The 21 Convention

Interview With Dating Coach Nick Sparks (Part 1 of 3)

Posted on 13. Sep, 2009 by Anthony 'Dream' Johnson in Articles

I recently had the chance to meet and hang out with Nick a bit at The 21 Convention (2009) where he was a title speaker alongside guys like Christian Hudson, Julian Foxx, and Adam Lyons.

I had been following Nick’s thoughts on the science behind social norms, modern dating, and relationships- for nearly a year- and was excited when he agreed to speak at T21C 2009.

Suffice to say, hanging out with him exceeded my every expectation. This guy not only “gets” it like few so few dating coaches do, but is a really down to earth cool guy from the limited time we spent together.

Seeing him speak was nothing short of riveting as well. The minute he got “warmed up” on stage, I knew he would help take the convention in an entirely new direction. And that he did, giving arguably one of the best presentations in 2009- which you can view free in streaming high def September 8^th on The21Convention.com

But enough chit chat, let’s get down to the nitty gritty and pick Nick’s brain for some gold nuggets =).

1. Actually Nick, before “digging in”, is there anything more you would like to say about yourself? I would specifically like to hear about your involvement with TSM, and how you ended up coaching men in this (often frowned upon) field as a profession. Did you have trouble socializing yourself growing up (for example)?

Hey Anthony, first of all thank you for the warm introduction and it’s a pleasure to be here.

As far as my history in this industry goes, I actually started out as a pretty awkward kid. In middle school I played a lot of video games and read Dragonlance books, which for those unfamiliar with the series can be strictly classified as sci-fi / fantasy. (I actually found out that Christian read the same books growing up)

My freshman year of highschool, I was 6’1″, 125lbs (this means skinny & awkward as hell), with terrible teeth (pre-braces), acne, and big glasses. Yes, I used to get pushed into lockers.

Despite all of this, both my mother and grandmother were keen social people, and I had the ability to be social. Plus, since playing tee-ball, I always enjoyed sports, and went right into football when the fall came around, although most people’s responses were either, “you’re going to get killed” (grandma), or “hahahaha” (everyone at school).

Above all of this though, I had a strong desire to climb the social ladder.

Sports, and the weight training that went with them, added an additional 60lbs on me before I graduated and by senior year, and after three years of socializing as much as possible I was one of the more popular guys at my school. Although they were given out for fun, it actually meant a lot to me when I was voted “most changed in highschool” in the mock elections at the end of the year.

College hit and although I could socialize I still had a lot of insecurities, especially with girls.

During my freshman and sophomore years, I would hook up with a girl here and there, but it was typically always while drunk. The next morning I would wake up wondering how exactly I did that and not really feeling any better about myself.

Things changed the summer after my sophomore year, when a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to sublet her place over the summer. I knew I didn’t want to spend another summer at home, and her place turned out to be one of the more popular sorority houses on campus.

Then I simply got bombarded with estrogen. It took a little bit of time for me to calm my nerves and make friends, but once they liked me I got to hear everything that they talked about – their thoughts on life.

The flip side of this, was that I also got to get to know the guys who would be dating these girls. These were some of the 20% men that my friend Mark Redman talks about in Conquer Your Campus , and I got to observe that side.

After a summer spent absorbing all of this I developed many of the personality traits and characteristics that my new guy friends had, which Mark writes about beautifully. I also became very comfortable in my understanding of what was going on in a girl’s head, albeit the heads of 18-21 year old girls that were really just figuring things out for themselves.

It actually got to the point where I started giving the guys and girls tips on how to better connect with each other because I could see both sides of the equation, and yes, I ended up dating one or two of my house mates as well.

I really started coaching ‘unprofessionally’ about 7 years ago now. It started with my guy friends who were coming back into the fall. After the shock of my ‘transformation’ took effect, they started telling other people about me and soon I had more guys coming and asking for advice.

My reputation started building and things were going great for me, however, it all had to come to an end – or so I believed.

Graduation day came and with it came the pressures on every side of me to “get a job”, so without any idea of what else to do I went into the corporate world of sales. I started out throwing myself headfirst into my work, and subsequently doing quite well in my job. Praise came from supervisors, along with more money than I was used to having.

Although the money and the friends I made in the office kept me there, my passion for the work faded and I started getting pulled in different directions.

