7 Principles On How To Become A 3% Man

7 principles you can focus on to help you become a 3% Man.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a viewer who has 7 good questions on implementing what’s in my book 3% Man. He’s trying to find the middle ground between pursuing too much and not enough with women and in life. Basically what’s the sweet spot look and feel like to becoming a 3% Man. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

Hi, I’m Coach Corey Wayne and this is my Video Coaching Newsletter. And the topic of today’s Members Only Newsletter is, “7 Principles On How To Become A 3% Man.”

Well, this particular email this guy is 33, loves what he does. And so he’s been studying my work. And he came up with seven questions, seven topics that he’s kind of struggling with. And he’s trying to kind of find the sweet spot and balance his approach out. So I thought there were a bunch of really good questions, because these are things that I see in emails and in my phone sessions. So I’m just going to go through them one by one.

Viewer Email:

Hey Coach,

I’m 33, and love what I do. I became so good at de-escalating spicy people downtown Portland, the company I worked for needed 5 more “me’s”, creating a little under a million-dollar department. Salsa dancing with Bipolar 2, being dead set on being full grounded and stable, comes with a bit more effort than others. It doesn’t stop me nor am I the diagnosis. 

So I assume that means he’s bipolar.

I’m trying to find the “Middle way” of Coach Corey Wayne.  I have read the book at least 7 times, but listened to the audiobook very intently more than 15. What does this balance look like, and can you provide examples?

How do you know you’ve crossed the line of confidence to arrogant?

Well, you want to be kind of cocky and charming, but not arrogant. Arrogant is kind of like, “I’m better than you. You’re a piece of shit. You’re under my thumb.” Confidence is having swagger. What is confidence? Confidence comes from knowing what you know how to do and doing it really well. It’s having a very matter of fact kind of attitude. A humble attitude, but you’re not bragging about it. You let other people sing your praises. You’re kind of humble, but you’re not arrogant.

Arrogance is thinking that you’re better than everybody else, that you’re too good for the woman. Now you can tease her and you can be playful. But the best way to know when you cross the line, especially as you’re learning this stuff, not trying to crack jokes over text or even the phone. It’s ideally you want to be face to face with a girl when you’re kind of cracking jokes. Because if you take it a little too far and she looks at you like, uh, did he did he really mean what he said? Or is he fucking with me?

And if you see a woman, kind of, you let her twist a little bit and she might think that you’re being really mean. She may even say, “hey, you’re being kind of mean.” You’re just saying. “I’m just teasing you don’t take it personally. You’re cute.” And reassure her that you’re just being playful. Four. And so again, it’ll be written all over her face. If she gets upset, you say, “I’m just joking. Don’t take it personally. Don’t be silly. Don’t take it too serious.” So that’s important because a lot of guys, especially, they study pickup.

They get a little arrogant. They do too much negging as the pickup community would call it, too many putdowns to the point where it looks like you’re belittling her and being mean to her, to the point where you really don’t like her and you really think she’s a piece of shit and you make her feel that way. So the idea is that when you’re face to face and you tease her and it doesn’t really land, right?

And she’s like, hey, you’re being really mean. If it looks like it really hurt her feelings. I’m not trying to hurt your feelings. I’m just goofing with you. Don’t be silly. And then tease her. Keep talking. Change the subject. But you got to do it enough to kind of see it. If you’re constantly pissing off women and they’re walking away from you, or they’re getting angry, or they ghost you, then you’re probably being a little too arrogant.

How do you keep your frame instead of falling into others habitually?

Well, when I talk about in The Book, you got to read it 10 to 15 times. And most importantly, you got to be applying it. Because the idea is that you want to see the stuff that’s in The Book you want to see it in your own life, you want to observe it in other men and women in their interactions. And that’s just going to take time and repetition. There are no shortcuts to success. And so what really builds your confidence and your certainty of displaying the behaviors continuously in The Book versus how you probably done it in the past.

