I Approached Models in Miami Stone-Cold Sober… and Everything Changed (Sober Dating, Part 2 of 3)

Because I knew I wasn't leaning on alcohol, I felt like I had a new superpower. I felt like the superpower was coming from inside of me,

not from the jetpack of alcohol.

Welcome back to the How to Get a Girlfriend podcast. I'm your host, dating coach Connell Barrett.
I help men attract women by being authentic. No sketchy pickup artist moves needed here.

And if you struggle to approach women, especially without alcohol, if you can only do it with liquid courage, then this episode is for you because I'm going to help you to approach women stone cold sober and actually do it better than you would do it if you were having a beverage.

And so yeah, if you find yourself thinking, oh man, I can't talk to women without a couple tequilas in me, I'm going to help you do it and do it really confidently without needing booze.

By the way, this is part two of my three-part series on sober dating. In the last episode, I shared my story about how I quit drinking for good after a thousand days of sobriety.

I just celebrated my 1000th day sober.

And so, if you missed that episode, go back and check it out. It was the most recent episode.
I think you'll really get something out of it.

But today, we're going to zoom in on one huge piece of the journey of you finding your girlfriend, which is meeting women out in the real world.

And I want to make sure that you can approach women without needing alcohol.

By the way, I have no problem with having a guy having a drink or two. I have no issues with alcohol for you or for anybody who wants to drink.

For me, it was like a toxic relationship that had to end. So I teach this having no judgment of people who drink or drinking itself.

But I also want you to be free to talk to women anywhere, wherever you want, and not need alcohol to do it. So let me start.

I want to tell you about the night in Miami many years ago when I went out and I proved to myself that liquid courage is a myth, that you can actually approach women sober at night.

and actually have it go amazingly well. And you're actually going to do better at approaching if you don't have booze, if you follow my tips, my

five simple steps I'll be telling you about but let me start with the story so this happened at Nikki Beach many many years ago I was in Miami Nikki Beach is a really fun hot spot it's a tiki bar bungalow vibe open air right on the sand and I was there in February and that means it's model season in Miami Model season means there are lots of beautiful, gorgeous women in Miami, some of them, many of them, literally professional models.

And I used to go to Miami with the coaches who were helping me at the time, and it was model season. Let's go meet some models.

And back then, this is back when I was not a coach. This is when I was just learning how to approach women and getting good at it.

And normally back then, I would have one or two drinks to get the wheels off the runway. so to speak, to loosen up before talking to women.
That was my pattern.

Is I told myself that alcohol just got me to take action. That liquid courage is what I needed to start off a lot of nights, at least when it was in a bar in the, in the nighttime.

I didn't drink during the day when I would approach women during the day, which I also did a lot. But at night, I told myself I need that liquid courage.

However, this night, a Sunday night in Miami, I said, tonight I'm going to do it differently. I'm just going to try an experiment.
No booze, zero alcohol.

By the way, Sunday night at Nikki Beach was the night to go to Nikki Beach. That was the hot night.
I don't know if it still is, but it was back in, back in the day.

So I walk into Nikki Beach and I can feel the nerves.

I'm with my friend Tyler, who's also sober.

And he and I are going to do our best to wingman each other.

But I had that old voice.

I still heard that voice that said, you can't do this without a drink, or this is going to be tough. But I just told myself, you know what? I'm going to do it anyway.

I'm going to go approach women and just see how it goes. So I walk over to a group of three women.
They're standing at a tall cocktail table. And I started a conversation.
I was definitely nervous.

I was in my head. And it went fine.
Didn't go great, but it went fine. Nothing magical, but nothing terrible.
Just a normal, chill interaction. And that got me some momentum.
And then

I told myself, don't spend a lot of time between interactions, talking to Tyler or not approaching. In other words, do a lot of approaches.

I learned the power of social momentum, meaning that when you go out to approach women, more is better. So I immediately bounced from one approach to another one.
I saw a second group of women.

