Becoming a Love Systems Instructor - An Inside Look



At least one guy each bootcamp asks how to become a Love Systems instructor. It’s a great job—travel, work with successful men from other fields, and gain unlimited access to the best resources on dating. (I make money at it too, obviously.) It’s the young man’s dream job.

I started instructing while I was still in college, which felt like playing in the NHL while still in high school… at least within this crazy little PUA world. It was a long process though. (The official guidelines are here: Be a PUA instructor with Love Systems.)

These are the unofficial steps you need to go through to become an instructor:

Take a bootcamp

If you want to teach for Love Systems , you have to be schooled in our systems. With the exception of the ones who precede the company, EVERY instructor has taken a bootcamp. Actually, most instructors have taken a couple of bootcamps or some 1 on 1s. Even if you spent twice the time it would take to get good without a bootcamp, we have too many qualified guys who have taken bootcamps who want to become instructors.

It's a requisite. Period.

Offer Value to Somebody

This is one you read between the lines.

So you did well in your bootcamp? Cool. That's a start. We run around 100 programs per year and we bring in 3 – 6 new instructors per year. Do the math. Being in the top one per cent of guys in the world is the minimum. Our instructors are tops.

Many guys nowadays have something extra that instructors can use. If you have tech skills, writing skills, editing skills, experience in the business/marketing/video world, you definitely will have something to offer. If you have an extra bed that an instructor can crash on when he’s in town, or if you can pick him up from the airport, that will go a long way. (For all you lair guys out there who e-mail us to give talks, stuff like this goes a LONG way when we’re in foreign cities.) Check the announcements board often. These jobs offer you personal contact with instructors.

This is a good way to get an 'in'.

Be a Professional. Be cool.

I’m a teacher, but teaching is my business. If you send me (with my professional writing degree) a chopped up, unpunctuated letter from your iPhone saying you’d like to help out, forget it. You need to be reliable, professional and respectful if you’re offering something. I will ALWAYS respond to a guy who makes a concerted effort to be a pro when contacting me.

Once again, especially if you’re hoping to become an instructor by attending a bootcamp, having good game is the minimum (and the first thing we size up on you). It’s assumed that you need good game, but please, SHOW us first! Don’t tell us the gory details of your romps and escapades—we’ve had them and we hear them from every guy who wants to be an instructor who is NOT instructor material. If having good game is normal for you, you’ll have no need to verbalize it. Show it first, then ask. It's tough to take you seriously unless we see evidence. Repect first, popularity second.

With that, you need to be a guy an instructor can hang out with. When you work a bootcamp, you may be sharing a hotel room, will be sharing cabs, etc. You may have sick game or something to offer, but if you don’t fit in, you’re not instructor material. I need to be able to introduce you to my friends, not have you showing up in a fuzzy hat or hitting on my buddy's girlfriend. This also includes not talking pick up 24/7.

However, you also have to let us know you want to be an instructor. As instructors, we love having qualified guys along to help, but many instructors have a team built already. You'll be an extra (male) body, which makes it harder to get into clubs. You also don't count toward the student:instructor ratio, so we need you to be focused, not gaming for yourself. Helping doesn't mean "hanging out." An extra assistant for demos and for winging students is valuable to us, but only when he brings value.

Again, there is enough volunteers to go around already, so be intelligent when inquiring or offering a hand. This means don't flood us with e-mails begging to sit in on workshops for free, don't ask if we want to "get drunk and hit on hot bitches," and don't ask if I can do a day game approach on you in the middle of a nightclub. Be tactful and competent--we are teachers of social dynamics.

Show you're up on things too. Don't use terms like "HBs," "negging," and "sarging." We're not the nerd squad and we don't use those terms. It immediately signals you're fresh or just read The Game . You're not ready to teach. I've winged with (or taught over 500 guys) ranging from guys like Savoy to guys like you. Actions speak louder than words. It's not that difficult for me to tell where you're at. If you have game and understand game, I'll notice. Trust me.

If you don't know how to offer your services respectfully, you probably don't have the social acumen to be an instructor yet... and if you do it right, your services will be rewarded handsomely. Respect first!

The Beginning

If you are accepted to help out on a bootcamp, you’ll be an assistant. Your job will be to help keep things running as smoothly as possible during seminar—gather forms from students, grab coffee, run drills, etc. You need to watch the seminar so you can learn the lead instructor's material inside and out. During infield, you’ll be doing a lot of demos and making sure students are approaching . This is when you show off your instructor-level game.