Which usually the way you act, you know, when you’ve consumed the same content that we all have that kind of brainwashes you into being unattractive is that you have to notice it over and over, and you have to have an awareness of it. Because if you don’t fill in your knowledge gap, then you’re going to be doing and saying things that you don’t even know are unattractive or that turn women off. But once you understand it and like question number one, you’ll be able to notice in her face, the tone of her voice, her body language, that what you said was kind of went over the line and she took it as you were being a dick to her.

And that’s when you say, “hey, I’m just joking with you. You know, don’t take it personally.” So you have to be able to notice that and adjust, because if you’re just a dick and you constantly put girls down, then they’re not going to like you and they’re going to think you’re an asshole, and it will cause you to start to come off as being insecure, because if you’re always putting people down, then it’s going to make you look insecure. So keeping your frame is like you got to understand is that, again, if you know The Book backwards and forwards and this is why I say read it 10 to 15 times so you have an awareness.

And so it’s going to take time especially the things that are in The Book that are counterintuitive, the things that you see in The Book and that you read, that, what you feel you should do and what you think you should do, is a complete opposite of what The Book tells you to do. And so it’s like something I remember when I first started using the Kiss Test. Just looking, you know, on a date with a girl thinking, oh, things are moving good. She just touched me. I think she’s ready to be kissed. Then you look in her eyes and then just looking down at her lips and her eyes, I start to feel a little shame inside, like, oh my God, what if. And then you do it.

And then she looks at your lips too, and you’re like, oh shit, now I got to kiss her. And so you have to do that enough and make out with girls. Enough to where, it’s not a big deal. It’s just like breathing. So repetition really is the mother of skill. Everybody starts out as a novice, and you got to give yourself permission to be a beginner and to make mistakes. You’re going to turn women off. You’re going to say the wrong thing. You’re going to upset them. You’re going to cause them to ghost you. It’s just it’s a rite of passage for us guys that we all have to go through. The key is to keep learning from your mistakes and critique.

Just like when I go through these emails, I see things that the guys don’t see because typically they’re emotionally invested in the interaction or with that particular woman. And so by having the awareness and recognizing what’s attractive and what’s unattractive. Guys that like, I was talking to a guy last night, very successful dude, and he’s got a coworker that he’s really into and she’s kind of into him. But over the last few months, he’s acted really dopey and kind of soft, and it’s caused her to lose respect for him, to the point where she came right out and told him that he needs to be more confident.

And so women help you when they when they like you and she likes them, but she’s noticing just because he’s kind of acting like a chick sometimes, even though he’s a very rich, powerful guy, that he acts like a pussy instead of a man, and she finds that unattractive to the point where she calls it right out. Which is great that she’s willing to do that because that helps him recognize that, oh, shit, I’m acting like a pussy right now. I’ve got to stop drooling all over her. Or over complimenting her. Those kinds of things.

And so it’s really going to take time and repetition and having the awareness and the awareness comes from reading The Book 10 to 15 times and constantly interacting with and observing other people, like when I really got into this stuff, when I was really connecting a lot of dots 25 years ago, 26 years ago, I was fascinated by it. The guys I worked with, we were always talking about it. We were always sharing things. They would share what happened on their dates and I would give them feedback.

And so I had a lot of people around me that were all around my age, and we were all kind of going through the same things, making the same mistakes, and we were learning from each other. And so the more you spot habits over and over and not only yourself, but in the people closest to you, you started to recognize those behaviors. And over time, you exhibited them less and less, to the point where you didn’t really have to think about it much anymore.

It just became you. But again, that takes time and repetition. Everything I teach is not a quick fix. That’s why guys that Cherry Pick and don’t bother reading The Book, or they just thumb through it once or twice. They get attainable success. They can get laid, but they can’t sustain it because they don’t understand what they’re doing that’s turning women off and causing them not to want to stick around long term.

Where is that line between staying emotionally detached, yet not cold?

So the idea is that it’s emotionally detached is not being attached to an outcome, not being attached to her saying yes, not being attached to her, sleeping with you, not being attached to things, going a certain way, being calm. And as Bruce Lee said, “Being like water.” Because what does water do?” It goes around everything. Under, over, around, sometimes through. So you’re very flexible. You don’t get butthurt, you’re not super rigid, but you don’t want to be too cold. Again, like we were talking about earlier, about being arrogant.

