Matador Interviewed at brobible.com

In 2007, when the “The Pick-Up Artist” premiered on VH1, the world met James Matador, the faithful wingman of the show’s host, Mystery. The Matador is a master pickup artist, a co-author of the book “Revelation,” and one of the founding partners of the the Venusian Arts, for which he leads seminars and boot camps throughout the world on the art of seduction. A computer science graduate of Depaul University and former national-champion martial artist, Matador is also an actor, an entrepreneur, and amateur bodybuilder. According to his official bio, he is most known for his “Matador Mayhem” technique, “a process in which he allows himself to be chased by multiple women simultaneously by hugging, kissing, and making out with many women at the same time, causing all the women involved to feel jealous of one another and compete for his attention.”

So when BroBible met the Matador at Marquee in New York a while back, we asked if he’d be up for an interview. He was down, so after a few months of telephone and email tag, we finally caught up with him recently for an hour-long interview that we present today and tomorrow in two parts. We learned right off the bat that although a third season of “The Pick-Up Artist” is not in the cards, a different show with a new angle is indeed in the works. The Matador didn’t want to reveal too many details just yet, but we got him to open up about plenty more.

BroBible: Our readers are big fans of you and Mystery and the rest of the “PUA” crew, and are always curious about what kind of trouble you guys are getting yourselves into. Any recent epic or funny stories that you can share?

James Matador: Sure, I was just taking a flight from Las Vegas to L.A., and I met a girl on the plane, and we started talking and one thing led to another and we ended up fooling around on the plane. And then we ended up fooling around in between when we got off the plane and got to the baggage claim, and to my dismay at baggage claim, she’s like, “O.K., we have to stop,” and I said “Why?” And she said, “Because my boyfriend is picking me up and I don’t want him to see.” I was kind of shocked, because this was something that she failed to mention to me. It’s not my greatest adventure, but it’s definitely a funny one that comes to the mind immediately.

It’s hard to imagine you not slaying every time you go out, but do you have any really embarrassing stories?

When I was just starting off and practicing, and I remember I was testing the whole cocky-funny paradigm, and going out and trying to be cocky-funny, or trying to do cocky-funny repeatings or gambits, as we call it. So one thing that came to mind, at the time — and I see the inappropriateness of it now — but at the time I though it would be cocky and funny to go up to a girl and playfully pat her on the behind as the opener. Well, hey, I thought it was funny, cocky-funny, what’s the problem, right? Slap in the face, getting thrown out of a couple clubs. I quickly figured out that that’s not working. Those were not one of my finer moments.

A lot of our users, when they fall in love, they fall hard. And if their girl cheats on them, or they have a bad breakup, they don’t know how to get themselves back in the game. Do you have any advice for them?

When you fall hard and you have a bad breakup, the world it seems like is coming down on you. And I think that a lot of times you’re going to think, “This is only happening to me, the universe is collapsing on me.” Well guess what, this is exactly how everybody who has a breakup feels. Your body, your emotions are ubiquitous, and we all operate pretty much the same way, with some anomalies. And I think that, first of all, there are girls that I see and girls that I ended up having strong feelings for, and there comes a time when it has to end sometime. And yes, I do go through that feeling of loss, that feeling of sadness, but it’s a state of mind, and it’s how you want to look at it. You can either look at it as a door closing permanently forever, or you can look at it as a door opening and the sun shining through and beyond that door lay all these new adventures, and new beautiful women that you’re going to meet. And new good times to be had. For me, it gives me a sense of optimism to get off my ass or stop smoking cigarettes and wallowing. It’s almost this very normal and understandable feeling of sadness and get out and do something proactive and start creating some happy moments again and start being positive again. And it is tough and it’s kind of like quitting smoking. It’s not to meant to feel good, and it’s O.K. to feel bad but it’s pretty much what kind of man you want to be. Do you want sit there for weeks upon weeks upon weeks or do you want to get up and do something and change the current situation that you’re in? And it’s going to take some discipline and it’s going to take overriding what your emotions are telling you but I guarantee it’s the best course of action. I’m not saying it’s easy, it’s something that has to be done. But I would say that it’s just one out of many instances in life — let’s say something happens to your business where you take a big hit that year. Are you going to run, are you going to hide, you gonna wallow in self-pity or are you going to use all of your resources, whatever they may be, to get up and fucking recover? That’s the way to look at it. You have to fucking recover. And know this: most of the time, when you do go out and you do meet a new girl who makes you happy, who you’re spending time with, most of the time the moment that happens, you immediately ameliorate all the negative emotions you had previously. And I’m not saying jump into another relationship, by the way, but it is healthy to start dating again, to start spending time with other women right away.

