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How Tynan Became a Pickup Artist, Made Earrings out of Human Bone, And Lives in an RV

04/11/2012

in Podcast

Welcome to the fifth episode of the Hack The System show!

You should subscribe to this show on iTunes.

The Hack The System Podcast is your access to interviews with the world’s foremost experts on blogging, lifestyle design, traveling, and life/system hacking. In short–you’re going to learn how to kick ass.

In this episode, I sit down with Tynan of Tynan.com. Tynan was one of the first bloggers that inspired me to become a lifestyle designer. Hell, his digital nomad packing list was the basis for what I still travel with.

Tynan was Herbal in the book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. He traveled the world with just a small backpack, and lives the most interesting lifestyle that I’ve ever seen. And now, he just launched a new blogging platform (different than wordpress) called Sett—you can see it in action at Tynan.com.

Tynan has been a huge inspiration for me, and you’re going to learn a ton of info from him. Below, you’ll see a list of things to listen out for–and a full transcript of the conversation.

Transcript of the Podcast Episode

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Don’t forget to subscribe to this show on iTunes.Maneesh:Hey guys! This is Maneesh Sethi your number one digital nomad. I’m coming at you today from Portland, Oregon. I’m here with my good buddy Tynan, from tynan.com better than your boyfriend. And, Tynan is freaking awesome. Men, I love this guy. This guy is one of the, like, one of my inspirations for travelling. Ty, why don’t you introduce yourself a little bit?Tynan: I’m Tynan. I tend to do really extreme weird things and then try to convince other people to do them. Take the best parts of them. I program, I write, I travel pretty much constantly. Yeah, what else is there?

Maneesh: And that’s all basically all you do.

Tynan: That’s all I do.

Maneesh: That’s all it is. Tynan, like, you guys remember my webinar that was recent, “How to take advantage of the system.” There’s nobody in the world I know who’s better at taking advantage of the system than Tynan. I’m going to tell you exactly why Tynan is here, because he is not from Portland. He is from San Francisco. And, basically, I was just going up to Portland and I told Tynan on chat I’m like, “Yo man! I’m going to head to Portland. I’ll talk to you later.” Twelve hours later I get a little IM from him, he’s like, “Yo man! Just booked a private jet, see you on Portland tomorrow.” The fuck! He’s like, “Yeah, it was a dollar.” How did that work out?

Tynan: Actually free, they didn’t charge me the bag. I got an additional discount. Yeah, it was a company called Jet Sweep, private jet chartering company. You know, all these jet companies, they have to constantly move their planes around to get them in position for the next client. And, I think most companies they want to see them like, “hoity-toity”, so they don’t want to offer discounted rates when they have to move the plane but Jet Sweep does, normally for 500 bucks. And, for a week they have them for a dollar. And so, out of the past five days, I’ve won four times. Came back from Vegas on a private jet, won one from LA to San Francisco, couldn’t give it to any of my friends, no one will take it, then came out here and then I won one from Austin to Houston yesterday for my friends, who are actually on it right now.

Maneesh: Amazing. So like, do you ever feel that it, like whatever, like, first of all, it’s most hilarious thing I ever saw was your PJ’s in your PJ’s in a PJ, Kanye West’s song, he’s going to take a photo of himself and all of his buddies in their pajamas on a private jet. Insane! But, tell me more about like, other stuff, other deals that you’ve done. What kind of cool things have you like, taken advantage of in this situation?

Tynan: Men, I mean, I feel like almost everything I buy or do, you know, like, I definitely don’t try to get like, the cheapest of everything because I feel like that’s sort of like, a losing strategy. But I try to, you know, I figure out what I want in life, you know, to buy or products or places to go and then I just try to get them as cheap as possible. So, a lot of them are focused around travel, like, you know, really cheap plane fares everywhere. Like, I just came back from, where I go Panama and I stop in Austin, Texas, Las Vegas and San Francisco. And I got all that for less than would have cost to go from Panama direct to San Francisco.

Maneesh: How did you pull that off?

Tynan: The key is to know where the cheap hubs are. So, like, you probably know, for Central America, South America, Fort Lauderdale is like cheapest place. So you buy one way to there and then you buy one way, you know, on and on to where you want to go.

Maneesh: So you check, still checking from Panama direct to San Francisco. You check for Panama to Fort Lauderdale to Austin to…

Tynan: Just as one ways.

Maneesh: That’s one ways each way.

Tynan: Yeah, and then the other cool thing you can do with that is, you know, Tuesdays and Saturdays are the cheap days to fly. And so you just stay in each place for a few days and then, you know, have life, what’s going on, on Tuesdays or Saturdays.

Maneesh: And what you do for like, staying? Do you pay to live in the hotel? Or do you pay to, do you find friends or couch surf or what do you do?

Tynan: Depends where I am, I almost never couch surf because I spend a lot of time working and I felt really weird when I’m like on somebody’s couch working all day. So, I tend to stay with like, friends. Like in Austin I have a lot of friends, families, I stay with them. They [basically hoist] get cheap hotels. Here we do Priceline. I don’t know if people do this, but Priceline is amazing. Like, 65 bucks a night, we have four star hotel in the middle of downtown.

Maneesh: Captain Kirk recommends it.

Tynan: Does he?

Maneesh: I mean, yeah, William shatters the commercial yet?

Tynan: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. They kind of negotiate some deals for me.

Maneesh: He did?

Tynan: Yes, gets it done, Captain Kirk.

Maneesh: But yeah, so I like to know like, I love looking at [rest of your] stories because every time I talk to you, you just say something ridiculous, I’m like, “Jesus Christ! Are you serious?” Are you really wearing earrings from the cat? Tell me about the earring’s situation. This freaking shit is great.

Tynan: Yes, I don’t have them anymore. I have one I lost one. But, my friends and I were in Paris and you know, Paris is a cool city but a lot of it is very [sterile], it’s like, go see the Louvre with everything, you know, Mona Lisa’s behind bulletproof glass, you know, and whenever I travel I sort of want a little adventure. So, I was looking up on Wikipedia, the Catacombs, you know, the miles and miles and miles of tunnels underneath Paris. And, of course, there’s a Catacomb museum where you can see like half a kilometre of Catacombs behind glass. I was like, “Well, it sucks.” You know, that’s not enough. So, we looked online and we found this guy who had posted some pictures from inside the Catacombs. We emailed him and he read the, you know, we said, “Hey, we are doing videos.” us running from [Catherine] at that time. It says, “Hey, we are doing these travel videos, you know, will you take us down there?” he said, “Well, of course.” So, we meet this guy on the outskirts of Paris and next thing you know we’re on this like, abandoned train truck. We break through this hole in the bricks, in the tunnel and you’re like waiting knee deep in this water, you know, this guy is amazing. He knows everything about the history of the Catacombs. So like we and he knows it all by heart, so we’re going through like this World War two, this German World War two bunker that sells like, all the equipment in it. You know, this basement of a monastery where like all these monks died, you can see the gravestones and stuff. And then of course, you know, what the Catacombs are famous for are bones. And so, we get to this place where the bones are and the reason there’s all these bones is because during the war, they ran out of gravesites, so they would throw them down the wells, but the wells were connected to the Catacombs. So you know, you start seeing these bones and you’re kind of like, “It’s a little gross.” You know, like, walking around them, you know, there’s more and more so then you’re kind of just resolve like, “Okay, I’m going to be stepping on bones then you get okay with that. So, you’re stepping on the bones, they’re crunching below your feet, then they like, the ceiling starts getting low so you’re like, “Okay, I got to kind of crawl on these bones.” And before you know it, you’re just like, you know, clawing through the bones.

