Masculinity Expert: Why Modern Men Struggle To Attract High-Quality Women | @Kyle_Froonjian

Kyle Froonjian 0:00 How many times have you been near an attractive girl that you would love to have in your life and you don't even say hi because you're worried about she's gonna reject me, she's out of my league? Like, she's out of your league for what? She's out of your league to say hi in passing? On my 24th birthday, my girlfriend of five years, from 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, shows up at my apartment crying, telling me she's going with this other dude. I'm devastated. Heartbreak and relationships ending, they could either be the sob story that puts you down a lane to toxicity and drugs and bad experiences, or it could be a massive opportunity to do some reflection, to sit in the pain, to heal from it properly.

Calum Johnson 0:40 For someone right now that they're at the point where they're like, "Okay, I just wanna start taking massive action. Like, I'm tired of feeling, like, hopeless or jaded-

Kyle Froonjian 0:49 Yeah

Calum Johnson 0:49 ... in dating."

Kyle Froonjian 0:50 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 0:50 What would you tell them?

Kyle Froonjian 0:51 I, I think one of the easiest, most practical steps I've ever given to guys is that-

Calum Johnson 0:57 Before we get into the show, I just wanted to say a huge thank you. We just reached 100,000 subscribers on the channel. It is so, so, so surreal to me that we hit this number. I started this podcast two and a half years ago in my little sister's bedroom, recording it on a Mac webcam. So to be where we are, to get all the messages of support, the likes, the comments, the people that DM me, it means so, so much. So thank you, and onto the show.

Calum Johnson 1:26 You told me that in the last three weeks you've added over 600,000 followers to your Instagram.

Kyle Froonjian 1:31 That's correct, bro. Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:32 Which is crazy.

Kyle Froonjian 1:33 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:33 Crazy.

Kyle Froonjian 1:33 I went from 175 to I'm, I'm closing in on 800K at the time of this video. By the time they see it, I don't know. I don't know where we're gonna be at.

Calum Johnson 1:40 Who knows? You could be a million by the time you-

Kyle Froonjian 1:41 That's, that's the goal, man. That's the short-term goal, for sure.

Calum Johnson 1:43 Which is crazy. And so here's where I want it to begin. When you think about the dating market and kind of social dynamics, what is it about you and your message that's resonating with people so much right now?

Kyle Froonjian 1:59 When it comes to, like, men's self-development and pickup and dating, that kind of stuff?

Calum Johnson 2:02 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 2:03 I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of content out there that's in a bunch of d- different directions. It's either these guys that come off very salesy and kind of corny and kind of like gimmicky pickup guys, and then there's also these other dudes in the market I think that are very extremist, or red pill guys, or some people even view them as, like, misogynist or whatever label you wanna put it on. But I think that there's kind of just different extremes if I look at a lot of the content out there, whether it's, you know, because of Andrew Tate creating this ripple effect or just... I mean, I mean, all of these different things, but I feel like my lane is just being the cool, natural, confident, charismatic dude. I try not to be too technical, pickup gamey, salesy, corny guy, and then I'm also not super on the other extreme, and I think I'm, I'm very relatable to a lot of just cool, mature men who wanna improve their lives. Not just dating, honestly, just to become, you know, a high-level dude.

Calum Johnson 3:09 Mm-hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 3:09 So that's, that's kind of, like, what I take pride in, just being, like, that, that kind of guy.

Calum Johnson 3:14 Yeah. No, that, that makes sense. That makes sense. And to be honest, that's the reason that I started watching your content. Like, it didn't have this weird salesy aspect to it, and it wasn't like this kind of we hate women, like-

Kyle Froonjian 3:25 Right. Yeah

Calum Johnson 3:25 ... vibe to it.

Kyle Froonjian 3:26 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 3:27 Um, I'm curious, like, why do you think that that's landing so well right now? Like when you even... 'Cause you've coached thousands of clients-

Kyle Froonjian 3:35 Right

Calum Johnson 3:35 ... all these people. Like, what do they tell you is the reason why?

Kyle Froonjian 3:38 I mean, that's really the feedback I get, is, "I just relate with you. I feel like you have a very real, raw, natural, genuine, authentic vibe and personality that I can relate to."

Calum Johnson 3:48 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 3:49 Because, I mean, I, I'm not anything special. I was just a normal dude growing up. I still feel like I'm just a normal dude, honestly. And I, I didn't get into the business to make money.

Calum Johnson 3:59 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 3:59 I think that's, like, the other part of it. I just genuinely wanted to help people, and that's probably because, like, my dad was my coach growing up, and he passed away at a very young age. And I think just losing him at a young age, internally I lost, like, my best friend and my coach, and part of me always wanted to, I guess, fulfill that side. So I found myself just naturally wanting to coach other people, and I struggled with confidence, communication, dating growing up. I was very antisocial. I was very big into video games and smoking weed, and I was the dude growing up that just thought, like, you either had it or you don't kind of a thing.

Calum Johnson 4:35 Mm-hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 4:35 And so once I dove deeper into these, these concepts, I, I became passionate about it. I made a, I made a big transformation, and then I was like, "Yo, I wanna help other dudes like this." I found myself naturally wanting to help my friends, and actually learned very quickly that most people [laughs] don't necessarily want the help, uh, unless they're actually seeking the help. So over time, I, I then... And I mean, there's a long story. We could get into it. I don't wanna drag out this answer too much, but that's kind of, like, why I started, was I just genuinely wanted to help people. So I, I wasn't in it for the money at first. And then I think building a brand around that concept created a very healthy foundation that a lot of men could just kind of relate to.

Calum Johnson 5:17 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 5:17 And that's kind of, like, what, what took off the channel to begin with.

Calum Johnson 5:20 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 5:21 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 5:21 No, that's great. That's great. You know what? I actually wanna get into your context, and it's interesting actually. When I go on your Instagram and I watch your content-

Kyle Froonjian 5:28 Yeah

Calum Johnson 5:29 ... it's, like, incredibly confident.

Kyle Froonjian 5:30 Mm.

Calum Johnson 5:30 Incredibly charismatic. You're, like, approaching, uh, women, but not even just women. You're just, like, making conversation in the day.

Kyle Froonjian 5:39 Yeah, yeah.

Calum Johnson 5:39 Just being, like, an outgoing, social person. And so you even alluded to it, but I actually don't wanna begin there.

Kyle Froonjian 5:48 Okay.

Calum Johnson 5:48 I wanna take it, whatever it is, 20, 30 years back when you were younger-

Kyle Froonjian 5:52 Right

Calum Johnson 5:52 ... when you were introverted. Can you kind of just describe to me, like, take me back to those-

Kyle Froonjian 5:58 Yeah

Calum Johnson 5:58 ... moments. Like, if I was a fly on the wall when, I don't know, you were, like, 11, 12-

Kyle Froonjian 6:02 Yeah

Calum Johnson 6:02 ... 13 years old, like, what sort of person would I have seen?

Kyle Froonjian 6:05 For sure. So actually growing up, from zero to 12, I was actually pretty confident. I'm, I'm pretty, I'm pretty confident that if my dad didn't die I would've just been, like, a confident jock, honestly. Because I was like on track to be that guy. I was like the, the captain on the sports teams. I was, I was like the main dude on the baseball team and on the basketball team and I, I wasn't like an ugly dude growing up, it's just my dad passed away at 12 years old, and so I didn't know how to handle that. I just kind of closed off from the world when that happened. I didn't go back to the, to the grave after the funeral. I didn't talk to anybody about it. I didn't go to therapy. I was like almost embarrassed about it, honestly. I was, I was embarrassed to go back to school after everybody even knew that he passed away. I was just like thinking, "E- what is everybody gonna think about me, and how they're gonna judge me," and this and that, and it was, it was a tough time for me. So I, I just buried all of that and dove deeper into video games. I wasn't smoking weed yet. I was just playing video games. I, I kind of like escaped from normal reality and I spent all my time building up this character in various different games, whether it was Call of Duty, Halo 3 and really World of Warcraft is where I became absolutely obsessed. I spent, I think, 200 plus days played on the character. I mean, like every 24 hours of the video game played is one day, so I don't even know how much time. I spent, my character had 200 days played plus. And so, yeah, through the teenage years I, I was probably playing video games like somewhere between 12 to 16 hours a day. I would sleep the first half of school through my classes, and then I would just play video games till nighttime, and then when summer came, I was just building up that character. And that was probably from 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, like all throughout my high school years. So I don't really have too many memories. Like I stopped playing sports after freshman year. When my dad died, I stopped playing baseball, 'cause he was my coach. I stopped playing basketball, and I really just went into video game mode. And so, yeah, I mean, in high school, I had girls that were into me too. That's the thing. I wasn't like a hideous dude. I remember girls that were showing me interest, and I had my video game friends, and I was very confident inside the video games. I just wasn't confident socially, and I think that's because of losing my, my father figure. It kind of taught me instinctively to not put myself out there anymore, because the things that I really loved or got close to me were painfully taken away from me. And so I kind of just stopped doing that. But yeah, throughout high school, I mean, there was definitely opportunity, man. There was, there was a girl that was very into me. I had a girl that was down to go to the high school prom with me. I was just so afraid. I didn't even ask her, and I just kind of like avoided the situation, and I didn't wanna go to the dance by myself, to show up there alone while all my friends would be looking at me, and so I literally just stayed home. Stayed home [laughs] playing video games for the high school prom. And that, that level of anti-socialness just continued throughout college. I commuted to college. I smoked a ... Then I started smoking a lot of weed, and that became like my new thing. I was always ... If I found something I liked, I would always just go all in on the thing, whether it was, initially it was basketball, then it was video games, then it was weed and, and later on in my journey we'll get into other stuff. But that's, that's where it took me. And yeah, same, same setup in college, man. It was like there was girls that were into me in my classes, showing me attention, and I would deliberately show up to class late, high. I would show up about three to four minutes late. Not beyond five minutes, 'cause then you actually get marked late, but if I ... I figured out if I could show up two, three, four minutes late, class would already start. I wouldn't have to sit in the hallway and socialize with anyone. I could just park the car, walk into class, sit down, head down, go through class, and then as soon as it's done, just get back into the car, drive home and, and that was like my college experience-

Calum Johnson 9:58 Mm

Kyle Froonjian 9:58 ... for a lot of it. So [sighs] I mean, I missed out on a lot of opportunities, honestly. Um, because my first year in college, I actually was in a c- a coed dorm, and I found myself escaping those opportunities too. I would drive home, stay back at my mom's house for the weekends and, and really just avoided all of that uncomfortable situations that could have actually led to potential growth, could have led to a dating life, could have led to building more confidence, making more friends, improving my communication. Really just avoided all of those potential uncomfortable situations.

Calum Johnson 10:30 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 10:30 And when you never put into those things and you just run away from them, obviously your confidence goes down. Obviously you don't grow. And I just, I didn't prioritize my own self-development. I prioritized a video game character's self-development-

Calum Johnson 10:45 Mm

Kyle Froonjian 10:45 ... throughout my teenage and college years. And so fast-forward a little bit. Well, actually, you, any questions-

Calum Johnson 10:52 Yeah

Kyle Froonjian 10:52 ... or thoughts on that?

Calum Johnson 10:52 You know, you know where I wanna go, you said that your dad was like your coach.

Kyle Froonjian 10:57 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 10:58 And so just explain to us like the dynamic. Like why, why do you even say that, like he was like your coach?

Kyle Froonjian 11:05 Well, he actually was the head coach of all of my baseball teams, all of my basketball teams. So I would ... And, and my soccer teams. I would play sports year-round growing up with those three sports, and he was always the coach, and I was always like the star player on the team.

Calum Johnson 11:20 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 11:20 And so we would always train outside of, outside of like games, just one-on-one. He built a basketball court in the backyard. He would practice with me, all of that stuff, and he would always ... He was like my best friend and my coach, right? And I feel like that kind of role I've kind of assumed in my own teaching, I feel like. I feel like a lot of the clients would feel very close to me on like a friend level, but at the same time I still have an authoritative position in the, in the teaching.

Calum Johnson 11:49 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 11:50 Which I think is a great place to actually be in as a mentor or a coach, but that's what I meant by my dad was like the, the coach and, and the best friend of, of me a- growing up.

Calum Johnson 12:01 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 12:01 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 12:02 You know, I can even tell the way that you speak about him, there's like a, there's like a deep admiration and love there. What was it that you admired?

Kyle Froonjian 12:11 Yeah. So [sighs] it's interesting, because in a lot of ways he was not a- the ideal father. Like, he actually was an alcoholic and a drug addict, and that's actually ultimately why he passed away.

Calum Johnson 12:23 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 12:24 But he would act like nothing was ever a problem with any of that stuff. So from the outside As a kid, I didn't know anything was even going wrong, which actually made his death much more sudden and abrupt from my perspective, 'cause I had no idea what was going on. Lo and behold, he was actually, like, in and out of, um, rehabs and, and halfway houses at, at different points in my, in my childhood. But from, from my perspective growing up, it seemed like everything was great, and there was never a problem, and money was never a problem. Stress or bills or outside things going on was never a problem. He was always in a good mood. M- maybe that was partially due to the alcohol and the drugs. [laughs]

Calum Johnson 13:02 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 13:02 But he was, he was always there to give, show, I guess, show me a good time, make sure I was having fun, make sure I was being taken care of. But at the same time, kind of like pushing me in the things I wanted to do, which weren't healthy things like sports, and, um, we even started working out about a year or two before he passed away, so.

Calum Johnson 13:23 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 13:23 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 13:24 You know, it sounds like it was, like, such a surprise. It's interesting actually, 'cause, um ... Or it's, it's, it's sad because even my, my mom had a similar thing where, like, when her mom passed away, it was complete surprise. Like, she, I think she had cancer. But my mom didn't even know-

Kyle Froonjian 13:40 Mm

Calum Johnson 13:40 ... because she just kept it, like, under wraps until-

Kyle Froonjian 13:42 Yeah

Calum Johnson 13:42 ... it literally happened.

Kyle Froonjian 13:44 Right.

Calum Johnson 13:44 And so I'm curious for you, like, the moment where you even found out, like, how did you even find out?

Kyle Froonjian 13:52 Oh. So he had gotten his third DUI, which I didn't even know what that was or anything. Like, I, I wasn't even informed that he got a DUI. He just didn't come home one night, and we found his car just parked at this field in my hometown. And I remember thinking, "The car is there, but, like, where, where's Dad?" My, and my mom was like, "He's not coming home tonight," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Lo and behold, he did get his third DUI. After the third DUI, I guess they put you in jail, and he got sentenced to go to a halfway house, so he stopped coming back to the house. And then at some point while he was in the halfway house, he ended up, like, overdosing/like drinking himself to death.

Calum Johnson 14:30 Wow.

Kyle Froonjian 14:31 And so really what happened, the way that I got informed was just my mom sat me down. She brought me and my sister to the stairwell in, in our, in our old house, and she literally was just, she just told me, like, "Daddy died last night." And I just remember I ran to the beanbag in the living room and just dove into the beanbag headfirst and was just bawling my eyes out. My sister, she actually didn't cry. She ... I think we both kinda just buried the pain in, in different ways, but she never really cried about it publicly. She didn't cry at the funeral, which was interesting in, in itself, but I ... I mean, I was devastated. I was crying every single day. There was a point probably three to six months after the fact where I remember, I still remember thinking to myself, "Will, will there ever be a day where I can think about this and not be crying?" And it probably took almost a year.

Calum Johnson 15:22 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 15:23 And I think that's also why I buried all of the pain.

Calum Johnson 15:27 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 15:27 And I stopped, like, thinking about and stop wanting to go to the, the graveyard and not go to therapy around all of that. I thought all that shit was, like, stupid because of the fact that I think it caused such a deep wound internally for me, that as a 12-year-old boy, all I'm thinking is, "I wanna get away from this pain."

Calum Johnson 15:43 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 15:43 And what does that mean? I mean, for me, it's like I don't wanna go back to the graveyard or talk about this stuff 'cause I associate those things with the pain.

Calum Johnson 15:49 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 15:49 Right? And so that's ultimately how I, how I processed it, which, I mean, actually turned me into a dismissive avoidant attachment style, [laughs] which is a whole nother story when it comes to long-term dating, but that's kind of like ... That's how all that was developed. Yeah.

Calum Johnson 16:06 Yeah. That's interesting. It's like the, the blueprint that you built in order to deal with the pain of what happened-

Kyle Froonjian 16:11 Yeah, yeah

Calum Johnson 16:11 ... was to avoid it-

Kyle Froonjian 16:13 Yeah

Calum Johnson 16:13 ... was to escape.

Kyle Froonjian 16:13 Because I couldn't for a very long time, and then over time, I kind of had to, like, bury it more and more and more as a means of, like, that was kinda the only way. I didn't, I just didn't have guidance around any other way to kinda process the pain.

Calum Johnson 16:24 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 16:25 And my mom was always very ... I mean, she's an amazing woman, but she always gave me the freedom to do what I want. And so she wasn't the type to force me into therapy. She wasn't the type to make me go talk to somebody about any of that stuff. She's kinda like, "What do you wanna do about it?" And obviously, I, I didn't wanna go back to the grave. I didn't wanna do any of that stuff, so.

Calum Johnson 16:43 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 16:43 Yeah, I don't know if that was necessarily the best parenting for me, but, you know, God bless her for giving me the freedom to make my own decisions. [laughs]

Calum Johnson 16:51 Yeah. You know, it's, it's, it's interesting how, like, habits develop because I even think about what you mentioned, which I think is incredibly relatable, which is, like, you're in school. Uh, you mentioned the thing with, like, the high school prom.

Kyle Froonjian 17:04 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 17:04 And, like, you just avoided it.