And this is no disrespect to women, but I think we live in a culture where love, so many notions of love have been mystified and it’s this mystical thing where we’re not supposed to understand it, that it just happens. But most of the time that when you have a lot of options in your life, two things happen: you start demanding better for yourself, you start realizing that a lot of these girls that you were going out with weren’t as special as you thought they were. Meaning they’re negative personalities, or unacceptable behavior, and I’m not saying all women are like this, I’m just saying that sometimes you need peace in the home and she just won’t stop nagging you. And you overlook it in the name of love. And when you start dating other women, you’re like, “Holy shit, I was pretty understanding, and this was why I had to break up with her because she wouldn’t stop fucking nagging me.” And you’re able to call women out on the stuff that is really not cool, and not O.K. But when you’re afraid that you’re not going to be able to get another girlfriend quickly or the next relationship’s going to come in a year from now, you get that feeling of, O.K., man, do I leave this vessel that I’m on right now? Do I leave what I have right now? I don’t know what’s going to happen. That can be a scary moment. I think the man who has options is in a position to make the most purest choice. Which is more pure: Being there because you want to be there or being there because you don’t have any other places to go?

What’s the best way to leave the girl the next morning and not be a total asshole? How can you do it with some class?

I guess what you’re saying is how to prevent resentful feelings and anger feelings in a relationship. Let’s look at what this is caused by. Anger is caused by a letdown in expectations. What are expectations caused by? Expectations are caused by telling people false statements or allowing them to believe things that aren’t true. So let me say this, that as a good pickup artist, you’re gonna be willing to lose the girl in order to get the girl. And if you have any egotistical thoughts in your head that I can pick up any woman, that’s not a healthy thing to do because it limits you and quite frankly it’s not fucking true and quite frankly you wouldn’t want to. So my point is this: When your skills are at a certain level, you can start screening for the type of women that you want in your life. So what are the type of women that I want in my life? Well as of right at this moment, well, yeah, I want to hang out with women who are beautiful, who have a good personality, who aren’t so emotionally hollow to where they need to latch onto the first guy that they see and their whole life revolves around me after that. And I am very upfront that I am seeing other people, that I do enjoy your company but don’t start asking me where am I going all the time? It’s not appropriate for you asking me those questions — who am I spending time with? Basically, lay down the expectations, the parameters of the relationship up front and center. What happens is people dodge these or aren’t capable of confronting those issues right off the front, so the other person is led to believe other things, aka, having expectations that aren’t accurate. And that’s when you get these really angry, rageful type feelings for the other person, where they call you an asshole and they start bad-mouthing you to your friends, but make no mistake, I never make statements or expectations, like I never say “I’m going to marry you,” “This is going to last forever,” if I don’t mean them, that is. “I’m not seeing anyone else.” I don’t bring these things up necessarily, but I never — I’m not a perfect person and I never claim to be — but to the best of my ability, I never try to be disingenuous in that way, does that make sense?

Totally. That’s the best way, that way they’re not going around bad-mouthing you and you can have fun with them.

It’s not only that. Fear of retaliation, that’s one motivator, but just in general you can still be, if you work on your way of being — and it’s also in our book, “Revelation” — and you understand what you want your personality, your lifestyle, and your identity to look like, you can still weave in characterstics in such a way that you do not have to be an untruthful person. We all tell little white lies when girls ask, “Does this dress make me look fat?” We withhold information at points to protect her feelings but at the same time I do believe you can be a pick-up artist and be a good guy and be an ethical person. There’s nothing unethical that happens naturally.

Another one, this is something that plagues a lot of guys now, the question of text messaging. How long should you wait? Is it a pussy move? What are your thoughts on text messaging?

There’s a whole school of thought on text messaging. I do think that when you are waiting to the point where you’ve already met and separated, now you’re trying to play the game going forward via text messaging, I think most of that work should have been done earlier. I’m not a text-messaging expert. Basically, here’s how all my text messages go. By the time it gets to the phone call or the text message, the girl and I really like each other and it’s a normal part of the process. The text message or the phone call isn’t scary because I’m going to know ahead of time whether it’s a flaky number or it’s a number I got because just for getting for lack of time in the moment or something like that. In terms of contacting the girl right away, I’m not saying being stalky or being needy, but remember at this point, if you know our model in “Revelation,” at this point it was supposed to have been already understood that the girl likes you and you the like the girl. And phone numbers are asked for or contact information is exchanged during comfort building, and what is that? That’s having a normal conversation, that’s having good conversation rapport, that’s vibing, that’s building connections, that’s building trust. And if you have a person in your life like that, a text message or a phone call is the most trivial thing. It’s basically the most obvious of things to start setting up the next time you guys are going to meet up. In terms of timing, right away: “Hey, get home safe, call me tomorrow.” In terms of the three-day rule or six-day rule, yeah, that’s old school, I know it was in that movie “Swingers,” but that’s just not something that we do.

