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I was watching a Dan Peña video on YouTube the other day. Between all the extreme Alpha Male 1.0 screaming and swearing he said something that I’ve heard before but had forgotten about. He said, “You are 2000 cold calls away from being rich.” It made me stop and think. I was taught much the same thing when I was in sales training in my twenties when I was building my first business.
-By Caleb Jones
The concept works like this: You make X number of cold calls and track how many sales you get and thus how much money you make. Then you go back through the numbers and figure out how many cold calls you need to make in order to make Y amount of money.
Once you figure this out it’s extremely motivational. It changes your entire view of sales in general and making and cold calls in particular. If you know, based on a lot of stats you’ve been keeping on your own performance, that you’re going to make a $5,000 commission (or whatever) once you make 27 cold calls (or whatever), then all of a sudden you realize you can now make all the money you want.
You just need to make 27 calls and you’ll get your $5,000, at least statistically. Even if 26 of those calls result in people telling you to fuck off and hanging up the phone in your ear, it doesn’t matter, you’ll still get your $5,000. (For you nitpickers and math nerds, I’m speaking statistically here. I’m not saying phone call #27 will literally pay out $5,000. You understand what I’m trying to illustrate.)
That’s what Dan Peña was saying. You can argue with the specific numbers if you want, and that’s fine, but the concept is sound. This leads me to the most important number you should track in your online dating efforts. Of course, there are several numbers you should track, and I go through all of them in The Ultimate Online Dating Manual. I went from sexless divorced beta male dad ten years out of dating practice to a guru-level online dating expert in less than two years, and I did it primarily by tracking my numbers and focusing on improving them.
The most important number, for online dating at least, that you need to track is this: the number of times you have sex with a new woman per swipes made or openers sent (depending on if you’re using dating sites or dating swipe apps). Let’s say you set up a profile, do a few blitzes, have five first dates, and eventually have sex with two of those five women. You carefully track your numbers during the entire time.
You go back through the numbers, do a little basic spreadsheet math, determine that you made 1100 swipes in order to nail down those five first dates. (I’m making up these numbers. Don’t take them literally.) This means your “swipes per lay” average is 550, or 1100 swipes divided by the two times you had sex with new women. If you want to nitpick the math (and, Jesus, I know some of you will), perhaps you could argue that the real number is not 550, but somewhere between 550 and 1100. Perhaps. The point is your magic number of swipes is well below 1100. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going with 550.
Once you figure this out it’s extremely motivational. It changes your entire view of sales in general and making and cold calls in particular. If you know, based on a lot of stats you’ve been keeping on your own performance, that you’re going to make a $5,000 commission (or whatever) once you make 27 cold calls (or whatever), then all of a sudden you realize you can now make all the money you want.
You just need to make 27 calls and you’ll get your $5,000, at least statistically. Even if 26 of those calls result in people telling you to fuck off and hanging up the phone in your ear, it doesn’t matter, you’ll still get your $5,000. (For you nitpickers and math nerds, I’m speaking statistically here. I’m not saying phone call #27 will literally pay out $5,000. You understand what I’m trying to illustrate.)
That’s what Dan Peña was saying. You can argue with the specific numbers if you want, and that’s fine, but the concept is sound. This leads me to the most important number you should track in your online dating efforts. Of course, there are several numbers you should track, and I go through all of them in The Ultimate Online Dating Manual. I went from sexless divorced beta male dad ten years out of dating practice to a guru-level online dating expert in less than two years, and I did it primarily by tracking my numbers and focusing on improving them.
The most important number, for online dating at least, that you need to track is this: the number of times you have sex with a new woman per swipes made or openers sent (depending on if you’re using dating sites or dating swipe apps). Let’s say you set up a profile, do a few blitzes, have five first dates, and eventually have sex with two of those five women. You carefully track your numbers during the entire time.
You go back through the numbers, do a little basic spreadsheet math, determine that you made 1100 swipes in order to nail down those five first dates. (I’m making up these numbers. Don’t take them literally.) This means your “swipes per lay” average is 550, or 1100 swipes divided by the two times you had sex with new women. If you want to nitpick the math (and, Jesus, I know some of you will), perhaps you could argue that the real number is not 550, but somewhere between 550 and 1100. Perhaps. The point is your magic number of swipes is well below 1100. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going with 550.
