "Hey, can you stay late for me today?" Or, "Can you work for me tomorrow morning?" If you're always doing her the favors, even though you don't want to, these are all subtle things that she knows.

The rule is that you're now the guy who does this. You're now the guy who does her the favors. You're now the guy who is always in a cheerful mood. You're always this, or you're always that. You've got to recognize what these are. It could be something subtle, like, is she always the one to end the text conversation.

If you're texting, does she always sign off first if you're chatting with her on Skype? If you're driving with her in a car and you get in the car with her, does she turn the radio station to the music that she likes, and ignores what you'd rather listen to? These are all subtle things that are taking place every time a guy and a girl get together.

These are things that she's not consciously thinking about, but if you want to change her perception of you, you've got to slowly - you can't jump into the thing - find all these unsaid rules of your relationship, and you start breaking them, because that begins to interrupt her pattern. It's little things that she's going to start thinking, "Something is different about him," and she's not going to know why.

She gets in the car and she puts on her favorite radio station, you're not going to go, "Hey, I'm tired of listening to your station!" You don't do that, you just subtly change the station to whatever you want to listen to. You don't say, "Hey, you always end the text conversation," just next time you're talking to her on text, you just be the one to end it.

These are things that she's not even going to really be aware of what's going on at first. It's going to be a subtle thing. Something is going to be different. She's going to be, "Wow, I just called him and normally when I call him he has all the time in the world to talk to me. This time when I called him, he was like, "I'll call you right back," and then he didn't call me back. What's going on?" It's these subtle changes that you want to introduce first, to begin resetting her opinion of you.

[Angel Donovan] Great man, so there are lots of different situations there. I think the hard part here is going to be for guys to figure out where these subtle things are, so it's great that you brought in the power dynamic.

They can think about all the different areas where they're letting her get her way, letting her make the decision, I guess that's a good way to put it right? Is she making the decision of where the interaction starts and ends? The decision of what to do? The decision of how you're going to interact with her and so on? Would that be a good way to put it?

[Bobby Rio] Yeah exactly. She's the more dominant frame I guess you would say, in the interaction. Her decisions are what is being said. And not only that, but a lot of guys change the way they are. Maybe a girl has a certain sense of humor, and when you're around that girl, you find yourself making similar types of jokes. You're going into her reality. You're letting her reality be the stronger one, ad she knows it. She knows you're telling little white lies to agree with her about things that you don't really agree with her about.

Maybe she talks shit about one of your coworkers and you actually like the guy, and you find yourself nodding and agreeing with her. All these little things, there are so many, and that's one of the things when I coach guys on the phone about, and we get into it. Like you said, you've really got to dig down because they're always there. And guys, as I start giving them examples, it's like light bulbs start going off in their head of all the ways they're giving girls power without realizing it. And for every guy it's a different thing, but every guy is doing it in some way.

[Angel Donovan] Okay. So the first step is to subtly start changing this dynamic by targeting. You write down a list of these things, and next time these situations come up, you're like, "I've got to stop myself here," and basically be more proactive. Be the dominant one, and steer it in the direction that is good for me rather than always being good for her.

[Bobby Rio] Yeah, exactly.

[Angel Donovan] So, once they start doing that, what would be the next thing that happens? Is there something they're going to see in the way she interacts with them next?

[Bobby Rio] Yeah, it's funny because we teach this whole thing we call The Scrambler. It's multiple steps. We have a total strategy guide, but the first step in The Scrambler is to begin breaking roles. It's shocking how many guys that go through this, or guys that we coach, or guys in our members forums, who are in step one. They are shocked because her response is night and day. This is the danger zone that these guys fall into though, because the minute you start doing this, it drives the girl crazy.

You will see a noticeable change in her. She will become noticeably different, but this does not mean she's attracted to you yet. It does not mean she's ready to sleep with you. It doesn't mean any of that. It just means that, now, you've got her attention. Now, you've begun to change the dynamic. You've confused her a little bit, and that confusion is kind of like making her go, "Whoa, something is different here. I've got to get back on the right footing." Now the problem is, a lot of guys, the minute they sense this... Maybe she never used to text them right back, and now she's texting them right back.