What about as far as making plans? Is it a cop-out to just text her or do you actually have to call her up?

Either/or, it depends, because of the projects I have on my plate, I’d text more than I’d be calling, but if I want to give details… or talk or something I usually call.

Can you describe your perfect wingman?

I think anyone can be a good winger provided that you synchronize with the same strategy, if you will. And if you both respect the boundaries and you both have discipline, and I’m not saying that I do, or Mystery does all the time, especially when we’ve been drinking, but ideally when we see a girl…. Or for example, if I see a girl, and she’s attracted to me, she’s going to be throwing IOIs [indicators of interest] to my friend as well. Now my friend, he can misinterpret that as the girl coming on to him or he can understand because we both follow the same structure that this is normal, that her throwing IOIs to my friend is her attempt to get to know her because she wants to get to know me and my friends and my crew and my social circle. So don’t take this the wrong way to start escalating not isolating with her because that puts me into a position of having to be reactive and chase her, which lowers my value. I wouldn’t be in this fucking problem if you played your role right. And it requires someone willing to do that and most of all knowing how to do that, because I know a lot of good guys out there who are completely annoying to hell and they’re good people, doctors, police officers, but they haven’t taken the time to fully understand. When you really understand the game and the psychology aspect and you understand what your body and mind is doing to you, a lot of the time, I’m not saying all the time, but a lot of the time, you realize why you’re saying this, why you’re getting offensive, when your ego’s talking, when your ego is not talking. And a lot of time, most non-PUA people, they start saying and doing things that they have no clue why they’re fucking doing it. They just think it’s magically all happening. And your sitting there yourself saying, you’re not mad at this person but this person is inconvenient in the moment right now. It’s not that I’m not going to hang out with this person, it’s just that right now, if I go out, let’s say we get a table and I go out I’m usually the guy that a lot of my friends, I’m really into pickup and I’ve studied it for a number of years now, and that’s why a lot of friends will call me up because they’ll get the table, but then there will just be like all guys at the table and then I end up being the guy who goes out onto the floor, grabbing girls, bringing them the back. And if I go out and grab let’s say a three-set and I break them back. One guy starts creeping out one of the girls, guess what, the other two girls are going to want to leave. And I put in 20 minutes or if I really like the girl and we have a connection going, guess what, she’s going home that night and it’s because of him, and he’ll probably deny it the whole way home, and you’ve got to ask yourself, “Who the hell am I? I’m just some other guy? I’m in no position to educate somebody who doesn’t want my help or to give unsolicited advice?” But at the same time, if I pick up the phone to decide who I’m going out with the next night, it’s not going to be that person. That doesn’t mean to say I’m not going to go play a game of pickup basketball with him the next day or anything like that, but you’ve got to know people’s strengths and weaknesses, and what they’re good at and what they’re not good at.

Do you have a go-to pickup line?

Yeah, you know I used to be Mr. Routine. Mr. Pick-Up Line. But there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is I’m not the person to go talk to about like all the best routines in the world, but the good news is because after a certain point, these routines all fall under patterns of mine and what happens is when you start talking this way, doing these things, it starts integrating into your personality naturally so you can spot these things on the fly. You can be dynamically humorous, dynamically intelligent without having a set of routines that are funny or a set of routines that are interesting. So this is the most truthful answer at this moment: At this moment I don’t really use any openers. I go up and I say hello. Or if there is any one opener that I do use it’s a non-verbal body opener; I’ll go up and look at the girl and I’ll do this very overdramaticized rolling my eyes look like a girl’s mannerisms, or do the “Whatever” hand in your face gesture, which usually creates instant laughter. And then I turn around and I’m normal again and introduce myself and immediately start talking and start owning the conversation.

Warm them up with some humor.

Think about it. You have eight emotional dimensions, you know? There’s a fear dimension, you have a love dimension, and then each dimension there are shades of that primary emotion. For example, discomfort would be a shade of fear. Agreed?

Yep.