You know, it’s one of the biggest things that guys struggle with is between pursuing too much and not pursuing enough. And so when a guy always over pursued like I used to do, and then you back off, you can back off too much to the point where you, you basically communicate that you’re not interested and you really don’t care about her. And then once she starts to see that, and you’ve dated and you’ve interacted long enough, you’ll notice that she’ll start to kind of slip away.

That’s why, as I talk about in The Book, is that, you know, especially as you’re learning this stuff, you might find that you have 2 or 3 really good dates, and then maybe you were a little bit of a cold dick, or you said something in text and you were just a little too cold, and then you notice a week’s gone by and you haven’t heard from her, whereas she was texting you just about every day or every other day. And now a week has gone by and you haven’t heard from her and it’s still new. And you look at that and you go, okay, well, the fallback is always a week.

So you haven’t heard from her. Whereas she had been texting you a bunch and now all of a sudden she stopped and you think, well, I may have been kind of a dick the last time I was around her. And then. So you reach out to her and she may tell you that, hey, you were a real jerk last time or. Or when you’re on your next date, she might tell you that, you know, I almost didn’t go out with you. And instead of making assumptions as to what that means, you say, well, why would you say that? What do you mean?

And then let her tell you. Oh, when you did this, it made me feel like you really didn’t care or you were just using me. Or you said some things when you were leaving. That really hurt my feelings. It’s like, oh, I’m sorry, babe, I’m sorry if what I said or what I did hurt your feelings. It wasn’t my intent. I didn’t mean to make you feel that way, so, I’m sorry. And you grab her hand and you kiss it. It’s like you forgive me. You’re not mad anymore. Just be. Love is playful and fun. And so when you notice you’ve been too cold, then you can be kind of sweet again to let her know that it’s safe.

But again, you just have to go through it. You have to have enough of these instances. And again, this is why it’s so important. And again, another thing that’s in The Book is the calling and the texting, the phone is for setting dates. Because if you’re spending too much time talking and texting. It’s hard to gauge her body language. It’s hard. You’re not going to hear the tone of her voice. You’re not going to see the facial expressions, especially when you’re trying to crack jokes. It’s better to do that in person, and then you could tell if you went over the line where you need to kind of back off and be a little bit warmer.

How do you know when to be vulnerable?

Well, at the end of the day, like I talk about in The Book, if it’s not going to make you appear more masculine, more confident, more calm, more certain, more mysterious, keep it to yourself. There is this attitude that’s pushed in our culture that men need to talk about their feelings more. And so I was talking to a guy the other night who is involved with his significant other in his business. And so he kind of struggles Struggle sometimes with, because she is technically his business partner, because they’re teammates. They’re also lovers, but he tends to when he’s having a difficult day, say, hey, I had a really rough day and he wants to tell her about it.

And, you know, I was talking to him on the phone session. I was like, it’s not going to help your situation, especially when you’re trying to keep her attracted to basically try to turn her into your mommy or your therapist and tell her what a hard day you had. Masculinity is calm. Masculinity is confident. And if what you’re about to say to her is showing that you’re less than confident, now you’re asking her to deal with your uncertainty. Feminine energy is uncertain. And if you’re the man, it’s your calmness and your certainty that makes her feel safe. So she can relax into her feminine energy.

But if you come to her with all of your problems, and you talk about all your fears and all your worries, you’re going to overwhelm her and you’re going to scare her, and then you’re going to force her to be into her masculine, which is not her natural essence, and she’s going to resent it, and that’s going to create problems. She’ll become bitchier. And so it’s better, especially if you’re involved in business or just family things. If you’re going through a tough time, you got to talk to that shit to your guy friends. Don’t turn your girlfriend or your wife into your mommy or your therapist because they’re not set up for that. They’re not designed to do that.