Maneesh: Yeah.

Tynan: You know, going through these passage ways and so I see all these bones. And, it’s not like he’s like, you know, like skeletons of people like this, you know, this is just like crunched up bone and you know, people have taken all the good parts, the skulls are gone.

Maneesh: Okay.

Tynan: But I thought, you know, I may not have another opportunity in my lifetime to get human bones, I hope I do but I may not. And so like, you know, I met a few friends, “Oh my God. You know, we should take some of these bones.”

Maneesh: Like for Leonardo da Vinci the modern age.

Tynan: Yeah, exactly. Nobody else wants to. It blew my mind. It’s like this private jet, nobody wants the free jet. Nobody wanted the free bones.

Maneesh: Exactly.

Tynan: So it’s like, well I’m taking some, you know. Like, In my head I’m like, I got a few friends back home that wants some, so you know, I get a few. So, I got like few bones put them in this plastic bags, put them on my backpack and we’re leaving and we get, we were going to go up through this manhole but it was shut, like the police had put bricks on it so you can’t get up because this special police force is just there to police the Catacombs. And so, we make it all the way back to the entrance and then this other, like, explorer kind of walks by us, you know, I’m kind of like trying to practice French, “Bonjour!” you know, and he walks by and then our guys like, “No, no, no, dude that’s the police they’re surrounding us.” So that guy gets behind us, stops, there’s more police in front, they pull us up and we’re in this dark tunnel where we came in through that hole. And they’ve got us lined up with our backpacks, that same backpack you’ve got and they start searching everybody and I’m last in line. So, they’re searching people. There was like, there were four of us I guess. So they search the first person. And there’s getting hard on them like, going through the whole bag like, everything is getting opened up and I’m like, “God, the bones are right on top of this bag” like I had a chance, there were no lights on me. I say, “I can open up this backpack and I can throw these bones away and they would never catch me.” But then, I start thinking, you know, again, not that I’m going to have a chance to get these bones.

Maneesh: Or go to French prison.

Tynan: Yeah. And actually, and that was going through my mind to, I’m like, “If I went to French prison that would be kind of cool.”

Maneesh: Exactly.

Tynan: Like, how long they were really going to keep me there? You know.

Maneesh: Yeah, just stealing dead bones.

Tynan: Yeah. It’s not a big deal really. And so, I’m like, “Alright, I’m going to think of a plan” and so like, you know, fourth person get searched, they’re done, still don’t have a plan, third person, still don’t have a plan, second person, I’m like watching like, “Alright, this is the time, this is the time for a plan to kick in” done with him, my turn, no plan.

Maneesh: [Laughing]

Tynan: So I’m like, “Alright, let’s do this thing.” So he says, “Open your bag” so, unzipped the bag and there’s the bag of bones and halfway on top is this hat I used to have. So, I’m like, “Okay, let’s try this.” So I kind of stuffed the bag under the hat like the head part of the hat, say, that was my hat, put down on the ground, go through the other stuff, they don’t notice.

Maneesh: Yeah.

Tynan: So I made it through the bones. They actually, were going to take us to jail but then, I think Todd saved us, you know, when he told them how much we love French history and that’s why were there and all this and like at the end, they were like, “Okay, you can go.” So yeah, I had these bones, they were just kind of sitting around for a while and you know, I thought, “What’s the good use for these bones?” And I feel like sometime, I don’t know, maybe you’ll know this, I feel like I saw a movie once were like the evil guy in the movie had human bone earrings.

Maneesh: Mortal Kombat?

Tynan: I hope I didn’t see that movie.

Maneesh: [Laughing]

Tynan: If it’s that, I’m going to be really embarrassed. But yeah, I had this idea that there was like some evil villain that had human bone earrings that actually do, maybe cufflinks.

Maneesh: I don’t know, I feel like human bones come up a lot of evil characters but whoever it was.

Tynan: Whoever it was, I was like, “Well, I’m going to do it.” So, found someone, it took a while to find someone who’s willing to make them. I found someone who kind of carved them into stars, you know, like these guys here and…

Maneesh: The logo from your blog?

Tynan: Yeah. Logo from blog had them for a long time then finally lost them in a really vigorous karaoke session.

Maneesh: In a freaky karaoke accident. Basically like, the fighting’s like, I go with Tynan every once in a while, we go out and get drinks and like, he starts telling a story and every story just goes to another story that’s just more insane than the last one and you’re like, “Alright, free karaoke care” apparently people were Tasing each other at the karaoke, we’ll talk about that in a moment but… [Laughing] We’re just going to throw in Tasing in karaoke we’ll get there eventually. But I really like the way that you have this mentality that I feel like not enough people have that I’m trying to have, I think I have pretty low.

Tynan: You got it too.

Maneesh: The mentality of this is just like, what’s the worst that can happen? Like, I don’t always do what’s right for the situation but I always do what’s right for the story.

Tynan: Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Maneesh: Like, you know, mostly like, “Oh my God! A French prison that’s scary.” I’m like, “A French prison, fuck you!” and I don’t know why other people don’t feel the same way that we do. What do you think? What makes us so weird? [Laughing]

Tynan: I have a theory and I’ll be interested to see if it actually lines up with your past too but I feel like, you know, I think it all starts like, with school and maybe with parents a bit too. But like, in school you have this weird sort of like, discipline system where they actually have nothing over you, right? But there’s always this like, “You better do this assignment or else” or you know, “You have to do this or else” and theirs is this like, sort of illogical pressure to conform and to do what people say and like it’s not based on any sort of rational thought. Like I remember at some point, in high school like, realizing my grades didn’t really matter, you know, but everybody else is still working to get good grades and, you know, middle school even worse sounds like, “You’re going to high school no matter what, you know, if you get bad grades you’re still going, you know, if you do want to go to college or whatever, your grades in high school matter in your middle school.” So, it’s sort of this weird mentality of like, consequences that are illogical. And I feel like, for whatever reason early on I figured out, maybe because I didn’t like school, I was like, “Well, these consequences are crap. So I’m not going to [refrain] to them.” And, I feel like it’s the same thing here, where it’s like, “Yeah, like maybe you’re going to jail in France.”But let’s be honest like, you’re going to spend your life in French prison because you stole some bones that are really like mixed up with mud. Like, obviously not.

Maneesh: Yeah.