This is exciting! Why? Because the next time you go online to find a new woman, all you have to do is do 550 swipes, and statistically speaking, you’ll have sex. It means that all the flakes and non-responders now don’t fucking matter at all. All you need to worry about is doing those 550 swipes regardless of the result.
Even better, that 550 amount assumes that you don’t improve at all on your second go-round. Likely, the next time you do another swipe blitz, your online game will be a little better, having learned from the experience of the first blitz. Thus, your new magic number will likely be less than 550.
Attitudinally, it really helps to know this number. It takes the sting out of most of the rejection. You don’t care who doesn’t want to meet up with you; all you care about is getting out your 550 swipes. This really, really helped me back in the days when I was hitting online dating hard. I always knew my magic number of openers I needed to send that would result in having sex with one new woman. Not responses, not dates, but sex. Sure, I tracked those other numbers as well. They’re helpful too. But they aren’t as important as the big one, the magic number!
You could argue that you can’t make this determination based on one blitz alone, particularly if it’s your very first one. You could have gotten lucky. It happens. I’ve had amazing blitzes where I got laid left and right with just a few openers and on the very next blitz I had shitty results (though not zero; I’ve literally never had a blitz where I didn’t have sex with someone new unless I was testing something new and strange).
This means that you’ll need multiple blitzes to really nail down that number. But, again, that number should decrease over time as you get better at all of this. If it stays the same forever, you’re not doing this right. You’re not modifying your approach, testing new techniques, testing photos for your profile, and so on. You’re not doing all the things I did for so many years. The fact that you have that number in your back pocket will make it more likely that you will test these things. If you have no idea what your numbers are (and most guys don’t), then you’re just pissing in the wind. You have only a vague (and likely inaccurate) idea of what kind of effort you need to expend in order to bring a new woman into your sex life.
There are other numbers that I track in my dating life that have nothing to do with online dating such as the number of first dates I need to actually get to sex, the number of women I have sex with who end up in long-term relationships with me, how long they last before the first LSFNTE, and so on. So, this concept extends out to real life dating and relationship management as well.
Figure out that number. Then remember it. Then do it. Then improve it. Your online dating will be so much simpler when you do. Want over 35 hours of how-to podcasts on how to improve your woman life and financial life? Want to be able to coach with me twice a month? Want access to hours of technique-based video and audio? The SMIC Program is a monthly podcast and coaching program where you get access to massive amounts of exclusive, members-only Alpha 2.0 content as soon as you sign up, and you can cancel whenever you want. Click here for the details.
Attitudinally, it really helps to know this number. It takes the sting out of most of the rejection. You don’t care who doesn’t want to meet up with you; all you care about is getting out your 550 swipes. This really, really helped me back in the days when I was hitting online dating hard. I always knew my magic number of openers I needed to send that would result in having sex with one new woman. Not responses, not dates, but sex. Sure, I tracked those other numbers as well. They’re helpful too. But they aren’t as important as the big one, the magic number!
You could argue that you can’t make this determination based on one blitz alone, particularly if it’s your very first one. You could have gotten lucky. It happens. I’ve had amazing blitzes where I got laid left and right with just a few openers and on the very next blitz I had shitty results (though not zero; I’ve literally never had a blitz where I didn’t have sex with someone new unless I was testing something new and strange).
This means that you’ll need multiple blitzes to really nail down that number. But, again, that number should decrease over time as you get better at all of this. If it stays the same forever, you’re not doing this right. You’re not modifying your approach, testing new techniques, testing photos for your profile, and so on. You’re not doing all the things I did for so many years. The fact that you have that number in your back pocket will make it more likely that you will test these things. If you have no idea what your numbers are (and most guys don’t), then you’re just pissing in the wind. You have only a vague (and likely inaccurate) idea of what kind of effort you need to expend in order to bring a new woman into your sex life.
There are other numbers that I track in my dating life that have nothing to do with online dating such as the number of first dates I need to actually get to sex, the number of women I have sex with who end up in long-term relationships with me, how long they last before the first LSFNTE, and so on. So, this concept extends out to real life dating and relationship management as well.
Figure out that number. Then remember it. Then do it. Then improve it. Your online dating will be so much simpler when you do. Want over 35 hours of how-to podcasts on how to improve your woman life and financial life? Want to be able to coach with me twice a month? Want access to hours of technique-based video and audio? The SMIC Program is a monthly podcast and coaching program where you get access to massive amounts of exclusive, members-only Alpha 2.0 content as soon as you sign up, and you can cancel whenever you want. Click here for the details.