Now they're getting that kind of approval from her, and they immediately fall right back into their old patterns because now they don't want to mess it up, and that's the problem. So to answer your question, you will notice things about. She will change towards to you.

[Angel Donovan] So the key step there is to stay observant? It sounds like guys are getting shocked, so they don't even really have to be that observant, because they've been stuck in that dynamic for a while.

[Bobby Rio] They'll notice it, they don't have to be that observant. What they have to be aware of though, is that when they observe it, it does not mean the game is over. It means the game is actually just beginning.

A lot of guys, the minute that she starts showing them this other, little bit more aggressive towards them... Aggressive might not be the right word... Interested in a way where, "Hey, how come you didn't call me back?" Or, "What happened the other day? You were supposed to call me and you didn't."

And then the next area that we move into, I'll explain that in a minute, but instead of doing what he should do based on what we teach, he'll immediately, maybe, apologize, or he'll say, "Oh I'm sorry, I meant to..." and he'll kind of fall back into his old way. And right there she's like, "Okay. Alright, I get it." It wasn't a change, and she gets comfortable with him again, and they fall back into the old dynamic.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah, an obvious move, you've just brought it up... An obvious move by the girl is going to be to think, even subconsciously, "Something's different," and she's going to ask the question pretty directly, "Hey, what's going on here?" with whatever seems to be different for her.

I guess, for a lot of guys, they're going to be thinking "Uh-oh, what am I going to say to that?" So do you have specific advice on how to answer those kind of questions?

[Bobby Rio] Yeah. This kind of flows into the entire second part of this journey out of the friend zone, or journey out of whatever area they're in, is the mixed signals confusion zone. Now that you've got her attention, it's going to be all about confusing her, because that's how you keep a girl's attention. Rob and I have a saying, "Once a girl figures you out, once a girl knows she has you, it's over," she gets bored.

People have probably heard of the cat and the string theory. If you dangle a string in front of a cat, they'll chase it, but the minute the string falls in the cat's lap, it gets bored and walks away. So with girls, guys make one of two problems. To answer your question here of what happens, guys make the mistake of either a) they go too cold on a girl. So they realize like, "Oh wow, it's pretty interesting that when I change how I act, this girl starts chasing me a little bit. I pull back, and she comes towards me," and they see how she reacts, and they make either mistake number one, which is going cold all the time, because they see that she's responding in the way they want.

But what happens is they never go high, and I'll explain what that means in a second. When you're always cold, then she just loses interest again because she's just, "Oh, nothing's going on here." She maybe thinks you're gay, or she thinks you're not interested, or whatever.

On the other hand, guys get too hot. They sense that she's interested, and now they start giving their hand away. The whole idea, the whole thing, is to keep her guessing at this point. And it's a mixture of validation, and pulling the validation away. Hot and cold. And it requires being very vague. So to answer your question, when she says, "What's different about you?" "Nothing's different. I have no clue what you're talking about."

Everything you're doing is vague. When you cancel plans with her, you don't even give her a reason that you're canceling plans, you just say, "Something came up." You don't explain yourself. Everything that you're doing at this point is giving her things to think about, because the other thing that we always say is that if you can get a girl thinking about you when you're not around, you can get her to fall in love with you. And the problem most guys fall into is they give her nothing to think about.

They give her such certainty. They want to let her know so much that, "I'm the guy for you. I'm this, I'm that," that she goes home and she's got nothing to ask her friends about. She doesn't get to go home and go, "What did it mean when he...? Why isn't he...?" And girls need that. They need to sit around wondering what's going on.

And guys do to an extent too. If you notice, guys fall for the girl that they can't figure out. That's an interesting thing that I noticed when I was coaching these guys, and they learned The Scrambler, one of the most common responses is, "Holy shit, that's what she's doing to me."