Tynan: You know and lot of times like, the worst case scenario turns out to be the best case scenario. Like, I have some friends who got, figure they were in Croatia or something, got kidnapped by rebels and like beaten up and all this and like, they’ve got an awesome story now, you know. These guys are on the radio show now because they have a lot of these interesting stories and they talk about stuffs like that.

Maneesh: Yeah. And the thing is like, we have, I have this friend who kind of blew my mind with the statement that he said when he was high as hell. And it’s like, one of these statement that people say, they don’t think it’s, they, that you say because they think it’s really interesting or like really deep but at this point it was really deep to me and what he said was that he had a cat, he’s like, “Maneesh I got this cat. And this cat walks around every day and he doesn’t understand roads, he doesn’t understand economy, he doesn’t understand there’s a system outside of what he’s inside of, what makes us think that we understand that there’s a system outside where we are.” And this kind of blew my mind because it just did and I started thinking about it I’m like, “What if we’re in this bubble that we just don’t realize that there’s another situation outside of it.” Now, people might take what I just said and think of it from like a religious or whatever perspective but when I started travelling, I started to notice that we in America especially have built this like system around ourselves that we assume is true and the system to me seems to be about getting into things. And the way I see it is like, when you’re in middle school, when you’re in high school, you’re trying to get good grades so you get into college. When you’re into college you try to get good grades so you get a good job. When you’re getting a good job, you’re trying to do well so you can meet, you know, a nice wife, you can pay your mortgage, you can get to retirement and it’s all about getting into the next thing. Well, as when I started to look at it from a different perspective, what if we try to navigate around it, you know, and look at a way to get into the system like from an edge, from an angle, what can we do with our lives? And so, that was when your stuff really resonated with me when you talked about removing, like, instead of making money equalling success by getting more money, what if you get less for your expenses? You know, what if you dropped a, so he was talking about his backpack, so Tynan recommended like, his backpack which I’ve been carrying with me for years and his camera and stuff and it’s all about getting it to be as little as possible. I try to adjust this 28 litre backpack, smaller than like a school kid’s backpack for like, over a year through India and that was all I had and I realized that if you don’t have many things, if you don’t have like a house that you’re paying for, if you don’t have a mortgage or a rent on a car, we call it car, are these loan? I don’t know these words anymore because I never use them. If you don’t have to pay these fees then suddenly your life can take a completely different strategy and I gave this presentation like few days ago about taking advantage of the system and I started with just the basic level. I just talked about less than what we’ve already talked about in this interview and some people’s minds were blown. They’ve never seen that there were ways to live outside of the normal system. So like, for example, your method of living with rent is really interesting to me. Tynan owns an RV. Tell me a little bit about the RV.

Tynan: Yeah. So, back in, what was that, about 2007, lived in this awesome place, downtown Austin Texas, this penthouse on the top of this building, we had like our own roof deck with the hot tub, all the stuff and it was awesome right? But when I was younger I had a school bus, my friends and I owned that we would take road trips on and I like, I really like have a lot of fun memories from that, so I was thinking, maybe I should get an RV, just like a little one, and so I could take some road trips around and stuff like that. And so, of course like I do, I start getting into the research, you know, I’m on EBay everyday looking at these RV’s and like all of a sudden one pops up, it’s like really good deal, so like alright well I’m just going to buy this thing, so I bought it. Next day, my girlfriend and I fly out to, I think Colorado or Nevada or something [or] it was New Mexico and we go pick this thing up and we, you know, we got there in a day but on the way back we took our time and visit these cool places and actually like lived in the thing for a few days. And, I just fell in love with living there, by the time I got back, I’d literarily never slept in a condo again like every day was in this RV and since then, you know, I sold that one to travel, got another one, I now live behind a gas station, downtown San Francisco. Yeah, I love it. Like, it’s really, you know, I’ve lived in whole variety of house, I have my own house. I lived in, you know, of course the big place in LA, the condo. It’s easily my favourite place to live, you know, it’s a nice little minimalist existence, you leave it you don’t worry about like, do I have to mow my lawn, do I have to like, you know, pay somebody to clean it up, [do I] bills, you know.

Maneesh: Just don’t worry about it.

Tynan: You worry about nothing. There’s no friction in your lifestyle when you’re in this thing.

Maneesh: So take a second guys and think about this, imagine if you didn’t have any rent to pay. All you have to do is pay for a car. You buy it and suddenly you live in your house, you can travel anywhere oin the world, you don’t have to worry about any kind of expenses, you own everything in one space, imagine how much freer your life is and for me like the whole digital nomad lifestyle, the whole lifestyle, it’s just about freedom, figuring out a way to focus on what you want because you can really have anything you want in the world, you just can’t have everything. So, one question that I’ve actually got, I got a few request from Twitter and from Facebook that I think are really interesting is about how do you handle peer pressure? Like, we’re weird dude, people, we’re really weird people. And it’s funny when we hang out with each other and our friends, we think we’re normal but everybody looks at us strange [relieve], you know, that tiny mission bubble.

Tynan: Yeah.

Maneesh: Or you’re going outside of the four hour for your community. My parents like, can’t handle me. My mom literally said to herself, “I don’t know where I went wrong with you Maneesh. What did I do wrong as a mother?” and it’s like, what, how do you handle this peer pressure, this problem from your family and from friends and from other people that just don’t understand our lifestyles.

Tynan: You know, honestly, I feel like I’ve just never felt peer pressure for whatever reason, it is, I mean, I’m sure I have in some degree but I think early on I just started doing things weird and just by fluke I’m sure, right? Like, I don’t even know what the first example would be but you know, I could think of a few, were like in a, when I started high school, I started selling things on EBay to make my own money because my allowance wasn’t enough. So, like, buy palm pilots, sell them on EBay, just when EBay was just starting out. And like, and it worked, right? Like, I have more money though than my friends and I remember like, through certain experiences like this realizing like, “Oh well, when I choose my own path and I do it, it actually works” so like really what other people want me to do, you know, like sometimes it’s good advice but it’s not like this definitive idea of what’s right that I have to like fit up against. So, I have just never really felt peer pressure to be honest.

Maneesh: You know, that also makes me think because like when I was in middle school in high school I was doing entrepreneurial things like, I bought a DVD burner or a CD burner and when it first came out I started making mixed CDs for people and selling them to make money and like, I sold T-shirts with my face on it and stuff. And thongs also, those didn’t sell so well. But there’s something about us like, all of these lifestyle [status] we mean often were a little bit entrepreneurial in high school but I’m noticing like some people start jumping into entrepreneurship as we get older are also having success too but from your experience like, have you seen that most in the lifestyle design community or our community is, was pretty much like has an entrepreneurial spirit inside of us from the past.

Tynan: I think it’s more that independent spirit. It’s like, “Look, I have one life. I’m going to do what I want to do.” And when you translate that to making money, you know, like I don’t know if you ever have a real job, I had one for nine months and it was like, insane.

Maneesh: I’m fired from 13 jobs.