Luckily, and I only use this word because otherwise I may still be working in that cubicle, the mortgage industry started to collapse and my financial incentive for staying there fell with it, and I left my job and pursued two things I had always wanted to do – stand up comedy and bartending – plus I also started coaching friends in their love lives again.

Bartending and stand up were fun for awhile, but one day a friend of mine came to me and said, “Nick, you have to read this book”. It turned out of be Neil Strauss’, “The Game “.

I read the book, excellently written of course, and slowly started realizing that I could do what I had always loved for a living; that there was actually a huge market out there for it.

I soon traded in my bar and stage for a blog, and through that and word of mouth gained my first professional clients.

I’ve always loved the feeling of coaching, of pushing a guy to his best and seeing the impact you make right in front of you. After some time of outgrowing my college town, I packed up my life and moved to the bigger market of Chicago to spread my wings. I actually thought I was going to stay there for awhile.

Three months into Chicago, and I get an email from Christian Hudson, who had gotten wind of my coaching reviews in New York. Now, Christian and I coincidentally first became acquainted in college through a mutual friend when he came back to finish his degree. It was actually right around the time when I met him that he was growing Charisma Arts with Juggler into the known entity that it is today, although I was much to consumed with finding a job with health benefits to notice.

Because of our familiarity with each other, it was very easy for me to jump on a plane and do a co-bootcamp with him under The Social Man name, which was the name of his new adventure- and when I say new I mean the full culmination of what it could be existed solely in his mind, at the time.

What Christian really wanted to know is if I could handle myself in the crazy world of New York women, or if I was simply a local celebrity who could dazzle in the Midwest. I really don’t blame him because at the same time I was wondering the same thing, and didn’t know how I would stack up against the guys I read about who could, “effortlessly seduce any woman, any time, anywhere”.

I landed in New York with a tremor and Christian was sold, and after a man who’s seen the top in the industry tells me to stop worrying about how I stacked up to other guys, I really started believing in my abilities in this industry and focused on developing myself as best as I can through making other guys the best that they can be.

Since then we’ve been focused, constantly bouncing ideas back and forth off of each other and testing them to no end, and determining the best ways to get these ideas into the minds of everyone else. Although the underlying core principles (give love had always been at the forefront) are what brings us together, it’s really our differences that give us our strength.

Christian is incredibly brilliant and sharp when it comes to social dynamics, however his heart, his talents, his passions are mainly in entrepreneurship. He has that ability to create and make happen that I simply can’t match.

On the other hand, I’m obsessed with human interaction, although I still have some great things to add on the business side as well.

To tie it all together we’re both ridiculously respectful of the other’s talents, and good friends to boot.

2. Speaking of “frowned upon”, Christian had a few things to say about what you guys do for a living. Do you have anything you would like to add to his thoughts? Or is there something in particular that you feel warrants some extra attention?

It’s been just over one ridiculously crazy year since I’ve moved to New York, and only now do I feel that the foundation we’ve built in the last 365 days is really ready to grow.

Since I have the opportunity, I’d like to draw out a lot of what Christian was getting at in the short time period that we had to talk.

While I definitely feel that this move toward greater social skills and sexual capacity is ultimately a great one that will impact our society as a whole, I also feel that there are some aspects that are holding us back and that should be “frowned upon” and weeded out.

A lot of it has to do with perception, which of course, is what is commonly meant when we refer to ‘reality’.

If I tell a girl that I help men get laid, she is most likely going to “frown upon” my profession. If I tell her that I help men and women connect with each other then her feelings toward me are going to be much different.

Of course these perceptions start with ourselves – how we see ourselves – which will in turn influence how we interact with everyone around us.

Some of the stuff commonly thrown around in the community as standard practice has an authentically negative influence on how a lot of guys perceive themselves which in turn has a negative effect on their communication with others.

I want to make it clear that I don’t think there are evil men out there who teach bad things to get other guys to fail; quite the opposite, in fact. I think there are a lot of good guys who are helping everyone else to the best of their abilities. The problem arises when- and I’ve definitely done it before myself- things that are taught which are influenced by one’s own negative mindsets creeps out into advice, and this advice is taken as gospel by people who are in search of the answer themselves, or who can market some of these ideas to the masses and turn a profit.

You can see a great example of this in Mystery, who I have personally thanked for single-handedly captivating the awareness of a huge group of guys and thus practically owe my given profession to. You can see significant differences between what he taught 5-10 years ago, much of which has been marketed, packaged, and shipped for a significant profit, and what he is currently teaching now.

