---
title: Episode 112 Self Reliance
episode_number: 112
era: mid
source_file: Episode 112 Self Reliance.mp3
audio_size_mb: 52.5
duration_sec: 1720.9
duration_min: 28.7
language: en
provider: deepgram
model: nova-3
diarized: true
confidence: 0.996
transcribed_at: 2026-05-27T16:54:26Z---

# Episode 112 Self Reliance

**Speaker 0:** Don't leave me, girl. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Reliance from Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA. This is city number three on the world tour from London to New York. Maybe you saw the New York video on my YouTube channel. And then from New York to Los Angeles. This time we're staying in Hollywood, which was a good decision, an eye opening decision. Actually, usually I stay down in Venice or Santa Monica near the ocean. But for the first time ever, we are staying in West Hollywood, Craig and I, and I'm starting to think that I love this city perhaps equally as much as New York. New York in the summer was just a sweat y hellhole to be nice really. A daygame paradise that's undeniable. It beats Los Angeles and pretty much any other US city hands down. There's nowhere like New York for foot traffic, for concentration, for urbanization, for loneliness, which breeds fantastic daygame, transients, anonymity, secret society. That's all New York City, but in the sunshine in the summer. Jesus Christ. It's the same temperature here. Blue skies, swimming pools. It looks like a David Hockney picture, but the difference is that it's relaxed. You know that saying, New York makes you hard. LA makes you soft. Well, yes, New York makes you hard in terms of daygame. LA is just relaxing. And here in West Hollywood, could say it's very rock and roll. There's a lot of rock bars, tattoos, ripped jeans. It's kind of like if you took Camden or lots of bits of London and you just gave it eternal sunshine. That's what it would be like. And you've got the ocean nearby and you've got the hills and you've got little day trips. It's just very chill. So we are enjoying it. We've got the documentary filming coming up this week with a guy here in LA who's coming up from San Diego, think. And then we've got the boot camp on Saturday. And then I think we fly to Sydney from here on Monday. So the world tour continues. Keep an eye on the videos on my YouTube channel. Let us dive into today's juicy topic, one of my favorite topics, one of the pillars you could say of my ethos, of my philosophy, of this podcast's, philosophy, of this channel's philosophy, grabbing life by the horns, the black sheep, go in your own way, doing your own thing, the nomad, the cad, the bachelor. You've got the idea by now. Self reliance, being able to do it by yourself. Now, doesn't mean eternally being by yourself, but it means, self fueling, self fulfilling, self reliance, which breeds, which leads to freedom, which leads to ultimate strength. Kicking off with the saying from the one and only through, of course, nothing can bring you peace but yourself. And it's at the heart, as I said, of of the black sheep, the, the outlaw, the troubadour, its ultimate frame, because it's freedom. You're assuming responsibility for the things that you do in the direction of your life. And, of course, you know where you're going because, you can't hold frame, you can't go your own way unless you are, unless you know where you're going. A footnote to this podcast before we even get comments on this, I'm not talking about men going their own way, as in, not interacting with women, not being social, not putting social dynamics into practice, not playing the game of chess, which is life, but just being a hermit and saying fuck women, fuck life, I'm on my own. That is not what this podcast is about. As I've said, self reliance is fuel for meeting girls, for having, good frame with your friends and family, for being able to decide you're the chooser, not the chosen. Am I going to stay in this city for three days or three months or three years? Am I going to date this girl for three hours or three days or three months? You decide. Okay? And that gives you freedom. So this does involve people, but we're talking about self reliance, as in you instigating things. You're the catalyst. You make the plans. And ultimately, philosophically, biologically, you're born alone, you die alone, no matter how big your family, how big your social circle. What's that saying? Every man is a castaway on his own island. And you can see that as negative, negative, you can see that as depressive or you can see it as liberating. I certainly see it as liberating because that Robinson Crusoe character, has self reliance. He can be dropped on an island and survive. So the daygamer, let's keep it, partly about daygamer, dating and girls and hustling. I'm confident I can be dropped in any, large city, major