The Thundercat Interview by Approach & Seduce's Jesse Allen

Like a lot of men, you struggled with women and had little to no confidence in approaching them. Not only did you conquer your fear with women, but you also have risen as one of the PUA community's foremost seduction gurus. What was the spark that motivated you to do something about your success with women, and how soon afterward did you realize you wanted to teach other men who were like you the "Art of Approaching?"

The spark, quite simply, was that I wanted to get LAID. Ha ha. I wish there was a loftier motivation for it, but if I'm gonna be honest here, sex was the primary motivating factor. Before I started my long journey to improving my love life, I was pretty miserable. I had extremely low self esteem, I was shy, I thought I was ugly, and every girl I liked seemed to either have a boyfriend, just want to be friends, or had no interest in me at all. Looking back, I can see now that I was limited because I wasn't giving myself options. Most guys are stuck pining after one or two girls in their lives who they find attractive, fun, and interesting. However, the more girls you meet, the greater the likelihood that you'll be able to find a fun, attractive, interesting girl who actually wants to be with you -- its just that most guys have no clue how to have that kind of abundance in their lives, and I was really no different.

I instinctually knew if I could meet more girls, I'd probably have an easier time finding the right one. I think every guy knows that. However, that didn't help the fact that I was too scared or intimidated to walk up to a hot girl I didn't know and try and get her to like me. I'd instantly imagine her rejecting me outright or looking at me funny and laughing. So in a sense, I was training myself to fail before I'd even begun.

Back then, there wasn't a lot of good information on how to get better with women. I found a lot of books that were written during the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s, but they were so outdated and laughable. They gave you advice to do things like "Take the girl to a disco" and things like that. My friends were no help either, because they were all as clueless as I was. And TV and movies just give you one bad piece of advice after another when it comes to picking up chicks.

Finally, I decided that no matter how painful it would be, I'd have to start getting out there, and I reasoned that if I could really get good at approaching girls -- the rest should be fairly easy in comparison. So I started going out, a lot. Like, 5 nights a week to every bar and club I could find. I'd walk up to every girl I saw - whether they were attractive of not -- and try to meet them. I had to train myself to overcome my fears and insecurities, and interact with girls in a different way then I was used to.

And low and behold, I started getting REALLY good at it! Soon, I'd be in situations where I'd go out to clubs and be talking to all these different girls, dancing with them, having a good time, getting phone numbers, etc., and my friends would come up to me and say "Dude -- TEACH ME!!!"

I didn't think I was doing anything all that special, but so many guys can't even talk to a girl, so I guess I thought "If I can teach what I do, maybe my friends won't have to go through the suffering, rejection, and failures I went through learning this stuff the hard way."

After a while, more and more people started asking me for advice on meeting girls. I was posting on a blog about my adventures and stuff, and complete strangers were finding it and begging me to teach them too. Obviously, there isn't enough of me to go around, so I decided to write a book called The Art Of Approaching and teach guys exactly what it is I do, and how they can do it too. It's the type of book I wish I could have found when I first started my journey, and thousands of guys have bought the book and used it to great success, so that makes me really happy.

Which gurus, if any, influenced your desire to create your own system that helped guys with women?

I wouldn't say I was influenced by any gurus to create my own system exactly. I definitely studied other people's stuff, but none of it ever worked all that great for me. I guess it was because of that I was forced to come up with my own system, because I know what my strengths and weaknesses are and if I wanted to succeed, I'd have to play to my strengths.

Too many guys make the mistake of looking at attraction like an algebra problem. If x+y=z, then to get z, they just have to do x and add y. But people don't fit neatly into equations. Everyone out there is different. Every girl is different, every guy is different, we all have our own likes, dislikes, turn ons, turn offs, thoughts, dreams, beliefs, etc. So trying to peg everyone into a formula that is supposed to create attraction just isn't feasible. And unfortunately, a lot of gurus teach stuff like that.