Tynan: [Laughing] Okay. Yeah. Like I got fired too, right? And I was happy about it like, you know, my boss and I were friends, like great, you know, I wanted to quit anyway. But yeah, I think it’s just this, when you’re strongly independent and you sort of like have this mentality that like, you know what, I live once, I’m going to do what I want to do, I’m going to figure out a way to make it work, you know, that sort of, you know, independence coupled with self reliance, where you feel like you can actually make things happen for yourself. I feel like, entrepreneurialism is just part of that, like you can’t escape how else you’re going to work, how else you’re going to make money.

Maneesh: That’s true. How else we’re going to do? How else are we going to make money? Men, we have to work for somebody like, through a cubicle.

Tynan: The idea is totally insane to me. I would honestly rather be, I mean, I guess I am kind of homeless when you think about it, I’m living at a Gas station but I’d rather be like, legitimate homeless than honestly have a hundred thousand dollar a year like consulting jobs or [things] horrible like that.

Maneesh: Absolutely. Men, I have this like dream though once, I woke up from it, in a shivering sweat, literally have never had more a worse nightmare and it was, I had a dog, I had a lease and a dog and it was this scary, sounds like, “I can’t travel, what am I going to do?” it’s not like I’m anti-dogs, it’s that I’m anti-leashes, in the sense of like, I’m worried about always being forced to be in one’s particular place.

Tynan: That’s a big part of minimalism I think is like, people sometimes see it as only being about money and sure it is nice to have control over where your money goes but a lot of it is the obligation too. It’s like, you know, I don’t have to worry about sending a rent check in every month, I don’t have to worry about feeding an animal, I don’t have to worry about, you know, any of like mowing a lawn, like any of these things and when you have no, you know, obligations on your money or your time, you really are like free, you can really do what you want to do.

Maneesh: It’s true.

Tynan: You know.

Maneesh: One thing that always interests me is like, how do you like, I don’t understand why, there’s like a law of attraction from the secret sort of happening with us and I hate, I don’t want to say that because it’s ridiculously bad. And the whole idea of it is mindboggling but I’ve noticed that like the more things I say yes to, the more crazy things I do, the more that everything works out like, I’ve never ever been in a situation where things went wrong and were permanently wrong. I mean, apart from losing a limb or dying, I can’t imagine anything that would go wrong that would just be bad and I’m wondering like, how do you notice that the more kind of crazy things you do the more crazy things that happen to you?

Tynan: Yeah. I have a theory about that too. Like, you know, I used to be a professional gambler. And the idea was, you don’t have to win every hand, you can’t win every hand, right? You have to, kind of have a system where you would win over 50% of money you put in. I think it’s the same sort of thing. And then, once you have that system you want to play as much as humanly possible so you can push that edge, right? Because say, 1% isn’t much but you make a lot of this, you know financial decisions and in the long run it’s a big deal. And I think if you’re the kind of person that can make really good independent decisions like, look, 100% of my decisions are not good like, you know, I can tell you that but maybe 60% or something like that. But if I’m, in putting a lot of situations where I’m making these crazy decisions and where there is a lot of upside, you know, 6, if most of them are turning out well over a long period of time, you build a huge amount of, you know, positive experience and you know, very [serious].

Maneesh: It’s true. That actually, that’s a good metaphor also for like any sort of money making opportunity or any kind of like blogging you’re doing or any kind of business you’re running. It’s just figure out a way to make 51% of the effort back, you know. If you’re, when once you get out just multiply, expand and grow. And so like, with the blog or with, you know, especially with your blog, like, how have you fine tuned it? How have you figured out? How have you, what are your strategies for actually monetizing your lifestyle? How do you fund it?

Tynan: I mean, I think I’m probably the worse person to ask for this. I feel like, I probably monetize terribly but, you know, I’ve read a couple of books and, especially the pick-up one sells really well, life nomadic’s sells, you know, a little bit but again I don’t have many expenses, so it covers my lifestyle.

Maneesh: But it does cover your lifestyle, your blog?

Tynan: Yep.

Maneesh: So, it seems like you, people are attracted to your blog because you do interesting things. And then from that you can sell them products that you trust and you believe in.

Tynan: Yeah. And a little bit of affiliate commissions, you know, like my gear stuff every year and stuff like that.

Maneesh: Yeah. So, what about your gear stuff? Tell me about your gear recommendations for this year?

Tynan: This year, so let’s see, you mean, one I just published or you’re talking about new stuff.

Maneesh: What are you doing? What are you wearing these days? What are you wearing out?

Tynan: So this is Icebreaker or is it SmartWool? I forget. One SmartWool, one Icebreaker. One of the other.

Maneesh: SmartWool and Icebreaker on right now.

Tynan: Yeah. I mean, always 100% Marino wool. It’s, this stuff is unbelievable. Like, you get caught in the rain, these are Versace pants, the only wool jeans I could find, nobody makes them. I brought them to a tailor in Thailand, the guy who made my tux, and I was like, “Look, I need more of this.” He says, “Oh, you can’t get material like this.”

Maneesh: It doesn’t exist.

Tynan: So it’s like super hard to find but these are amazing, you get caught in the rain, I don’t wear rain pants anymore because this get wet, it doesn’t matter. They dry off, they’re warm, etc.

Maneesh: What watch are you wearing?

Tynan: The same one, the Suunto X10, the vessel keeps falling off.

Woman: Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Do you want a close up on that bad boy?

Tynan: I’ve been waiting for a close up.

Woman: Insert.

Tynan: There you go.

Woman: What? What? What? What?

Maneesh: Moving on. I just realized I…

Tynan: Awesome watch has built-in GPS altimeter, like I actually used them when I was skydiving, use the altimeter.

Maneesh: Oh yeah?

Tynan: Because I was like what if it can really handle this sort of thing that [I can]. But the vessel, I don’t know why they do this, the vessel sucks it falls off all the time. So now it looks like some sort of like broken Cyborg watch. So I just stop gluing it back on.

Maneesh: That’s amazing.

Tynan: Yeah. What else do we have? You know what this is right?

Maneesh: No.

Tynan: This is so when I die the [crutch] will be frozen.

Maneesh: Oh yeah!

Tynan: You know about that?

Maneesh: Tell them about this.

Tynan: Yeah. So, when I die, well that’s pretty much what there is to it. [Probably] gently frozen and someday hopefully we’ll be able to bring me back to life.

Maneesh: Yes. Tynan forever! [Laughing]

Tynan: Tynan forever, exactly. So if you like my blog post.

Maneesh: That will be your cryogenic blog post. You should like…

Tynan: You’re a good shape. Your shit’s capable of, you know.

Maneesh: You’re playing like 3 weekly different blog posts for the next 30 years, 50 or 100 years and then it will be tynanfrozen.com

Tynan: Honestly, I’ve thought about that.

Maneesh: That’s actually a pretty good idea, men.

Tynan: I used to have a blog post that would post if I die. Like, I’ve [make] this like, elaborate mechanism where I had to like, keep pushing it ahead and so if I died, it would post. And I was going to have like years of posts queued up but, you know, it didn’t…

Maneesh: Tynan forever?

Tynan: Yeah. Tynan forever.