And if you basically tell them you’re unsure of yourself and you’re scared and you’re fearful and you’re worried and you don’t know what to do, you’re going to freak her out. You’re basically asking her to be the man in the relationship at that point. And that ruins the sexual polarity. It’s not going to help you. Again, I know when you see TV and movies people talk about women are like, “oh, I wish she’d be more vulnerable and talk about his feelings more.” It’s like, no, don’t do that. You see the Star Wars meme? It’s a trap. Don’t do it. It’s definitely a trap. It’s not going to help you.

Because again, the culture is telling you to, well, be vulnerable. Tell her about all your problems and all your base are going to do is make yourself look unattractive. You know, if you’re already struggling in your relationship now you just threw a hand grenade in there and made things worse. So don’t do it. Share that kind of stuff with your guy friends because they know how to deal with it. Don’t make your girlfriend or your wife, your mommy or your therapist. She’s not set up to do it. She doesn’t want to do it, even though she may ask for it. It’s not going to help her be more attracted to you.

All you’re going to do is give her reasons to doubt you, doubt your masculinity, and doubt that she can trust you to handle things. You know, you can tell her after the fact. Yeah. I was really worried I was going to lose this deal. But you know what? I did everything I was supposed to do, and it all worked out in the end. It was great. So she can see that you were dealing with something that was kind of scary, but you stayed stoic, you stayed masculine, you stayed focused, and everything worked out in the end. So in that case, you can tell her, like, yeah, I was really worried I wasn’t going to get that job, or I was really worried I wasn’t going to land that client or whatever it happens to be.

So it’s like, if there’s a problem at work, don’t go to your boss with the problem. Go to your boss with the problem and 3 or 4 potential solutions, and then tell them which one you think is the right solution and let him say yay or nay, or pick a different solution or offer you an alternative. Think about it from that perspective. Again, if you work for somebody else, don’t go to them and go, oh, the copier is broken. Go. Hey. The copier broke. I think it’s the paper tray. We looked at it, but I’m not sure. But we put a call in to the copy person, and they’re going to be here this afternoon. So we’re going to get that fixed.

How do you not let approval or disapproval from others have weight in yourself worth?

Well, when you’re in high school and in your early 20s, you tend to worry about those things because, like, especially in high school, you want to be cool, you want to be popular, you want to hang out with the popular guys. You want the popular girls to like you and think you’re funny and cute and want to date you and those kinds of things, and you’re really worried about fitting in and being accepted and being one of the cool kids. But as you get into your 20s and especially your later 20s, you start to care less and less about those things.

And it really comes from being certain about yourself and your abilities and realizing, like I eventually did, and I think most people at some point in their lives realize that you can’t live your life according to other people’s expectations. And 200 years from now, everybody’s going to be dead, so it’s not going to matter. Nobody fucking cares. We’re all going to turn to dust anyways. Now who’s going to care if you got rejected in seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade, the girl you asked out to prom. Nobody’s going to give a shit. So you have to get to a place where you’re happy with yourself. You love yourself. You love your life. You’re proud of yourself.

You’re proud of your life. Because if you’re not proud of yourself and you’re not proud of your life, how are you going to get a woman excited about it? So it just comes with time. Knowing your worth, being confident and ultimately competent. And that comes from doing things over and over and over again. You know, if you’re trying to live up to the unreasonable expectations of other people, there’s always going to be somebody that’s not going to be happy with how you’re showing up.

And at the end of the day, it really doesn’t amount to a hill of beans because everyone you love, everything you build eventually is going to turn to dust. So it really doesn’t fucking matter in the end. The only thing that matters is what you do, what actions you take, because that’s going to shape and change your destiny. And again, that’s number five is just something that kind of comes with age.

What do you do when you recognize you have left the present moment and are in your head, and how do you get out of it and into the body?

Well, it’s just practice. You know, a big part of why we suffer as human beings is because we want reality to be other than it is. So if you you’re just say, sit at home in your couch and you’re feeling depressed and sad, it’s probably because you’re ruminating over something to happen in the past, now you can’t do anything about. Or you’re ruminating over something in the future that you’re worried that may or may not happen. And the reality is, is like 95% of the things that we worry about in the future that may happen or that may not go well, they don’t even happen. It’s all a mind fuck.