My approach is a bit more fluid. I have an over-all structure I like to teach which is really simple: Meet, Attract, Seduce. That's it. You meet a girl, you get her attracted to you, and you seduce her into sleeping with you. After sex, you can then take it further into relationship territory if you want. Now, though that's a simple structure, you have a lot of room to maneuver and be flexible within each stage. For instance, you can meet women online, at work, at the coffee shop, at a concert - wherever. You're not limited to any one location, any one line, or any one type of girl. There's also different ways to attract a girl to you. Can you get EVERY girl you desire? No. There's just too many variables. Maybe the girl is on her period and not feeling great. Maybe you're not her type. Maybe she's a lesbian. Maybe she's in a relationship and happy with who she's with. You just never know. But you can increase your odds of success.

If anyone really influenced me, it was friends of mine who were naturals with women. I'd hang out with them and study exactly what they did, and try to recreate it. That's actually where I got my best material and inspiration from -- guys no one but me has ever heard of. :-)

What do you find men struggle with most when it comes to approaching and seducing women?

I think the biggest struggle for guys is approaching women, which is why I focused my course on that. If you can't meet a girl, your chances of seducing her are 0%, so everything starts with the meeting. And when it comes to that aspect of the process, most guys are either too crippled by their anxiety over meeting a girl, or they're meeting girl's they don't like and aren't happy with. So the question is: How do you meet more women of better quality?

And the answer, of course, is you have to seek them out, and take action when you find them. A lot of guys are under the delusional fantasy of having a hot girl they're attracted to approach them and pick them up. Sure, it would be nice if that actually happened, but it almost never does unless you're super good looking or famous in some way.

So a lot of what I help guys with is overcoming approach anxiety, overcoming shyness, getting them out of their shell, and teaching them where to go and how to meet the type of women they want. To me, success is based on whether the student is happy with the girls he's getting. If he's happy, then I feel like I've done my job.

It must really make your day knowing you're helping thousands of men with their confidence in approaching and seducing women. That said, how is your current love life?

I does make me feel great. Whenever I get an email saying "I met my girlfriend because of you," or a picture of some guy at his wedding with a note thanking me for making that possible, it's such a huge mind trip. I really enjoy those emails.

My love life is pretty good. I have a girlfriend right now I'm very happy with. I still have to deal with the usual headaches and drama a girl always brings to the table when she enters your life, I think its impossible to escape that, but I'm happy more often than I'm not, so that tells me its a good relationship. Before I met her, I was juggling 14 different women, which was a real headache, but a lot of fun too. However, I'm happiest when I have just one special girl in my life, and I'm happy to say I have that at the moment.

I am always interested in how the top PUA's came up with their nick name. Yours, Thundercat, has become synonymous with "King Of The PUA Jungle." Could you tell us how you came up with that name?

I was listening to the radio one day back in 2003, I believe. It was around the time when the movie Bad Boys II came out, and there was this Nelly song called "Shake Your Tail Feather" on the soundtrack to that movie which was getting a lot of air time. In it was a line that went like "I'm not hard, I got women that handle that. They be like 'he the man' when I'm really a Thundercat!" And I laughed when I heard it, so I thought "I'm more than the man, I'm a Thundercat!" So I started using that as my nickname on forums and stuff where I posted advice and stories about meeting women, and people just sort of started knowing me by that name. It's kind of silly actually, but I still enjoy being identified with it.

You say that you do not you don't look like what society would expect a PUA to look like. What is the most common reaction to someone's discovery that you are one of the Internet's most popular and trusted PUA?

It varies from person to person. I'm a big, fat, bald, ugly shlub of a human being - to be kind, lol. I like to say I look like Tony Soprano's love child, to give everyone out there a mental image of yours truly. So when some people meet me, if they feel they aren't very good looking either, they're really excited because I give them hope. If they still judge people based on looks, they think I'm a total fraud and have no idea what I'm talking about. I don't dress in flashy clothes, and I'm pretty low key, so people are usually extremely surprised when they meet me, because I'm very unlike most other guys who teach this stuff.