Lead instructors will always be listening for the feedback you give to students and for how you give it, but your main purpose is demos. You are on display for paying clients, so you better deliver. The 100% money back guarantee is no joke.

At the same time, if students start telling the lead instructor that you are giving solid advice, you're inching toward the next step...

Getting Evaluated

Here’s the kicker: you can impress one instructor in your home city, but one is not enough. You’ll need at least one other instructor to vouch for you. This means that you’ve either offered enough services to multiple instructors, or you’ve developed a close working relationship with your initial instructor, enough so that he’ll recommend you to another. (Tip: Knowing DAY and NIGHT game makes you twice as useful, and a growing number of juniors are equally skilled at both.)

Once you’ve won over a couple of (lead) instructors, you may get invited to Super Conference for evaluation. After the past SC, I think just getting put up for evaluation will be a huge accomplishment. We had six or seven guys getting evaluated and they all are worthy of approval—a couple having three or fours years of experience in game.

At the Super Conference , you’re big-time under the microscope. Not only do you have to impress the other (lead) instructors, but also you have to get as many or more tokens as junior instructors to show you’re on the level. (At SC, students get X amount of tokens to vote for instructors who have helped them. This was how I was named top instructor—most votes.) You’re in tough when you’re an assistant because you don’t have a speaking spot. All your seeds are sown in person. It’s intentional.

Impress Savoy

Savoy will know who you are coming into Super Conference , but he’ll want to see you in the field. It's another new beginning. He was out with us again in-field this year, he had his eye out, and he gathers feedback from all of the instructors BEFORE you even get there. After you get through the in-field, you undergo a theory test. (The theory test is verbal, not written.)

The theory test sounds easy, but even yours truly failed it the first time. (You’d be surprised who else has gotten a ‘Not Yet’ after this test.) It’s one thing to know the concepts in your own head, but it’s another to be able to break them down into actionable steps for students. You also need to answer questions about teaching, not just stuff from Magic Bullets , although that is a big part as well. Being able to break sets down and make theory actionable is the key difference between guys that make great instructors and guys who just have good game.

You have to go through over a dozen people to get to Savoy , and he guards the gate.

Post-Savoy test

Once you get through the above procedure, usually a 12 – 18 month process, the (lead) instructors all give their feedback on you to make sure nothing slips through the cracks. Some of these discussions are lengthy. Savoy takes every opinion seriously, runs background checks with your former students, and if you have received good reviews to that point, you should be made a junior. If you’re not on the level, you’ll get a ‘Not Yet’ or a ‘No’.

If you get a ‘Not Yet’, you have to keep practicing and studying before getting a new evaluation. The delay before a new exam is on purpose. The leads want you to be able to help (and count toward ratio), but you need to be on the level.

If you got a ‘No’, you really fucked up. See ya.

Why would anybody invest this much? Well, imagine being in on a bootcamp every month. It's a great trade-off. Every instructor says their tipping point for world-class game came when they started hanging out with instructors. It certainly was for me. It's very tough to find guys better than you who aren't teaching when you're at this point, and LS has some of the best.

As a Job

Some of our instructors, about half the leads, do this job full time; others chip in on bootcamps here and there and focus on their outside business(es) with no intention of becoming a lead. Every instructor in the company has ambitious interests outside of the company going on, mostly in business. If you’re one of those “I’m a greasy pick up artist. I’m out to lay the world and prove I’m cool” kind of guys, you’re not a good fit. You simply won’t be able to win over an instructor to get evaluated.

Doing this job full-time is serious work. I spend well over 40 hours per week marketing, answering e-mail, working on blogs, checking message boards, booking seminars, accounting and projections, doing phone consults, not to mention actual teaching. If you want to pursue this as full-time work, you need business sense or a hunger to acquire it. Love Systems is not a two-bit operation—we have a sales team, office manager and a complete support staff. You better know how to communicate with these people because they are all pros.

We don’t lurk at the mall day gaming every day or sneak into clubs every night like an intermediate student needs to do. I would seriously question any instructor who games non-stop, cold approach because that is a seriously unbalanced lifestyle, with no social circle , and it’s not one of somebody I’d look to as a mentor. If your instructor is more worried about cold approaching than enhancing his lifestyle and social circle , he isn't a guy you want to learn from. He's not there yet.

If you’re a part-time guy (like every junior except me), you get asked to fly out and help on bootcamps when needed. (To be objective: if you don't want to do this full-time, you won't have to worry about all the behind-the-scenes business stuff as much, if at all.)|If you want to become a lead instructor, you have to help on a lot of these programs in order to get enough instructors vouching for you to become a lead. I’m doing it full-time, I’m #1, I’m not a lead. It’s that intense.