Maneesh: Shit, that’s awesome.

Tynan: God he’s dead.

Maneesh: Damn it stop posting.

Tynan: Yeah. Stop posting.

Maneesh: Your gear doesn’t even make sense, we have Cyborgs now.

Tynan: Yeah, exactly. Still like the same shirt I like back in 2011. People wearing like laser shirts or something like that, you know.

Maneesh: Men, so that’s really cool. I like to tell, I think fat I want to, what am I trying to say here, I want to ask you about your Taser karaoke.

Tynan: Taser-oke. Yeah.

Maneesh: Taser-Oke, this shit cracked up yesterday.

Tynan: Yeah.

Maneesh: Tell me about it.

Tynan: Yeah. So my friend Todd also, you know, he went out on “Life Nomadicaly” when we first started. We’re hanging out with another friend of ours also kind of like entrepreneurial girl and she had this Taser like personal protection 400,000 watt Taser, and for whatever reason Todd sees it and he says, “You know, I want to get Tased. I want to see what it’s like.” And we’re about to Tase him and I said wait a minute like, we should make a spectacle out of this somehow and at that time I hosted Karaoke. I use that back and I realized that Todd said, “I want to get Tased.” Actually, it’s way less, it’s way more common than you think, I’ll get to that in a second. And so, I hosted karaoke just because I loved it so much I want to cut all the time and if you host it you can insert yourself in whenever you want. So, that’s what we were doing. He said, “Okay. Well, let’s do Taser-oke. We’ll make this fake contest where you’ll sing against someone, you’ll throw it and then we’ll Tase you on stage.” And so, you know, the [Cobliners] don’t want to agree to this so I wait until they are really drunk at the end of the night and like, “Hey guys, we’re doing karaoke, Taser-oke next time.” And then like, “Oh, I don’t know we can get sued.” I said, “Oh, you know I’m going to right up a legal document.” He said, “Oh, yeah I do want to see someone get Tased.” “Okay.” Literally, that was the entire discussion, so they agree to do it and I decided I’m just not going to mention it. Show up the next time, get tough time in stage, just announce to the crowd we’re going to do it, so at that point you can’t back down, you know, they’re not going to stop you then. And so, Todd throws it, we Tase him and, you know, it was like, “Oh, you know that hurt, that was a big deal.” And then I’ll send people start lining up to, to sing, we had a line, because we had all these people get Tased then, people started coming up then they’re like, “I’m only scared to sing but can you Tase me?” Like, you will be shock of how many people wanted to get Tased but were too…

Maneesh: You will be shocked! [Laughing]

Tynan: Oh God.

Maneesh: Sorry.

Tynan: Yeah, there’s power through that. Yeah. You’d be stunned. No, that’s not, you’ll be surprised! How many people just want to get Tased and see how we did that for over a year, Tase people, you know, I’ve Tased hundreds of people now, and eventually got shut down when Todd and I left for “Life Nomadic” and my co-host apparently got drunk and Tased someone who didn’t sign a waiver, and that was that but they’ve been actually like, they’ve been [touched] from me, they want to have it again.

Maneesh: The funny thing is when you start doing something crazy or new everyone’s like, “What are you, you can never do that. That would never work.” And the second you do it, everyone’s following.

Tynan: Yeah. It’s best to just do things.

Maneesh: Yeah. Ask for forgiveness and affirmation.

Tynan: Exactly.

Maneesh: That’s the truth. Nothing ever goes wrong if you just do it. So, Taser-oke, you’ve done your RV, let’s talk a little bit about pick-ups because that seems to be, it used to be a little huge part of your life, it seems like it’s cut down a little bit.

Tynan: It’s about to begin February 1st.

Maneesh: February 1st.

Tynan: It’s getting push backed to bit, I’m doing it with a friend, we’re supposed to do it January 1st he is in Vietnam right now and he’s like, “Okay. Yeah I’m going to be back in January 1st” So I’ve got like, “Alright, January 1st pick-up.” And then he’s like, “Yeah, I got to push back January 14th.” So I was just talking yesterday, now it’s February 1st.

Maneesh: You got to pick a date. You got to start doing it yourself men, pre-game.

Tynan: Yeah. I know. The thing is if I do it, it’s going to be 100% like every day, all day, so I’m kind of I’m going to wait until we’re in the ideal situation.

Maneesh: So like Todd, Tynan is talking about, he used to be, if you guys have read the book “The Game” by Neil Strauss, Tynan was one of the characters who was, he was “Herbal”.

Tynan: Yeah. Herbal, British people call me “Herbal”.

Maneesh: “Herbal” in the game. So, he was one of the characters in the book. And basically, that book is about these set of guys a lot of them like awkward dudes who want to learn how to pick up women, so they all lived together and they try to like, basically, practice it all day and that’s all they do and that’s all they focus on it. And so, I’ve noticed like I’ve seen you change a little bit like the way you tell stories is pretty interesting and I think that, I’m wondering if like you used to be a lot meeker when you told stories or if you were like less, more jumpy and a little bit less like chill and relax when you told them. How do you tell stories? That’s my question.

Tynan: Yeah. I mean, it’s hard to know exactly, right? Like, there’s this weird thing that when you make, you maybe have experienced this too, you go through big changes, people assume you were always like that, even like your friends who knew you like everyone [are that good] at pick-up, I have this one friend who like, someone’s like, “Oh, you know, look at Tynan, you know, he’s into this pick-up artist thing.” and he’s like, “Oh, he’s always been good with girls.” Like, it’s not true, like I had no girlfriends, right? Like it made no sense but there’s that same sort of thing. So, even from my own perspective, it’s hard to really remember what it was like but…

Maneesh: I like, did read, read one day and stumbling in one of your comments randomly in a thread, it was about you in college in the most awkward situation

Tynan: I’m not even sure exactly which one you’re talking about but there were some… is this the one where I passed out?

Maneesh: No, this is the one where the girl came in to your bed and asks…

Tynan: Oh! Yeah, I know.

Maneesh: And she’s like, “I’m cold.” there was something, it’s funny because I saw this poster, it wasn’t your name on it, I was like, “Oh, that’s an awkward story and I clicked the button.” and I’m like, “This is Tynan. I know who this is.”

Tynan: That girl’s actually, I don’t think she even knows it, she was basically the reason I got into pick-up.

Maneesh: So, you went from being awkward to being not awkward and people thought you were always not awkward.

Tynan: Yeah. But I think, one of the interesting things about pick-up is it gets this bad, a bad rap for a lot of reasons, some of which, not so much just five but one of them is because of routines. What you do, is you kind of memorize these little stories, especially openers. And, if you’re going out at night you may just open, you know, your first thing you would say to a girl might be the same for every single girl. And, so like you know, people don’t like that because it seems like mechanical or whatever. But one of the interesting things is you learn a lot of these routines and your brain starts to see the pattern, like the sort of arch that they have to take and the arch is generally speaking like, you start off, you kind of build up the story, you had the high point and then you drop off a little bit to kind of rap it up but you never go back down here, right? So you go, “Oh, stop here and then you jump with your next story.” And, routines are sort of training wheels, like nobody is actually good at pick-up, uses them all the time, right? Maybe an opener just because it doesn’t really matter at the first time what you say is but what you do is you sort of engrave it in your head and you sort of subconsciously understand how to tell a story in a way that follows an art that’s interesting and just doesn’t get boring, doesn’t go off too many [attentions].