Kyle Froonjian 17:06 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 17:06 And then even when you're, like, in your first few years of college, it's like you had good opportunities. You had girls or, like, people that were interested in getting to know you.

Kyle Froonjian 17:14 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 17:14 And you just avoided it, like, "I'm not gonna, I'm just gonna bury myself in the game."

Kyle Froonjian 17:19 Yep.

Calum Johnson 17:19 And I'm assuming that, like, the actual beginnings of that was, like, that's the blueprint of how you avoided dealing with things. It's like, "I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna peace out."

Kyle Froonjian 17:29 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 17:30 Like, "I'm just out of here."

Kyle Froonjian 17:30 Yeah. It's a recurring theme throughout my, my childhood into my high school into my college years for sure.

Calum Johnson 17:36 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 17:37 It's just avoiding. I think a lot of people do that, too, whether it's consciously or not. Like, I wasn't consciously ... In those moments, I didn't think, "Oh, here's an opportunity for growth. Here's an opportunity for me to do this. Maybe I should go do this." I was very unconscious throughout my high school and college years, and obviously even before that. So from my perspective, at those times, if you would've asked me, I would just say, "Nah, those, that's not for me," or I g- "I'd rather do this thing," or, "This thing's more fun."

Calum Johnson 18:04 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 18:05 I wasn't even thinking like, "No, it's because I'm unconfident, and I'm choosing not to grow through this," and yeah, very unconscious, I guess, with, with that mentality at the time. And I think that's how a lot of people are when it comes to self-development and growth mindset and all that stuff.

Calum Johnson 18:20 Yeah. I think you're completely correct.

Kyle Froonjian 18:22 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 18:22 I think, I don't know the percentages, but I think, like, 90% of people are completely unaware of why they-

Kyle Froonjian 18:27 Right

Calum Johnson 18:27 ... why their behavior is the way it is.

Kyle Froonjian 18:29 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 18:30 Um, but usually there's an origin in your childhood. Is what-

Kyle Froonjian 18:34 For sure

Calum Johnson 18:35 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 18:35 With every dude that I help, a- and even women, actually I have female clients coming in now too, which is, which is cool to see that the growth has, and the reach is so big now that even like women are actually joining my programs. But with pretty much everybody, they experience to some extent something going on in their upbringing or their parenting or their childhood or in school that had negative impacts on them. And based on those things, it kinda shaped them into going from childhood into young adulthood, and that's how they end up closing off or having negative self-talk or just avoiding opportunities, uh, avoiding situations, but that really are those potential opportunities. The people that grew up with great upbringings, they were the captain of the sports team, they had a healthy family at home, very encouraging parents that kind of pushed them through those things, or if something tough happened, the parents were kind of there to reframe their brain. Those people just had the experiences that they needed to, to, to have the, the lane paved to, to be successful. And that's really all it is. I think everybody has the opportunities growing up, it's just certain, certain situations affects certain people differently and, you know, we are a result of those things.

Calum Johnson 19:48 Yeah. No, completely, completely true. I'm curious, what was the...

Calum Johnson 19:53 'Cause I think you're right, I think most people are completely unaware.

Kyle Froonjian 19:55 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 19:56 They're unaware of like why it started or like why they are the way they are. Do you remember, is there a moment, is there a story, is there an experience where like you actually became conscious, you actually became aware of like, "Oh, the reason why I'm like not putting myself out there or like turning up to these things or I'm burying myself in video games for 12 to 16 hours a day, it's linked to this"? What do you-

Kyle Froonjian 20:21 Yeah, so those things were revealed to my conscious in small increments throughout my 20s and, and even deeper parts of it in my 30s.

Calum Johnson 20:29 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 20:30 But I think the very first time any of those things started to become uncovered was probably in my early, early to mid-20s when I started watching YouTube content based around male to female dynamics, confidence, social skills, pickup and dating. And I started looking at all these things and I was like, wow, these are actually concepts and skillsets that you could actually learn to improve yourself. Like up until that point at maybe 24 years old, I had no idea that these were actually skillsets that you could work on. I, I was convinced you either had it or you don't.

Calum Johnson 21:03 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 21:03 I g- I grew up with a, a childhood best friend who was the most confident dude in school. He was like 6'2", tall, dark, handsome. He probably had been with like 50 women just in high school alone.

Calum Johnson 21:15 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 21:16 And to me, you know, I knew him when we were in first grade. We, we didn't do anything differently like growing up, so from my perspective at the time it's like, oh, well, he's just like the good-looking, confident, tall guy that the women want, and I'm just not that guy, so I'm just not that guy.

Calum Johnson 21:30 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 21:31 And so that's, that was my upbringing. That's like the unconscious story that I was just telling myself, right? Like all of these people, they have a story that they're telling themselves, right? And even if some of these people are aware of the fact that they're not going into certain situations, I would still argue that they have a story that's justifying their situation of why they're not gonna be successful. And so [laughs] I guess, um, yeah, growing up with that best friend, Justin is his name, I just had the wrong mindset. I just thought like I couldn't get better with any of these skillsets. You either got it or you don't.

Calum Johnson 22:07 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 22:08 And so, yeah, it wasn't until I was around 24 years old, I started watching this content online, I was like, wow, this is actually a skillset you could work on. And as I started learning more and more about the content, I slowly was then able to tie it back to previous experiences I had of missed opportunities in high school, and this is why I didn't go up to this girl. This is why this girl ignored me. This is why blank thing happened.

Calum Johnson 22:32 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 22:32 Right? So it was starting to open my eyes a lot more to the reasons behind why a lot of things happened in my high school and college years, and that was extremely interesting to me. I c- I dove deeper and deeper and deeper into those things, probably because I had so many years of pain and missed opportunity. And now that I was in my mid-20s, I'm kinda like discovering this new thing, I felt, I just wanted to dive into it a ridiculous amount. I was like obsessed. I just dove down the rabbit hole, probably too far, honestly. But that was the first point that really my awareness started to c- um, develop around social skills, confidence, understanding attraction, understanding male to female dynamics, even just networking and socializing with people in general.

Calum Johnson 23:19 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 23:20 Right? Um, and so that was the, that was probably the first moment. And then as I go, went from 24 all the way up to 34 is where I'm at right now, I would say there was just different incremental chapters that have slowly brought even more awareness to, to each, I guess like phase.

Calum Johnson 23:38 Yeah. You know what? The thing that you mentioned is actually so important, which is like I think for a lot of us growing up, and it's even built through the media, it's like in school, especially when it comes to like women and dating and stuff-

Kyle Froonjian 23:49 Yeah

Calum Johnson 23:50 ... you either got it or you don't.

Kyle Froonjian 23:52 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 23:52 And the reason I say it can be so detrimental is because if you don't have it, it almost breeds like this hopelessness.

Kyle Froonjian 24:00 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 24:00 And it's like the narrative starts to build. And you see it in the way that people communicate, that like, "Oh, I'm just an introvert," or, "I'm just-"

Kyle Froonjian 24:06 Right

Calum Johnson 24:06 ... like they'll, they'll give themselves-

Kyle Froonjian 24:07 That's what I meant by the story

Calum Johnson 24:08 ... you-

Kyle Froonjian 24:08 That, that's their story

Calum Johnson 24:09 ... certain labels-

Kyle Froonjian 24:10 Yeah

Calum Johnson 24:11 ... of like, "Oh, I'm just this person."

Kyle Froonjian 24:13 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 24:13 And it's like there's no hope for me to change because I'm like, "This is who I am. This is the way I was built-

Kyle Froonjian 24:19 Yeah

Calum Johnson 24:19 ... to be" and it's incorrect. And you know what? We're gonna get into kind of like the practical things and like the transformation that men can make to kind of be the complete, the complete man.

Kyle Froonjian 24:30 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 24:31 But where I wanted to go,

Calum Johnson 24:33 I was reading this on your website You said, "At the age of 24, my first girlfriend left me on my birthday for another guy."

Kyle Froonjian 24:41 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 24:41 [laughs] It's a happy life, isn't it?

Kyle Froonjian 24:44 Yeah, man. I mean, honestly, I don't regret that ever happening 'cause I feel like that kind of shaped me. All of these instances that we're talking about, I wouldn't change any of it at this point because I feel like these are key moments in my development that positively impacted me. So I guess just to get us up to speed from where we were, not going to the high school prom, you know, smoking weed throughout college. Eventually, I reconnected with that childhood best friend after a couple years into college when I was at my lowest antisocial moment, and he was the one who was like, "Dude, like I haven't seen you in like 10 years, but like, bro, like you gotta get it together, man. Like, like what are you doing?"

Calum Johnson 25:25 [laughs]

Kyle Froonjian 25:25 I remember I was probably 20, 20, 21, and he was like, he's like, "Bro, you're wearing... You're at the basketball court wearing like PJs right now. It's like 5:00 PM. Like why are you wearing PJs?"

Calum Johnson 25:35 [laughs]

Kyle Froonjian 25:35 And he, he then gave me a bunch of his hand-me-down clothes, started taking me out. I was, I was going to the gym. That was the only thing I was doing, and so I started hanging around him more. He started bringing me out to more parties, and again, he got all the women, so he was naturally the, the dude that was at the top of the social hierarchy, and he was the dude that was going to all the parties. Everybody was hitting him up, and I think just by going out with him a decent amount, it started to give me new experiences. They were kind of uncomfortable, but I kinda had him there with me, so it wasn't like I was just going out alone. And I think having him there giving, giving me a little bit of encouragement, there was almost like an expectation that I had to do these things with him. And so that was a great starting point to kind of push me more into being a little bit more social. Now, he was smoking a lot of weed. He was drinking a lot, too. He wasn't like this master self-development dude. He was just this naturally confident guy.

Calum Johnson 26:31 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 26:31 Party dude who liked to get with a lot of women. So I did find myself drinking and smoking all the time, but it... Honestly, it was better than doing nothing. It was better than just sitting home lonely, depressed, high, playing video games. So maybe it wasn't a complete transformation, but it was definitely a step in the right direction. And then by going out with him for about six months, ultimately one night we were out, and there was a girl that was out who remembered me from middle school, and she had a crush on me in middle school. But I didn't like her at the time 'cause she actually wasn't that attractive. Fast-forward 10 years later, this girl was actually very hot.

Calum Johnson 27:07 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 27:07 But she still had a crush on me.

Calum Johnson 27:09 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 27:09 But now she was like arguably out of my league.

Calum Johnson 27:11 [laughs]

Kyle Froonjian 27:12 And so I was very nervous. I, I was intimidated, but we ended up hanging out one night at a, a weekend party that my friend threw, and we ended up hooking up that, that weekend. And we hung out every day after that. Like we just dove straight into a... The first night we hung out, we hung out like 28... I think she slept over 28 days in a row. I was like 20, 21 years old. She... Which is crazy to even think about, but she slept over 28 days in a row. Because I was at such a low point, I didn't know anything that was going on. I was like, "Oh my God, this girl fucking likes me, and she's attractive, and we're getting along." And so I just dove headfirst into, pretty much into a relationship. Like that happened in a matter of a couple of weeks. And, and initially everything was great from my perspective. You know, we're hanging out. We're having sex. I'm with this attractive woman that I've never really been... I've, I had been with maybe two or three girls for a couple of minutes on drunken party nights prior to this. So for me, all of this was brand-new experiences. And so I'm having a lot of fun. All these chemicals are being released. We're hanging out a lot more. And I'm actually improving 'cause I'm actually spending time with an attractive woman and, and there's a lot to be learned just from hanging around women ho- honestly. I don't even think that's actually talked about that much in [laughs] men's pickup and dating. Like I think dudes just focus on trying to go out and do cold approach. But like just hanging around women and having female friends is a very big thing that can teach you a lot and, and make you socially... Just give you a higher social IQ, just hanging around women. And so for me, having sex frequently and just hanging around a hot girl was a massive learning experience. And it was all great for the first couple months, and then I think probably after, you know, six to 12 months, we're one year into the relationship, that's kind of when things started to get more rocky. You know, the honeymoon phase kind of wore off. Um, things start to annoy you about your partner. And if you're a dude and you don't have anything going on for you outside of the relationship, and that's all you're doing all the time aside from just weed and video games, man, you're, you're in for a rude awakening, too. That's another thing. I think dudes are trying to find their dream partner, [laughs] but they don't even have their own foundation built up as a man, and that's where I was in this first relationship, was I found a really attractive girl. I didn't have anything going for me that I could bring this woman into. I had no experience. I was kind of like I used the girl to kind of complete me and get me out of this hell un- I guess that I technically was in. And yeah, when you do that over an extended period of time, you're just gonna find honestly that like if you're not leading the woman, if you don't have things going for you, for you, if you don't have things going for you, if you're not on your self-development journey, if you're not building something as a man, oh man, it's, it's, it's very hard to keep the attraction high long term and have a woman who's gonna support you and follow you when you're really not growing or expanding or leading in any particular direction.

Calum Johnson 30:05 Mm-hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 30:06 And so I think over year two, year three of the relationship, things started to get very rocky. We had multiple breaks, um, and then at some point we had this, this toxic cycle that I see a lot of relationships get into, which is like one person wants to break up with the other person. We have space. Then the other person wants them back, and there's just this back and forth power dynamic of I want you. Oh, I don't want you. Then I'm single, and it was like kind of back and forth. And then really ultimately I pushed her away further and further until she started talking to some other dude. And then I realized I couldn't actually get her back. And that's when I was like really weak trying everything I could to get this woman back. Like, I changed my whole lifestyle up to try to get her back. I remember I stopped smoking weed. Not that there's anything wrong with that [laughs] but I, I was doing it out of reaction to try to make her happy, to maybe convince her to come back to me. I stopped smoking weed. I was going to the church that she was going to, hoping that she would run into me at church. Doing all of these things, talking to her friends at the gym, and just being weak as hell, honestly. And ultimately, uh, we met one day on my birthday, 'cause we were kind of still talking and I was thinking, "Damn, this is gonna be my one opportunity. It's gonna be my birthday. We're gonna go out."

Calum Johnson 31:22 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 31:22 "We'll have sex. Everything will be back to like where it needs to be." And she comes to my house crying and bawling her eyes out before she even gets into my apartment or my, my mom's house. I remember, I have a distinct memory of opening the sliding door as she's outside the door and she's already crying. And I'm starting to tear up because I kind of already know what's going on, just the way that she's showing up. And then ultimately she tells me, "I'm, I'm going with this other man, and I'm really sorry, but I've given you so many, so much time and like you never changed," and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think really what it was was just I was just a super weak dude-

Calum Johnson 31:58 Mm

Kyle Froonjian 31:58 ... that had nothing going for me. I had no backbone. I had no confidence, and I was this soggy diaper that was just trying to get her back just so I could be back to baseline by myself. Which ties back into what I was saying before about not having a foundation built up and, and seeking the woman to kind of complete you so you can kind of escape, right? And that's kind of where I was when I was trying to get her back. And we ended up crying. I... That was probably the longest I've cried other than the death of my dad. We cried f- together for like five hours until I had pulsating headache. And then eve- eventually I came to a conclusion that was like, "You actually need to go with this dude. Even though I was begging for you to come back, even if you were to come back to me right now, just knowing that you're kind of in love with this other guy and you're debating between the two of us, I can't even date you seriously right now anyway." So it was, it was kind of a breaking point for me as well, thankfully, for her to g- to go with this other dude. And then that's, I mean, that's really what brought me to that point. So on my 24th birthday, my, my girlfriend of five years, from 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, shows up at my apartment crying, telling me she's going with this other dude. I'm devastated, heartbroken, but at least I accept it.

Calum Johnson 33:13 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 33:14 That's where we were at.

Calum Johnson 33:15 Yeah. You know what? You know what's interesting? I think [coughs] with relationships, I think a lot of the times when people get out of relationships, they'll say that they could like see the writing on the wall, kind of. Like, there's certain moments where it was, it was kind of obvious. Like, the breadcrumbs were there. And even when you were telling the story, even though you were with her for what, like four, five years?

Kyle Froonjian 33:35 Yep.

Calum Johnson 33:35 It seemed like even after the first year, in hindsight, it's kind of like clear that things weren't... Like, the honeymoon period was over. Like, things weren't going the way that they needed to. I'm curious in, in

Calum Johnson 33:48 your mind, reflecting back on it now-

Kyle Froonjian 33:51 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 33:51 ... what is the first moment, story, experience, like place and time, where you almost started to have that feeling of like, "This is actually not right"? Like, it was starting to go wrong.

Kyle Froonjian 34:06 Like I was saying earlier in the show, I think due to the way that I processed the death of my dad, I naturally became a dismissive avoidant attachment style. Which essentially means that if you get triggered by somebody, you naturally want to dismiss and avoid the, the situation. That's what a dismissive avoidant does. They get triggered by some kind of thing, and instead of dealing with it, they wanna get away from the thing.

Calum Johnson 34:32 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 34:32 Right? And so that, that was developed through the death of my dad, but that bleeds off into my relationship and the way that I received love growing up. Because inevitably, you're gonna start arguments with your significant other if you're with them for long enough. Especially if you've never been in a relationship before and you d- have no understanding of how to deal with confrontation in a healthy way, which I had zero experience with. I, I could barely even communicate with my girlfriend. It took me nine months to tell her I loved her, and I had to do it when I was blacked out drunk in the middle of a fight while we were crying. I couldn't communicate for shit.