Now of course she didn't read The Scrambler report, and she's not using it on them because she learned it, it's just what works, and she just did it naturally, and that's causing him to get obsessed with her, because now he's sitting around thinking about her, trying to analyze her behavior. And the more he's doing it, the more attention he's spending on her, and attention equals attachment. The more you think about somebody, the more attached you become.

So your goal is basically to get her thinking about you a lot, and the more she's thinking about you, the more attached she's becoming to you.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah, makes total sense. So, at this stage, is she getting attracted? She's getting into this attraction zone? Moving from the friend zone into the attraction zone? Is she already moving into that now?

[Bobby Rio] Yeah. This point now, you're taking up more and more of her space. Depending on where you're at, some guys that are learning this, they're dealing with a girl that they don't see very often. So, maybe they're doing stuff over Facebook, or text. With them, it takes a little longer to bring her into that attraction phase.

On the other hand, let's go back to our earlier example of a girl you're working with. So, if you're doing this stuff with a girl you're working with, and then you're also mixing in now, because now that you've shifted her perception of you by doing this stuff, now you can mix in these new flirting things, these sexual tension things that are developing. And that's when the attraction starts.

[Angel Donovan] So it's back to a more typical program, a more typical approach, once you get to this stage?

[Bobby Rio] Yes and no, because everything you're doing at this stage is still meant to confuse her. So, in a normal situation, if a guy is going out to a bar, and he's getting sexual with a girl, I would be like, "You should be assertive." If your goal is to sleep with her, bring her home that night. Ask her to come home with you. All this stuff. On the other hand, in a situation like this, it's not necessarily what you should do.

Let's say a girl you work with. You come in one day, you flirt with her. You create this sexual tension with her. But then you leave work without saying goodbye to her, or the next day at work you walk in and, depending on what your job is, maybe you just go right to your desk, or maybe if it's a more social job, you go and you have this conversation with somebody else.

When you see her you're not meant to her, you don't ignore her, but you're just kind of distant. What she got from you yesterday, in terms of flirting, all of a sudden that's not there today. And now she wants it more, because whenever you take away validation, the person begins to crave it more. So, it's a very hot and cold type thing you're doing, which is not necessarily what you would be doing if it was just a random girl that you're just meeting.

It still does work on random girls that you're just meeting, but my advice in those situations is, "Let it be known what you want. Let it be known that you're trying to sleep with her, if that's what your goal is." With this girl, you don't really want her to know what your goal is.

[Angel Donovan] So how long do you have to keep up that dynamic? Basically, is there a stage where you'll be more straightforward, or is it like you'll go all the way through to a relationship? I guess all the guys who're interested in this are all interested in a relationship with this one girl. Because this is also a fair amount of investment of time, and energy, and effort, especially when you're talking about the ones where they're not seeing her every day. So I can imagine if they're seeing her once a week, or even less... Because it's someone they haven't got a standard routine of seeing every day, it could take quite a while I guess.

[Bobby Rio] Yeah, we teach in the program there are several goalposts that you're looking out for. There are certain things when you know at this point, "Okay, this phase has worked. I can move to the next phase," and from that phase, you're like, "Okay, it's time to now go into seduction mode."

There are certain things we guide you. The whole point of creating The Scrambler was to not leave things up to interpretation, because that's where most guys mess up. Like I said in the beginning of this interview, your emotions are going to mess things up for you, and if you listen solely to your emotions, you're going to mess up. So what we did was take the guesswork out of it.

[Angel Donovan] We kind of skipped over this topic, but I guess the huge aspect of this is that the guys are already emotionally invested in the girls.

[Bobby Rio] Yeah. This is the thing. Another thing guys often realize when they go through the program is they go, "Holy shit. This girl, Jennifer, that was obsessed with me, I didn't really like her, but these are all the things that I did to her," because when you're not emotionally invested in a girl, it's a lot easier to do a lot of things naturally.

So, let's say you're dating this girl, and you're confused about her, because you're like, "I kind of like her, but I don't know. And I don't really want to lead her on," You're naturally hot and cold towards her, because that's just how you feel, right? And that girl becomes obsessed with you. It leads to her having that same reaction.