Maneesh: What I’ve noticed with pick-up and with anything really is that people always focus on these tactics, they focus on like the easy jumping into process, something that’s like, A, you know, six steps to doing whatever but when you start focusing on it, the experts aren’t focusing on tactics, they’re focusing on strategy, and strategy is much, much deeper than tactics and so like, when I used to try to do pick-up a lot or when I was doing, even with blogging or with web design or anything programming, you start off just like, following the steps but when you start to assimilate it that’s when it really gets powerful, like that’s when it really starts to get deep. Have you noticed that with other industries as well like, with programming or with anything really?

Tynan: I don’t know if I have, but I think it’s mostly because I just have this weird tendency to not try to figure out how everyone else is doing it, like, even you know, Todd and I [are working] on this big programming projects right now. And even as I look at my code, I’m like, you know, I’ve seen other people’s code and it doesn’t really look anything like what mine looks like. And like I know I’m doing things different, I don’t know if it’s better or worse, probably worse or maybe better in some ways worse I think but yeah, pickup is one of the very few times where I was like just so hopeless, I was like, alright I’ll do whatever you people say, like, you know, I didn’t even try to figure it out myself.

Maneesh: You just kept doing it until you pushed through, until it worked? …[you are] with the masters.

Tynan: Yeah. I mean, that had a lot to do with, and really like, what I learned from those guys, of course I learned tons of, you know, tactic strategy but you know, it was the attitude they had like, when I was in Austin that’s where I used to live when I got into to this, you know, we’d all go out together, like 10 of us, we’d go to this club and we basically like make this one like huddle, like little school of fish, like all 10 of us like facing inwards like, “Alright, I’m going to go talk to her.” They’d like, “Okay. Well, alright, good luck. What opener are you going to use?” like, “Oh, I don’t know. Let me think about that” and you kind of think you’d like, “Alright I’m going to go do it. Oh, she’s talking to a guy. No, I can’t do it, okay” and like the next [they’re] like, “I’m going to go talk to her.” It’s like disaster, we’re like, you know, huddle of dudes and like maybe you talk to like 2 girls. So, first day, I get to Project Hollywood, I sort of have this like lingering worry I was like, “Oh, maybe these guys aren’t really going to teach me anything. Like, maybe they just wanted the rent money. Like, I didn’t know any of them.” So, I get there, that’s sort of like in my head, I meet Mystery and he’s like, “Oh. Well, I just came back from a club and hey let’s go out.” So, he takes me out, “Oh, my God. I’m going out with Mystery, let’s do this thing”, walk into a club, he’s instantly talking to a girl and I’m standing there like by myself like, “Oh, I guess this is what we do here, we just instantly go talk to girls, we don’t dick around and talk about it forever.” And so, you know, it’s like that sort of the attitude that I learned from them.

Maneesh: Jump in, do what you got to do, don’t worry about planning, just fucking do it. The worse that happens is they say no.

Tynan: Exactly. And that’s really just one area, were like there’s all this sort of like mindsets they had which is really what I learned most.

Maneesh: And, one thing you mentioned to me which I’ve been feeling a little bit with myself too was like that recently you would try, you were thinking about talking to a girl and you just got a little, the jitters, right? And I felt the same thing, I went to a bar in San Francisco and this is, granted I’m going to give myself a little credit I just spent a month in the wild only, with literally only dudes. So, after Berlin, I came back to this wild and I go, and someone’s like, “Yo, why aren’t you talking to these girls?” I’m like, “I don’t know. Why am I not talking to those girls.” and he’s like, she’s like, “Go talk to them.” Like, alright, and I walk over there, I started to have my conversation and suddenly I start to shake. And I’m like, “This doesn’t happen to me, what is going on?” And I’m like, this is one of those perfect examples of use it or lose it like, you have to keep doing it but I also like that when you start jumping back into it [when it come back].

Tynan: It does yeah.

Maneesh: So, what other awesome stories, like what are your top stories?

Tynan: Oh men, top stories?

Maneesh: Like what, for example, when you start talking to girls during pick-up, you’re basically, you’re basically storytelling the situation. Like, I found that a lot of it comes down to you like keeping, you’re trying to keep the presence, like you’re trying to get [keeping] presence, so even though they want to tell stories you got to let them talk and you try to get them to talk but at the end of the day you’re going to be the one like telling the story usually in the conversation, right? Do you have like a set, a set group of stories that you use often or is it just sort of tangential depending on what you’re talking about.

Tynan: Yeah. I mean, I definitely try not to have a set thing. I feel like, a lot of times when people have sort of like a list of stories they want to get down and they start dropping them, it seems like bragging, right? Like, it comes up just not genuine in some way but, you know, at this point I have a lot of stories and they tend to come up like, you know, there’s certain themes like, I feel like anytime I talk to a girl, travel comes up because everybody is, you know, everybody likes travel, everybody has favourite places, you know, I’ve been to a lot of places, for girls like, “Oh, you know, I just went to Japan” and like, “Oh, I got about a million stories about Japan now.” And so, I think that’s how real conversation works, you know. And, the truth is if you’re going out and you’re talking to girls constantly or anybody really you say these stories enough that you kind of you see which parts are interesting, you see which parts aren’t interesting. Once [where] it comes up the time is how I got into pick-up to be honest because I feel like, you know, with a girl I have to tell her, like, she’s going to find out eventually.

Maneesh: Is it the first jump?

Tynan: That one actually, I do try, I try to get that one out and the RV one out very early because I feel like, if you don’t get the RV out early, it seems like you might be embarrassed about it or something. And then the pick-up one it’s sort of like, like, if they don’t know upfront then they find out, “Oh, was he doing these things on me?” where it’s like, “Look, this is what I came from, this is what I do, ask me questions, I’ll tell you about it.”

Maneesh: Tynan’s like one of the good guys in the space. But the funniest thing was like, when my brother started going out right after Mystery’s TV show came out.

Tynan: Really?

Maneesh: Yeah. [We’d be] like, the weekend after for every single week during it, he told me what would happen is that, people would go up in the club and he’d be listening in and guys will go to girls [in line] straight from the club and good for them whatever they’re using what they got and then another guy would walk up to him always and be like, “Hey men, why are you using that pickup line you learned from the TV show yesterday?” It’s like if you’re not going to try out the line, why are you going to ruin other people’s like using a line…

Tynan: That’s it. There’s a lot of like, a lot of the people will hate pick-up, guys will hate pick-up it comes with this insecurity where it’s like if they admit that it works and it’s an okay thing to do then they’re basically faced with, the only choice that they can possibly make is to do it, right? It’s like, okay this is okay to do this works, either I’m going to be lonely for my life or I’m going to learn this. And so, as a defence mechanism I’ve seen a lot of people who don’t want to accept that, so they have to either make it not work or they have to make it wrong, and you see that a lot.