Calum Johnson 35:09 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 35:09 She, on the other hand, was very, very good at communicating. She, she lived alone. Her, her family lived in Florida. She would talk to her mom for hours a day on the phone. So, I mean, God bless her for slowly tearing down my walls and, and showing me how to communicate more emotionally over the years. But yeah, I think by year two, year three, we started fighting more and more and more in a very toxic, unhealthy way. We, we never had relationship check-ins. We would never sit down and talk about, "Hey, you're doing this thing and it's making me feel this way, and I think it would just be healthy for us moving forward if we get in sync with this topic."

Calum Johnson 35:44 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 35:44 Or, "Hey, I really appreciate the things that you did for me this week," which was like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't think a lot of couples do that shit. I didn't even really utilize that too much in my, in my most recent relationship either. Like, I think we take a lot of the stuff for granted because when you start dating somebody long term, you just have these unwritten codes about like how you guys are gonna behave around each other. And if you don't deliberately go out of your way to sit down, either on a weekly basis or biweekly or monthly to talk about the things that the other person has been doing that made you feel good or bad and to try to get in sync with these things, I mean, dude, over the course of 12 months, 24, 36 months, like shit is gonna start to build up and inevitably implode in the relationship. And so I just didn't do any of that stuff in the, in the first relationship. And so these small little triggers that happened over the first little bit of the relationship that maybe weren't that big of a deal in the first six months, 12 months because everything's very new and the sex and the chemicals are kind of flowing out Year two, year three, those things are just compounding, building up more remorse, more resentment, more, I would even say borderline hatred for these things because we're not communicating about it. I'll just go over to my friend's house, get high, shoot the shit, talk shit on, on my girl about the things that are pissing me off. A- again, I think this is what most normal people, average or below average people do. They just kind of talk shit on the other people, whether it's their relationship or their friend group to other people, and they never face any of this stuff from a healthy non-confrontational position. And so that's what happened in that relationship. I, so I would say year two, year three, year four, there was several different periods where we would have these very loud, crazy fights. Never physical, never even verbally abusive, nothing like that, but just screaming and, and being very loud and, and getting it to a point where it'd have this mini explosion and then we would need a break or we would need time apart, and that happened multiple times throughout the relationship. And as a dismissive avoidant, when you're triggered like that, you actually just want the space. So me getting the space that I wanted actually made me feel better over time.

Calum Johnson 37:57 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 37:57 Right? Like, I could actually go three days, seven days away from my partner, silence, no talking, and that's, in those moments, that's what I would actually feel that I would need [laughs] to, to be able to go back to them at some point.

Calum Johnson 38:10 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 38:10 So depending on your attachment style, whether it's like dismissive avoidant or if you're anxious attachment style, which was what my last girlfriend was in our relationship, they're kind of like the opposite. They need to resolve this, the thing on the spot.

Calum Johnson 38:22 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 38:22 And I need to avoid the thing on the spot. So I mean, that's a whole... We could talk about attachment styles at, at another time in this show if you want, but that, there was multiple times in year two, year three, year four where I was just like, "I can't be in this relationship anymore. The grass is greener on the single side."

Calum Johnson 38:39 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 38:40 And so, yeah, that, that was constantly happening.

Calum Johnson 38:42 Yeah. You know, I think, I think you're right. I think there's so many people in their relationships, and maybe they've, it's like good in their mind, but, um, they go through these cycles which are like... And they're just escalating, right? Like, each time it's getting a bit more. The distance, the break is a bit longer.

Kyle Froonjian 38:58 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 38:58 It's like you're just gradually moving apart. I remember someone, someone said this. They said after any sort of like conflict or disagreement in a relationship, you either recover from it and get 1% stronger-

Kyle Froonjian 39:12 Yeah

Calum Johnson 39:13 ... or 1% weaker.

Kyle Froonjian 39:14 100%.

Calum Johnson 39:15 And it's like over time it's like for most people it's probably y- it's just slowly chipping away-

Kyle Froonjian 39:20 Yeah

Calum Johnson 39:21 ... because it's not dealt with in the right way.

Kyle Froonjian 39:22 Exactly, so it's literally a ticking time bomb about how much you could, how long you could hold out and just keep taking these hits.

Calum Johnson 39:30 Mm-hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 39:31 Because it's n- you're never fixing the problem, when in reality, like you need to be able to sit down and have these con- these conversations from the jump. Like it, the sooner you can have the uncomfortable conversations, or the moment that there's conflict you could actually sit down from an, a, a, a non-confrontational place to just say, "Hey, look, this is going on and I, I really like you," or, "I love you and I care about the relationship, and I think it's very important that we get in sync about this thing."

Calum Johnson 40:01 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 40:02 You need to ha- you need to be able to have that talk, and that's not just with your, with your girlfriend or your wife. That's with... I, I see this happening more and more and more, uh, over the last year in my own business with my employees, with my coaches, with, uh, business partners, with girls I've dated, with my last girlfriend. Like, that is an absolute essential skill set I think every man needs to get really good at, is understanding his own boundaries, his own morals, what's best for him. And the moment that something is getting thrown at him, whether it's in his, his love life or in his business or in his social circle, whatever it is, you need to be able to address those, those instances and sit down and have that uncomfortable conversation with these people in a way that's not attacking them, and also in a way where you don't get triggered and explode and emotionally overreact at the person either. Because, uh, it could go in either way, I think. Dudes will be so passive that they never talk about the thing ever.

Calum Johnson 40:59 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 40:59 And it just kinda eats away at them. A- or maybe they'll go talk shit about the person to their friends, or they'll, they'll use some other outlet to kind of like talk about it.

Calum Johnson 41:08 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 41:08 Or maybe they don't talk about it with anybody and it's really just eating them up inside until they just can't take it anymore. Or the opposite, which is like some of these like overly aggressive, whether it's like a macho dude or it's just kind of like a verbally abusive dude, whatever it is. They'll, the moment that that thing happens, they just go over the top. They emotionally overreact, too.

Calum Johnson 41:26 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 41:27 And then the other person will typically kind of like be more passive because of how over the top they were, but that still doesn't create a healthy dynamic. In, in both scenarios, whether you're s- too passive or you're over the top emotionally reactive and kind of dominating the situation, I think neither creates a, a healthy dynamic between either your, your, your lover or your friend or your employee. Like, I just don't think there's clear communication where there's respect in place.

Calum Johnson 41:55 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 41:56 Right? You, one scenario could create fear in the other person, which could get them to obey, but I don't think that that's ideal.

Calum Johnson 42:02 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 42:02 I, I want respect and admiration from my employees and from my, my partner.

Calum Johnson 42:07 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 42:07 And even from my friends. Like, I want, I want those things. I think that's healthy. That means I'm, I'm on the right track if they admire the qualities that I have, they respect me, they're encouraging. That they don't low-key hate me and wanna see me fail because of these other things that we're not addressing. Like, yeah, that's, that's definitely not healthy. It's, and it's not easy either. I've struggled with these concepts from my first relationship to even in my last relationship. So I've had years in multiple relationships and in my business with my employees and my coaches of being triggered, emotionally overreacting, or not talking about something, or not addressing the thing early on enough, and then it just builds up, and then it goes in one of two directions.

Calum Johnson 42:46 Yeah. You know, I actually think that's so good, and I, and I wanna make sure people key in on it, 'cause even as I was listening to you I was making a mental note of like- Where in my life... Because I think you, you subtly know when something kind of triggered you.

Kyle Froonjian 43:01 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 43:01 It can be like the smallest thing. You're like, "The way that they just said that, like it kinda..."

Kyle Froonjian 43:06 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 43:06 It's like a bit more of just like I was just a little bit annoyed. Like, it's a bit more of a thing.

Kyle Froonjian 43:11 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 43:11 But I think a lot of the times we just like dismiss it and you start feeling good, I don't know, maybe like six hours later, and you're like-

Kyle Froonjian 43:16 Yeah

Calum Johnson 43:17 ... "Oh, it's cool," and you just move past it.

Kyle Froonjian 43:19 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 43:19 But you're, what you're setting into motion is for that relationship to just slowly degrade, 'cause it's still in your mind.

Kyle Froonjian 43:26 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 43:27 And so I think that that's actually really good.

Kyle Froonjian 43:31 And people don't wanna have that talk. They don't wanna have, they don't want to address the situation because it's a small thing that's a tolerable thing, and-

Calum Johnson 43:38 Until it's not

Kyle Froonjian 43:39 ... they're, they're right in a sense that that one instance, that one 1% moment in time is a tolerable thing.

Calum Johnson 43:47 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 43:47 However, you're setting the foundation for that to reoccur-

Calum Johnson 43:53 Mm

Kyle Froonjian 43:53 ... over and over and over again. So although it may be tolerable for that one time, and you're like, "I don't wanna make a big deal about it," what you're really saying is like, "I'll allow this to continuously happen." And 1% isn't a big deal, but when that stacks up 10 different instances, now the 10% becomes a really big deal, and now it's so much harder to even have the conversation too because you have so much resentment and hatred and emotional ties into the situation. That's why I said you gotta be able to put your foot down the moment the thing happens.

Calum Johnson 44:21 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 44:22 Because it's only a 1% thing then. Now it's easy to actually have a conversation around. There's no real buildup or anything like that. But if you, if you did this thing 20 times, by the 20th time, I'm gonna be like, "This motherfucker, man. Like, I can't even take it."

Calum Johnson 44:33 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 44:33 And then when we go to have the talk, I can't stay calm around the whole thing.

Calum Johnson 44:37 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 44:37 I have 20 different instances of that's like triggering me.

Calum Johnson 44:40 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 44:41 So it, it's a compounding effect, and it's the same thing in the relationship too. And this is why I tell a lot of dudes that, like you need to go out and get dating experience because the first time you go on a date, the first girl you start dating for those first couple months, if you've never made the mistakes, if you've never been through the situations, it's very hard to lead and set proper foundations and expectations of what you're gonna be able to tolerate and what you can't tolerate, or what's gonna end up blowing up three, six, 12 months down the road, like, if you've never been there before.

Calum Johnson 45:12 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 45:12 And that's what happened in my first relationship. I had no idea. Lo and behold, two years, three years, five years into a relationship, it's very hard to then correct the thing when there's been so much time and experiences of something going on a certain way.

Calum Johnson 45:26 Yeah. No, that's so, that's so important. It's so good. Okay, here's where I wanna go, because I wanna, I wanna help that, that

Calum Johnson 45:34 man that's watching that is at kind of like that rock bottom level-

Kyle Froonjian 45:38 Mm

Calum Johnson 45:38 ... of, of confidence. Maybe it's, uh, a breakup and kind of-

Kyle Froonjian 45:42 [sighs]

Calum Johnson 45:42 ... the way it was for you. But just something has happened in their life, and they kinda just, they just feel like this is just not-

Kyle Froonjian 45:51 Yeah

Calum Johnson 45:51 ... going my way. And maybe, like, the narrative is building on top of it. And they're like, "Well, this is just what it is for me."

Kyle Froonjian 45:57 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 45:58 And so I'm curious, like, 24, 25, you get out of that relationship. It's a heartbreak. Even when you describe, like, your, your... You meet with your girlfriend on your birthday, and it's like... Or your ex-girlfriend, I should say.

Kyle Froonjian 46:13 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 46:13 And five hours crying. Like, it sounds traumatic.

Kyle Froonjian 46:16 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 46:18 What does Kyle do after that? Like, where do you go from there? Like, what happens next?

Kyle Froonjian 46:24 I spent about a, a month literally just crying [clears throat] and being home. [laughs] So I, I didn't, like, do anything first, which actually is, is probably a good thing too. You gotta go through the pain and process the pain and heal from the pain. You don't just... Like, if you go through a breakup, you don't just go out party and get drunk and try to start dating instantly, because it's like then you're just trying to fill a void with drugs, alcohol, and lust. So I actually... I mean, thankfully, I was in crippling pain to the point where I actually had to just sit home and cry, and I didn't wanna do anything. I didn't wanna talk to any other women without comparing them to my ex. I, I felt pretty hopeless, uh, you know, damn near in the gutter mentally because I had no real confidence or communication skills. I was just starting to realize that these skills were things you could work on. This was right around the same time. And so I started studying this stuff religiously. I, I realized that, hey, these are skill sets I could work on, and I can get out of this. Wherever I'm at, I'm only in this position due to all of the experiences I've had up until this point in my life. So if somebody's going through this and you're at a very low level, understand whatever level you're at, it's just due to all of the experiences you've had up until this point. It could be you grew up and you were shorter than everybody else, and so people picked on you and made fun of you for that thing, and you really dove deeper into that. Because you felt smaller and less significant, you naturally didn't talk as loud. You didn't hold eye contact as well. You weren't as confident with your words. You didn't feel like you could be the guy, or some guys are, like, bald or a certain ethnicity or a certain skin color, or they grew up without, uh, supportive parents, or they got embarrassed in front of their whole school and everybody just made fun of them growing up. Or they had a very bad ph- physical feature that was embarrassing. Could be anything. Could be even a combination of these things, but whatever caused it to happen, just understand that you are the dude right now just because of all the experiences you've had up until this point. Now, that's just the reality, and the moment you can accept that, the good news is you can now go out and put yourself into the experiences needed to become whoever you wanna become, right? So it's like the first thing is just acceptance. It's acceptance of and bringing awareness to your situation, which is what we were talking about earlier. Dudes are in this BS story of why they're always gonna be this way, and that's just not the case. That's why you're this guy up until today.

Calum Johnson 48:54 Mm-hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 48:55 It doesn't need to go any further into the future beyond today, right? And, and... It can be very hard if that's the only story that's been playing in your head for 25, 35 years because that's all you know. You literally just have that evidence in your brain. So when I tell somebody, "Hey, there's actually this other thing," they don't believe it because they haven't ever experienced that. There's no evidence for them that it could be that way, and there's all these years of conditioning going the opposite direction. So the very first thing is just coming to terms with it, accepting it, and bringing awareness to wherever I'm at, I'm here now, and that's okay, but it is on me to now take the necessary steps, and I 100% can get to whatever level I want to despite the height disadvantage, despite the skin color or the accent or the physical disfigurement. What- whatever the story is, it's okay. You just need to accept that, become aware of it, and start to be more proactive. That's step zero-

Calum Johnson 49:53 Mm

Kyle Froonjian 49:53 ... I would say.

Calum Johnson 49:54 You know what? It's actually, it's interesting what you say, 'cause it's really the stories, like the stories we tell ourselves, that's what gets you. And you see it both ways, right? You see the, the guy that's like, um, complete... And I think we've all exhibited this. Like, I've done it at certain points, where you, where your confidence is kind of low and you're just like, "Oh, I'm an introvert," or like, you're like subtly talking yourself down.

Kyle Froonjian 50:17 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 50:17 Or like, "Oh, I'm just not as tall as these guys," or, "Oh, it's 'cause he's better looking," or like you, you kind of make these excuses. That's on the one end.

Kyle Froonjian 50:24 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 50:24 On the other end, you hear the excuses of like, "Oh, well, I'm just too busy. I have too much going on."

Kyle Froonjian 50:30 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 50:30 It's so, it's almost like I have better things to do than like my dating life is like the-

Kyle Froonjian 50:35 Yeah

Calum Johnson 50:35 ... kind of thing. But it's both leading to the same thing, which is like making a story and a narrative about why you're not where you wanna be.

Kyle Froonjian 50:43 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 50:44 And so I think what you say is important, which is like that moment of acceptance is critical. Because as soon as you come to that moment of acceptance, now you can make a change.

Kyle Froonjian 50:55 Exactly.

Calum Johnson 50:56 Now you can put-

Kyle Froonjian 50:56 Up until that point, you're in denial.

Calum Johnson 50:57 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 50:58 And, and whether it's, it's valid or not, that's, that's the, the crazy part about it, is like most of these dudes, they have valid excuses. I t- I talk about this all the time. It's like your excuses are valid.

Calum Johnson 51:08 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 51:09 100%, they're valid. You did grow up short. You are fat. You do have a accent. You, what- whatever the thing is, man. I've heard so many different things. It's a valid point, right? However, it's either you just a- accept that and go to live that life indefinitely, or I'm just letting you know, you can still be proactive and make the change. And it just comes down to awareness and acceptance.

Calum Johnson 51:35 Mm. You know, one of the, one of the things I,

Calum Johnson 51:38 I actually watched one of your videos and you said this. You said, like, you start watching this content around, like, dating and all of this stuff, and guys even going up and like approaching women and whatever. And you mentioned, you're like, "I was watching this content for nine months and not making any approaches."

Kyle Froonjian 51:54 Mm, yeah.

Calum Johnson 51:54 And so I'm curious, what was that kind of... What was that specific moment in time where you hit that point of acceptance, and then you actually start to take action-

Kyle Froonjian 52:06 Yeah

Calum Johnson 52:07 ... against that point of acceptance? Like, what was your life like at that point? Like, what was happening?

Kyle Froonjian 52:11 Yeah. So it wasn't like at the nine-month mark I was like, "Today, I'm making a decision to now go take action." Really, I wanted to take action at month three, month six, and there was numerous opportunities to. It's just every time I was faced with the situation, I just couldn't pull the trigger to, to take the action itself. And so I found myself over and over and over again just watching more content. That, th- and that's where self-development's k- kind of this weird place that you could get caught in, or this loop that you could get caught in in this watching self-development content, is because I would watch a video, I would learn something, and so therefore I thought I was improving because it, because it brought more awareness, right? So self, self-development videos and watching content can bring awareness to things. However, like I said earlier, s- awareness is literally just step zero. It's not even step one. It's step zero. So watching the videos can bring you to step zero, but it can be this sticky loop because you think you're getting better, but you're not. It's just bringing more and more awareness to the thing. So I would watch a video, I would think I would learn something, and then I would move on to the next video, and then I would learn something, I would move on to the next video, and I'd think I'm getting better. I'm not. I'm just becoming more aware. But my situation [laughs] and my reality and my action-taking is not changing at all.