But when you're emotionally invested in a girl, it's a lot harder to do that because your scarcity mindset kicks in of, "If I don't let her know, if I don't give her certainty about how I feel, she's not going to think I like her. Or she's going to get frustrated and leave."

A lot of guys are so nervous, like, "If I cancel plans on a girl, if I have plans to hang out with a girl this Friday. Maybe it's a girl I'm in the friend zone with. Maybe it's a girl I'm kind of dating, but I sense she's pulling away," and I tell the guys, "You know what, on Friday just call her up and say something came up and cancel. And then just go and hang out with your friends. Don't really explain to her why."

Guys shit their pants going, "I can't do that. She'll get so mad," but think about if it was the opposite. Think about if you were about to hang out with a girl, and she canceled on you at the last minute. Yeah, you'd be mad at her, and yeah, we'd all want to say that, "It wouldn't bother me," but part of you now sees her in a more valuable way.

The minute you sense a girl slipping away, it's human nature, this fear of loss. Whenever we fear we're losing something, we begin to want it more. And you're playing into a lot of these natural desires that all men and women have, and fear of loss is very, very strong.

[Angel Donovan] Right, so it definitely gets your emotions all engaged. I was thinking, going back, we were talking about the dominance dynamic, but it's also about the fact that you've already got your emotions invested in this girl, so it's skewing your ideas of what to do, which you covered at the beginning.

The Scrambler's point is to give you clear things to do, because it's acknowledging the fact that you're probably overly emotionally invested, and you're having difficulty. Even when you say, "This is the right thing to do in this situation," you're still emotional about it, and you're not sure.

[Bobby Rio] Yeah, and that's the thing. Several years ago, I was in a situation. I knew a lot of this stuff already, but I was so in the thick of things that I convinced myself to send her flowers at work. And it's something that, before that I knew it was a bad move, but for some reason, in that state, I convinced myself, "She's pulling away because she's not sure..." Because at the time, I had a little bit of a reputation of being a bit of a player in that social circle, and I'm like, "I've got to prove to her that I'm not, that I am serious about her."

And I did that, and what's interesting is that all the things that attracted her to me initially, that whole vibe I was giving off, I killed it by doing that. It's very easy when you're in what we call "emotional quicksand." You're trying to get out. You're in this quicksand, and you're trying to claw your way out of it. And when you're in that, you can convince yourself of anything, and ninety-eight percent of what you convince yourself of is wrong.

This is a guide of what does work, and also what not to do in a sense, because a lot of times, what not to do is just as important as what to do.

[Angel Donovan] That's funny, when I first got into this, one of my rules is when I got emotionally invested, I was just, "Don't do anything. Wait." That was one of the things that saved me many times, back in the day, because I had no clue what I was doing back then either.

Okay, so I'm sure there are a lot of guys who're interested in this. However, is it a good idea for every guy to do this and then get into a girlfriend? I'm thinking of guys who're new to dating advice, and maybe they haven't got a lot of experience. I'm sure you're talking to guys about these specific situations. Maybe he hasn't dated very much at all, and he wants to get this one specific girl. In a bit more long-term perspective, what would be your advice to him? Maybe he could use this approach to get this one girl, but have you got any other advice about what his longer term approach should be?

[Bobby Rio] Well there are two ways to look at it. I look at myself as an example. I told you earlier, I was extremely shy, and I learned dating advice. And the minute it started working, I got into a relationship, because I learned it for a specific girl, and I got that specific girl.

On one hand it kind of hindered me, because I did get the girl, but I came out of that relationship two years later, and I really hadn't learned that much about getting better. I had experience now with the one girl, but I didn't have the social confidence I might have developed if I continued going out and practicing, and learning, and building my skill.

On the other hand though, I got the one girl that I wanted, and it was very gratifying, and I had a very good relationship, and I also got the confidence of knowing that it's possible to get that one girl.

[Angel Donovan] That's an important point. It's like breaking your mental reality. If you're a guy who, for instance, if you've been in a situation where you're often in the friend zone of the girls that you like, then it's important to break that cycle, to show that that limitation isn't really there.