city in the world and I don't know anybody there. I can't use Tinder or online platforms or going into bars. Don't have a social circle. Can't flash my cash. I just have the shirt on my back. I just have the Torero bollocks, the balls to hustle, to do daygame, to first meet girls and then meet those girls friends if I want to and then, if I want to have a social circle and use daygame to meet guys in a non gaygame way. That same charm, that same banter, that same flirtatiousness in coffee shops with waiters, just with guys. I remember once I was teaching a boot camp here. This story is in Torero Travels. I was in Santa Monica maybe three, four years ago and I often say to beginners with spotlight and approach anxiety, I say, well, you know, hit and run warm ups. Just, hi, you look nice. Have a good day. And watch, it works on guys as well. So I stopped the guy walking down 3rd Street Promenade, and I said to him, sorry, mate. Without sounding gay, I love your style. Because he had the skinny jeans, the cowboy boots, the cowboy hat. He looked like something out of London. And he grinned and he said, oh, you're British. I said, yeah. He said, oh, I've just come back from Britain. I've been on tour for the last two years. I said, yeah, you look like a musician. What do you do? He was a session musician for the Beach Boys. And, we got into a good chat about all things Beach Boys and, how he played percussion and la di da di da. But there you go. And, yeah, he invited me to a concert if I was in that next destination, which I wasn't. But that's how you are self reliant in that you can meet girls, you can meet guys, you can get to know a city. You're walking around the streets. As I always say about London, I'm like a black cab driver. I'm like a parkour freestyle runner. Yeah? Because I know all the ins and outs of London. I know every stone you could say it reminds me of a set or a student or a dating story, a sexes or some blue balls. I know all the the parks and the cafes and the different areas and the bars. And that's what I love. Each city is like a jigsaw from Tokyo to Los Angeles to Cape Town. And by walking around, not only do you get fit, but you you get to know the city. You are self reliant. Yep. One of my favorite books that I've talked about many times, maybe you remember that video, minus 20 me in the Arctic Circle with those husky dogs. I think the video is called Call of the Wild, which is one of my favorite books by Jack London. Not Into the Wild, that is a good film about self reliance, but The Call of the Wild, about this longing, this longing to, do things your own way, to to rely on yourself. Yep. And I've always been drawn to these kind of solo characters, solo adventures. Joshua Slocam, sailing alone around the world. John Muir, going into the Sierra Nevada. Obviously, Walden, Thorero's Walden. I'll do another podcast on minimalism another time. That's a common question I get about descaling. Is that the word? Uncluttering, unfucking yourself by uncluttering, traveling with that little bag. I've made a video on that as well. Or, who are other solo greats? Oh, yeah. When I was a kid, was inspired by John Steinbeck's, book, Travels with Charlie, him driving around America in a van. Ted Simons, you might know the guy that rode around the world, on a motorbike called that book is called Jupiter's Travels. He did it twice actually, once in his early forties, I think, and once in his seventies. But on his own, but meeting lots of people. So again, that's the disclaimer. He's self reliant. He can go where the fuck he wants. He can make and break relationships as he chooses. But he meets characters. He spends time with people just like the Steinbeck thing. Muir, Thorero, Slocum, they are spending time alone like a hermit in nature, but coming back refreshed. That's the whole point of self reliance. Another one that I always talk about in terms of flow and flow mad is, Martin Strel, I think you say. He's from Slovenia. He's that big guy. And the movie is called Big River Man, the documentary about him swimming the Amazon. He's also swum the Mississippi. I think he swung the Yangtze, the Danube, and he's planning to swim around the world. Now he's a solo swimmer. He has a support team, of course, but he immerses himself. He pushes himself. He's self reliant. Drinks a lot of red wine. Defies a lot of medical knowledge. I love him. He's a fucking badass. He's a proper black sheep. And he gets into these, flow states through, swimming. Crazy swimming, not swimming in LA by the pool like here. And anyway, all these things, self reliance, all these things are the opposite of herd behavior. Yeah? The normal white sheep who's in the pen, who has to go this way and that way, depending on the farmer and the sheepdog. The masses, and you see it here in LA, the masses