Calum Johnson 53:30 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 53:30 And so eventually, after six to nine months, some of the, the coaches that I was watching online, one of them said, "Hey, we're offering a free in-person training in New York City for anybody that wants to come out. If you... All you need to do is be able to show up in person and we'll actually put a microphone on you, and we'll have a camera on you, and we'll coach you in person. And in return, we may use your content as educational content to some of our clients."

Calum Johnson 54:00 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 54:00 And so for me, I didn't have the money at the time to actually hire coaches, and there wasn't all these communities popping up like how they have all these school groups and, and like YouTube wasn't... YouTube was big, but it, none of this stuff was what it is today. I think today there's a lot more opportunity online for you to surround yourself with like the right environments and stuff. But there wasn't any of that back then. There was just one guy who said, "If you wanna come to New York, we'll put the mic on you." And, and so my thought was, "Let's do it. I can't do this alone, but I do know if I just go there, there'll be enough pressure and leverage on me that I'm gonna have to do something. I'm gonna have to go up and talk [laughs] to somebody-

Calum Johnson 54:39 Right

Kyle Froonjian 54:39 ... if the coach is there and they're gonna tell me to do it." So that's what I did. I'd, I, I lived in Rockaway, New Jersey. I took an hour 15 bus ride on the Lakeland bus into Manhattan, and then I walked down to Chelsea, and I m- I met up with this guy and his cameraman, and I was nervous as shit. I c- I couldn't... I was, heart pounding out of my chest on the ride in just knowing that I was gonna have to go through some uncom- uncomfortable situation. And he puts the mic on me. He, he's got his cameraman with us, and he's like, "Okay, you ready?" And I was like Yeah, as ready as I'll ever be. And he's like, "Okay." He was like, "Why don't you just go up to that girl over there?" [laughs] And honestly, this is even before COVID, so New York City was just booming, honestly. This is before Instagram what it was, or OnlyFans what it was, like, at the time, and New York City was like peak, peak, uh, opportunity. And so he said, "Just go up to that girl." And I was like, "Okay." And I, I went up to her pretty much shitting myself, and I said hi, and she just instantly walked right by me. And then I went back over to him, and he said, he said, "Welcome." He's like, "That's the initiation." He's like, "It happens to everybody." And it, it's true. If you've never gone up and talked to a stranger, you're gonna be so nervous. Uh, you're gonna be so anxiety-driven, especially with the whole buildup that happened to me taking the bus in. There was like a two-hour buildup and a nine-month buildup to this moment. And, and also something else worth noting, that day, the nine months of studying, all of that went out the window, bro.

Calum Johnson 56:08 [laughs]

Kyle Froonjian 56:09 Like, I spent nine months studying just to literally still be at step zero going into that. You would think if you watched nine months of content around something, like, you might have a little bit of, of, uh, intelligence to, like, implement. No, 'cause really the only way you could actually build most skillsets is through the implementation itself.

Calum Johnson 56:26 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 56:26 So I spent nine months studying just to still be at zero. [lips smack] And he then proceeded to throw me into 10 to 15 more interactions, and after about five or six of them, after five or six women just completely ignoring me and walking by me, eventually I started to calm down a little bit. I wasn't as nervous. I was kind of like, "Okay, like, this is okay. I can actually breathe and talk normal. Nothing bad's gonna happen when a girl walks by me. Like, I'm still alive. I'm still me. I'm actually doing this." And so by the fifth, sixth, seventh one, I noticed that girls were actually starting to slow down and respond to me.

Calum Johnson 57:02 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 57:03 They weren't, like, giving me a, a full-blown conversation or giving me numbers or anything, but they were actually, like, acknowledging my presence and, and talking to me. And then he was like, "Hey, dude, you gotta, like, smile more. Hey, man, on this one I want you to try to talk a little bit louder. Hey, on this one I want your body language to be like this. Maybe try saying like this with this more tonality." And then by the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th one, I was actually having full-blown conversations with women. And that, that all happened over the course of, like, an hour or two hours, and I was starting to get excited. [lips smack] And at that point he said, "Okay, I think we have enough for the day." He was like, "You know, great job. We'll let you know if your footage is selected to be used." And so I then got back on the bus, and I went home, and I was so excited, so proud of myself for taking that step. I had felt so accomplished and free. Honestly, free was the word, 'cause up until that point in my life I was completely shackled and suppressed by society. And a- although I didn't do it by myself, it was still a very freeing moment to go against all of the anxiety and societal pressure, to push yourself... If you've, if you've ever been pushed out of your comfort zone for an extended period of time to the point where it's no longer uncomfortable for the day, you will feel in a very high frequency.

Calum Johnson 58:15 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 58:15 If you ever crush a workout beyond the point of, like, that uncomfortableness or even with social interaction. I was, I was on cloud nine. But what happened at that point was I woke up the next day and I was back to zero. I was back to my normal introverted self, and if anything, I think I had more anxiety because now I'm like, "Do I gotta go do this again? How am I gonna do this now? I don't have a coach. I don't have anything." And so I had that one burst day that showed me it was possible, but I still couldn't go out and do it. And so I, I went right back into the same perpetual loop that I was in because I still just didn't really have awareness around a lot of these concepts. So I spent another six months at the time studying, trying to do the thing, not really doing it, and then eventually I turned to, like, alcohol, because I had these social friends that were going out on the weekends.

Calum Johnson 59:08 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 59:09 And they would always get drunk, and I was kinda studying this stuff. I just couldn't do it by myself, so I would just get drunk to the point where I was kind of, like, un- unconscious [laughs] where, like, almost blacked out, but very, very drunk. My subconscious was just completely numb, and then I would be out, and I could at least be social.

Calum Johnson 59:23 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 59:24 And I did that for a little bit of time. And I mean, I could keep going into the journey-

Calum Johnson 59:29 Yeah, you, you know what? Let me, let me come in.

Kyle Froonjian 59:30 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 59:31 So you wrote this on your websa- on your website. You said, "After that" talking about your breakup with your first girlfriend, "I skated from failed interaction to failed interaction. Eventually, I got fed up with my lack of results with women and decided to make a change. Thanks to my tenacity, I learned the skills to be successful in meeting and attracting and dating women." And you know what's, um, interesting? When you tell that story, it's like you see the impact of momentum, right?

Kyle Froonjian 59:58 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 59:58 Even within a day, even within 24 hours-

Kyle Froonjian 1:00:01 One day, literally

Calum Johnson 1:00:01 ... is like just continuously making the approaches. And so I think back to where you were when immediately after you broke up with your girlfriend, where it was, like, hopeless, depressed, crying every day, to the emotion that you had even after that just one day-

Kyle Froonjian 1:00:18 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:00:18 ... of, like, meeting and approaching people. And-

Kyle Froonjian 1:00:20 That was me seeing hope, experiencing hope.

Calum Johnson 1:00:23 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 1:00:23 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:00:23 And I think that's an important moment for the people that are listening. And so for someone right now that they're at the point where they're like, "Okay, I just wanna start taking massive action. Like, I'm tired of feeling, like, hopeless or jaded-

Kyle Froonjian 1:00:39 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:00:39 ... in dating, and I just wanna start taking action, start feeling that hope, start building that momentum."

Kyle Froonjian 1:00:45 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:00:45 You mentioned that step zero is awareness.

Kyle Froonjian 1:00:47 Yep.

Calum Johnson 1:00:48 Step

Calum Johnson 1:00:49 one, if you kind of had to give them a blueprint, a routine that they can follow, that, like, if you do this daily, you will experience some level of change that's gonna start to move you in the right direction-

Kyle Froonjian 1:01:01 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:01:01 ... what would you tell them?

Kyle Froonjian 1:01:03 Just in terms of social confidence?

Calum Johnson 1:01:05 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 1:01:06 Depending on the level they're at, really what it comes down to is, and I already was kinda saying this, it's the implementation. So you need to interact [laughs] With people. And dudes kind of hate to hear this [laughs] but it's like you can't build social confidence unless you're being social to some extent. And that starts with being social with people you're, you're not already comfortable with, right? Like if I'm hanging out with just my best friend I don't think that that's going to lead to that much social confidence outside of that one particular situation, right? Confidence is situational. So I think the best way to build social confidence is to be interacting with people that you've never met before. To me that is the, the, the h- I guess the hardest ... And when it comes to interacting I guess like the closest would be for me the easiest was with a headset playing a video game I could interact with people very confidently.

Calum Johnson 1:02:03 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:02:03 Then a step below, above that would be my closest friends. Then a step above that would be my family. Then a step above that would be acquaintances that I would see, you know, regularly at the gym or the staff, whatever it is. And then a step above that would be complete strangers that I've never seen before in these environments. And the step above that would be complete strangers in new environments where I've never seen these people. And a step above that would be attractive women or high status people in complete, in, uh, completely new environments as well. Right? So you just kinda need to evaluate where you're at. And I would tell a dude low level you wanna just get the ball rolling, say something to three people in passing. In p- key word, in passing because guys see the hot girl or the really cool dude and they'll start having an entire interaction play out in their head of how am I gonna ask her out? What if she says this? What if she rejects me? Where am I gonna take the conversation after I say this? And you start thinking 17 steps ahead. And you haven't even said hi. And so you start worrying about all of these different things. You get more in your head, and you don't even, you don't even say anything really. Like how many times have you been near an attractive girl that you would love to have in your life and you don't even say hi in passing, right? 'Cause, because you're worried about she's gonna reject me, she's out of my league. Like she's out of your league for what? She's out of your league to say hi in passing? Like no.

Calum Johnson 1:03:37 Mm-hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:03:37 You're thinking she's out of your league to date, and that is step 20, dude. Right? So you gotta bring it back down to step one, and I'm just doing step one. That, that is almost like ... I know we said awareness is step zero. This is all kind of tied into awareness and mindset, which is still I think part of step zero, is having a realistic expectation of what is the first step because it's not going out and bagging the 10. If you haven't talked to anybody in passing and you can't carry a conversation with an unattractive person that's a male as well or, or the same, same sex as you, how are you gonna go up to the 10 out of 10 girl [laughs] and, and sweep her off of her feet and get a phone number that's gonna go to a date? Like that is just like crazy to me. That's like stepping onto the court and doing a 360 windmill. You haven't even dribbled the basketball.

Calum Johnson 1:04:28 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 1:04:29 Right? So it's realistic expectation of what is step one because this is actually how we think in every other avenue of life. If you were to try to learn to play the piano, if you were to go to the gym, if you were to try to learn any kind of skillset you wouldn't beat yourself up for not walking into the gym and benching 315 on the first day at the gym. You wouldn't beat yourself up if you didn't walk onto the basketball court and slam dunk the first day on the court. Or be able to play an amazing piano solo or guitar solo the first time touching the instrument. Like we actually have realistic expectations when it comes to all other skillsets. If you're learning like jujitsu or Muay Thai like we, we go into these skills or th- or these arts with an expectation of this will actually take years and I'm gonna need to train this skillset or this muscle multiple times per week and I'm gonna need to have a coach.

Calum Johnson 1:05:18 Mm-hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:05:18 And there's gonna be trial and error, and I'm gonna get punched in the face, and that's how I'm gonna learn. But yet for some reason when it comes to social skills and dating, when, when it comes to interacting with people dudes have like an unrealistic expectation and they're beating themselves down that they suck and they're a loser that they can't go up and, and land the girl that they're really into.

Calum Johnson 1:05:36 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:05:36 And it's like well why don't we treat this just like any other muscle because it, it is an art form and it is a muscle and if you've never worked on it, and step zero bringing awareness to where we're at and accepting that, we can now properly take step one.

Calum Johnson 1:05:53 Mm-hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:05:53 Step one is just saying something to three people in passing.

Calum Johnson 1:05:57 Mm-hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:05:57 And also part of that mindset is being focused on just the action itself. We're so focused on the reactions of other people that we don't even, we, we either don't take the first step at all or we deem that the first step was a failure because we got, we didn't get the reaction we wanted, right? If I, if I say something to someone in passing and they ignore me I'm like damn, bad reaction. I suck. I'm a loser. That was creepy. I'm not gonna be good at this. I'm never gonna get good at this. It's because I'm short, fat, bald, whatever the thing is. And that negative self-talk keeps us from taking the step over and over again. If you could have the right foundation, step zero awareness, and the right expectation and the right mindset of I'm just gonna take this step consistently and it's gonna be 1% wins daily, action-based wins. Not reaction-based from the world. Action-based wins 1% daily and my first step is just saying it, saying something to three people in passing. And each time you take that step regardless of the reaction I'm telling myself internally, "Fuck yeah, let's go." I'm starting to derive my own validation and fulfillment and emotional state of success and accomplishment based off of my action. And that's the only thing that we can actually control. We can't control the reactions of other people in this world. We can only accept responsibility of our own actions on a daily basis. So step number one A- assuming that the prerequisite is mindset and awareness, step number one is just taking that first step socially and, and having the right self-talk afterwards.

Calum Johnson 1:07:35 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:07:36 So m- sorry, one more part, because so many dudes, if, if you've had this negative story going on for 25, 35, 45 years that you're not, you're not good at this because of blank and that's just the way it is, the moment you get a bad reaction, it goes back to the story. It's because of blank. I'm creepy because of blank.

Calum Johnson 1:07:55 Mm-hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:07:55 I'm not gonna be good at this because of blank. And that's why I'm so passionate about social skills, man, because on a daily basis, you can go out and go against your brain that's telling you, "Act- I shouldn't go up to them. There's this excuse, there's this excuse. She's busy, she's on the phone, he's a, he's too cool for me, she's out of my league." And you can sit there and have awareness around those BS thoughts, and you could say, "I'm just gonna say something. I'm just gonna give a compliment. I'm just gonna give a greeting in passing," and you go out, you give that greeting, and the moment you did that, it's a, it's a fucking win. It's a fuck yeah, let's go. You could build yourself up on a daily basis to rewire your brain to have really positive self-talk. And so I know this is... Hopefully, this is a very practical first step, but it is a intricate first step because that's where everybody fails with it. They just don't have the right mindset, and so they don't take the first step consistently. They either give up on it or they talk themselves out of it or they talk themselves down on them, they get the bad reactions, and that's why most dudes never even get past step one of taking consistent action on that, on that first step.

Calum Johnson 1:09:01 Yeah. You know what, when I... 'Cause I, I'd heard you say something similar, uh, on a video a few months ago, and when I heard it, it was a huge unlock.

Kyle Froonjian 1:09:09 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:09:09 Because I think, um, and I see this for a lot of guys, like even friends that I speak to, they're, like, disillusioned with the whole, like, dating apps.

Kyle Froonjian 1:09:18 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:09:18 And, like, it's just... Like, they just don't like it. I actually think on both sides, even for women, they're, like, kind of just jaded-

Kyle Froonjian 1:09:24 Mm

Calum Johnson 1:09:24 ... with the whole thing.

Kyle Froonjian 1:09:25 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:09:26 And when you live in a city like New York or you live in Miami or LA, like, you live in an actual city, you're seeing, you're seeing beautiful women that you would love to speak with-

Kyle Froonjian 1:09:34 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:09:34 ... every day just in your life. Especially even if you're someone that's busy, like, you can't get around it. Like, you're seeing these pe- these women, like, just living day-to-day life. And I think it was... We're in an age now where people have so much anxiety and nerves and, like, lack of confidence, and I had this as well, of just being able to talk with someone else that they don't know.

Kyle Froonjian 1:10:00 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:10:00 Where there's not, like, a specific reason why they need to speak with them. And that's why what you just said is literally so valuable, and the part that is really valuable, speak to three people and just say something to them in passing.

Kyle Froonjian 1:10:15 In passing, yes.

Calum Johnson 1:10:16 The in passing piece is so critical because I think the thing... This is what I... This was my experience, which was I would want to do it. Like, I would want to make the approach. I think as a guy, it's just there's something nice about, like-

Kyle Froonjian 1:10:31 Of course

Calum Johnson 1:10:31 ... I see a girl and I can just go up and confidently-

Kyle Froonjian 1:10:33 Every dude wants that, man.

Calum Johnson 1:10:34 Yeah, it's just-

Kyle Froonjian 1:10:34 Every dude wants that. Even if he doesn't want the girl, he wants the skill set for himself to say, "You know what? I conquered this area of my life-

Calum Johnson 1:10:42 Yeah

Kyle Froonjian 1:10:42 ... and I can do this, and I've proven this to myself."

Calum Johnson 1:10:45 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:10:46 Whether, whether you want to take it as far as, like, becoming a coach around it and, like, do it indefinitely, I, I think most men don't want that, but I don't think there's a single dude who's at the end of his life and could be confident around the fact that, "I never got this part of my life handled."

Calum Johnson 1:11:00 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 1:11:00 Just, it's just part of being a man.

Calum Johnson 1:11:02 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:11:02 I think part of being out... Like, like if I think of, like, manly things, it's going out, conquering, acquiring resources, and I think part of that is being able to go out and attract the opposite sex.

Calum Johnson 1:11:14 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:11:14 You know?

Calum Johnson 1:11:15 Yeah. And, and it's, um... I think one of the things that I would always talk myself out of, it was actually too much pressure to go up and be, like, the complete guy and super confident and open them and, like, speak with them and make everything happen and get the number.

Kyle Froonjian 1:11:30 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:11:30 But just speaking to someone in passing, it takes all of the pressure off.

Kyle Froonjian 1:11:35 Exactly.

Calum Johnson 1:11:35 And then as you do it more and more, you're getting, like, a bit more confident. Now you start, like, a little conversation.

Kyle Froonjian 1:11:41 Yep.

Calum Johnson 1:11:41 Then that little conversation goes to getting their number.