It’s all an illusion anyways. So when you recognize that you’re suffering, or you’re feeling depressed or you feel hopeless, you have to recognize that you’re probably either stuck in the past or you’re too focused on what may or may not happen in the future. So that means that you’re not living in the present moment. And the best way to refocus yourself in the present moment is to have an attitude of gratitude. What can I be grateful for in my life right now that I can definitely say I got? I got my health, I got my friends, I got my got my family. I got my job. I got my business. I got my career. I got my life’s work. I got a nice car. I got food in the fridge. I got a roof over my head.

Nobody’s trying to drop bombs in my house. Nobody’s chasing me around the neighborhood with a drone with a bomb attached to it. Like what you see in, you know, the Ukrainians and the Russians. I’ve seen thousands and thousands of Russians and Ukrainians murdering each other up close, blowing each other up. Ever since the war started, it’s just absolutely fucking horrible. It’s a tragedy of epic proportions what’s going on. And no matter where you are or how bad you think you got it, at least you’re not a Russian or Ukrainian soldier running for your life from the type of drone you can buy off of Amazon with a bomb attached to it.

So again, no matter how bad you think you got it, there’s always somebody that’s got it way fucking worse. So if you recognize that you’re not in the present moment, start focusing on things you have to be grateful for. Because if you start thinking about all the things you have grateful for, or that you are grateful for, that gets you refocused in the present moment. And then recognizing if you’re suffering, it’s probably because you’re ruminating about the past or focused on what may or may not happen in the future, instead of being in the moment. It really is an art. It’s a skill. It’s something that you have to practice over and over and over.

Also, what can help you is doing the Consciousness Exercises Stage 1 through 12. If you go to the homepage of my YouTube Channel and you scroll all the way to the bottom, there are 12 stages. Stages 1 through 12 and Doctor D’Anna and Gracie demonstrate those for you. So I would suggest maybe three times a week Monday, Wednesday and Friday maybe, or at least twice a week. Do all 12 stages take you about an hour or so, put them on your big screen TV, and then just do them all in order.

Stage 1 through 12. There’s a whole playlist so you can just autoplay it. Just go right through it. If you’re going to go out and hang out with your buddies and you feel like you need a little bit more confidence boost. Doing all 12 of the Consciousness Exercises before you go out with your friends, it’s going to make you feel like you can walk through a wall and it will really grow your confidence, and it’ll really help you. So those are some good tools.

How do you transfer confidence from work to personal life?

I’m sure you’ve got plenty of examples I’m missing when it comes to your, “middle way.” I have been ballsdeep in some absolute smoke shows, been with the lady I’ve been sweating for 3 years, and have gained more vigor than words can capture, thanks to you and my decision to not be a 97%’er.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Bob

Well, like I was talking about earlier, what is confidence really? Confidence is doing what you know how to do and doing it really fucking well. You know, as Bill Belichick always says, “do your job. And what’s implied in that is to do your job well.” And by the way, Coach Belichick has got a book coming out and I think it comes out in May. I’ve already pre-ordered it. I can’t wait to read that. That’s going to be a wealth of information. I highly recommend you guys go and make a pre-purchase of his audible or his paperback or hardcover version of that, because that’s going to be a great book. It comes out again, I think it’s May of 2025.

So again, confidence comes from doing what you know how to do and doing it really well. Well, how do you gain confidence? Repetition. Repetition is the mother of skill. As the great Aristotle said, “Excellence is not a singular act. It is a habit. You are what you do repeatedly.” So having routines and being disciplined, like Jocko Willink says, “discipline equals freedom.” Being disciplined in the things that are important, just being physically fit. Like when I got up before I filmed this video, even though I didn’t feel like it. I ran a couple miles on a treadmill and I felt amazing afterwards. It really helps my mental clarity. It helps me be sharper, helps me energetically. It’s great for my skin.