[Bobby Rio] Yes, so a lot of times, I often think to myself, "You can't go back and change time," but I'm like, "What would have been better for me? Would I have progressed faster if I had kept learning and practicing?" I was nineteen or twenty at the time in college, and it was a very good time to be young, single, and practicing this stuff.

But at the same time, like you said, also having had the experience of going, "I want that girl," and then seducing her gave me a confidence going forward where I didn't have that limiting belief that a lot of people have. A lot of guys, the more they want a girl, even though they really want her, there's a mental block that says, "I never really get the girls I really want," and it kind of stops them even following the plan that's laid out for them, because they don't really believe it's going to work.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah, it's also that they're kind of comfortable with that dynamic, in a strange way. It's something you're used to, and when something's out of your comfort zone, even if it's the exact thing you want, sometimes you still pull yourself back from it.

Okay, I just wanted to touch on another thing, which is dating and social circles. A lot of these situations are in social circles. Some guys can be nervous about things like sleeping with a girl in a social circle. What kind of impact is it going to have on the social circle in general? Is it going to change the dynamic? If, for instance, I'm not interested in settling down, and there are other girls I'm interested in, can you sleep with other girls? I think you've got a bit of experience of that in your background.

[Bobby Rio] Yeah. From what I've experienced, it can never hurt you, sleeping with other girls. And it doesn't matter who they are. Say there's one girl in the social circle who's like the slutty girl, and you have a crush on the good girl.

A lot of guys go, "If I sleep with the slutty girl, the good girl's not going to like me. She's going to think I'm a... whatever," so they don't take advantage of all the opportunities that they could have within their social circle, because they think it's going to negatively impact their situation with the girl they really want.

I can tell you from experience, and not just myself... I can list off a hundred different guys in my head... Sitting with girls talking about a guy, and the girl going, "Eddy's such a pig, I can't believe he slept with her. She's so fat." Six months later, she's sleeping with Eddy.

I saw it so many times, where the girl saw what the guy did, and even acted grossed out, or acted offended, or acted whatever, and he still wound up dating her, making her his girlfriend, sleeping with her. I've never seen it serioursly affected. The only time, and this is sort of rare, if you sleep with a girl and that girl falls in love with you, and now you want one of her really good friends, and her really good friend, if she's a really loyal friend, may not do something with you because she doesn't want her friend's feelings to get hurt. That's the only situation that I've seen, where it can come back and bite you. But other than that, I would say don't worry about it.

[Angel Donovan] As long as it's kept casual. As you were saying that, I was thinking of a situation that happened to me a little while ago. I have an ex-girlfriend, and one of her friends came to the same city. She put me in contact with her to show her around and stuff, and her friend hit on me. Immediately in that situation, I always think, "I could cause a hell of a lot of drama..."

I was with my ex-girlfriend for quite a long time. It's a relationship that I have ongoing. It was one of those situations where, "This is going to be a huge drama thing. I don't want it in my life going forward." So I think what you said is correct, but if you have an ongoing relationship, or if there's been an ongoing relationship for a while, then it could cause a bit of drama that you don't want in your life.

[Bobby Rio] In your situation, yeah. If you have a girl that you dated for a long time, and you're still on good terms with her, yeah, you don't want to sleep with one of her friends. To me that's not, "Oh it's going to affect my game," it's just a douchey thing to do.

If you have feelings for a girl, and you like her, I'm not going to do that, not because it's going to affect my ability to sleep with other girls. I'm not going to do it because if I have feelings for a girl, I'm not going to hurt her by sleeping with one of her friends.

[Angel Donovan] I like the way you basically just put two compartments there, like, "This is game, and this is relationships. Having integrity in the relationships I care about is important." So it's two completely separate areas.

[Bobby Rio] Yeah. WWhen I give examples too... When I was in various social circles... But I'll talk about the restaurant social scene that I was in. I may have a very casual type of intimacy with several of the girls going on at once. But I'm never leading any of them on. If I know I want none of them to be my girlfriend, I'm very honest with them, I'm very upfront with them. I never make promises. I don't pretend like, "Hey, I want to introduce you to my parents," I don't say anything that would lead them to believe that I felt a way I didn't feel. I think as long as you're doing that, then you're fine.