walking down the Hollywood Walk Of Fame, the masses on their tour buses, the masses doing those celebrity home tours, the masses that, you could say rely on other people all the time for everything. They rely on the state. They identify only with a group, you know, people that say, their football team is everything to them or their political party is everything to them. Now what's that saying? The masses have no habit of self reliance or original action. That was by Thorero. Yeah. They're the copycats. They do what everybody else does. And, for me, that's the definition of hell, you could say. Even more specific, I've always said being on a cruise ship and being made to do that kind of forced fun. Do the conga quiz night captain's table, get off at this port, do this tour, get on this tour bus. Okay. If you're 70, 80, 90, you're frail, you, you need somebody to to show you show you that, keep you safe. Okay. But if you're in your twenties and thirties, Jesus, come on. Imagination, black sheep self reliant here. So that's what this channel preaches. That's what I teach. That's what daygame gives you. And, hopefully, it stops you even being lonely in a crowd because people think of, the black sheep as somehow selfish and somehow the bachelor life as being lonely. But I always remember that Bill Burr quote. Hang on. It's on my desktop. Yes. About being lonely in a relationship. He says, realize that sleeping on a futon when you're 30 is not the worst thing. You know what's worse? Sleeping in a king bed next to a wife you're not really in love with, but for some reason you're married. And you've got a couple of kids and you've got a job you hate. You'll be laying there fantasizing about sleeping on a futon. There's no risk when you go after a dream. There's a tremendous amount of risk to playing it safe. And that is, the one and only stand up comedian Bill Burt. And the irony is obviously he's now married. Hopefully happily married, but perhaps like, Tucker Max or Neil Strauss, he is slipping into purple pill, blue pill under the thumb, but hopefully not. He's still a fucking great comedian. Now, this links to people saying, they need a girl. They're desperate to find a girl because they want to find their other half, quote unquote. Yeah? Somebody who completes you. And that's what every love song and romantic comedy and, female chick lit book is about, finding your other half because of that, inherent loneliness. That's where the myth of the one comes comes from partly. Men have this affection addiction. I've said many times, listened to that podcast, I did one of my favorites, affection addiction, where play is actually full hardest. Because if you have a lot of casual sex, you enjoy it, it's fun. But when a girl comes along who perhaps reminds you of, your mom in terms of motherly love and, you know, the cuddles are there and she's stroking your hair and she's cooking for you, players fall because they're lacking that oxytocin perhaps from other sources. Listen to the podcast, I won't go into it. But, yes, affection addiction. So guys perhaps in a Freudian way looking for their mother, looking for somebody to take care of them. They slip rapidly out of frame into, blue pill, into beta, into chode, whatever you want to call it. She's leading him. She has the frame. And importantly, she doesn't know why she's starting to lose attraction for you because when she met you, you were this cool guy. That's what she was attracted to. She was attracted to your motorbike. She was attracted to your bad boy behavior. And then you're now just cuddling up watching Netflix. It's all got very cozy and she doesn't know what happened. It's a subconscious thing, yeah? She she doesn't know why she lost that affection. But anyway, let's get back to the practicalities because this is meant to be a practical podcast, not just some mind wank, not just more circle jerk. So becoming self reliant. You could argue, well, it's just in your genes, but I would say you can learn it, you should learn it, it toughens you up, it's a muscle, and you should start doing it as early possible. So at the moment, you don't have to go to school and you don't have to rely on your parents. You move out, you do all the shitty jobs. I did plenty of shitty jobs from waiting tables, bar work, cleaning, gardening, working in a supermarket. Supermarket. And in my twenties, roughing it in terms of backpacking and travel. Yeah. You don't need money. I was backpacking across North Africa, Morocco and Egypt, just hitchhiking. There wasn't carpooling in those days. There wasn't, the fucking Internet. There weren't smartphones. There weren't apps. You just stick your thumb out or you rough it. You jump on really cheap buses and trains. You sleep on the floor. You sleep in, hostel rooms, which have, like, 22 people in them, very