Maneesh: Yeah. And then, I remember the beginning, like when I first started going out, I’d get so scared and I didn’t…

Tynan: It’s terrifying.

Maneesh: It’s freaking terrifying and then these days I’m like, “Dude, what the, who the fuck cares you’re going to see no, they’re never going to remember you tomorrow unless they do.”

Tynan: Unless they do.

Maneesh: Unless they do, right? So, why, I don’t know why, why do you feel like it’s such, so difficult for us in the beginning to break into it like why are social situations so hard.

Tynan: I’ll tell you Mystery’s theory which could be true, could not be true but it resonates with me I think it may be true and he talks about like, evolutionary biology. How we’re actually meant to be in like small tribes, right? And when you think about, you know, maybe a tribe with 100 people, 50 of them are women maybe 20, 10 are in your age range, some of them are already taken so maybe we’re left at 5 to 10 girls that are potential mates, if you get rejected by one of them, the other ones know, right? And there’s definitely that thing, where like, if somebody says no to something, “Wait, why did they say no?” you know, like, say you introduce me to a girl and you’re like, “Yeah, you know, I can never date this girl and like I’m going to back out, I might be [saying] wrong with her” and even more so with girls because they do seek a lot more approval from their peers with guys tend to be more independent not always usually. And so I think that you know, the way society [advance] is awesome and crazy but I think our emotional wiring’s definitely not caught up. So, I feel like, you know, because it doesn’t make any sense, like, even when I’m scared to go approach a girl, I’m like, okay, why am I sacred? And I can sit there for 10 minutes and not like, I don’t care about getting rejected, how many times have I been rejected, like, thousands, right?

Maneesh: Probably.

Tynan: And never have I taken a [port], like, every time it’s like who cares, like she doesn’t actually know me anyway.

Maneesh: I’m fucking Tynan! There’s a thousand users, only one of them…

Tynan: You know me! You don’t know me. Yeah. So, it’s like, like it’s never even been bad to be rejected but it’s that something of like walking up you’re scared.

Maneesh: It’s that shaking, like that weird…

Tynan: It’s weird.

Maneesh: It’s so weird and I still can’t explain it when it happens to me, like, why, I don’t care about you, why is this happening.

Tynan: And the other thing too is logically you realize like, they’re not rejecting you, they don’t know enough, right? They’re rejecting your approach which is actually awesome because that’s good feedback. And so, it’s actually beneficial to be rejected in a certain sense. Yeah, and that’s why I’m getting back into pickup honestly, I remember there was this, I was in Berkley, got off the train and there was this absolutely gorgeous girl, like the exact type that I’m into, right? Standing there alone, perfect scenario, waiting for a bus that I’ waiting for too, like, that’s a gimme right? It doesn’t get easier than that and I’m looking at her like I should approach this girl, I’m terrified, I’m not going to do it. And like that was like the catalyst, I’m like, “I got to get back into it” it’s that 5 second rule like, you’re just like 3 seconds, come on don’t shit now.

Maneesh: Shit.

Tynan: You have to do it.

Maneesh: You have to do it right away. I don’t know. It’s crazy. It’s crazy situation, one thing I noticed, I went out a few months ago with some guys were just coming back from a pick-up conference, they were speaking at a pick-up conference and we went out to, don’t remember their names, this was in Club der Visionare in Berlin and we were there and they’re like, “Yeah, let’s go out, let’s see what happens.” I’m like, “Let’s go out.” And these guys just come back from a freaking speaking at a pick-up conference I’m assuming they’re going to be the kings of this stuff, right? Spend 15 minutes talking to each other, I’m like just, I look over the right, I’m like, “Hi! Where are you guys from?” And I’m talking to a bunch, a group of girls and I turn back and they’re like, “That was impressive men” I’m like “That was unimpressive guys come on you didn’t back me up.” Like, have you noticed this in the pick-up community that people talk?

Tynan: So common, so common.

Maneesh: What the hell is up with that? Who are the real guys? Like, in your opinion, like, out of the guys who were famous, who were the real guys?

Tynan: Mystery all the real social dynamics guys are legit. I love simple pick-up, I think they’re the only new people who I’ve seen enough of to really like, and like but I think those guys are awesome I think they are making pickup fun again.

Maneesh: Why are we not doing a new simple pick-up of our own?

Tynan: Where about to. What do you think is happening February 1st? Who else, I’m trying to think, I’m not leaving people out, I mean, Neil of course he’s the real deal. Like basically, like most the people I came up with in Hollywood were the real deal. And I think that’s why there were so much innovation happening then like really what’s changed since then, like, I’m not that into the scenes so I don’t know but back then like, people would come up with new amazing insight constantly and I don’t feel like there’s been much and part of it is because to be a coach like those guys are talking about, it doesn’t take much, you should be better than other people and you don’t even need to be sometimes. Like, it’s like football, like most football coaches would get tackled and probably break a hit and be done, you know, I’ve tried a lot of pick-up seminars or workshops we go to the field and I taught them way before I was qualified to do so honestly. But people got good results because all you have to do is push them but it’s okay go talk to this girl, hey go talk to this girl. And if you understand, you know, the strategy in the [redirect] you can teach it in a compelling way to other people but a lot of these people can’t really do it like you see them go out and you know, then they do nothing and I think part of the reason I actually, you know, rose up fairly quickly was, except about all these guys is because I sucked but I was absolutely willing to approach.

Maneesh: Yeah.

Tynan: I remember I meet the guy who [made] fast reduction, I caught him in Boston, you know, we’re in a mall in Copley Square and he’s like, alright let’s do this like great first 2 girls I went up and talked to and he’s like, “Oh, jee, I meet so many guys, none of them actually ever talked to girls.” Yeah. And it’s what it is.

Maneesh: What about day time versus night time pick-up in your opinion?

Tynan: I mean, there’s a positives and negatives to both, I don’t drink so I like day time, I prefer day time like, when a girl’s drunk I’m pretty much, instantly, not interested.

Maneesh: Yeah.

Tynan: Same as smoking, there tends to be more smoking girls at night. The cool thing about day time is that you get a lot of credit for the approach, right? Like, girls know it’s hard to approach them. But at night they figure you’re drunk and that’s why you did it, so you get like no credit. But, you know, I think in the day you go up to a girl like, with some confidence and like, not act weird and creepy, and she’s like, “Wow!” Like, the student knows what, you know, like, she knows it’s hard and she knows that you’ve done it and you’ve done it [recent lost] so you get credit for that.

Maneesh: They also don’t expect it and they’re just like, I think defences are down, they are not wearing make up all the time, you can tell they’re a good coke based on what’s in the shopping cart.

Tynan: My buddy, the one who I introduced to you today, Rockman, he used to do, I never went by, I wished I had, he used to do these epic pick-up dates. He’s like hardcore, probably more hardcore than like Mystery and this guy would go out on Saturdays, every Saturday with his buddies and he would have clipboards and they would just sit in the back and watch and he would have to approach a hundred women with like 25 different lines women each.