Kyle Froonjian 1:11:43 Yep.

Calum Johnson 1:11:43 Now you're going on dates. Like, you just start to build the momentum.

Kyle Froonjian 1:11:47 Yep.

Calum Johnson 1:11:47 And it all begins with just say something in passing.

Kyle Froonjian 1:11:52 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:11:53 And so here's where I want to go to next. Let's say that as a man, I'm, I'm doing this every day, and I know even for you, like, you're going through this period where, like, um, you'll do it for, like, 100 days.

Kyle Froonjian 1:12:06 [laughs]

Calum Johnson 1:12:07 So, like, let's say I've been doing it for a long, like, a long amount of time.

Kyle Froonjian 1:12:10 Yeah. Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:12:10 And I'm, you know, I'm disciplined with it and I'm starting to see, like, my confidence is building.

Kyle Froonjian 1:12:15 Right.

Calum Johnson 1:12:15 Starting to go on dates with women that I'm really attracted to. Um, even just when I go to, like, networking events or of just events in my life, I'm just confident, I'm charismatic. Like, it's starting to build.

Kyle Froonjian 1:12:27 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:12:28 I'm curious, like,

Calum Johnson 1:12:30 we start getting to that point of I'm actually going on dates.

Kyle Froonjian 1:12:34 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:12:35 What are the mistakes that you see when people are going on, like, first dates, when guys are going on first dates? What are some of the, the missteps, things that they're getting wrong that that first date isn't then turning into something more?

Kyle Froonjian 1:12:50 Yeah, I would say generally speaking, with dudes who are trying to build their social confidence up and they get to a point now where they actually are going on dates, they're most likely not creating enough of a man to woman dynamic between them and the woman. Meaning they've gotten good at social interaction, but that is slightly different than creating a man to woman dynamic, which would be more around flirtatiousness or the idea that we could potentially be, uh, intimate partners together, 'cause they are two different skill sets. I think being socially confident and charismatic is a prerequisite, right? Like, you need to be able to carry a conversation to even go on the date, but I do think beyond just normal conversation- The next level that could ultimately lead to intimacy between us is being able to flirt and slightly escalate in a way that makes the girl feel comfortable, but at the same time creates at least a tiny bit of arousal.

Calum Johnson 1:13:48 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:13:48 Not that it needs to be sexual by any means, like, it definitely does not need to go to sex, but I do think it needs to be s- ever so slightly moving in that direction minimum, right? Otherwise, it's just a friendly talk. Without it, without that hint of potential intimacy or pot- or at least a little bit of a- arousal, it will just be a friendly dynamic and it, it won't progress beyond that point. And if you don't, if you can't create that emotion within the woman, she will just naturally categorize you a certain way over time. As you interact with anybody, the longer you interact with them a certain way, people will start to categorize you a certain way based on the emotions that they feel and the, the, the type of conversations that they have with you. Even if I met you, and the first time you met me I was in a business suit and I was speaking extremely formal and all we talked about was business, and I gave you guidance around those things, you would categorize me as, like, the business mentor.

Calum Johnson 1:14:39 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:14:40 But if I dressed super casual, I gave you no advice, and we were just shooting the shit about the Knicks and the Lakers, and, uh, you saw me kind of, like, fucking off all the time, like, you would just think I was, like, just kind of, like, the homie. Or, or whoever it is. So people will categorize... And this, this goes for anybody, not just on a date, but people will categorize other people based off of the way that the interaction goes and the emotions that they feel in those interactions, right? And I would say generally speaking as a dude, if you're just starting to date and you're just starting to build up enough confidence to interact with women, there is a higher level than just normal conversation, which is being able to create the right emotions, uh, of attraction and arousal.

Calum Johnson 1:15:19 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:15:19 And that's going to be a slightly different skill set than just regular conversation.

Calum Johnson 1:15:25 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:15:26 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:15:26 Can you even... Because I think to some guys it's like, I think as men we tend to be, like, more logical.

Kyle Froonjian 1:15:32 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:15:33 And so when you even talk about, like, attraction and arousal, like, what are some... What are, like, some things that guys can start to do on their dates? Just, like-

Kyle Froonjian 1:15:42 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:15:42 ... little ways of just starting to-

Kyle Froonjian 1:15:43 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:15:43 ... like, spice it up a little bit.

Kyle Froonjian 1:15:45 Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I, I think one of the easiest, most practical steps I've ever given to guys is that the moment the date starts, understand that this woman already cleared out hours of her day. She has other opportunities going on. She- I'm sure she has other dudes talking to her if she's even remotely attractive. She cleared out hours of her day to go get ready, to put on makeup, to, to go wear, like, a, something attractive, to feel sexy enough to go and spend time with you. So understand that going into the date you can at least assume that there's some level of attraction between the two of you guys. That's, like, again, step zero. It's just a mindset going into the date that there's at least some level of mutual interest here. And with that, you can give yourself the entitlement to start off the date assuming that there is attraction. So what that would look like, I tell guys, is go in with a nice big smile, holding eye contact, give her a hug, a warm hug. Look her in the eyes and just say, "You look really cute tonight, by the way." Like, if nothing else, it's just a very simple way to break the touch barrier, and it's also setting the tone that I'm at least physically attracted to you, right? Because bringing it back, bringing it back to, like, where do... One of the biggest mistakes I see men making on dates is there's zero indication that this is a man to woman interaction. It's, it's the equivalent of getting on a sales call and the guy that's running the sales call never brings up the product. You just get on the call with him and he's like, "Hey, what's up, man? How you doing today?" And we just start talking. And I'm like, "How's Brooklyn, my man? Blah, blah, blah." We start talking about the Lakers, like, we start talking about this, and then an hour goes by and I never asked you anything about, you know, w- what are you desiring in the product? Like, what's, what's been your previous experience with the product? Like, what qualities of the product would actually be, like, really important to you? Or why do you think you would be a good fit for this product? Right? Like, if there's no... And I never even make a sales pitch about the product ever, there's just no discussion around those things, it's like, how could you make a sale? You can't.

Calum Johnson 1:17:45 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:17:45 So, and, and that's essentially what dudes are doing [laughs] in their interactions with women. There's just no, there's no confidence or communication about the idea that we could potentially be something.

Calum Johnson 1:17:57 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:17:58 And that is the underlying premise of why you go on a date to begin with, it's because there's that mutual attraction. So that's, like, the first practical step. And, and I would also say to a dude, I think periodically throughout the date, it, there needs to be consistent spikes of that reminder that this is a man to woman interaction. It's not just I start the date like that and then we just have small talk. It's, it's very similar to a sales call in a sense that the moment the call starts, there would be a little bit of vibing, and we would slowly go into the, the prospect's desires and why they want those things and what they're looking for in a product. And it, yes, throughout the conversation we could get off on random topics, but a good salesman will know how to continuously bring the conversation back to the topic of the prospect in relation to the, the product.

Calum Johnson 1:18:47 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:18:47 And that is the skill set of flirting, creating attraction, getting the girl accustomed and comfortable to your touch and to potential intimacy. Um, and again, the skill set in itself is being able to do that in a way that's not too abrupt, not too predictable, that creates good emotions within the girl while making her feel comfortable.

Calum Johnson 1:19:06 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:19:07 And she's simultaneously getting to know you.

Calum Johnson 1:19:08 Yeah. You know, I was, um, I had this thing. I think that when we see, like, media or, like, TikTok, I think the way that, like, men are portrayed is, like, most men just wanna get with, like, a ton of girls.

Kyle Froonjian 1:19:22 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:19:23 I actually think, like, when I speak with my friends or, like, I think most men actually just really want a girlfriend that would be, like, a great fit for them. Um, like, they don't wanna settle. They want, they want, like, a girl that is like-

Kyle Froonjian 1:19:35 Right

Calum Johnson 1:19:35 ... she would be, like, great in my life. Like, I'm really attracted to her.

Kyle Froonjian 1:19:37 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:19:37 She would be, like, a value add in my life as well.

Kyle Froonjian 1:19:40 Mm.

Calum Johnson 1:19:40 And so- I understand that, like, I feel like a lot of the times as men when we're going in dates, we just think about, like, how to impress the girl.

Kyle Froonjian 1:19:49 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:19:50 But I'm curious, even with the clients and, like, the people that you work with, in terms of, like, signs or traits in the girl that you're like, "This isn't actually the right person, um, that I should, like, pursue-

Kyle Froonjian 1:20:05 Mm

Calum Johnson 1:20:05 ... in that way," like, what are some of the red flags of, like, that you should start to notice on dates where actually as the man you're like, "Actually, I'm not gonna... I don't wanna go on a second date," or, "I don't wanna go on, like, a third date with this girl"?

Kyle Froonjian 1:20:18 For a dude that's looking to land a girlfriend?

Calum Johnson 1:20:20 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 1:20:22 I think first he needs to have clarity on what he, what k- what kind of relationship he wants and what the dynamic's gonna be because there's a, there's a lot of different dudes out there. Some guys want almost, like, a, I guess the... I don't know how else to phrase this, for lack of a better word, like an equal partner in terms of the woman's bringing home almost, like, equal amount of money she can contribute to the household financially. Um, if he's working, like, a corporate 9:00 to 5:00 job, he kinda wants a girl in a similar, uh, I guess level with similar degree, similar level of, like, intellect in terms of, like, his career path. And then there's other dudes that aren't necessarily on that route. And I'm not saying one's right or wrong, but then I know other dudes that are, like, they just wanna be the guy where, like, if the girl's with them, like, they got those kind of things handled. He's clearly the breadwinner. He wants the girl to kinda just play more of the supportive, nurturing role. And, and I think depending on what you're looking for, I would even say there's, like, a third one which is, like, a lot of dudes, they just haven't had the experiences or the abundant dating life that they want, and they really just wanna get, you know, dates and sexual experiences.

Calum Johnson 1:21:30 Hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:21:31 So those are, like, three different goals when it comes to their dating life, and I think each one of those warrants a different criteria of what I'm looking for in the woman on the date, right? So it really comes down to getting clarity, I think. And, and unfortunately I, I don't think that you can really have full clarity without actively dating. I think to some extent you gotta get out there and try the flavors. That doesn't necessarily mean you need to sexually try the flavors. [laughs] It just means you need to interact, and it ties back to what we were saying about going out and interacting with the world to see what you like and what you don't like. Uh, you're not just gonna blindly go into your first date ever and know exactly what you want 'cause you haven't experienced anything.

Calum Johnson 1:22:14 Hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:22:15 It's like how could you ex- how, how do you know what flavor ice cream you want if you've never tried the ice cream flavors? Like, asking a dude who has zero experience tasting ice cream, "What flavor you like?" I don't know, dude. Like, you're gonna have to try them out. That one looks appealing. That one looks appealing. I'm really int- I got my eye on that one. But let's have, let's at least, like, dabble in these to see if they are a good fit, and kinda based on that I could make a further conclusion about exploring deeper into those potentials. So I guess just generally speaking, let's, let's go back to your scenario though, 'cause let's just say majority of dudes, they just want to end up in, like, a, a solid relationship, right? And he's going on a first date. It's like what should you actually look for? I would just say as- l- let's just assume that you are a good conversationalist. You do have a, a certain level of charisma. You do have your shit together. 'Cause, like, most dudes don't have those things [laughs] together and then they're, like, looking for the things in the woman. I'm like, "Hold on. Like, we got, we got some work to do on you first, bro."

Calum Johnson 1:23:09 Hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:23:09 You know, like, if you're here, don't expect to, like, land a girl like this. Like, it just doesn't work that way. You gotta really build yourself up first, in my opinion. Um, but, uh, let's just say you are at a good level. You, you're confident, charismatic. You got your shit together to some extent. You're going on dates. What should you be looking for? I would say, like, do you actually have fun with the person? Do you actually... From a dude's perspective, I would say, I mean, this is kinda like a prerequisite, but, like, is there obviously a high level of physical attraction? I think that's very important. As men, we are very logical and, like, physically or visual creatures. So, like, is there a high level of physical attraction? And then beyond that, like, can you legitimately have fun with the, with the girl?

Calum Johnson 1:23:49 Hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:23:49 If I look back on my relationships, like, I can have a lot of fun with the girls that I've dated long term. And, and even my last relationship, like, we were friends first. Even though there was a high level of physical attraction, I just wasn't in a rush to get in a relationship, and I had had enough experience with women that I- we were actually just friends for, for quite a long period of time first. I think being able to have fun, engaging, enthusiastic conversations where you could really connect with the other person, you genuinely have fun spending time with them, and the physical attraction element's in place, I think those are, are very important.

Calum Johnson 1:24:22 Hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:24:23 That's, like, a, a great starting point. Obviously, there's a lot of other things, but for the first date you don't wanna... I, I wouldn't recommend having too big of a lens o- of, like, does she hit this criteria, this, this, this, this, this? It's like, it's the first date, man. Like, you're not gonna really know the person in entirety until you've been seeing them for an extended period of time anyway, and I think the minimum criteria to even go further than that is the physical attraction and can we actually have fun? Is there some level of, like, genuine chemistry here?

Calum Johnson 1:24:52 Yeah. You know, I'm curious when you, when you reflect

Calum Johnson 1:24:55 on your story, and obviously we have everything that happened with your first girlfriend.

Kyle Froonjian 1:25:02 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:25:02 And then you get another girlfriend after that.

Kyle Froonjian 1:25:04 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:25:05 Um-

Kyle Froonjian 1:25:05 Five years later. Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:25:06 Yeah. And I'm assuming that, that was the, the girl that, like, she's in a lot of your content as well.

Kyle Froonjian 1:25:10 Correct, yes.

Calum Johnson 1:25:11 So, like, what was that point? Because even for guys that are listening to this, it's like, okay, let's say I've been in a situation where I was heartbroken, and I'm starting to build the confidence-

Kyle Froonjian 1:25:24 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 1:25:24 ... back up. I'm now, I'm, like, approaching women that I'm seeing around. I'm going to events, and I'm, like, approaching women. Like, I'm starting to build that abundant dating life.

Kyle Froonjian 1:25:34 Yep.

Calum Johnson 1:25:34 I'm, like, going on dates.

Kyle Froonjian 1:25:35 Yep.

Calum Johnson 1:25:36 What was the point for you personally when you were like, "Okay, I'm actually ready-" To get in another relationship, specifically with the context of, like, the first one ended this traumatically.

Kyle Froonjian 1:25:52 Mm.

Calum Johnson 1:25:52 Like, how do you even know that it's like-

Kyle Froonjian 1:25:54 Time

Calum Johnson 1:25:55 ... okay, yeah, it's time?

Kyle Froonjian 1:25:59 Well, I, I started putting myself back out into the dating market before I even felt like it really was time. I wasn't going on a, a, a high a, a, a lot of dates, but I was back out into the social environments interacting with a lot of women. And so at first, when you're coming out of a heartbreak, honestly a lot of the girls you'll interact with, you'll just naturally compare them to your, your ex, right? Especially if you were genuinely heartbroken and you had like a, a quality relationship. You might just start to compare them, and that's what I did with the first relationship. All the girls that I started talking to over the next year, none of them compared to my ex. But also understand no one's gonna really compare... You're comparing a first impression to a four or five-year relationship. So, like, no first impression is ever going to compare to that, and that's kind of like an unhealthy frame to, to be looking at. You need... It's all mindset at the end of the day. So, like, if you're coming out of a heartbreak, understand it's like, hey dude, it's gonna suck for a little bit. In terms of, like, you getting a, a partner. I don't, I don't even recommend you try to jump into another relationship. I would just go into I'm taking the nic- the next six to 12 months to, to look at this as an opportunity to build myself up, heal, evolve, and go to way higher levels because that's really what it is. Hear- heartbreak and relationships ending, they could either be the sob story that puts you down a lane to toxicity and drugs and, you know, bad exper- I mean, bad experiences. Or it could be a massive opportunity to do some reflection, to sit in the pain, to heal from it properly through, like, not doing what I was doing at a young age of burying the pain. Like, actually sit back and reflect on all, all the things. Assume responsibility that you were the reason the relationship ended. Even if, even if she or the other person did some bad shit, what could you have done better? Like, just sit back and unbiasedly think about that for a long time, which is what I did, too. I really sat and thought about all the things I did bad. Stop pointing the finger. Start assuming responsibility a, a, as a person, honestly. And, and do reflection. Like, I, I've been going to a therapist on a weekly basis. I do a daily reflection every single day where I'm reflecting on the previous day, the thoughts and emotions that I had, and the reasons behind those things. Um, and, and really putting in the work. That's the other thing, too. This is the first year where I've completely removed all drugs, alcohol, nicotine. Uh, all of that stuff has just been completely removed for the last 150 days. Some of those things have been removed for quite some time, but this is the first time ever I'm completely off of everything. And that really gave me a lot of clarity, a lot of clarity. And, and you don't realize how some of those things actually impact the relationship itself and just develop bad habits. Um, so first thing is get sober, man. Get sober, get clarity, start doing reflection, and then you wanna start putting in the work if you're coming out of a relationship.

Calum Johnson 1:29:05 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:29:06 I mean, even if you're not going into a relationship. I think this is the, a blueprint for anybody. It's like what are all your bad habits? What are all your vices? How can you just start to remove those things or at least chip away at those things? Get clarity, bring awareness to where you're at right now, and what are the things that we could start working on as a dude? Like, a- as a video game character. I told you, I was obsessed with video game character development. I just turned my life into that. I'm the guy that's spinning on the platform with all the different attributes, and I'm just looking at those as pros and weak- pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses. And I was like, "What do I need to do on a daily basis to crank up these attributes?" As long as the, on a daily basis I'm moving in the right direction with those things, in one, two, three, five years I'm gonna be a monster at these things.