Now, the second time I had some butterflies, but the anxiety was gone. Now it was just butterflies.
And I felt lighter, I felt looser, and I began to have some fun.

And maybe it took one more approach, one or two more.

And then I felt something really click. By my third or maybe it was my fourth approach, I hit what you might call a flow state.
There's a term called flow state, which I'll talk about shortly.

Basically, flow state means that your mind goes into autopilot. You're not worried about anything.
You're not focused on the future. You're not worried about the past.

You're not quote unquote in your head. You're just very present.

And flow state means that you link a lot of positivity and enjoyment to what you're doing. In other words, everything feels good.
And I got into a flow state pretty quickly.

And suddenly I wasn't thinking. I wasn't analyzing.
I wasn't trying to attract women. I was just being and talking.

And I now call that side of you, of me, of any guy, the higher self. That calm, grounded, fearless, expressive you at your best.
I now call that the higher self.

At the time, I just said, I'm in the zone. I'm in the zone.
And so, by the way, I'm drinking water. I have a

cup of water.

And even though I just had a cup of water, I felt buzzed. I felt really confident, really energized, nice and loose.
And it was kind of like,

I told Tyler, I'm like, dude, I feel drunk. I was drunk on me.
I was drunk on action. I was drunk on talking to people.

And so I started to do bold things that night. I started, I saw no fear.

I approached a man and a woman who were clearly together. And I just, hey, guys, what's up? How's your night going? And they were pretty cool.
They were pretty chill.

I approached another man and woman who were together, not because I was trying to steal her, but I was just having fun. I approached a woman and a man making out.

And I walked up and tapped him on the shoulder. And I said, hey, can I cut in?

She laughed. He looked at me like he wanted to punch me, but he didn't.
He just kind of grimaced and she laughed. And I just felt like, oh man, if I can do that, I can do anything.

And I was absolutely fearless the rest of the night. I was walking up to the most beautiful women there, literally models, and I was having instant phone numbers, creating some real sparks.

I got two or three numbers that night. I was having fun and I just gave zero fucks.

And I remember

the big moment that stands out that night, other than the may I cut in approach. By the way, don't do that.
Don't try that at home.

I was just in the mood that night to do that.

But the highlight moment was I saw this really pretty woman. I found out her name's Rachel.
I saw the stunning woman. She was surrounded by four guys,

like literally surrounded. They were kind of all fawning over her, orbiting around her like, like

satellites.

And I walk over and I say to myself, to Tyler, sorry, I say to Tyler, hey,

what's the hardest approach in this room? And we both looked around and said, oh, that girl over there surrounded by guys. So he's like, go over there.
And I said, I'm on it. I was fearless.

I walked over. I cut right into the circle and I smiled.
And I simply said to her with a smile on my face, I reached my hand out like a gentleman from the 19th century. I said, You, come with me.

With a nice

smile of an assumption that it's going to go well, a smile of, I belong here. I am worthy of you.
I reached out my hand, calm and confident, and she took it. And I just pulled her

away from these four men.

My old coach Owen would probably call that parting the Red Sea. He was like, You can part the Red Sea, walk up to women and just part the Red Sea and take a woman away from all these other guys.

By the way, she wasn't with any of them. She wasn't dating one of them.
It's not like I stole

a woman away from her boyfriend, but these guys who were fawning over her, talking to her, she basically just was drawn to my confidence and my flow state. So she takes my hand and

Moses leads her away from these guys, leads Rachel away. And we start talking.
We chat for about five minutes.

And I'm just cracking jokes, having fun, being my smart ass self. And at one point, she said, what are you drinking, by the way? She assumed I was drunk.
I said, I'm sober.

I was, but when she asked me that, I was so glad because I was like, oh, I'm sober. She's like, what do you know? You're not.
You're drunk. I can tell you're drunk.
I said, no,

tell for yourself. I gave her my cup and she sipped it and saw that it was water.

She said, wow,

I thought you were drinking.

You're in such a, I forget what she said. She didn't say you're in a good state, but she's like, oh, you're having so much fun.