cheap. I did it across Canada. I worked in a hostel. I was picking fruit. I was a ski guide for a season. So all these things teach you, to get away from your parents. It's that, rite of passage that you should do. It's the initiation ceremony, you could say, into, boy to men, boys to men. I saw a Hollywood star yesterday for boys to men, and I thought that is ridiculous. You know? What how low is the bar to get a Hollywood star if boys to men have a Hollywood star? Anyway, yes, you become a man through doing those things and you do DIY travel. So you don't need a travel agent. You don't need to go to Cancun or Ibiza or follow the crowd to Magaluf to go on holiday you book the flights using the internet or using an app you book the accommodation the hostel use hostel world if you're just starting out or airbnb if you can afford it you don't need the whole apartment. You could get a room. You don't go on a tour. Okay? Download a city walk audio guide if you like, historical walks or nature walks or whatever if you want get to know the city. Download maps on your phone. That's what I did for LA and New subway maps for New York or, specifics. Get that all on your phone so you're good to go. Self reliant. You don't need to ask people. You don't need to join a tour group. You don't need to carry a heavy book around. You've got your phone in your pocket. You know, this this this day and age is unbelievable for self reliance. You've seen me with my small luggage. You've seen me with my laptop. So start thinking in your twenties about the DIY income where, okay, you've got to for somebody for a bit, you've got to have a boss for a bit, but in the background, as I talk about in that podcast, the, one man brand, you're working on something online. You're working on a seasonal job where you can move around. You can just say fuck it and quit at any time. But, yeah, the online thing. No excuses now for looking into podcasting, making vlogs just on your phone, editing for free on your laptop, recording a podcast on your phone. We are blessed with these times for self reliance. Yeah? But on top of that, that's not enough because let's say right now you already have the laptop and you already have the phone in your pocket and you already have, some fucking money saved and you already have a little thing going on. What's the difference between, real black sheep and perhaps where you are now? Well, this is, the training muscle. This is the habit. This is the hard bit. This is the disclaimer. This is the self discipline. Right? Where you have to get out of bed in the morning. You have to learn to cook your own food. You have to be motivated to write or to film or to do that side hustle. You have to be motivated to apply for jobs. You have to be motivated to leave your comfort zone. Everything a fucking life coach says. Yeah. Nothing new under the sun. I'm not going to regurgitate every life coaching book, but it's basically about forming the habit of self discipline. And, it's simply a muscle. It's it's simply something that you want on autopilot. It's simply repetition. It starts off with motivation where everybody's excited for a few days. You try it. And then the difficult bit is one or two weeks in when you start slipping back into the lazy habits, into the comfort zone. You've got to keep reminding yourself about self discipline is the key to self reliance. And let's bring it even more specifically to daygame because this is a daygame podcast. So daygame. In the beginning, you have a wing, you use my free audio guide or you get some coaching from a coach. They push you. Having a wing helps you with your state initially because you have a fragile state, and it helps with the anxiety, it helps you explore a city, and it helps you travel to a new daygame city. But ultimately, daygame is not about having a wing. Daygame is self reliance. As I said, where you're in animal mode. Okay? One of the questions on that video from New York was how do you do day game solo? And I said the classic bits of Torero advice. You have a time limit, so I do ninety minutes on the street. You have a set number to do, so I say 10 approaches in ninety minutes. Or I used to have that one number a day rule, whatever. You have some music on your phone or your iPod to boost your state. You minimize time between interactions so you're not walking around. You have a route so you're not ambling around and getting tired, physically tired. You know where you're starting, you know where you're finishing. If you can in New York or London, it's very easy to make it circular. So you start off, let's say, in Union, you go down to Washington, you go to Broadway, you cross over, you go up Broadway, and you finish back eventually at Union. And that whole thing takes you ninety minutes, and you've done 10 sets. You can't go