Calum Johnson 1:29:49 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:29:50 It's taking away all of that stuff. Every dude, every person out there, they have negative things that they're putting into their body, bad activities that they're, that they're doing on a daily basis, hanging around the wrong people. It's just shackling them, dude.

Calum Johnson 1:30:03 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:30:03 And when you can, when you can just remove those things and just focus on the positive actions, you will start to rise up.

Calum Johnson 1:30:09 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:30:10 So just to bring this back home, you're coming out the relationship is a little bit more specific. Get out there for the first six to 12 months with the head space of, like, I'm not even trying to land a girlfriend right now. I'm just trying to build up my own character from a healthy place. From a healed, healthy place that I could learn from the previous relationship. What did I do wrong? What did they do wrong? And how could I make a difference in the, in the potential future relationship if and when that comes about? You start going out, you start interacting with people, make new friends, try new activities, and over time you'll start to interact with people. You'll start to see some girls that you're genuinely interested in, and then slowly you'll start to see things that remind you of maybe a previous thing in your relationship that wasn't a good thing. Or, or you see things that you really do like that wasn't in your other partner. But by going out and interacting, maybe even going on light, casual dates. Whether or not it gets sexual, that's up to you. But getting back out there slowly, you're gonna start to get a feel for, like, what you like and what you don't like. And I would say over a, the course of maybe a year, 'cause I'm about six months, seven months out of a breakup of four years. Primarily been sober since then. Um, maybe a little bit post-breakup I wasn't. That's when I started to get clarity, but six, seven months of just going hard on all these things that we're talking about. The social confidence, the diet, the fitness, the, the reflection, all of these things. I think I'm legitimately at a place right now where I'd be open to dating somebody, but I think, like, two months ago I wasn't in the right position. I wasn't in the right head space. So I think it took me six, seven months of really going at it. And it may not take that long for everybody. Just kinda depends on your situation, but that's what I would start to say is like it, it all ties back to your own self-development, your own routine, getting clean, getting clarity, and then taking the daily steps to go slowly into the, the right direction with no expectation of jumping back into something, and it'll naturally kinda find its way.

Calum Johnson 1:32:07 Yeah. You know, actually, I, I wanna, I wanna go deeper into that because, um, over the last, like, month or so, I've been watching your Instagram story, and so I've seen that you've been on this journey of, like, 100 days of, like, sober.

Kyle Froonjian 1:32:21 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:32:21 Um, celibate. There's like a few different things that you've-

Kyle Froonjian 1:32:25 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:32:25 ... been.

Kyle Froonjian 1:32:25 It was waking up every day at 4:00 AM.

Calum Johnson 1:32:27 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 1:32:27 No, no drugs, no alcohol, no nicotine. Um, going to a weekly therapy with my, with my new therapist, which I had never done, which was something I always kinda wanted to do ever since the death of my dad and in my last relationship. Took a relationship course more based around attachment styles, which brought me more awareness of my triggers from my previous relationships and why that stuff ended. Doing the daily reflection in every single morning. Um, committing to doing my Instagram story post minimum on a daily basis, and then also my social interaction on a daily basis b- which started out with a minimum of interacting with three people a day.

Calum Johnson 1:33:05 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:33:05 And gradually progressed to higher and higher and higher levels as the weeks went on, but that was 100 days of committing to doing that kind of routine.

Calum Johnson 1:33:14 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:33:14 That I did maybe two... I was kind of already doing a lot of those things. I guess the other thing is, like, gym every single day, too. I'm at 125 days [laughs] in a row of the gym, but I was already doing most of those things and then, like, I added in the wake-up time and a couple of these other elements and said, "I'm doing this for 100 days in a row," and kinda publicly announced it and kinda documented my experience going through that.

Calum Johnson 1:33:34 Yeah. You know what I love about it? It's like it's a s- it's such a holistic blueprint, and I can just imagine that, like, for anyone that's in a spot where they just don't really like who they are at this moment-

Kyle Froonjian 1:33:46 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:33:46 ... it's like it's really gonna kickstart it in a really practical-

Kyle Froonjian 1:33:50 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:33:50 ... way. I'm curious, though, because

Calum Johnson 1:33:52 I think one of the things that people struggle with when it comes to this sort of stuff is, like, you get... You watch something like this.

Kyle Froonjian 1:33:58 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:33:59 Super inspired, motivated. I'm gonna make the change.

Kyle Froonjian 1:34:02 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:34:02 I'm gonna do the 100 days. You can even envision the person that you're gonna be on the other end.

Kyle Froonjian 1:34:07 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:34:07 Whether that's, oh, I'm gonna have an amazing girlfriend. I'm gonna be in the best shape of my life.

Kyle Froonjian 1:34:11 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:34:11 I'm gonna have this incredible dating life. I'm gonna be making more money. Like, whatever the outcome is, but then you kind of, you go to day one, and you're pumped.

Kyle Froonjian 1:34:20 Yeah. [laughs]

Calum Johnson 1:34:21 You're up bright and early, 4:00 AM.

Kyle Froonjian 1:34:23 Right.

Calum Johnson 1:34:23 It's still dark out.

Kyle Froonjian 1:34:25 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:34:25 The birds haven't even started tweeting at this point.

Kyle Froonjian 1:34:28 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:34:28 And you're like, you're, you're good for it, though.

Kyle Froonjian 1:34:31 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:34:31 You're in the gym. You're lifting the weights.

Kyle Froonjian 1:34:32 Day one's cool, man. Yeah. [laughs]

Calum Johnson 1:34:34 [laughs]

Kyle Froonjian 1:34:34 Day one's cool.

Calum Johnson 1:34:35 Then, then it gets to day two, day three, day four-

Kyle Froonjian 1:34:38 [laughs]

Calum Johnson 1:34:38 ... day five, day six, day seven, day eight. S- It's becoming old.

Kyle Froonjian 1:34:43 Yeah, for sure.

Calum Johnson 1:34:44 Can you, can you talk about the discipline part? Like, what were the difficult moments for you?

Kyle Froonjian 1:34:47 Yeah, 100%. I would also say if... S- 'Cause some dudes might watch this and just say 4, 4:00 AM's unrealistic, and they kinda like discredit this whole thing. Everybody's wake-up time is subject to change. I'm not saying you need to do my exact routine, but I do think you should push yourself to wake up earlier. Slightly, at a slightly uncomfortable time, and there's a lot of benefits around that one thing because it will force you to just make yourself go to bed earlier. And just from my experience, there's not a whole lot of beneficial shit that's going on late night after hours. So you may not need to get up at 4:00 AM, but you should make it a goal to wake up at a set time on a daily basis, and it should be slightly uncomfortable. Now, with that being said, back to the question. Day one, it was awesome. I woke up feeling so cool that nobody's up yet, and it was, it was great. I was so motivational.

Calum Johnson 1:35:40 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 1:35:40 And even day seven was great, honestly.

Calum Johnson 1:35:42 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 1:35:42 I thought I was getting a lot of, I had a lot of motivation around it. It was probably around day 21 or maybe even, like, day 40, and I would, I would probably attribute that long of a, of a timeline because of the fact that I, I felt like my self-development, my mindset was already pretty evolved. I think a dude who's, like, at very low levels may not be able to make it to that point before they hit the rut or I, I believe the term is the, the valley of despair, which essentially means you start a new thing and it's exciting. You start to see, like, "Yeah, I'm gonna do this thing. I'm gonna get up early and fuck the weed and the drugs, and anybody that does that's a loser. I'm this guy now."

Calum Johnson 1:36:23 [laughs]

Kyle Froonjian 1:36:23 Right? And so you're, you're, you're on the high of the decision that you made and, and things are going up, but very early on, and it could be anywhere between day two to day seven to day 21, or in my case, it was more like day 30, day 40. At some point inevitably, though, you get past the initial benefit of the thing, and you're starting to... The reality's starting to sink in that, hey, like, this is just supposed to be, like, the way it is from now on, and it's not that fun, and it actually is hard work, and there's really not a result, uh, not a noticeable benefit on a daily basis that's going on, right? Which is honestly the path to, to being successful and building true confidence or having, like, a, a, a big business or... I mean, even you, you were talking about this. Like, you, you had, like, something like 20 or 36 months before your, the podcast started even really growing, so you had 30 months of desp- [laughs] of, like, is this gonna grow, right?

Calum Johnson 1:37:20 [laughs]

Kyle Froonjian 1:37:21 Um, so yeah. Initially, you have that high, and then the reality kicks in of, like, damn, this is, is this how it's gonna be for, for a long time? And that's why everything we were talking about in this, in this talk earlier on the show is, uh, it's like it really comes down to step one, having the right mindset, having the right awareness, having the right expectation going into the journey. If you have the right mindset and the right expectation, you're gonna be good. Most people just don't have that, and we could blame it on TikTok, we could blame it on movies, we could blame it on whatever the thing is, right? Like, it, uh, we have very ADD brains at this point due to, like, social media and all these advertising on TV, making these outrageous claims that we're looking for the, the quick overnight quick burst of, like, wins or, or massive transformations, or, "You could make 10,000 a month in, like, the next three days if you do this," right? It- we're programmed to get those quick wins, and that's just not a healthy route to go down if you're really trying to make, like, a, a true life-changing transformation or build true confidence or build a solid popping business. It, it takes the mentality, the resilience, the, the mental fortitude to go through this thing of like, "Hey, this is gonna be a slow, slow grind, and there may be weeks, possibly even months, where I'm putting in the work and there's just not the return that, uh, society has taught me that there should be." Like, if the dude goes out and says hi to three people and does that for a week straight, you're gonna find out very quickly you're not just gonna be Rico Suave after- [laughs] ... a week of doing that. You s- y- you may even, with the wrong self-talk, you might actually find yourself lower, right? That, and that's that valley of despair. It's, "I put in work for blank amount of time, and I'd have not really gotten that far." And that's where most people give up, whether it's trying to come off weed. Like, I struggled with quitting weed for six years. I smoked weed from 17 to, like, 32 every day. There was a point in my journey I thought I would never get off of weed. I, I was fully convinced, "I'm just gonna smoke weed for the rest of my life and that's just, like, the way it is." I had that same thought with nicotine. I had that same thought with so much shit. Social skills, too. There was a point in my journey I was just like, "I'm not, uh, you either got it or you don't, and I'm not that guy, or I'm never gonna get past a certain point." When you have the right mindset around it, though, that this is possible and I'm just focused on taking just the next step. If I could just take the next step successfully, consistently, and base my self-talk off of the action, not the reaction o- of the other people, not the tangible wins, and I just stay consistent and dedicated to that thing, eventually you will start to climb. And it might take weeks. It might take months. I mean, even with your podcast, it took you years, right? And even with my self, with my self-development journey, it took me years, too. I didn't pop off. First nine months, zero progress. And then another year after that of trying to be social and not really getting anything. And then another year after that of starting to interact with people but not really getting, like, the dating life I wanted. But I could tell you by year two, year three, I had made enough of a progression that I was like, "This trail that I've, th- this progression that I've just had, like, you can't deny that. You can't deny that I've made this kind of progression so far, which shows me it's possible. Inevitably, if I just keep going down the timeline, I'll get to the, I'll get to the destination." So I think i- it's not what you do when you're in the valley of despair, like, after that burst. It's about going into the thing with the right mindset to begin with. Go in before it even starts thinking, "Hey, day seven, day 30, it's gonna suck." Because when you go in thinking that, it's really not that bad. Mm. You set a set goal that I'm gonna stick to this for this amount of days, and you make a deadline. You create urgency. You're, you're focused on the consistency and the actionable steps. That's how you can stay positive through it. And I think dudes get lost in that. They don't focus... If, if I'm getting burnt out or, or pissed off or frustrated, it's because I'm not focused on the action. I'm focused on the reaction of other people. I didn't get the, I didn't get the reaction I want. I didn't get the result I want. And for those reasons, I'm starting to feel frustrated or burnt out. Mm. Right? And I did, even myself, I, I started to feel that on around day 40. I remember thinking, like, I told myself 100 days. I'm like, damn. It's, I mean, 40 days in a row is a lot. When you get up at 4:00 AM, dude, like, I'm, I'm going to bed with the, with the eye mask on, and it's- [laughs] ... still sunny out. And I live on the, the penthouse in Miami. So I'm- [laughs] ... I'm overlooking Brickell, and the sun is still up, and there's a lot of people outside, a lot of opportunities. I had high-level dudes that are like, "Yo, you gonna come out to dinner tonight? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And I'm like, I'm like, "Bro, I'm, I'm in bed, bro. I can't do it tonight." [laughs] You know? And I'm like, damn, sh- is this really the thing? Even my, my boys and my coaches are like, "Yeah, 4:00 AM's not ideal. Blah, blah, blah, blah." And honestly, maybe to some extent it's not for some people. But I do think going through that uncomfortable phase for an extended period of time and pushing yourself, that creates, uh, that creates resilience in the character. Mm. So, so, like, don't be afraid to go through that uncomfortable time. A- and it doesn't necessarily need to be 100 days. For some people it might be 30, it might be 50, it might be 100. It might be, might be even longer than that. Once you, once you get to 100 days, you might find that, hey, now I can actually do this indefinitely. Mm. Right? So tha- that's how I feel with the drugs and the alcohol. Like, I, I think there's no going back on those things, honestly. And the further I go with it, the more the, the new identity's been created. But yeah, 40 days for me was, was the rough point. And even though it was rough, even though I was, quote-unquote, in the valley of despair, there was never moments where I was like, "Am I gonna give up? Am I gonna stop doing it?" Like, that wasn't even a question. That was never a question. There's a period where it'll suck, but it's just one day at a time. It's like, well, what did I do today? Did I hit my goals? Did I do the actions? 'Cause if you're programming your brain to stay focused on the actions and that's what validates you, you can almost inevitably be in a good mood. I know that if I get up and I hit my wake-up time, I do my reflection, I hit that hard workout, I push myself socially, I put out the content, um, on social media, I, I take some sales calls, I make some money, I help some clients. Man, like, it's, it's almost impossible for me to feel down for the day. Mm. So I set up my daily actions to push myself into uncomfortable situations. And as long as I'm not turning to vices or doing any of the bad shit Man, my frequency just goes up and up and up throughout the day. Like, I'm, my frequency's going higher the further into the show that we get because I'm just getting into that social flow. I got a clean, clear head. And so, like, that's how it is, man. That's, that's how... [sighs] I'm trying to make a con- a quick conclusion. For a dude who's just starting out, it's like just stay committed to the actions, and you can't turn to the vices.

Calum Johnson 1:44:14 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:44:14 That's where dudes go wrong, honestly.

Calum Johnson 1:44:16 Yeah. You know, uh, and I, and I love it the way that you put it, um, the valley of despair. And it's interesting because I was recording an episode last Friday with this entrepreneur who's built a huge... He built a huge newsletter, sold it for, like, over $20 million. And he was talking about the valley of despair in a business sense.

Kyle Froonjian 1:44:37 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:44:37 And he says this thing. He goes, he goes, "Most people quit the first time it gets hard."

Kyle Froonjian 1:44:42 Yep.

Calum Johnson 1:44:43 "And everyone else quits the second time it gets hard."

Kyle Froonjian 1:44:46 Yep.

Calum Johnson 1:44:46 And so it was like, if you can just get through those first two times of like, it's, of like this is fucking difficult.

Kyle Froonjian 1:44:54 Yep.

Calum Johnson 1:44:54 'Cause you feel it.

Kyle Froonjian 1:44:55 Mm.

Calum Johnson 1:44:55 Like, everyone has had that moment or time in their life where you're doing something, you're doing the new thing, you're approaching the goals, and it's like, I don't know, y- you've been doing it seven days in a row, and now you're like, "I'm tired. I don't even really look that good. I don't have a haircut."

Kyle Froonjian 1:45:11 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:45:11 Like, all the excuses are coming.

Kyle Froonjian 1:45:14 Yep.

Calum Johnson 1:45:14 And if you can just push through two times, and I really, I really like that reframe because it's like you start getting excited about the adversity.

Kyle Froonjian 1:45:24 Mm.

Calum Johnson 1:45:24 Like, it's a complete mental shift.

Kyle Froonjian 1:45:26 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:45:26 Because you're ... I'm looking forward to when it gets hard 'cause I know if I can overcome that-

Kyle Froonjian 1:45:31 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:45:31 ... I'm on the other side now.

Kyle Froonjian 1:45:32 That's the, that's the mindset. It's like having... Man, it all ties back. It, it's really just mindset and awareness, everything we're talking about. Because it's like if you could be present and aware in those moments and not lose your shit and just think, "Oh, this is that part where everybody else gives up."

Calum Johnson 1:45:49 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:45:50 The moment I just have that thought, I'm already separating myself in real time about like, "This is where everybody else quits." The p- the time people quit or give in on, on shit, it's because they get so lost in those moments that they, they talk themselves out of the thing, right? They lose awareness of where they're at in the progression, and the negative doubts and concerns come in, and that turns into a new story that they tell themselves as to why they should stop doing the thing. And then they, before you know it, they revert back to their old tendency. So having the awareness in those moments and envisioning yourself, like literally just envision, there's two versions of yourself. There's the guy that, like, gives up on the thing, and he's... I like to see him as all the weak, unattractive traits that I've possessed of myself over the years. I had a time where I was really fat. I had a time where I was very unconfident. I talked a certain way. I dressed a certain way. And then I have an envision of myself that's like me 3.0 or 10.0, right? And so, like, in those moments, having the awareness when you're in the tough situation and just thinking about, like, which path would each one of these guys take in this moment? This is the part where most people would, would give up. This is that tough moment where the old me would even give up. And just being able to just sit in that and just stay focused on day to day.