And happiness would be a shade of love, so most of the time you can look at a person and know what emotion that they’re on with a great deal of accuracy. If you need routines, it’s like in one to three seconds, you’ve got to take her out of discomfort and put her into happiness. An outward sign of happiness is laughter. Now that she’s in happiness and you’re the cause of it, you’re the stimulus, she’s going to be willing to talk to you for another couple minutes, and then if you can keep those core characteristics coming, because you should be working on your personality all the time, she’s going to deduce that you are this type of person. And not to sound cocky but I’ve had people make all kinds of weird statements to me: “Are you this funny? Are you this interesting? Are you this cool? Because you’ve cultivated your personality to where you can be interesting for a good amount of the time or be humorous a good amount of the time on end. And you can keep those characteristics coming to where there is nobody else in her environment or where she’s at that can surpass you. I’ll give you an example. If you’ve ever gone to a comedy show, and you’ve seen a good comic. Have you ever honestly laughed for an hour straight?

No.

Well, I have. I saw this one guy in Chicago and I laughed for an hour straight. It’s a very profound experience, and if you can make somebody laugh 10 times in a row, whether it’s a premeditated routine or if it’s just through your ability to be dynamically humorous, that is going to separate you from basically every other guy in the club. Maybe she’s bored, maybe she’s irritated of all the guys hitting on her, and then you come around and you’re the guy that within three minutes she’s laughed 10 times. You mean to say that you’re not the most emotionally relevant person in the world? Even if her friends want to go, she’s going to want to turn around and ask, “Do we really have to go?” Does that make sense?

Routines are good. I still endorse them for people who are new. However, what you want to do is, every routine, every routine causes some type of emotion to occur. Try to now understand a routine, the pattern of it, and start implementing those patterns without that routine into your personality to where you’re actually evolving into something better, and it happens quicker than you think. Now you take one month out of your life and dedicate it to the art form of humor, and in that one month you’re going to be, and I’m not saying you’re going to be Chris Rock, but in one month you are going to be a marginally more funny human being and be able to give people the gift of laughter better than you were at the beginning of the month. And just imagine doing that for years now. It’s like stand-up comics. You don’t think stand up comics have their routines? Chris Rock — I read a biography of him — he would specifically take his routine to try em out night after night after night. His pacing, his timing, his rhythm, all the stuff is planned and timed. It’s well thought through before he did the show. And it’s worth it. You see him here on HBO, for the last show he did, I think it’s called “Kill the Messenger,” it was some funny, man.

And it was three concerts filmed in three different cities and it was the same routine.

Yeah yeah yeah, exactly, it was a montage. One in London, one in South Africa, and one in new York.

On the topic of New York, South Africa… You’re out in L.A., based out there? We’re sure you travel to cities all over the country and all over the world? Do the girls change at all between city and city and do you adjust your technique at all when you’re in some place new?

Here’s the only barrier that at a certain point things that stop you usually are things that are out of your control like logistical things. For example, unless I proactively smile, or unless I dress in a way that conveys playfulness, personality, a girl — I’m not going to say she’ll find me unattractive, but she’ll definitely be on guard because do I look like a man who is capable of protecting or capable of danger? She just doesn’t know yet. So unless most of the time I can quickly convey my personality, but if there is a language barrier she doesn’t understand the language, it can sometimes thwart the process. So for example, if she’s speaking Japanese, I have to basically alter my — I still stay in set as long as I can take it and sometimes it’s work — but you have to speak in a way that’s a combination of body language and sub-communications and using a lot of facial…. Basically you’re communicating pure emotions, she doesn’t logically understand what you’re saying whatsoever, that can be one problem.

In terms of like Miami versus New York, there may be subtle differences, but some things I’m just oblivious to. Maybe if I really think about it, but I just don’t pay attention to these things. All I know is that when I do go down there to any one of those cities, I have the best time.

Do you have favorite city to party in? What city has the best girls?

On face value, Miami will appear to have the hottest girls. L.A. on face value will appear to have the hottest. And they do have very beautiful girls in both cities. Las Vegas as well, but in Las Vegas, everybody is a transient, meaning they’re coming and going. It’s not like you meet a girl at the Hard Rock, chances are she’s from Wisconsin or L.A. or someplace other than Las Vegas. I have a cousin in Vegas, if you ever spend time in Vegas, it’s a very blue-collar town, it’s not as exciting as the Strip. But what I realized is that in New York, if you know the right people, and you know the right venues to go to, there is a sea of beautiful women in New York. We’re talking really tall, classy, high heels, 5’11″ Ukrainian model hot girl in New York. You wont see them walking down 34th and 8th, you wont see them walking down to Starbucks, you know? It’s like an underworld that exists. It’s not an underworld, but it’s a world where you have to know the right people and the right venues and the right places to go to, but there is a horde of beautiful women up there.

It’s true. That’s why we live here.