I thought you had a buzz going. And I said, well, I do.
I'm drunk on me. And now I'm getting a little bit drunk on you, Rachel.

And she laughed. And a few minutes later, we kissed.
We made out 15 minutes later after I pulled her away from these four guys.

And it was, it was one of the best nights I'd ever had approaching in terms of, I'd had better nights in terms of results.

If you want to hear the most amazing result, read the first chapter of my book, Dating Sucks, But You Don't.

I talk about this incredible approaching result I had on the very first night I ever went out. But this was the night, I don't think I ever before that night felt that confident.

I had never felt that confident. It was one of my best nights ever.
And I never saw Rachel again. We never had another date.
We didn't hook up. We had a, a,

we had a bar kiss and it was just a huge ego boost.

And so yeah, it's not about she became the love of my life or anything, but this gorgeous woman in a bar chose me over all these other guys.

And I did not need any booze to not only to approach her, but she actually thought I was buzzed because I was in such a, such a good flow state.

And once I got into that flow, I had all the same benefits of drinking,

but without the toxic

liquid in my body and with a clarity of mind, I was confident. I was loose.

I was connecting.

I was having a blast.

Again, I wouldn't make this up if I'm not trying to make it seem like it was better than it was. There were some blowouts.

I approached some women who didn't want to talk to me that night, but most of the, most of the approaches went really well.

And also, I never had to refuel. You know, when you go to a bar, you need that liquid courage.
You got to go refuel, get another drink. I didn't have to worry about that.
I felt

clear, confident, loose, charismatic, but total clarity of mind as well. Total clarity of mind.

And that night at Nikki Beach taught me something incredible,

which was, wow, you can, when you, not only can you go out sober and have an incredible night of approaching, actually, it's easier and more effective to do it sober.

Once you take just a few sober actions, you'll catch a natural buzz. You're going to feel drunk, but you will not have to have a single drop of alcohol, alcohol, if you don't want.

And it's a rush of real confidence and it's 100%

the authentic you. So how do we get there? What do you do when you want to go out sober? Well,

what you want to do is first, don't do what you normally do.

What you normally do when you go out, I would imagine, is you go right to the bar and you get a drink to get that quote unquote liquid courage going your way. Well, don't do that.

The first thing you need to do when you go out is I want you to follow what I call the five master steps. The five master steps.

When you go out to approach women, you need a framework that takes your mind away from all the things that you're worried about. And that's what alcohol does.

Alcohol takes your mind away from the things that you're worried about, the pain you're afraid of feeling, like rejection. Like, what do I say?

Like, will women like me?

And you want to give yourself a framework. And I call this framework the five master steps.
So here are the the five steps. I'm going to read this to you.
I'm going to read some of the highlights.

This is from my book, chapter, what chapter is this? Chapter nine, I think. And I'm going to go through these five master steps because when you, when you go out sober, you have to follow a framework.

Otherwise, you're going to get in your head. You're going to get in your head.
And to quote Tony Robbins, get in your head. You're dead.

Instead of getting in your head, follow these steps. Here's what you do when you go to the bars.
This is all I did that night at Nikki Beach, and this is all you need to do. Step one, open often.

Meaning, you approach lots of women and you minimize time in between approaches. All right.

You don't want to go to the bar and get a drink and walk around, go to the bathroom. No, walk in, talk to the first human female you see.
So you open often, you approach often.

Step two is offer value, offer authentic value. In other words, be you.
You are enough.

Step three is make a connection. What I call, be what I call manto woman.

That is flirt a little bit. If she's sexy, tell her she's sexy.
If she's a dork or a nerd, tease her.

Authentically flirt with her. So step three is make an authentic connection, be manto woman.
Step four is go for the clothes. Basically, you escalate.
Step four is you escalate.

You go for the bare minimum, you go for a number, bare minimum. But it might mean you go for a first kiss if you're feeling it and she's feeling it.