Calum Johnson 1:47:07 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:47:07 You know? That's, like, really what it takes to just not... It's just... It all ties back to just not giving up, man.

Calum Johnson 1:47:13 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 1:47:13 Like, that's all it is. Just stay in it.

Calum Johnson 1:47:15 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:47:15 That's all it is.

Calum Johnson 1:47:16 Yeah. You know what? And it, and it's interesting because I think so many, and I know for men particularly, and it's, like, popular in media and, like, social media is, "I wanna be him," or, "I wanna be the top 0.001% man."

Kyle Froonjian 1:47:31 Yeah. Yep.

Calum Johnson 1:47:31 And it's, like, kind of been romanticized and, like, um, exaggerated what it is. And I love what you said. It, it's like it's just all about the awareness.

Kyle Froonjian 1:47:41 Yep.

Calum Johnson 1:47:41 Because those moments when it's difficult, and, and this is what I tell myself because we all go through this, and I had it with the podcast. I had moments of, like, extreme self-doubt. Like, I, I left my job, um, when this was making no money.

Kyle Froonjian 1:47:56 Wow.

Calum Johnson 1:47:57 And, like, moved back home. So I was living in, uh, Lower East Side in Manhattan. I moved back to New Jersey where my mom is and just grinded this thing out seven days a week.

Kyle Froonjian 1:48:05 Let's go.

Calum Johnson 1:48:06 And I had mom- you have moments of extreme self-doubt.

Kyle Froonjian 1:48:10 Yep.

Calum Johnson 1:48:10 Where you're like, "This is not working. I've been doing the thing." It's not like you've just been doing it for one or two days. You're not dabbling. You've been doing it for months and months and months. And to the external world, it's like there's no results.

Kyle Froonjian 1:48:22 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:48:23 And so it's like, but those... I love what you said about having the awareness.

Kyle Froonjian 1:48:28 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:48:29 'Cause that's where you're separating.

Kyle Froonjian 1:48:30 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:48:31 Like, if, if you really wanna talk about being, like, a, a 0.1% man or whatever, that's the moment that that person is created in those daily habits, daily action, in those 100 days.

Kyle Froonjian 1:48:42 Yeah. Even just reframing it like that, "Oh, if I wanna be .0001% of men, this is that moment where everybody else would give up. And so if I really wanna be that guy, this is the opport-" It's just such a powerful reframe. It's like I'm at the crossroad and it's like, "Oh, I wanna be that guy. This is, thank God, I'm finally experiencing that moment that I would need to go down in order to inevitably become that person."

Calum Johnson 1:49:05 Mm-hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:49:06 And so when you can just... But again, it, it's tricky to have the awareness in those moments, and that's why I think having daily goals, weekly goals, and a daily reflection of where I'm at in relation to the course, like, that's- that's very important. Otherwise, you kinda lose awareness where you're at. Like, if I'm not tracking on a daily basis what my thought process was, what my goals are for the week, the reason behind those things, and, like, where I'm at in relation to it, it's very hard to... It's very easy to get lost on the map.

Calum Johnson 1:49:38 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:49:39 You know? So yeah, the awareness is everything.

Calum Johnson 1:49:42 You know, here's, here's where I wanna go next, because we spoke about obviously the 600,000

Calum Johnson 1:49:48 followers in three weeks, and you even mentioned that you've been doing content for years. And for people that don't know, obviously we've been speaking a lot about, like, dating, relationships, all of that stuff. You run a seven-figure business

Kyle Froonjian 1:50:00 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:50:00 Like, you're, you're certified in this So I'm curious, what is like the origin of Coach Kyle? Like, at what point at what point in the journey does it go from, I'm just the guy that was heartbroken who's like building up my social confidence and like building this abundant dating life to actually this brand of Coach Kyle Like, I'm gonna start coaching people and all of those things?

Kyle Froonjian 1:50:27 Yeah. So I think when I started studying this stuff, I just thought it was a really cool thing because I, I always wanted to help myself. I really wanted to get out of pain when the first relationship ended, so I started studying all of these guys online, and I just thought they were cool. Like I, I thought it was cool what they were doing. I felt like it was kinda like this cheat code, this hack into the matrix because I was always on the other side of it. So I thought like, man, this is like social skills and, and confidence and pickup and dating is like a, a superpower in my, in my opinion. Like, and I genuinely think it is. Like, if you tell some dude that like, "Hey, I could, I could pick you up and drop you anywhere in the world right now," and if you have the skillset, within a, a matter of a week or, or a couple weeks you could go up, interact, and attract high-level dudes and high-quality women into your life that would wanna spend time with you just solely off of your confidence and your understanding of how to run interactions. Like, to me, that sounds like a superpower. I, I think that's like extremely like an in- an invaluable skillset. So I was always just obsessed with learning the skillset, and then as I studied more and more of these guys, I would see some of them that would travel the world coaching other dudes, getting paid for it in the process while still working on the skillset and building a business and a brand around this- the thing that I felt was like inevitable, so... Or invaluable. And so to me, that just sounded like a no-brainer. It's like, what else do I wanna do with my life? I had a criminal justice degree. I was... I didn't wanna go to law school. I almost did. I pulled out of going to law school because I was like, "I'm not passionate about this." So I had a criminal justice degree. I was a private investigator for five years through my late 20s in New Jersey, and I was like, what am I gonna do? Well, this is the thing I'm studying obsessively, and if I could make a living off of this, and I already wanna help other dudes with this, and I could travel the world with this while building up a personal brand, like to me it was just an obvious thing.

Calum Johnson 1:52:25 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:52:25 And so I just wanted to start the channel initially to help people. Actually, before that, I didn't even start the channel. The first thing I did was I wanted to work for one of these companies. So I actually applied as an assistant coach. One of the, one of the coaches that I, that, that helped me massively, I applied to be a coach's assistant. He brought me into the company. I started working with his team, and my only goal was to work my way up in the company. I wanted to travel the world with them, be the assistant, help them out, and I thought I- that way I could practice myself, I could really build myself up, I could travel the world, and I could get more immersed into this thing. I started doing that for a couple months, and just doing it for a short period of time, I started to realize that the assistants that were in the company, I felt like personally I was already at a higher level than, than most of these dudes. So that actually gave me more confidence. By being in these environments over and over again, I started to see more about what it was and learn from them, but also it, it built up how I felt about myself in these environments. 'Cause I had been putting in the work for years on end at this point already. It wasn't like I was brand new to this. This is me at 28, 29, and I started at like 24. And so I was watching the dudes on YouTube at this point. I had watched everybody's products. I felt, I, I felt like I was at a level that was similar to a lot of these dudes, and then going into this company kinda gave me confirmation. Now, ultimately, that, the company ended up firing me over some BS drama that was actually out of my hands, but they fired me, and I was devastated. I remember even almost tearing up while they, they fired me because I remember thinking, "Oh, they wanna talk to me. Maybe they're gonna invite me to the, to the Barcelona event that's going on." So I got on that call thinking I'm getting invited to be a potential coach. Lo and behold, they, they let me go on that day. And so at that point, I just made the decision. I didn't really have any other option. I was like, I, if I wanna keep doing this, I gotta start my own, my own brand. I gotta start my own channel. And I felt kinda confident enough to do it, but honestly, I didn't. I have memories of having the name Coach Kyle typed out on the YouTube channel bar, and all I had to do was hit the create button, and I couldn't click the button

Calum Johnson 1:54:39 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:54:39 Which is kind of interesting. Like I, I had the whole thing set up right there. I just couldn't click the button. I was sitting there like, "Ah, but am I really a coach? 'Cause I haven't coached anybody yet. Like, do I need some kinda like certification to do this to go, to go to the next level? Like, what do, what do I do?" And then eventually I was like, like, you're never gonna be ready for the next step until you take the step.

Calum Johnson 1:55:00 So you, you were feeling like an imposter syndrome almost, like around-

Kyle Froonjian 1:55:03 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:55:03 ... starting this channel.

Kyle Froonjian 1:55:04 Yeah, for sure.

Calum Johnson 1:55:05 Um, and then there's a certain moment that you just go, go all in and you go for it.

Kyle Froonjian 1:55:09 Yeah. So I made the decision. I, I started the channel, and there was definitely imposter syndrome. Like, I even see this with a lot of dudes that I've been trying to work with. Or I- I've even seen this with a lot of dudes who work with me who they feel inspired to wanna put out content. For anybody that's watching this, if like, if you wanna start a brand, you wanna start putting out content, there's 100% going to be those moments where you're like, "This isn't me. I don't know if I'm up to the level I need to be to, to make the brand, to put out the content, to coach other people." Whatever the thing is, you're not gonna be in a position, you're not gonna be ready to be the guy until you've already been acting like the guy. You can't think your way into it. You need to act your way and experience your way into really being that person. So thank God I just made the decision to just start the channel. And the one thing that I did do right at this point, because I was already 28, 29 At this point in my journey. And so I had already been doing self-development for quite some time. And that's the o- that's the one thing that the, the social skills and like cold approach and going out and interacting with strangers really taught me was it's a process, and you just need to have awareness, and you gotta just take the 1% steps every single day. So I went into YouTube with the mindset of, I'm gonna put out 100 videos over the course of the next year, and my goal is to just hit 1,000 subscribers. Like, that was actually my goal. No mentors. Nobody told me to do that. I actually went in with a realistic goal. Two videos a week. Every video I'm gonna try to learn from the previous video. I'm gonna slowly climb my way up, and I, I thought that would be so cool to just have 1,000 people, uh, subscribe to the channel. And that's what I did, man. I think by the nine-month mark, I hit 1,000 subscribers.

Calum Johnson 1:56:56 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:56:56 And I was already a lot better at that point than when I had started. But I also know a lot of people that tried to do YouTube that never made it to that point. They never made it to the one-year mark. They, they never went viral. They didn't hit the thing they wanted, and they were in that valley of despair. They had unrealistic goals, unrealistic expectations coming into it, and when they, they realized it wasn't popping off for them, they gave up. So I went in with the right mindset around the whole thing. I hit the 1,000 around nine-month mark, and then over the next six months is when the channel really started taking off. This was at a time where there wasn't nearly as many competitors. I feel like nowadays everybody's kinda putting out content, especially with TikTok and Instagram. They make it very easy to put out content. Back then, you couldn't just film a reel and throw up the reel and it would get thousands of views. Like, it was more based around consistency, and you would need subscribers to kinda build yourself up. So it took me over a year to start to get the channel to pop off, and I, again, I just genuinely wanted to help people. I did h- I had no offer in place. I had no sales funnel. I would put out my videos, and at the end of the video I would say, "Hey, link below if you wanna book out a free coaching call." And it was not a sales call. It was not a consultation call. It was a free coaching call. And I did that, and I had 50,000 subscribers on my channel, and I was giving out free coaching calls. Dudes were getting on the call like starstruck.

Calum Johnson 1:58:20 [laughs]

Kyle Froonjian 1:58:20 And I was tripping out because I was like, "This is crazy." From my perspective, I'm still working my job making $30 an hour. I'm taking these calls, and one of the first dudes I got on with, at the end of the call he said, "What's your, what's your Venmo? I got, I gotta pay you for this. This was too valuable." He sent me 70 bucks. I remember tripping out thinking like, "This is actually crazy. Like, I made more money over the last couple hours just doing this." And so that's what started to open m- my eyes up to the idea that I could even make money off of it.

Calum Johnson 1:58:48 Mm-hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 1:58:49 So again, I, it, it all comes back to mindset expectations because I went in thinking like, "I'm just gonna put out the value. I'm just gonna keep doing this process, 1% wins daily," and realistic goals in terms of my timeline. And eventually, when you put out enough value like that, people will start to wanna pay you for your, for the amount of value you're putting out, and I had clearly demonstrated I had an expertise, and so I started to get money. And I, over the next year, I opened up a Patreon 'cause that's like what other people were doing. I still knew nothing about business, and I started charging $1. It was a $1 Patreon. You could get exclusive lives. You could jump on Q&A with me, and 500 people came into that thing.

Calum Johnson 1:59:29 [laughs]

Kyle Froonjian 1:59:30 And I was like, "Damn, I'm making 500 bucks. This is great." [laughs]

Calum Johnson 1:59:34 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 1:59:34 I had sales reps and shit contacting me trying to sell me on their high-ticket business coaching, and they're like, "You're not making 50K a month yet?" I was like, "Nah, dude. I'm working a full-time job making like $500 a month-

Calum Johnson 1:59:44 [laughs]

Kyle Froonjian 1:59:45 ... off of my Patreon. I'm cool."

Calum Johnson 1:59:46 [laughs]

Kyle Froonjian 1:59:47 And then slowly I cranked it up to $5 a month and then $10 a month, and I, I built it up to the point where slowly, very, very slowly, I built it up over the course of the next year and a half up to about 12K a month.

Calum Johnson 1:59:59 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 2:00:00 And I was still working my full-time job making 4K a month off of my full-time job. Living at my mom's, living in my mom's basement.

Calum Johnson 2:00:06 [laughs]

Kyle Froonjian 2:00:07 Making more money than my mom was. Just stacking. Because I had... I, I just didn't understand business or sales or anything like that, so I was just stacking money 'cause I was like, "This is too good to be true. I'm, I'm gonna wake up tomorrow and the channel's gonna be gone, and all, I'm gonna go back to fucking nothing." And you know, very, like, scarcity type mindset with, when it came to the business and making money 'cause that was never in my reality. And then slowly, over the course of the next year, I saved up enough money, and then eventually I hired a mentor around the whole thing. It took me a very long time to get to this point 'cause I did it all by myself. But about three years into making money, I finally saved up enough. I hired a mentor. I finally moved out of my mom's basement after I had already stashed like $100,000 [laughs] dude. I was so afraid to leave. And I hired a mentor. He actually taught me high ticket sales and, like, business, and then over the next two years I had, I learned a lot about business, sales, team management, leadership, building up my employees from a, an egoless standpoint. Like, I think that's another important part for certain influencers and brands is that, like, you can only get to a certain level by yourself. To get to an even higher level if you really wanna create, like, a powerful infrastructure, you gotta be able to put your ego to the side and, and build the other people up beneath you who can also get some level of recognition, which in the pickup and the men's self-development niche, it's not that easy to do, honestly. Like, having former clients that you could build up to become, like, praised by, um, other, other potential clients you have. Like, it, that was not that easy for me to do initially. And so there was just a whole process around leadership, having uncomfortable conversations with employees, taking sales calls, grinding it out for months on end when you're trying a new sales funnel or a new process and it's not paying off the way you want, when you spent blank amount of money on a mentor. And man, there's just a whole process in that in itself, too, that I went through. Um, and then over time just refining the client journey, really maxing out the experience I could give to clients. While also getting paid a- an amount that made sense for my time a- a- as well. So it, it took a long time, dude. Like, I've been, I've been doing business and sales for almost six years at this point, and now I'm at a point where I have three coaches beneath me. We can run live events. We have an, uh, an online mentorship. I also have a lower ticket community that, that seems to be doing very, very well for, um, only $97 a month. Like, that's a great community of dudes who are just trying to get their, their d- their diet, their physique, their, their daily actions, their social confidence. Really just everything we were talking about earlier in this, in this podcast. But it- it's not easy, dude. Like, it, it has taken a long time to build those things up and, and there's still struggles with it. You know? I, I feel like by no means am I anywhere near the level I wanna get to, and so I'm just, I'm prepared to keep going at it through the stress, through the fucking uncomfortableness, and I, I love every day of it, honestly.

Calum Johnson 2:03:13 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 2:03:13 Because of the fact I'm so focused on the daily actions.

Calum Johnson 2:03:17 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 2:03:18 Right? So when you love your routine and, and, and you love the things you're going into, and you have a growth mindset, it becomes a very fulfilling process every step of the way.

Calum Johnson 2:03:27 You said this very interesting

Calum Johnson 2:03:28 thing, and I'm gonna bring it back to the dating real quick.

Kyle Froonjian 2:03:31 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 2:03:32 Which is you said that, you know, a lot of people, they'll sign up for your program, they'll start working with you one-to-one. Who knows how l- um, I'll just put a random time on it. Maybe three, four months down the line, they go from this place of, like, they're not having that much success, or they're, like, kind of frustrated with, like, their dating life, and then they meet, like, an awesome girl. They get, like, an awesome girlfriend. It's, like, an amazing partner.

Kyle Froonjian 2:03:56 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 2:03:57 And I remember you even said to me, you're like, "They call me up, and they're like, 'Kyle, peace.' Like, 'I'm good.'" [laughs]

Kyle Froonjian 2:04:02 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 2:04:02 Like-

Kyle Froonjian 2:04:02 "Thank you so much. This was so transformative, man. I got, I got the girl now." You know? Like, "Thank you, my man." And we have this ongoing joke in my-

Calum Johnson 2:04:10 [laughs]

Kyle Froonjian 2:04:10 ... in my company with my coaches. We're like, "All right, bro, take care." You know, like, "We'll see you in three months."

Calum Johnson 2:04:15 [laughs] Yeah. And so I'm just, I'm just curious 'cause I actually think it's a serious thing. Like, what-

Kyle Froonjian 2:04:21 Yeah

Calum Johnson 2:04:22 ... what is it, what is it that's happening there? Like, what's giving you the foresight to know that, yes, this person is on the journey, and they've kind of, like, completed, I guess, the initial steps, you could say, by, like, even being able to get a girlfriend that they like.

Kyle Froonjian 2:04:38 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 2:04:39 But what kinda gives you the foresight, or what experiences has taught you that that's actually really only the beginning of the journey is actually getting the girlfriend?