On the other hand, if you're the kind of guy who, when you're sleeping with a girl, you're going to say, "I love you," to her because in the moment you can't help yourself, then you're playing with a girl's emotions. They're two different things. Even if I don't intend... like you said, "compartmentalizing", I also won't play with a girl's emotions. I won't tell a girl, or lead a girl to believe something, that is not true.

[Angel Donovan] Well said. Right man, I'd like to fire a few questions at you which are really aimed just to see who you are as a person. You've learned a lot yourself, and to get to the stage where you're teaching guys this stuff, it's not a typical path that people take. So there could be some interesting things about you. One of the questions here is, what is the strongest character attribute you have?

[Bobby Rio] As far as friendships are concerned, it's loyalty and empathy, I would say. It's that I'm able to put myself in somebody else's shoes. You'd have to make a serious fuckup for me not to be able to understand your mindset. Same thing with girls. I can kind of get in their head, and see from their point of view, which allows me to a) not make bigger deals out of things.

If somebody disrespects me, from their mindset, I can see that it wasn't meant to be that way. I think a lot of people don't have that ability to be empathetic, and it's very hard for them to put themselves in other people's shoes, so-to-speak.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah, that's a great attribute man. So rounding off, who, not including yourself, would you recommend for high quality advice in this area of life?

[Bobby Rio] Obviously, Rob Judge, who I started working with a couple of years ago... I learned a lot myself from him. I learned from a lot of guys. A guy, Chris Anderson, who goes by the name 60 Years of Challenge. I've learned a ton from him. I did an interview with him a couple years ago.

It just blew my mind, with some stuff in regards to sexual tension that he teaches. I'd say every product that I've put out since then, I've quoted him in some way, certain things I learned in that interview.

[Angel Donovan] Great, thanks for that. Did you and Rob know each other for a long time before you got together?

[Bobby Rio] No. I have a website called TSB Magazine, TSB Mag. It's a men's lifestyle site, and Rob randomly contacted me, I guess it was probably about 2009, to write articles. I had no clue who he was. At the time I had an editor, so I didn't even really talk to him, I just said, "Oh, contact our editor." He had been writing articles on the site for probably a year, and then TSB Magazine was invited to some kind of event that we got tickets for, and we invited some of our writers. I met him in person there, and we just got along, and from there we kind of slowly developed a friendship. We're both in the New York area.

At the time, as articles were getting posted, there were so many articles that I didn't really read a lot of them that were going up. I would skim them, and kind of know what was going on. After I got to know him I was like, "Let me read some more of his stuff," and I started actually reading his articles a little more in-depth. And I was like, "Wow, this guy actually has a lot of cool stuff to offer," and from there it was more of a friendship really.

Then a couple of years ago we were talking about texting, and I had some psychology of what I knew about it, and what I recommended. But he also had this other style that I thought, "Wow, we've got to come together and teach," and that led to our first program together, Magnetic Messaging, which guys absolutely loved, and led us to... I wouldn't say work together. We both have our own separate teachings and coachings, but occasionally, like with this current program, we would both be on the same wavelength.

We basically both do a lot of one-on-one coaching, and we also enjoy talking about this. When we go out for beers and stuff, we wind up talking about what we've learned. We both came to this dual realization about all these things that make up The Scrambler, and the program we taught. I guess that was a long way of answering your question of how we got to know each other, but that's basically where it started.

[Angel Donovan] It's a great illustration of taking initiative. Rob just reached out to you basically, started writing, did some good stuff, you saw that, and it evolves from there. So it's good to hear those kind of stories anyway.

[Bobby Rio] It's actually interesting too, the way he went about it. If there's anybody listening, I know you have a huge audience of guys into this, and a lot of guys eventually say, "I want to put out my products," or, "I want to do this..." And the way he went about it is the way I recommend it. If you want to work with people, prove it. Don't contact somebody that might be in the business and say, "Tell your list that my stuff is good."