It’s great for my overall sense of well-being. I just feel better when I always I run at least three days a week usually. Same thing with the weight training. It’s just like a combination of everything. I’m not a big bulky dude. I’m fit, lean and mean like Steve McQueen, as I like to say. So as far as confidence from work, well, the reason you’re confident in work is because you know what you’re doing, hopefully. And if you don’t have confidence in your personal life, well, that just tells me you need more repetitions with what’s in The Book. There’s no shortcuts to success. A lot of people that struggle, they thumb through The Book a few times. They just cherry pick videos.

I was talking to a guy the other night. Dude’s been following me seven fucking years. Just got around to starting to read The Book back in December because he was cherry picking. He was just picking up what he needed from videos. He got laid, he got himself into a relationship, but he couldn’t maintain it. And because he got burned, he’s like, okay, now I’m going to take Corey seriously. I’m actually going to read The Book. And he’s been through, I think, 3 or 4 times, he said, since December. So the way to get the confidence in your personal life is to see the same patterns over and over and over and over again.

Reading The Book, watching these videos, because each one of them is like a case by case basis of guys that are having real world situations and how they’re trying to, or struggling with applying what’s in The Book to their specific situation. That’s why I do these. This ongoing coaching. Because again, everybody’s situation is not exactly 100% the same. There’s always little subtle nuances and things that make the situation quirky or weird or odd or different or a little unique, or there’s weird wrinkles. Maybe somebody’s a little bit long distance, you know, you just every situation is different because life is messy.

And so you just have to have enough repetitions in your personal life with the stuff that’s in The Book, and that includes your own life, but also what you observe in other people. You know, just going to a mall or a place where there’s lots of humans around and just observing couples and how they interact. Are they walking side by side? How are they holding hands? Is the husband or the boyfriend always walking behind the girl? Is he walking side by side? Is he walking in front? What do you notice? Who’s touching who more? Or if you’re out in a bar or a nightclub or some social setting and guys are trying to pick up girls just being in a table where you can kind of watch it.

And see guys turn women on, guys that turn women off, girls rolling their eyes, shaking their head and then walking away from a group of guys because they say stupid things. It’s just seeing things like that over and over. You start to recognize the patterns that are in The Book showing up in other people’s lives. Also showing up in your own life, and you just have to have enough repetitions with the material, and you see it enough in your own life that it just becomes second nature. It becomes unconscious competence.

Just like, you know, I’ve shared the example of what it was like all the I don’t know how many hours I spent in the gun range with John, training with pistol and rifle and going through 500 rounds of nine millimeter in a day, 500, 556 and 4 or 5 hours, and then just doing that every other week for several years, and then going into the shoot house and going up against guys that, quite frankly, didn’t have anywhere near the level of repetitions that I did on pistol and Rifle. And after you do your first few runs through the shoot house and you get used to the fear and you get used to your breathing and what can happen, you just go through the shoot outs and basically smoke everybody.

Exception of one of my friends who’s just way better than me, and he pretty much always kills me first when we’re training. But, you know, it’s like I was talking to John about that, and we did a podcast a year or so ago. We were talking about where I was surprised that it’s like once I got in there and we’re clearing rooms, you don’t know where the people are that are waiting to ambush you, but it’s like once you get over the fear of the newness of the environment and wondering, how is the UTM round? How bad is it going to sting? You know, how many times am I going to get shot? Where is it going to be coming from?

Where the bee sting is going to be coming from? And then you do it a few times. It’s just everything’s automatic. It’s just you’re focused on the red dot and making sure it stays still and easing the trigger back. And it’s just unconscious competence. It was it was beautiful. I had a really great, great experience when I started training with John in the shoot house, because he trained me so well on the gun range that when I got in the shoot house, once I got over the initial fear or a few runs after that, it was just, man, it was just automatic. The training just took over. I didn’t even have to think about it anymore. And so that’s unconscious competence. And that’s where you want to get to be with The Book is unconscious competence. But you need enough repetitions to get through it.

So, if you’ve got a question or a challenge and you’d like to get my help, go to UnderstandingRelationships.com, click the Products tab at the top of your screen on any page, and book a coaching session with yours truly. Until next time, I will talk to you soon.