You could leave the venue with her, go somewhere else. You could have an instant date where you go from the approach to sitting down together and basically go on essentially a first date.

And then step five is the least sexy step, but it's really important. Step five is appreciate something great about the approach.

Notice at least one awesome thing that you did well or that you can feel good about.

So I'll go through those again. Step one, approach often slash minimize time in between approaches.
Step two, be yourself,

offer authentic value, be you.

Step three, be man-to-woman, make a man-to-woman connection, flirt a little bit. Step four is essentially escalate, go for it.
Don't just settle for a good conversation.

Get the digits minimum, maybe even go for more. And then step five is no matter how long the approach lasts.

I don't care if it's five seconds, five minutes, five hours. When it's over, ask yourself, what did I do well? What can I feel good about? Or what was funny?

And step five is not sexy at all, but it's so important to protect your mindset.

The reason why guys approach women, I'm sorry, the reason why guys don't approach women is because they're afraid they're going to get rejected and interpret that approach as a failure.

You have to interpret every approach as a success.

Either you win by getting a number or creating some nice sparks, or you learn by learning a lesson, or you feel good about taking action, or you, or something funny happened.

I remember, it wasn't that night, but on a different night I went out approaching. I remember I got harshly rejected by a woman who said, Fuck off, Ginger.
This was in Vegas.

I approached, she said, fuck off, Ginger. And I laughed out loud at what she said.
I was like, ha ha ha, oh my God, that was hilarious.

And I turned to a different woman and I approached a different woman and I said, hey, did you hear what that woman just said to me? She just said, fuck off, ginger. Can you believe that?

But I was laughing about it. I was finding it funny.
And the second woman I approached was really into me. And we ended up having an incredible interaction.

And I would never have approached the second woman, who actually was way more beautiful and interesting to me than the first one.

I never would have approached girl number two if I had taken girl number one's rejection personally.

So step five, it ain't sexy.

It's basically a mindset tip, but it's so important because if you judge your approach, if you give it a grade of like a, oh, that was a three out of 10, she wasn't into me.

I said something stupid, then you're gonna, you're gonna judge yourself so harshly, you're never gonna gonna be able to recover.

You have to have a really short memory, a really short memory when we're out in the field, especially when you're doing this sober, because

you don't have the liquid fuel, the buzz, the state change of alcohol. So you've got to create that state change or maintain the good state yourself.
And that's what I'm talking about here.

That's why I'm harping about step five. So one more time, and then I will go a little bit deeper on a couple of these steps of sober approaching.
Step one, open approach often.

Step two, offer authentic value. Step three,

be man to woman slash make a connection. Step four, go for it, escalate, go for the number.
Step five, find something great about that approach. And

yeah, we got to start a lot of conversations. I think the most important steps are going to be step one.
and step five, because we got to, we have to talk, we have to talk to a lot of women.

Because when you follow that that first step and you open conversations with a lot of girls and by the way, I'm talking five to ten approaches in one hour

At least if it's a busy bar at night, then you're gonna notice a real shift in your psychology and here's what happens what happens is

when you approach often is the fearful part of your brain basically switches off And what happens is you see the true opportunity that's out there rather than the false danger.

And what this does is this leads to bolder actions and some really badass benefits.

And then you enter a fearless flow state that feels like you're kind of drunk, even though you're completely clear-headed and sober. And again, I call this the higher self.
It's really addictive.

Now, if you want to learn about what actually causes this flow state to happen in our minds, then I highly recommend a book called Flow, F-L-O-W, Flow, The Psychology of Optimal Experience, written by Mihali Chiksentmihai.

I am not even going to try to pronounce it, but the book is called Flow. It's a classic book about

the psychology of getting into a flow state, basically how to get in the zone in different areas of life. So those are the five steps.

When you go out at night, all you need to do is follow the five steps. And it's almost impossible to have a a bad night emotionally.

Now you may or may not get phone numbers and dates, but if you follow these five steps, especially steps one and five, approach often and interpret every approach in a positive, empowering way, then you're going to feel good.