I get emails every day, "I'm releasing this new product that I want you to tell your 200,000 email subscribers about," and I'm like, "I don't know you. I don't trust you. I don't know what you teach." Had they contacted me sending me articles, and what they're learning, that's the way to go about it. I just wanted to throw that out there, because I do know you have an audience of guys that, a lot of them do want to go on and eventually, maybe, teach this stuff, so just giving them a hint of the right way to go about it, which is how Rob did it.

[Angel Donovan] Yes, that's a good point. I think we will get a lot of those emails. We get a lot of emails as well, so those are the first ones you don't really have time to pay attention to.

Ok, to seal off, we always ask the same question of everyone. What are the top three recommendations to help men get results as fast as possible with women? So that's your top three recommendations.

[Bobby Rio] My top three... It depends on the guy in general, but one is to learn how to flirt. I know this is not what we necessarily focused this interview on, but you've got to learn the art of flirting. And the reason I say that is because most guys, they like a girl, they think, "Oh this girl, she kind of looks at me in class," and they kind of convince themself they like her, and they want to just go ask her out, and they skip the whole flirting phase.

Flirting, and kind of teasing her, and building attraction, is what leads to actually getting her to go out with you, and guys want to skip that. Guys want to believe that they're so good looking that they don't need to flirt, that they don't need to talk.

So that's number one, is learn how to flirt. The simple way to do that is learn how to tease a girl in a playful way, and switch when you're hanging out with a girl. A simple thing to do is switch from asking questions to making statements, and it's just the simplest little change you can make when you're with a girl. Instead of saying, "Where are you from?" Make a statement, "You must be from - insert a random place," and make a playful observation about why you think she's from there. And just doing that teaches your brain how to think differently in terms of logical conversations, versus these emotional fun conversations. So that would be number one.

Number two would be what we talked about in this interview, learning the art of sending mixed signals. It's kind of an unsaid thing, everybody has this, you get so many guys saying, "I don't want to have to play the game," but that's a lazy mentality. The game exists. You fall for girls that play the game.

When a girl sends you mixed signals, chances are you're going to be a lot more attracted to her than if she's a hundred percent into you right off the bat, and she gets really clingy and needy, and she always wants to hang out with you. And then all of a sudden you're going, "This is kind of alright, but let me look around and see if any other girls want to hang out this weekend."

Guys don't realize that if you're not giving the girl something to think about, if you're not being a little bit of a challenge, you're not giving her something to work for, she's going to get bored and look for a guy who's a little more challenging. So learn how to send mixed signals.

And finally, the final piece of advice is more attitude-based. People say, "What is confidence? How do you become more confident?" I think the word that I like to tell guys is, become more autonomous. If you want to become confident, become more autonomous. Autonomous means, essentially, independent. It means, have things going on in your life that you are a hundred percent passionate and focused on.

Sending mixed signals for instance. It's a game if you're actively trying to send mixed signals, and you're consciously going, "Today I'm going to pull back some of my interest." But on the other hand, if you're a hundred percent passionate about, let's say, building your business or whatever, you're naturally going to do these things, because some days you're going to be so wrapped up in some other aspect of your life that you're going to naturally forget to call her back. You're naturally going to not have time to hang out with her, and that's going to make her attracted to you on a more natural level.

That's the evolution of everything. People say to me, "With your girlfriend now, do you do this stuff?" And I say, "You know what, I don't do this stuff now, because I have so many interests in my life that I do it, but I do it naturally." I leave these hot and cold things, but not because I'm consciously going, "I have to kind of be mean today," or, "I have to pull back my interest level today." It's just natural, because I have so many different things going on in my life.

That's the final piece. Don't make the woman the center of your life. Have a ton of things going on in your life, because then these things become natural.

[Angel Donovan] That's a great word, autonomous. I've never heard it expressed that way, and I think that's really useful and clear, the way you talk about that. So thanks for that. And thank you for coming on the show again, it's been great to have you on here.

[Bobby Rio] Yeah, it's good catching up man. It's always fun to do these.