Kyle Froonjian 2:04:49 Yeah, I mean, well, the first experience was, like, my first relationship, which was, like, dating a girl who I thought was incredible for the first... I, I mean, honestly, the whole relationship. Like, I thought, I thought she was out of my league, but losing that girl and, and coming to the realization later on in the relationship that, like, I can't make her happy. But also in hindsight, realizing I had no fulfillment externally, and I wasn't building anything as a man. And so when, when you're not leveling up as a man consistently, like, if you're not building, if you're not leveling up, if your financials aren't increasing, if you don't have a fulfilling purpose or drive towards the world, and you're not consistently optimizing yourself,

Kyle Froonjian 2:05:28 how are you supposed to keep the attraction high within the relationship? Like, it's your job when you're leading the relationship as the dude to keep growing, to keep leading, to keep expanding. That, now that doesn't mean I need to keep growing my brand and, like, then I can't give attention to my, my daughter or my son or my, my wife. I'm saying, like, you need to keep optimizing these things. Maybe there's a, a time, like, if we just had a, a baby, you're gonna have to give more attention to the, to the kid and, and all that stuff, but you need to keep growing as the dude. And I think the problem that I see is, like, guys that haven't... They don't already have the solid foundation in place. They're seeking the girl to get out of the pain. They're seeking to get the relationship to get the fulfillment.

Calum Johnson 2:06:11 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 2:06:11 To be happy, to be complete. When I have this girl, I'm no longer gonna feel this way, and that's because they don't have fulfillment in their business, their brand, their purpose, their daily actions. They don't have a validating process that they could do by going through their own actions. And when you're, when you're always seeking that externally from the relationship, you're just in a, you're just in a bad position, man. Like, I don't see... I just don't see how that could be more beneficial. Like, if I'm just looking from a female's perspective and I'm gonna follow some dude that I'm supposed to support and, and, and nurture and admire, like, long term, which I do think the woman to some extent should do those things, like, if you're gonna be in a fulfilling relationship, right? How could she do those things, like, if you're not growing as the man? Like, you set the tone for the relationship, I think, as the leader. And so dudes go into the... They, they start dating a girl that they really like, and then they think it's done. I got the girl now. I can hang the jersey up, and, like, life's good. Like, we're just gonna be chilling for right now. And it will be like that at least for a little bit because of the chemical release, because of the honeymoon phase, because of how great you and your partner are. I'm sure, like, all of that could be really well. But just understand there's different phases to dating, and the further into long-term dating we get beyond the honeymoon phase, year two, year three, year five, when the trauma actually does come out, when you need to be a, a confident leader, when you need to be able to have uncomfortable conversations with your woman, when you need to be able to keep the attraction high year three, year five. When you've been having sex with the same girl a thousand times, what is she attracted to if you're not working on yourself anymore? The sex will become routine, right? The, the woman will be attracted because you can consistently on a daily basis display to her that I am the best suitable partner for you. And you show that every day, not just in the bedroom. You show that every day by the way you interact with the world, the way you, you maneuver through the world, and, like, the control you have and the, the... Independence that you have on society.

Calum Johnson 2:08:20 Mm-hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 2:08:20 Right? And that's by not being shackled to drugs, vices, bad habits. That's through consistently growing, consistently working on yourself, your physique, your finances, um, ideally building a business or a brand that you're passionate about. Like, I'm at a place now where I don't need the relationship. I'm not saying that I don't want one, but I don't need one because of how fulfilling my daily routine is, my business, my brand, my purpose in helping other men. That is extremely, extremely fulfilling to me. Um, and so because of that, I feel like I'm now in a place where I've worked on myself enough, I have the emotional intelligence, the communication skills, this kind of world that I've created where if I do meet the right woman, I can kind of screen out the ones that I know wouldn't be a good fit just based off of previous dating experience, as well as understanding what I have going on, and the ones that are potentially a good fit, I can explore that further. And now I have the foundation to bring the girl into this world. I have a kingdom that I've created-

Calum Johnson 2:09:18 Mm

Kyle Froonjian 2:09:18 ... where she could actually come in and be the queen.

Calum Johnson 2:09:21 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 2:09:21 And I don't mean like some toxic thing like, "I'm the king, you're just the queen." I mean like the queen p- the queen plays an essential role in the kingdom, I think.

Calum Johnson 2:09:30 Mm-hmm.

Kyle Froonjian 2:09:31 And when you pick the wrong queen or you don't have the right foundation set up, like that could be detrimental [laughs] to a kingdom-

Calum Johnson 2:09:38 Mm

Kyle Froonjian 2:09:38 ... as well. So there's a lot that goes into it, dude, and, and as a man, again, you, you just gotta, in my opinion, as a dude, long-term dating, you gotta be on top of your shit. You gotta, you gotta keep building and, and live a fulfilling life outside of just the relationship.

Calum Johnson 2:09:54 Yeah. You know what? I, I, I wanna take it a bit deeper.

Kyle Froonjian 2:09:57 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 2:09:57 Because I think we've all experienced that friend who maybe they, they start working on themselves, right? They're like going to the gym.

Kyle Froonjian 2:10:06 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 2:10:06 They're like slowly going up. You're like, "Wow, this is like, they're starting to have a transformation."

Kyle Froonjian 2:10:10 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 2:10:10 And then maybe they meet a girl, they really like her, they get in a relationship, all good, and then all of a sudden it's like you don't see them anymore.

Kyle Froonjian 2:10:18 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 2:10:19 They're, they're like, the gym routine is gone.

Kyle Froonjian 2:10:22 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 2:10:22 They're now like watching Netflix and getting like slightly overweight.

Kyle Froonjian 2:10:25 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 2:10:25 Like, you start to see these... It's like they, there's like this pivot once they get in the relationship. And so I'm just curious for you, because you've obviously, I'm sure at this point you've probably worked with like thousands of guys-

Kyle Froonjian 2:10:37 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 2:10:37 ... to be honest. What are some of those like telltale signs that if I'm a guy listening, and maybe I'm even in the relationship, of like certain behaviors that start to show that you're kind of... Because really what you're getting at, you kind of lose the thing that the, or the reason why the girl liked you in the first place.

Kyle Froonjian 2:10:58 Right. Yeah.

Calum Johnson 2:10:59 So like what are those telltale signs of like things, behaviors that you see or hear from guys that they started doing it and then the relationship started to degrade a bit?

Kyle Froonjian 2:11:10 I mean, one of the biggest things is like just not dating the girl, but just kind of chilling with the girl. Like, you kinda just said it. It's like you stop going to the gym so much. But it's not even like you're going on dates with your girl. You're just chilling. I, I mean, I even did this too. Like, I've fallen victim to this. I, I don't think any dude could be successful with this if he hasn't gone through it. This is what we were talking about earlier. It's like you gotta go down the path and get derailed and then come back to it to realize like, "I fucked up."

Calum Johnson 2:11:40 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 2:11:41 And then you could actually go back into the simulation with the, with the, with the awareness now of, "I've been down this path before. I've kind of fallen victim to this thing, and now moving forward, I could actually have the awareness that I need to properly navigate this thing." And so g- because if, if not, like you're inevitably gonna make the mistake. And that's also why I feel like you need to have some kind of lane built up for yourself as a man that's fulfilling outside of the relationship, because that's extra incentive and leverage and a- attention and even pressure to keep you on point. When you don't have anything else going on for you, your girl's gonna continuously want more and more time from you, assuming she really likes you. Like, she's gonna want more and more time from you, and she's going to, whether it's conscious or not, she's going to have somewhat of a, she's gonna at least try to influence you.

Calum Johnson 2:12:32 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 2:12:32 I think she, she almost needs to do that just for her own sake biologically to get clarity that as the leader you can still guide this thing. You're not overly influenced by the woman. Like she wants a dude that n- not, not that she wants a dude that's gonna just, gonna put her in a place on some abusive shit. But she wants a dude that he can be the rock, and even if, uh, even if she's kind of like trying to influence sometimes, it's not that he doesn't hear her out or, or they can't make decisions together, but like the dude should not always be swayed a- and be able to be, um, compromised because of the girl's influence continuously. That's actually an indication of a bad leader in my opinion.

Calum Johnson 2:13:10 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 2:13:10 Right? And, and we're starting to get into these areas where it's like I could see there's a lot of like toxic masculinity around some of these things.

Calum Johnson 2:13:16 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 2:13:17 But I do think there's a healthy place where you could still lead the relationship properly and still give your girl all the love and attention and affection she needs, but you can also not be overly influenced by certain decisions, right?

Calum Johnson 2:13:29 It was, it was good what you were saying. And I think it's like, um, it's an important distinction that you make when you talk about like even the toxic masculinity stuff coming into it.

Kyle Froonjian 2:13:39 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 2:13:39 Because it's not about like, at least in my mind, it's not about like displaying dominance over someone-

Kyle Froonjian 2:13:48 Yeah

Calum Johnson 2:13:48 ... or like this weird manipulative thing, or just being like stubborn.

Kyle Froonjian 2:13:52 Mm.

Calum Johnson 2:13:52 Like, "Oh, 'cause my girl said it, I'm, like I'm not doing it."

Kyle Froonjian 2:13:54 Right.

Calum Johnson 2:13:55 It's more, it's just kind of knowing who you are and like knowing what gets you in the spot and like puts you in the, you're just the highest version of yourself.

Kyle Froonjian 2:14:05 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 2:14:05 And staying consistent. Staying consistent to that. Um, but to your point, it's so difficult, 'cause I think, I think as guys we do a lot of things for like the validation of women.

Kyle Froonjian 2:14:16 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 2:14:17 Um-

Kyle Froonjian 2:14:17 That's why you gotta go through it, man. Like, I don't see how you could have a high level of awareness around these concepts if you haven't been through it.

Calum Johnson 2:14:23 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 2:14:24 Because the first time it happens, sec- even second, third time it happens, like- Yeah. How else, I mean, how else could you have awareness unless you've gone through it and you've been derailed from it, and then you come back to it? That's what creates the awareness in my opinion. It's going, it's going down the path, losing it, then coming back to terms with, "Oh, wow, that actually did happen. Now I gotta get back to center and now I could be a little bit smarter about this path the next time I go down it." And so, I mean, I've, I've lost myself in relationships. M- in both long-term relationships I've lost myself in different ways, and I- I've been the passive dude that got stepped on for not putting his foot down to have uncomfortable conversations. I've been the dude who was over the top on the opposite end just trying to be dominant and, like, too aggressive to try to, like, just put the girl in her place almost out of, like, fear. A- and I don't think that that's a good place either because that doesn't create admiration. Maybe she'll respect you, like, almost, like, out of fear if she's, like, has kind of a, a weak mentality, which is, like, what some of these maybe red pill dudes could do. Like, they're very dominant, they're very powerful, and they find a, like, very, like, weak girl that they could just overpower.

Calum Johnson 2:15:29 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 2:15:29 And they kinda keep her there almost out of, like, fear or there's just, like, this massive value proposition that kinda keeps the girl there. But I, I don't think that that's actually a healthy place. I think being able to properly communicate these things from a confident place where you actually have something else going on in your life that's fulfilling outside of the relationship, being able to give adequate amounts of affection and love and care and security to your, your partner at the same time, and having that balance. I mean, as I'm just saying this, obviously this is intricate, so the only way you could do that is through experience.

Calum Johnson 2:16:01 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 2:16:01 A- and failure.

Calum Johnson 2:16:02 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 2:16:02 I- in my opinion.

Calum Johnson 2:16:03 Yeah. You know what? Just I, I, I love what we mentioned earlier around, like, every time there's a conflict or something comes up or it makes you uncomfortable in, yeah, it can be in, like, your romantic relationship, but any relationship. Just think that it's either the way that you handle and resolve that conflict is either making the relationship 1% better-

Kyle Froonjian 2:16:23 Yeah

Calum Johnson 2:16:23 ... or 1% worse.

Kyle Froonjian 2:16:25 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 2:16:25 And it's gonna compound in either direction.

Kyle Froonjian 2:16:28 Yep.

Calum Johnson 2:16:28 Um, I just think it's so powerful. But here's where

Calum Johnson 2:16:33 I, here's where I wanna end, 'cause we've been going for a, for a long-ass time. [laughs] Um, you know, we've, we've gone through it in this episode, like, 12, 12 years old your dad dies and it, like, sends you into this, um, kind of spiral of, of being, like, depressed, I guess, at certain points, introverted, uh, addicted to gaming or weed. Um, then when you're 24 it's, like, the breakup with your girlfriend. It's, like, another thing that kinda sends you into this spiral, and it's, like, these, these different rock bottom moments in your journey. But to be honest, now you're what? You're 34 now.

Kyle Froonjian 2:17:16 Mm.

Calum Johnson 2:17:16 And we're speaking, and you've made, like, money that many people would dream of. I'm as- I'm assuming that even you dreamed of it when you were-

Kyle Froonjian 2:17:26 Yeah, for sure

Calum Johnson 2:17:26 ... when you were younger. You have, uh, a dating life and, like, skills that are, that are valuable to you. You have, like, the social confidence and charisma. And so I'm just curious, if there was a conversation between the 34-year-old version of Kyle that's sitting here and that 24-year-old kid-

Kyle Froonjian 2:17:50 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 2:17:50 ... that just had that five-hour-

Kyle Froonjian 2:17:54 [laughs] Crazy

Calum Johnson 2:17:55 ... breakup with his girlfriend, uh, and then was really upset about it. I'm just curious what you would tell him. If you had to tell him one thing, what would you say?

Kyle Froonjian 2:18:07 Boil that down into one thing? It's pretty tricky. I think it ties back to what I was saying earlier in the show at some point, which is the idea of, like, for everybody watching, no matter where you are at right now, I don't care if you're at the lowest of lows. Like, even in my own journey, like, I, I felt like at 24 I was at a very low point. I was literally slightly chubby, smoking weed every single day and night. Like, I, I was more high than I was sober, and I was working a pizza delivery job making $15 an hour cash, living in my mom's basement, commuting to college, not talking to a single soul. That's kinda where I was at 24, and then I was literally heartbroken at that point. Now, whether you're at a higher point than that or a lower point than that, it doesn't matter. You just need to accept where you're at and assume the responsibility of, hey, we're here now. Whatever happened, it is what it is. But the good news is, is that no matter what, [laughs] it's on us moving forward. Like, and anything is possible. You could literally become whoever you want. I don't care if you watch this and you're 45 years old or if you're, like, 17 and you're watching this. It really doesn't matter. Whatever the starting point is, it's literally today, and then starting tomorrow, whatever actions you do on a daily basis will sculpt the character for the future.

Calum Johnson 2:19:28 Mm.

Kyle Froonjian 2:19:29 That's honestly what it is. And so, like, the moment you can just accept responsibility and stop telling yourself the BS story, 'cause if you're watching this, you have some story, and maybe some of it's even valid. It's, some of it's true. Doesn't matter the, the point you're at, you just need to accept that, hey, this was a story. I'm at this point, and then moving forward my daily actions and my routine will dictate the character that I become. And it's gonna be a slow process. There's gonna be a valley of despair. It's gonna be uncomfortable. I'm gonna have to sacrifice a lot of different things. I may have to give up certain fun things or bad habits, or, or people even. I have to sacrifice the old identity even, or, or actions to become this new dude. But if I could just put my head down and do that and stay focused on the 1% actions on a daily basis, even when there's no positive benefit coming out of it for maybe weeks or months on end, years might even go by without me actually seeing the thing that I want to accomplish, as long as I stay consistent with that, I will inevitably hit the goal. Inevitably And I think honestly, like the younger me to some extent embraced that. Maybe not at 24 years old when I'm heartbroken. Initially, I just wanted to get out of pain. I never imagined it would go this far, like into the, the progression. I just wanted to get out of pain. I just wanted to take one step higher, honestly, just to get out of the pain. But by doing that one step and showing myself I could go from here to here, I d- I learned that process of going from wherever the, wherever I was at to one step higher than that. And once I got out of the pain, I was like, "Hey, that was possible. I could do this step again, and I could do this step again." And by the time I made two, three steps, I showed myself, man, over the last year, over the last six, 12, whatever months, I was able to go through this process despite how I was feeling and make a transformation. And with each step forward, you kind of show yourself the evidence you need that you could go to an even higher level. So if you're, if you're in it right now, d- you don't need to become .00001% of man. You just need to go one step higher. And with every step higher, you show yourself a new reality and a higher potential you could become, man.

Calum Johnson 2:21:36 Yeah.

Kyle Froonjian 2:21:37 That's what, that's what it comes down to.

Calum Johnson 2:21:38 You know, I'm so, I'm so happy that you ended with that because I think sometimes it's like we have these aspirations for ourselves and we see ourselves maybe achieving this thing one day, or maybe it's even just someone was in a moment like what you described at 24, where it's almost like overwhelming, like the, the emotion and the pain that you're feeling is so overwhelming, it's difficult to imagine another reality.

Kyle Froonjian 2:22:03 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 2:22:03 And so it's like when you're in that moment, the only thing that you need to do is just focus on like, what's the next step that's gonna make my situation marginally better?

Kyle Froonjian 2:22:13 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 2:22:14 And it's like, just doing that gives you a little bit of momentum. Like it just, it stops you from being, being on the losing spiral.

Kyle Froonjian 2:22:21 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 2:22:22 Just getting one win, and now you're going up. And so Coach Kyle, man, thank you so much. Thank you so much for watching this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. It's really a dream for me that I get to do this. It's surreal that this is what I do full time and every week. So if you enjoy the content, if you enjoyed the conversation, the stories, please hit that subscribe button. It helps us immeasurably with growing the channel, with getting guests, all of those things. So please hit that subscribe button, and I'll see you next time