And if you're feeling good, you're going to talk to more girls. And if you talk to more girls while you're feeling good, guess what?

You're giving women what they want, which is a fun conversation with a guy who's feeling good, feeling confident confident in himself. And that's all I did that night, that sober night out.

And

I think that what also happened for me that night, and what will happen for you if you do this a few times, is not only was I in the zone without the crutch of alcohol, because I knew I wasn't leaning on alcohol, I felt like I had a new superpower.

I felt like the superpower was coming from inside of me,

not from the jetpack of alcohol. It was coming from myself.
And that felt just fantastic.

And I recently saw the power of this in person with my client, Robbie. Not his real name, but a real story.
So Robbie and I went out recently here in New York City.

When I go out with my clients, I give them approaching missions to do.

And something to keep in mind is when you go out sober, the first two approaches are going to be the hard ones. So just get them over with.
Think of them as warm-ups.

Think of them as you're stretching at the gym. It's your warm-up set.

It's the warm-up before the game.

They don't really count to count.

You're just getting your mind accustomed to this action and the discomfort, the uncomfortable actions you're taking in this setting.

And then by exposing your mind to the thing that you're afraid of, approaching girls, your brain realizes nothing bad will happen.

Then your mindset will come back pretty quickly. So, for example, my client Robbie and I went out.
He's

5'7, 5'8. He's a software engineer.
He's Indian, Indian heritage, American raised. And Robbie has been very in his head about afraid to approach women, very afraid.

In fact, until recently, he had never done it until he started working with me.

He was so afraid to approach women or to take a romantic risk that he had a huge crush once on this girl who, this woman who's a cashier at his grocery store. He never actually talked to her.

One day he had written a note out for her saying, Hey, I like you. You're so cute.
Do you want to go on a date with me? Here's my number.

He wordlessly handed her

a post-it note or a written note and then ran away. I'm not laughing at him.
I did shit like that too.

And suffice it to say, she never texted him. She was not interested.
Because think about that. That does not read as confident, a guy who passes a note, a 25-year-old guy who passes a note.

You do that in fourth grade, not as a 25-year-old man. Anyway, that was Robbie when he and I first spoke.
Fast forward to this night out. Robbie, he wants to go out to approach.
He does not drink.

He does smoke. which I yelled at him, but he doesn't drink.
So Robbie's like, okay, what do I do, Connell? I gave him the the five steps. He

did not want to do the first approach.

We're at a place called

Houston Hall in Manhattan. It's a beer hall and kind of like a

beer garden type vibe, even though it's not literally in a garden setting. And there are two or three women on the dance on a dance floor part of Houston Hall.
And I say to Robbie, go approach them.

He was like, I'll do it in a minute. I'll do it in a minute.
I'm like, no, go now. He's like, but

let me just do it in a second. He's procrastinating, putting it off.

He's addicted. He was addicted to procrastination, something I talked about in the last episode.

So I look Robbie in the eye and I say, bro, either you go approach those girls like you told me you wanted to. You're paying me.
thousands of dollars to approach women.

So either go do it or I'll put you in a headlock. I will walk over to those women with you under my arm and I will say, excuse me, ladies, this is my friend Robbie.

He wanted to approach you, but he's afraid.

So Robbie, your choice, go in under my arm or go in like a man. He laughed.
He said, all right, I'll go. I'll go.
He approaches and it goes okay.

Doesn't go great, but it doesn't explode. They were like, hey, what's up? Hi.
He's like, hey, what's going on? How are you ladies doing? I'm like, oh, we're good. They went fine.

They were friendly-ish. They weren't into him.
They didn't drop to the floor and say, have sex with us, stud, but they were pretty, they were pretty chill, pretty friendly.

I can see

his mind, his body relax. He does the second approach.
This time I didn't have to push him. He just went in and did a second one.

The second one goes a little better than the first one, where a couple of women are really friendly and smiley. And the second approach, I can see he's standing taller.