home. You've to be strict on yourself. You say the first one's the worst one, so you say within two minutes of leaving your house or the bus or the metro, you've got to do that first approach. And I know it feels weird because you've just come out of your jobs. You say the first one's just gonna be on a 50 year old woman, and it's just gonna be hit and run. Excuse me. Little bit random. I love your look. You look very beautiful. I love the red hair. Have a great day. She smiles. On to number two, where you do it on a 30 year old woman and you try to do the compliment and the stack. Approach number three, you do it on a 20 year old girl who's hot. You jump in front of her, you do the open, you do the stack, and you try to get the hook point, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. By approach number five, the student is flying. By approach number 10, he's cooking on gas and he wants to stay out. So don't go home in in a negative state. That's what I just said on that video. End each daygame session on a high, even if it's just a small high of making a girl smile or, having a cheeky instant date. I used to say, Tom, you can't have a coffee in London until you get a girl to come with you. Or you could say, I'm gonna finish the set with a Facebook or I'm gonna finish the set. But don't go home on a negative because that will stop you wanting to do solo daygame the next time. Try solo trips. Okay. This will really test you. Backpacking solo tests you, but you obviously meet people in the hostels and you're distracted by the mountains or the deserts or wherever you're going but solo day game trips, they they test your metal and recently I did one in The Ukraine only for two weeks I think but, yeah you have that enthusiasm when you arrive That's when you do your number farming. And then you get into the ups of collecting hot numbers and going on dates and you have the downs of the flakes and the failed dates and the blue balls. And it's a roller coaster and you need that daily discipline of get up, make your food, the walking is your fitness plus more perhaps than doing a day game, then doing a work related activity, then keeping in contact with your friends and family on WhatsApp or FaceTime or whatever and then having a date in the evening. You start all over again. It's like being in the army without being in the army. That's black sheep. Yeah. So if you want to know more about that traveling abroad and daygaming and why it's not lonely and why it needs to be regimented in a good way, watch watch a video on my channel from South America. It's called, is daygame lonely? Something like that. But anyway, we shall finish with the disclaimer that this is not about being on your own forever. Guys always say, well, you're going to be a lonely old man. This is going to be terrible. I answer all those common questions about being a black sheep, being a bachelor in your thirties, forties, fifties forever on my black sheep posts. I'm tired of answering them, so I put them all in, three posts, which I shall link below on iTunes and YouTube. Maybe you don't know that, but you can listen to this podcast on iTunes. Again, a common question is why it's only available on YouTube. It's not. It's also available to download for free on iTunes. Do me a favor, leave a review. It boosts, the podcast into people's suggested feeds and it helps spread the black sheep love, perhaps for a guy who needs it. He's a he's a bit of a beater. He's a bit of a nice guy chump, and he needs to know this stuff, especially if he's late teens, early twenties, and, the damage hasn't been done, as, as crazily as a guy in his thirties, forties, and fifties. It's a great time for a guy to hear these podcasts as well about self reliance and travel and la di da di da. But yes, the disclaimer. You're using daygame to meet girls. And do I throw the girls away immediately? No. I have little haremes if I'm in a city, so I keep three or four girls around. In lover mode, not in boyfriend mode. I've made a video on that. How do they know? Well, know from your approach. They know from the fact that you don't let them sleep over. They know from the fact that you ooze the kind of black sheep vibe. They know from the fact that you don't do public displays of affection or you don't text them every day. They know because you disappear, travel for periods of time. They know because you don't promise them anything. You don't buy them shit. You don't do the boyfriend shit. And they know because a lot of the girls that I date have boyfriends, have fiances, have husbands. So they come to me for the fun, for the adventure, for the sex. And many girls now know what I do. They've even read my books, they know about my YouTube channel, and then ice guy, I can hear you across the airways, he keeps going, well, what what the