I used to not like New York, because I hate the weather. The summertime is beautiful. I didn’t spend that much time where I had any quality friends in New York. But once I got to know the city and got to know the right people, just beautiful women in New York.

Are you spending more time in New York?

I’ll be spending time here and there, maybe Miami. We’re doing a boot camp in Australia, Mystery is leading that one. Didn’t want to go. Sometimes you’ve got a toss up between the work you have on your plate and…. Boot camps are very exhausting. They’ll derail you for four days, because you’re up all night.

Two last questions: Any other advice for our users or words of wisdom?

I would say this: It’s O.K. to be sexual. It’s O.K. to be looking for a girl or a girlfriend or girlfriends, but if you’re not doing it right, then at least be humble enough to know that you don’t know everything and go seek out that knowledge. When I was born, I didn’t know anything about anything. From different people I started acquiring knowledge in different areas. But if you’re willing to learn and put down your cockiness and go to somebody that does it better than you. And I guarantee you that all that effort and time and all that money that you spend on whatever cologne you think is going to work or whatever your shirt you think is cool or whatever bottle service you get because you think some girls are going to be attractive, all that are just things to supplement your core personality, because if that ain’t there, then all of it’s for not. I’ve seen a lot of my clients, my classes aren’t cheap, they’re like 3 or 4 thousand dollars, so the typical student I get went to college and has a job and has a business. These are successful men. So it’s testament to the fact that money alone hasn’t solved his problems for him. So if you want to invest in anything, really look at your personality, your lifestyle, your identity. And treat like that a piece of art and work on it because without that… the most important thing you can invest in is your personality.

Tell me anybody who’s ever made history he’s had a very magnificent, charismatic, powerful personality. Norman Schwarzkopf, Persian Gulf 1, he was the commanding general and he said, “On the subject of leadership, if I had to choose between character and ability, I would choose character because even if you don’t know how to load a tank or shoot a machine gun, but you can command a group of men to do those very important and dangerous tasks for you, they have to want to listen to you and respect you.” So even if you don’t have the technical skill yourself, but if you have the character that other men will follow you, your aggregate power increases. So invest in your personality. And it’s not something that’s handed to you and it’s not subject to change. You can be a better person and the reason I say “better,” it’s not because i want to make a feel good moment, I think being attractive is synonymous with typically that which is the best of humanity. Things like being humorous, being intelligent, being ambitious, being successful, and I’m not saying being fat and being lazy can get a girl, I’ll tell you to go be fat and lazy. It just doesn’t happen. So you’re going to find that if you want to invest in yourself that way, two things are going to happen, you’re going to end up attractive to women and you are going to be a better person. So what’s a better of spending your time than doing that?

Absolutely. And lastly, a lot of people find themselves in situations where they see the most beautiful girl and just want to talk to her, but they don’t just have the balls to do it. What kind of advice do you have for that situation?

Well, there’s a reason for that in a couple areas. The primary area I believe is the ego, you have to understand your ego. Because you’ve created this prisoner of your own device. In some way shape or for, the approval or rejection that you’re about to receive from this woman has some bearing on your own self-image as a successful man, as an attractive man. I don’t have that thought process. If that happens to me, cocky or not, I have the audacity to allow myself to believe, what’s wrong with her? Now some people say what’s wrong with me? Maybe she’s having a bad day. Move on, it doesn’t phase me. The whole buildup of the initial reaction is just not there, I come in and I’m not too friendly, I’m not too standoffish, I’m not 100% normal, at least from my perception, and it’s exactly what they want.

There’s a set of belief systems also that I teach and one of them is kind of counter-intuitive actually but it’s very helpful, is you’re talking to a girl, the last thing you want to think about is picking her up. Because your thoughts will show in your outward actions and your emotions and the things you say and the things you do. You go up to the girl, don’t even care about if you pick her up, don’t even want it, don’t even think it. Just focus on the process in the moment right now. That’s all you can do anyway. But to the guy who’s nervous about approaching the girl, yeah, you’re not the only one. Everyone gets nervous, you have to understand what causes that and don’t let it rule you. Have some control over it. You’ve got to do this in life with many other things: I don’t really ever feel like working out. I know it’s good for me so i motivate myself to get out of bed and do it. I didn’t feel like studying in college, in fact I hated studying in college, but I decided that now’s the time and I went and did it no matter what. I always ended up feeling sleepy or wanted to go have a cigarette or something, but you’ve got to sit down and fucking do it. This is no different. You’ve got to understand, okay, this is what’s happening. This is not an emotion that I’m going to relish in right now, I’m going to override it and plow forward.

Excerpted from http://www.brobible.com/. View full article here.