Have you ever been standing in a bar and you could swear that the girl of your dreams just walked by and if only you just knew what to say to her she’d fall madly in love with you?

Haha that’s a very specific and unreal scenario but ask yourself this? Have you ever not walked up to talk to a girl who you were interested in because you didn’t know what to say? Have you ever just ordered another drink and watched from the bar as some other guy walks up and obviously said the perfect thing because she’s now laughing and touching him?

We’ve all been there, I can remember all those frustrating nights where I thought that if only I had the perfect line I’d be walking out of that place with her, only to let the situation fly on by.  It’s not a fun feeling.

Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I’m going to tell you exactly what you need to say to a girl to start a conversation.  The bad news is that as much as it seems like you just need is a line to win her over, it’s not going to solve your problems, all it will do is get you in the door and buy you time.

But lets stick to the problem at hand and not worry about that for now.

So there she is. Maybe she’s the girl of your dreams or maybe she’s just someone you think you’d like to get to know a little bit better. Either way you need to walk over and start talking to her if you’re going to have any chance with her.

So what do you say? How about hi?

What’s wrong with walking up and saying “Hey, what’s up?”

Absolutely nothing, in fact between all the years of going out and all the women I’ve met I’ve found that nothing beats walking up with a big, genuine smile on your face and saying exactly that.

That’s the easy answer and in all honesty if someone told me this five years ago I’d tell them to piss off, meeting women can’t be that easy!

But if you stick with me for a quick minute and you’ll know exactly why it is that easy and why this is the best thing you could say to a girl to get her interested.

Direct Without Being Direct

Direct openers are very high impact statements of your intention. There’s nothing quite as ballsy or powerful as walking up to a girl and saying exactly why you’re there and what you think of her.

But there are a couple problems with direct openers.

1. Mastery is all about consistency and by using a direct opener you’re actively reducing the percentage of girls who will be receptive to your opening statement. This ties into the next points so don’t worry if you don’t quite understand why this is yet.
2. In a bar situation every drunken asshole is walking up to her and mumbling something about how hot she is. By going direct you’re risking being lumped in with all of those other guys which goes without saying, is a bad idea.
3. There are a lot of girls out there who would be extremely receptive to a different approach, but would be scared off by something direct. Once again you’ve effectively reduced your consistency percentage.
4. The reason why learning verbal game is so important is that it allows us to move past our physical disqualifiers. Are you short? Are you out of shape? Are you older? These are things that can ruin your direct approach before you’ve even opened your mouth. By using something more neutral you give yourself more time to talk your way around your physical shortcomings.

The real power behind direct openers is the simple principle that it removes the context for you standing there talking to her. Using an excuse to walk up to a girl and talk to her is not only transparent but also makes you look like a coward. By removing the context you look like you have the confidence of a super hero. It’s the simple unspoken statement that I’m here to talk to you.

By walking up and saying “Hey, what’s up” you’re effectively removing the context from your approach without going so direct that you lose her or get labeled as just another drunk guy.

Limiting Contingencies

The problem with structured game is that there are a million different contingencies that you have to deal with at any given time, literally anything can happen at any time. This alone makes it impossible to plan anything beyond creating yourself a blueprint for how it should work.

However there is something worth saying about structuring the first 30 seconds of an interaction to reduce stress.

Ask yourself real quick, how do you feel when you’re about to walk up to a girl you’re interested in. If you’re a normal healthy male you are probably nervous, hesitant and your mind is probably going 500 miles an hour. It’s in this first 30 seconds that if you hit a speed bump or something unexpected happens that you’re most likely to freeze up.

We need to remove unexpected contingencies.

By saying “Hey, what’s up” what you’re really doing is eliciting one of two predictable responses. Either she’s going to be happy to meet you and greet you with enthusiasm, or she’s going to be less than pleased.

What to do with either response is beyond the scope of this article, but it’s self-explanatory that two possible response patterns are better than any number of variables that may come with something more complicated.

Measurability

How do you get really good at anything really quickly? You measure your progress and analyze results. You learn to simplify and isolate certain elements of the skill set in order to specifically target them.

By simplifying your verbal opening strategy and making it a constant you can effectively isolate the two most important variables (non-verbal communication and tonality) to work on those elements, which are vastly more important than what you actually say.

To Wrap It Up

I’ll be the first to admit that walking up to a girl with nothing more than a positive, enthusiastic “Hi” is not an easy thing to do. It effectively removes all common crutches that other openers put into place and forces you to learn how to swim in the deep end.

It’s scary and it’s hard, but I’ve saved the real power of “Hey, what’s up” for this conclusion.

If you learn to use “Hey, what’s up” to effectively start conversations in a bar, you can now confidently say anything you want to any girl in any bar.

By removing the crutches and learning to do it the hard way you’ll unlock a world of freedom, spontaneity and improvisation to increase your consistency and move closer to mastery.

Opening is a very small and insignificant step in the process of building connections but if you train yourself properly the skills will pour over into other areas of your game.

Stumble it!