The simple answer for this is because he’s grown, he’s gotten better, and he’s realized that some of what he previously taught wasn’t the best – all while driven by the same thing that’s driven him all along, an earnest drive to improve himself and use his gifts to improve everyone around him.

An example of this occurrence can be seen in classic opinion-opener/neg psychology. The old standard holds that a woman has a high value, and a man has a lower value in a given venue, and that therefore a man must go to pains to prove to a woman that he’s not hitting on her when he is striking up a conversation, and furthermore has to lower her value with the neg in order to ‘bring her down to his level’.

There’s a reason why Mystery no longer preaches this stuff.

Assuming that she has a higher value vale and you a lower one, respectively completely ignores the face that she’s out there looking to meet guys just as much as you are there looking to meet girls, and often feel very insecure themselves.

Also, it presupposes the perception that a man already has a lower value from the get-go, and it’s not surprising that these ideas, that don’t feel right on the surface, lead to problems in interacting with women.

Often a guy, viewing this great value discrepancy between himself and the object of his affection, will over-compensate to make up for it. He’ll go to great lengths to entertain when asking the right questions would have given him his desired effects. He’ll go to great lengths to prove himself as ‘valuable’, when many times a woman will be attracted to a man before he even approaches, and she’s wondering why he feels so low on himself that he’s trying to prove something to her when simply saying “hey, how’s it going”, would have been good enough.

Hopefully I don’t even have to go into the ‘neg’, as I feel that one is on it’s dying breaths anyway, although good natured teasing, meant to make both of you laugh and bring you both together as a result – without ‘devaluing’ her for some good old ‘insecurity-sex’ – is always a good thing.

The bigger piece that deserves some frowning upon is the guru worship and reliance on ‘technology’ or material. I group these together because I feel they both share the same underlying problem, which actually reflects one of the bigger issues facing our society.

Many people today face an ever growing feeling of anxiety or confusion and find themselves searching for an answer to it. Many people turn to alcohol, their work, women, and a number of other things to be this answer. Now, of course not saying that any of these things are inherently bad, in fact they all have wonderful things about them.

The problem arises, however, when people use things as a crutch to avoid facing the anxiety and confusion that they fear – kind of like a band-aid. In much the same way and through the same natural process, when people saw the possibilities this industry provided, the tendency to make all of this the new solution to all of our problems came through, and now many people are searching for that next secret, that next routine that’s going to make everything perfect.

The effect this is having though, is giving a guy another thing to distract him from facing that ever growing anxiety when the path to his own growth lies not in looking for the solution is outside of himself, but realizing that the real solution is inside of himself and that there is where one must focus on building strength, instead of in a routine stack.

I do want to add, that all of the lines and routines and everything else are not bad, especially since I’m all for developing one’s social and communicating skills and a lot of great thoughts and knowledge has come from all of this, and that I’m sure that every word of it has worked at some point or another. I just have to point out that if someone is using these things as a cover for not developing himself, then the confusion and anxiety will subside for a bit, but then continue to grow, all of your subconscious communication with a woman will be off, and guys will see themselves getting worse.

I’ll give one more example of this that is a bit more specific:

Whenever your thoughts or words treat a woman as an object, the more difficult is will be to connect with them as a human being. To illustrate this, I’ll say that you will always have more successful interactions with a woman when you (for example) , “look at that very cute girl, she looks like she wants to have a good time but is just a little bit nervous and in her own head”, versus, “look at that HB9″.

Now, despite these aspects of the community that should be frowned up, as I said when I began this answer, ultimately we have a shit ton of guys who are in a mission for self improvement and social awareness. The frustration with a lot of these old evils is building even as I type this, and I strongly believe, when it’s all said and done, this movement will only grow, much in part to the foundation set by the imperfect people building it and the imperfect people who will keep it moving in the right direction, and we’ll further understand that those evils were a necessary part of our own growth and ability to see past them, as we leave these things by the wayside in pursuit of further perfection.

That’s all we have room for today guys. Nick obviously has a lot of great things to say, and rather than compress his thoughts into one post we have decided to make this a multi-part interview. More to come! Thanks for everything so far Nick, totally loving the vibe and content.

-Anthony

Tags: advanced game, Nick Sparks, the social man, unbreakable

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