But if you ask me, learning to pick up chicks from a good looking guy is always a mixed bag. Sure, he may have skill, but his looks will play a factor in the interaction with a woman. When I first started, I sought out people who weren't classically good looking, and wanted to learn from them, because that was the purest form of skill you could get. To be able to attract a girl, despite what you look like, is a major factor into having a great love life, and too many good looking guys just trade off their looks for success.

One of the best pick up artists I ever knew was this short, fat, bald guy with a deformed hand named Dan. He was an absolute troll in the looks department. However, whenever we'd go out, he'd have such a commanding personality, he'd be able to pick up almost any girl he wanted. I learned a lot from him. I also learned a lot from my friend and author Neil Strauss, who's a short, scrawny, bald guy with a big nose and weak voice. That's not to put down Neil, because he's a great guy, but it just showed how much of his success with women was based on skill and not looks.

Skill is something that can be taught, refined, and passed on. Looks aren't. So if I see a fat bald dude who's supposed to be good with women, that's who I want to learn from! Ha ha.

But for the most part, people's reaction to me is usually always positive after they meet me. The reason being is that once you get past the looks, I've developed an amazing personality people enjoy being around. That's the key to my success with girls, after all! So if people can get past how I look, they're usually pleasantly surprised.

You are a successful publisher of numerous seduction resources. Do you hold seminars or offer private consultation? If no, any plans to do so in the future?

I don't hold seminars or do private consultations, no. The reason for that is I hate to travel, and I'm extremely lazy, lol. I'd rather be out having fun with women and my friends, and living my life. In the future, who's to say? Sometimes I speak at other people's events and I have done private coaching for friends before, and I always enjoy it.

I've also taught in-field workshops and I always think they're a blast to do, but when given the choice between sitting on my lazy butt at home playing Guitar Hero with my girlfriend or hanging out with a bunch of dudes in a loud an noisy club trying to get them to talk to women, I don't really see a contest there, ha ha ha.

But I may do something like that in the future if there's enough demand for it.

In order for seduction techniques to work effectively, one must have a deep, personal respect for themselves and a positive outlook on what the future holds. You talk a lot about this and I'm just curious to hear any "words of wisdom" you may have for our readers. As an example, one of my favorites is: "It's better for people to be jealous of you than to feel sorry for you."

Well, I'd say 90% of success in life is about the outlook you have on yourself and the world around you. So it is extremely important to be positive as much as possible. Lots of guys get into learning how to pick up girls because they're angry at women. They've been rejected in the past, and they feel like if they can bang a bunch of girls, that will teach all the ones that made them feel bad in high school or whatever. But my favorite saying is "The best revenge is a life well lived." So if you're motivated by being happy, and achieving that happiness, as opposed to making other people feel bad and having the "I told you so!" mentality, you've won.

Pick up is really a form of "male self help" as I see it. It's about teaching men confidence and self worth, and getting them to accept their flaws and learn to love who they are. So many guys that struggle with girls beat themselves up way too much. They harp on everything they don't have - they think they're losers because they don't make enough money. They think they're too old, or too fat, or too bald, or short, or stupid, or whatever. So they get used to this notion of beating themselves up, and it becomes normal. Suddenly, they're uncomfortable with good feelings. When a girl compliments them, they suddenly think its insincere because they don't believe it themselves. They put out a vibe of anger and negativity that drives people away from them. They play the victim and never improve because they think they're helpless to change things, and they resent other guys just because they've got a girl and are happy.

That is not a healthy way to live. If you can imagine looking in the mirror and feeling good about yourself, and having fun, and making others around you feel good, then you can also imagine a life where beautiful women flock to you like bees to honey. Because women are attracted to positive, confident, outgoing men - no matter what they look like. I like to tell my students, if you can have fun with a girl, you can sleep with her. And its true! The biggest seduction technique I know is having fun with a girl.

I talk about this a lot in my book. But the truth is, if you can train yourself to be negative, you can also train yourself to be positive! And when you are, when you like yourself and you put out that energy and attitude -- women pick up on it and want to be with you because of it.