Maneesh: A hundred women, how is that even possible?

Tynan: Like, he would just do it! And he would just, I’m not sure about the numbers, but I’m pretty sure it was a hundred, I’m fairly sure it was and he would basically have his friend watch him from the back of the clipboard watching the effects of each pick-up and doing metrics on it and each week they would like push it forward straight up.

Maneesh: That’s what Mystery did. That’s how he got good.

Tynan: It’s like basically doing it’s like Google Analytics for pick-up.

Maneesh: All that guys friend have him watch you. So I think that that is freaking, it’s an interesting situation, like pick-up is such a strange world.

Tynan: It is a very strange world.

Maneesh: It’s a very strange world. I don’t know what is happening with the industry these days. Do you know where it’s going? Is it just…

Tynan: I mean, I don’t follow it at all, like I have a somewhat pessimist [to fuel] that I feel like, you know, guys who are bad at women are vulnerable, like I remember back when I was there, kind of there again now, you know, like, it’s the same sort of thing where it’s like you need the help and the people who get into pick-up are the guys who are willing to admit they need help, which is like you’re really making yourself very vulnerable and I think a lot of people are taking advantage of it. You know, on one hand, they probably are offering some benefit to the guys because like, really just having someone to push you is beneficial and, you know, like, they are probably not teaching these guys anything they don’t already know but sometimes hearing it from someone you perceive as an authority is helpful but I don’t feel like things are really getting pushed forward. I think a lot of people are exaggerating how good they are.

Maneesh: Yeah.

Tynan: You know, because it’s a marketing tool.

Maneesh: It’s very easy to do that.

Tynan: Like, I’ve done that too. Like, maybe not intentionally I try not to but of course, you know, it’s part of it.

Maneesh: And like when I went out with these guys who are talking about coming back from conferences like, I basically, I’d opened the set, I saw this girl and she just started talking and she was just so drunk and I was like, “Pfft! Peace!” and I walk away and the guy swings in and he starts talking around like, and even then he couldn’t pull it off, I’m like, this is just embarrassing men, she’s literally like shit face drunk, this is like not impressive what are you doing?

Tynan: Yeah. And a lot of these guys too. Like, you know there were certain people who were trying to post up big numbers because they knew that if they told students that they’d be impressed and you’d see these girls they’d workout with and they’re like not girls the guys are actually interested in. You know, there’s like, you know, kind of terrifying girls in some situations and so it’s like.

Maneesh: It’s like bringing in quantity of traffic versus quality of traffic.

Tynan: Exactly.

Maneesh: Do you want to email subscribe or do you want to read it? [Click] through, you know what I mean? Like, some people are actually going to be useful in here. I don’t know.

Tynan: And these people are cross spectrum like there’s definitely people like simple pick-up I love those guys, you know. I think they’re cool about it, they’re genuine, they’re good at what they do and they’re making it fun and I think that’s an aspect that is been overlooked, it’s how much fun it actually can be. Like even, you know, I haven’t been really doing it for a long time I watch the videos and it’s like, “Oh yeah, you get into all these crazy, like interesting scenarios with new people like it really is a fun adventure.” So yeah, there’s some people doing cool in this stuff.

Maneesh: That’s actually the coolest part on pick-up is like you meet, first of all, cool people who are doing crazy shit and then just the night goes in a fun way, progresses and you never know what’s going to happen at the end of the night. Yeah. So, anyway, what else is going on in your life Tynan?

Tynan: What’s going on, programming, doing a lot of work these days which I’m psyched about, I mean, I was just on this cruise for 2 weeks and literally probably averaged 10 to 14 hours of work every day but just really loving it, you know, you live in San Francisco and I feel like you can’t live there for more than a year without starting to start-up it’s just like the atmosphere there, I feel like it’s this gold rush, it’s time to do it.

Maneesh: It’s been a gold rush for like 10 years.

Tynan: It has but…

Maneesh: Keeps [failing], keeps coming back.

Tynan: But I also feel like right, I mean, I’m an optimistic to in most scenarios, I think maybe I always think it’s perfect time but you know, like the first dot com boom, it seem like everybody was trying their own thing, there was no real pattern for how it worked and some people are successful somewhere but I feel like now there is sort of this like generally accepted like good way to do things, not everything but for certain things there’s you know, start with minimum viable product, put it out, get mentors, you know, people are doing fundraising which I’m not really interested in but I don’t know I feel like it’s just an awesome time to be doing it. It’s fun.

Maneesh: It is interesting. It all happens in awesome time. Anyway, Tynan, I think that, that is an interesting interview or probably in a long time but we have plenty more to talk about when I get to San Francisco in a couple of weeks. We should do a few more of these shows.

Tynan: For sure.

Maneesh: Guys, check out Tynan’s blog at tynan.com. Email him if you want, he’s pretty responsive.

Tynan: I’m getting in trouble now.

Maneesh: Yeah. He’s a nice guy usually. Anyway, thanks a lot guys. Tune in next week. Take care.

Don’t forget to subscribe to this show on iTunes.

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A Summary Of This Episode

0:27 – Meet Tynan
1:05 – How to book a private jet for free
2:45 – Knowing the cheap hubs
4:05 – Catacomb earrings
14:00 – Life in an RV
16:39 – How to cope with peer pressure against your lifestyle
18:06 – The entrepreneurial / independent spirit
20:29 – 51% theory
21:40 – Monetizing
22:18 – What is Tynan wearing these days
23:37 – Tynan Forever
24:39 – Taser Karaoke
27:04 – Pickup Art
36:57 – Why is it so hard to get started picking up?
39:58 – Who are the real pickup artists?
43:33 – The state of the pickup industry

{ 7 comments… }

Bob Harper January 14, 2014 at 4:44 pm

Where can I find Jet Sweep and see if they have any deals on private jets? Thanks!

Reply

Bob Harper January 14, 2014 at 4:51 pm

I figured out that it was Jet Suite.

Reply

Bryan April 21, 2012 at 12:11 pm

Tynan is awesome. I admire both you guys; not surprised to see you’re friends.

Reply

mark e April 13, 2012 at 5:00 pm

This is by far my favorite Hack The System podcast yet! I’ve been following Tynan for a couple of years and love the crazy experiences he writes about. This is my first time hearing his voice, though. Wow, something about the tone, rhythm, and delivery of his words reminds me a lot of Tim Ferriss. That surprised me. As for future episodes with Tynan, YES please!

Reply

Martijn Reintjes April 12, 2012 at 10:26 am

Nice little talk! And really cool stories, especially the story about the catacombs! I love doing weird (less legal) stuff myself, just to see what would happen.

Reply

Dave Brett April 11, 2012 at 7:56 pm

Great interview with Tynan.

Dave

Reply

Dilanka April 11, 2012 at 4:52 pm

Nice job Tynan and Maneesh. Fantastic episode!

Dilanka

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