fuck? Like, wouldn't that make the girl mad? Wouldn't that make the girl angry? Wouldn't that make the girl jealous? Yes. For the first one or two days, one or two weeks when she finds out she might get a bit pissed off. But that, my friend, links to last week's podcast on dark triad and drama, girls love it. Okay? Girls love being jealous. Girls love pining. Girls love preselection. That's why all those girls can live up the road in the playboy mansion or back in the day with Hef. And the more there were, the more they wanted him. So you can use that principle for harem. Sometimes when I'm traveling, the relationship is just for one night, like the English girl in New York. Here, I'm going out today. Would be nice to find a girl where I can have a relationship for two or three days, where you have sex, but you also go off and go up the Hollywood Hills, or you go to the beach, or you walk around. She knows you're leaving, but it's just one of those magical moments. I made a video on mini relationships from, Rome when I was with a girl there, and, it was like Roman Holiday. Was like that famous film with Audrey Hepburn. We just had fun for forty eight hours and we're not in contact. There are certain girls where I've had open long term relationships. There are certain girls where I see them once or twice a year. There's one girl she knows about this YouTube channel. She knows what I do. She has a relationship for most of the year, but whenever she's single, whenever she wants to travel, she goes somewhere, and I've met her in various random cities just for three or four days, and we have fun. That's lasted for about four years now. Now, do these relationships always last? Is the nature of open relationships, always sustainable? There's a chopper flying overhead. It might be another OJ Simpson. Who knows? I love LA. It's so cinematic. But anyway, no. These relationships are fragile. Girls get boyfriends. Girls get married. But if the sex was good sex was good, if you were a fun guy, they'd come back to you. But you can't rely on it. But the good thing about daygame is that you have self reliance, you have the funnel, you're always opening, you've always got hot leads, you're always closing, you've got, what's the saying? A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. You've got multiple plates spinning. I call it air traffic control. So you've always got girls on your radar, not your radar, your radar, not from Tinder, not from online, but from meeting them in person. Some of them are Facebook, some of them are WhatsApp, some of them are SMS, some of them are email maybe. And girls come and go as we say here in LA in and out like a cheeky in and out burger you're in then you're out you come then you go that's the definition of being a black sheep riding into town you're that nomad You're that, what's the film I'm thinking of? The good, the bad and the ugly. Any kind of western when he rides into town, causes mischief and then he's gone. So girls are in your life. You're certainly not a lonely guy. Okay? Family you look after. Family you take care of. Friends. It's difficult when you travel, but there's those long term buddies. There's those long term guys where you see them a few times a year, but immediately it's like you've, you've never been apart. And it's great to have that circle of guys, band of brothers esque, which I think I've done a podcast on or I've done an article on on my blog, but I'll talk about that another time. And having shared experiences with people because, yes, life is about shared experiences. Voltaire said, life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. So self reliance doesn't mean hermit state. It doesn't mean desert. It doesn't mean mountaintop alone forever, forever, chanting things in a Tibetan monastery. It just means, as I said at the beginning of this podcast, the strength to stand alone and be your own catalyst, to not need mommy holding your hand, to not need your girlfriend making your sandwiches, and telling you what to do, to not need other guys or a group to identify with to tell you the rules of what to do. But you stand there and you say, fuck it. This is what I wanna do. This is what I'm gonna do. Last night, I couldn't get to sleep because of the jet lag, so I rewatched the eighties classic Ferris Bueller's Day Off. And if you want a black sheep, fuck it film, and you also wanna relive your eighties, nineties childhood, with some nostalgia. I think films in Chicago, beautiful film, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. What a sheep for a day. Fuck it. Yes, it's a little bit cheesy, but, self reliance, doing what you wanna do. That, my friends, was podcast one one two from Los Angeles. The next one will be from Sydney, Australia, Down Under. Until then, keep grabbing life by the horns. Ta da.