The Tao of DJ Fuji

It’s that time again, gents. It’s hard to believe it’s been a year already since the last 21 Convention event. For those of you fairly new to the blog, last year’s convention was my first major speaking engagement after having resigned from the old company and starting out on my own. Even though I had decent media exposure from my previous employer, I was, for the most part, walking into the convention as a “nobody.” In fact, I was technically a fill-in for someone else who couldn’t make it. And even when I gave the speech, I thought I was bombing it.

But to my surprise, the reviews, emails, and feedback started pouring in and apparently people liked it. That one little speech seemingly launched my career, giving way to MTV deals, interviews, documentary appearances, and tons of exposure. But even more important than that were Read the rest of this entry »

For this week’s tip I decided to give away some of my favorite routines, sound bites, and humor techniques. “Sound bites” is a term that I stole from my old wing Philos (who was featured on the infield insider and who is still to this day one of my most skilled wings) who confessed one day that much of his amazingly effective humor came from the thousand of so soundbites that he had memorized over the years. I didn’t understand this at the time (Philos, if you’re reading this, this was in 2006 when we were at the kaleidoscope mall together), but I later started to acquire my own “sound bank” of witty quips, comebacks, and funny one-liners and it all made sense.

In a ‘pickup’ type interaction, most humor comes from combining general technique (e.g., sarcasm, Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s Tip of the Week is a special request from blog reader Frozen Flame who wants more information and actual examples of the “self-amusement” concept.

But before we get too deep into it, let’s first back up and actually make sure we understand the idea. Self-amusement is something I believe I first heard about from the esteemed Tyler Durden of Real Social Dynamics, one of the most well-respected men in this industry and someone who had a huge impact on my own development, both as a practitioner and as a coach.

Although I’m sure the concept had been around forever, Tyler was the first to initially codify it for me.

The basic premise is this: Read the rest of this entry »

New feature I’m starting here on my blog. At the beginning of each week, I’m going to be posting a quick “tip of the week”. It’s going to be a short little “golden nugget” that you can immediately implement into your social repertoire.

Today’s tip is semi-obvious to a lot of people and yet I still see this happening every day:

Stop talking like a little kid lest you be treated like one.

This mainly applies to text-based communication (email/text messaging). I don’t care if your friends say “i kno” or “wat r you doing?” I’ve never heard of a single woman who finds that sexy. Even if the GIRL does it, you shouldn’t. If you want to use an ampersand (&) instead of the word “and”, then that’s fine. If you want to abbreviate long words (‘appt’ = ‘appointment’), or even use an “lol” sometimes, fine. But talking like a texting 13 year-old does nothing for you or your game. It actually hurts things. Read the rest of this entry »

Some random humor courtesy of the internet. For being from a non-community source, it’s remarkably accurate. And oddly enough, uses some of our terminology.

There’s something I’ve seen recently that I want to bring up because it’s a super common sticking point that has recently regained popularity. It’s this whole “chode” thing. I remember how damaging it was back in the day to a lot of guys, only back then we called it something else. This ‘new’ version isn’t any different. I guess it really shows you how cyclical things are in pickup.

Back in 2004-2005 (when I had to walk to school in the freezing snow… uphill… both ways…), we came across a strange phenomenon in the community. Guys who were coming from so-called “AFC” backgrounds were becoming obsessed with proving that they were no longer human doormats. They had grown so tired of the feeling of powerlessness that they had made it their personal quest to become exactly the opposite. Now when a woman asked them to buy them a drink at the bar, these men were armed with an arsenal of witty comeback lines. When a women tried to shit test them or control frame, they were prepared with re-frames. And when an old lady fell down the stairs, they walked right by her, showing how “unreactive” they could be. You know, to show her how “alpha” they were.

Wait… What? Read the rest of this entry »

I was talking to Eric/Hypnotica today at Johnny Soporno’s Las Vegas AVN event and he brought up an interesting point. We were talking about where the community is heading and the recent influx of new instructors and Hypnotica pointed out that there’s no sense of respect among the new guys these days. He was referring to all the bad mouthing going on recently, from people trash-talking Ross to David D to Mystery and so on. It reminded me of what comedian Aries Spears said about the Soulja Boy – Ice T feud. The basic premise being that a lot of times the younger generations forget where they came from. They forget that the elder generations paved the way for them. Nothing going on today would be possible without the work of those who came before us. In the Marine Corps we almost worship the “Old Corps” Marines from yester-year. I’m not saying that we should go to that extreme, but Eric had a really good point – no matter how you feel about RJ or Mystery or any of the old timers, they deserve a lot of respect for making all of this possible. How easy we forget that in our current self-absorbed world.

On that note, I’m going to call my parents and see how they’re doing.

Do you have your New Year’s Resolution yet? Let me guess… it’s either something to do with being more healthy, working on yourself (dating or otherwise), or spending more time with family and friends.

But c’mon. Let’s be realistic here. Most people don’t actually do ANYTHING long term with their resolutions. Did you make a resolution last year and fulfill it? Probably not.

January 1 is the biggest self-deception day of the year. Come Jan 1, 2010, most people should make a resolution to stop making resolutions. Instead, they should be Read the rest of this entry »

Colombia - Click for full size

At the risk of getting all Tony Robbins on my dear readers, I want to share a quick story about the power of asking for what you want. This actually just happened today while flying back home.. I’m literally writing this blog post on the plane back to California.

The day starts like any other, except that I’m in Colombia, everything is mad cheap, and the coffee is, well, Colombian. I check out of the Read the rest of this entry »

One of my big pet peeves in this industry is the spread of misinformation and just plain bad advice by “gurus” who couldn’t teach their way out of a paper bag. Not only are these so-called teachers ruining their own credibility, but they are damaging the progress and belief systems of their students, whom most of the time don’t know any better.

I had one student recently with really bad inner game who told me that he worked with a coach who told him Read the rest of this entry »