He's following step one, open often, approach often, not giving his mind time to overthink. He does the second approach.
It goes well.

And then he's finally, I see him stand taller. He's got a little swagger.
He realizes, oh, there's nothing to fear. They're just girls.
They're just women at a bar.

And he walks over to two women, very pretty women who are seated at a

bench, almost like a picnic type bench. That's what Houston Hall has for seating.
Sort of, yeah, it's a beer garden thing. Anyway, he walks over just like

freaking James Bond, just feeling so cool in the zone. He walks over, just tons of swag.

And I couldn't hear what he said, but I could just see the women look up and smile and think, ooh, who is this confident guy? And he gets one of their phone numbers. I forget which one.

And he ended up approaching 15 or 16 women that night, and he got five phone numbers total.

This is the guy who a few weeks earlier, he couldn't say hi. He couldn't verbally say hello to the cute cashier at Trader Joe's grocery store.
He had to give her a note, a creepy, wordless note.

And now he's 15, 16 approaches on a Friday night, five or six phone numbers. I'd never, I shouldn't say never, I'd rarely seen a client

take such amazing action and get such great results. And all he did was follow the five steps.
I know what you're thinking. You're probably asking, what did he say? Connell, what did he say?

What were the magic words he said? I don't know. There's no such magic words when you approach.
When you walk up, to women and you are just in the moment and you get in the zone, the words will come.

And women want organic, spontaneous conversations with men. They don't want magic words.
Women don't give a fuck what you say to them.

They want it, they want whatever you say to come from a guy who believes in himself.

So I didn't give him any fancy lines. I don't think.
If I did, they were just to help him get the wheels off the runway at the start.

And then he was fine. He was more than fine.
And so anyway, that's the power of following these five steps.

Now, even if if you do drink i want you to follow these steps but really these steps are perfect for a guy who wants to go out and approach women without alcohol

because

you'll get drunk on yourself you'll get drunk on taking action just like i did at nikki beach just like robbie did at houston hall

and oh last thing i'll mention about the approaching tips is you might be asking me this. You might be thinking, well, hey, am I going to look like a weird guy who's not drinking?

What should I drink? Should I have water? Should I have seltzer? Should I pour water into a alcohol-shaped glass? Women don't care. Women don't care if you are or aren't drinking.

Women are out to have fun. They're out to meet.
They're out to be with their friends. They're out to have a fun night of dancing and socializing.

They want to get out of their head and enjoy a nice night out. And then...

If the right guy approaches and he's got the nice overall loose flow state fun vibe going, that's what they want. They just want to have fun with a cool guy like you.

They don't care that you're drinking. So drink whatever you want or don't drink.
What I mean is don't worry about having water or not even having a drink.

You could walk up without a drink in your hand. I've done it a hundred times at bars.
Women don't care. They don't care what you are or aren't drinking.

They care that you're a good, authentic guy who's bringing some real fun and connection and worth to their life. So those are the five steps.

If you want to read about the five steps in detail, I break them all down in my book, Dating Sucks, but you don't.

And if you want a free copy of Dating Sucks, but you don't, shoot me an email, connell at datingtransformation.com.

And by the way, if you've listened to this episode or any episodes recently and you're thinking, huh, I wonder how that whole dating coaching thing works. I want to approach girls.

I want to get five phone numbers in one night.

Then go to my website, datingtransformation.com, and you can book a free call with me.

If you're looking to find out how dating coaching works, especially you're looking to get more confident with approaching, you want to get really good at flirting, or you just want to never get stuck in the friend zone.

Those are some of my specialties. So just go to my website, datingtransformation.com.
You can book a free call with me. If we end up working together, awesome.

If we don't, the call is free and it's fine. Not everybody is a fit to be my client.
But anyway, that's how you can find out about working with me. Okay, stay tuned for the next episode.

We're going to do part three of my special three-part series on sober dating.

Don't forget, your dream girlfriend, she's out there and she's going to love you, but she's going to have to meet the real, authentic you. Till next time.