There are other factors to consider, such as the pressure to perform in front of students, having to explain to your Grandma that you work for a company that teaches how to "charm" strippers , and explaining to your girlfriend what qualification means on your pick up blog and in your day game videos. That’s always fun... not. (You become good at framing the job and come to realize not everybody agrees with it.)

That said, I enjoy being surrounded by men much more successful than me, partying at the Playboy Mansion and escaping the Canadian winter. There is a large degree of freedom that mustn’t be taken for granted, and the mentors and opportunities to meet people are tremendous. The juice is worth the squeeze.

What I did to become an instructor

My route was unconventional.

I started by taking a bootcamp and followed it up with a 1 on 1 a year and a half later. Both of these were with Tenmagnet . A good friend of mine was asked to help Jeremy Soul at a day game workshop , his second, so we crafted a plan to ask Jeremy if I could help as well. Jeremy knew me from my three failed Project Rockstar applications. (My last one was good enough, just too late. It was also impossible not to love—I researched everything I could on Jeremy, and showed what I could offer him and Rockstar, not what Rockstar could do for me. **wink, wink to all you future applicants.) If it wasn’t for the applications and introduction, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to pay my own flight, hotel, etc. in order to volunteer my time.

On that initial bootcamp, I had the most outrageous pick up of my life. That didn’t hurt. Moreso, I knew from hanging out with high value people in other fields that I had to show Jeremy I was a guy he could “chill out” with first and foremost. After a few beers this was tentatively a mission accomplished. I’d earned the right to pay my own way some more.

After flying across the country each month and missing a whole lot of school, Jeremy contacted Tenmagnet and Cajun . Being a former student, I received the opportunity to help them. Eventually, Jeremy asked them to vouch for me, and they put me through a barrage of tests, including having to make out with a smokin’ hot girl in front of Cajun , and bringing a two-set across the bar for Tenmagnet . Check and check. I also wrote blog posts for Tenmagnet and Soul , and wrote a 140 page e-book, one page an hour every day, for Vercetti and Mr M . (I wasn't after the credit or free training. I knew I'd inevitably make a connection over the duration of the project.) As fate would have it, I'm now officially part of this project and still working on it every day.

At 2010 Super Conference , I had no problem helping students. I didn’t even worry about gaming for myself. I just ran around and around making sure the students were in set, seeing demos and receiving feedback. I also attended every breakout session I could. My game was not an issue since I’d been in this so long, but I did have to prove I could teach and overcome the instructing biases against me, a tall white dude.

After a couple of months, I did my first theory test, botched one question severely and had to retake it. I did well the second time and got approved. At that point, I went on a tear, helping on bootcamps seven straight weekends. I lost love for my writing degree and took an interest in business, so school was not a big concern for me. (FYI: I finished the degree.)

I moved to New York literally the day after school ended and started teaching more and more, realizing I could get by as a junior doing 1 on 1s if I lived in a major city. I also helped on Rockstar and just worked really, really hard at 2011 Super Conference to get votes. That was my road to becoming #1 instructor.

A final note on sacrifice and dedication

If you want to be an instructor, you have to seriously consider what you want out of this job. To make a decent to good living at this, you must to be a (full-time) lead instructor, which takes years. That’s after taking a bootcamp, paying your own way as an assistant and pretty much being a junior full-time. It costs a lot (unless you live in NYC, LA or London where travel is minimal).

Currently, we have one assistant, Pounders, who quit his job so he could earn the opportunity to get evaluated. We have another, Intrigue , who has been in this close to four years. He|took a bootcamp just for the opportunity to impress a lead, which he did. It’s rare to see a guy like Venture get approved in less than a year, but it does happen. It all depends on the place you’re coming from beforehand. We promote based on merit, not time.

Nothing is less surprising to me than guys who think this job would be “so cool” and would love to "help out" only to see them drop off the map. You can get really good at game without being an instructor, and you certainly aren’t the be-all, end-all of womanizing because you are an instructor. Many guys want to be an instructor because it’s like a confirmation of having good game. If you want to vicariously relive high school and be the cool kid, or just for acceptance, there are way better ways to do it than becoming an instructor. You must consider everything that goes into it or if you’re just looking to stroke your ego and feel cool.|You'll lose the love for the profession quickly if you aren't in it for the right reasons.

But if you are, it's great.