---
title: Episode 35 Charisma Defined
episode_number: 35
era: early
source_file: Episode 35 Charisma Defined.mp3
audio_size_mb: 52.3
duration_sec: 1712.4
duration_min: 28.5
language: en
provider: deepgram
model: nova-3
diarized: true
confidence: 0.994
transcribed_at: 2026-05-27T17:15:49Z---

# Episode 35 Charisma Defined

**Speaker 0:** Ahoy there, you beautiful people. This is Tom Torero, podcast 35 back on the podcast port here in Salvador, Brazil. Sitting in the airport waiting for my flight to London via Sao Paulo. And what better thing to do than to knock off a podcast? Tom Torero coming in your ears once again. That's what she said. The silence has been because I've been away at sea for just over thirty days sailing from Tenerife to here in Salvador on a traditional square rigger tall ship. The ship's going on to Cape Horn and Antarctica, but I did crossing of the Atlantic, crossing the Equator via Cape Verde, 3,300 nautical miles. Pretty much all under sail except ten, twelve hours using the engine as we entered the doldrums where there was no wind. Yeah, epic. And if you wanna check it out, look at the video I've just put up on my YouTube channel called Deepwater Crossing the Atlantic and you'll see sunrises and sunsets, dolphins. We saw hammerhead sharks and there was phosphorescence, whales and swordfish, and marlin, and squids. You see on the video the the ceremonies we crossed the Equator. In nautical terms, what they call going from polywogs to shellback, somebody who sailed across the Equator. And you see some deep sea Mid Atlantic swimming. That was epic as well. What I couldn't catch capture on the video was the stars, the ridiculous stars that we saw at night, the moon, that phosphorescence, seeing dolphins swim through phosphorescence at night. So you just kind of get a ghost of a dolphin with this really, really long tail underneath the the boat. That is a that was probably the highlight, very hard to capture. It was a working trip and that we were crew. We weren't just tourists. So we worked four hour rotating shifts at the helm or handling sales or on lookout, ship maintenance. And your shift start, your lookout for your watch start kept changing. So sometimes it would be midnight, sometimes it would be 4AM. So everybody had sleep deprivation, often mixed in with seasickness. We have some schools. So it was really really nice to come on to dry land yesterday. I'm still feeling rocky like the horizon's moving. But it was it was epic. I think when people think of going to sea, they think of this romanticism of running away to sea, maybe isolation. That's what was in my head. Think, you know, having read books like Joshua Slocum Sailing Alone Around the World, reading, watching documentaries about people that have sailed single handedly circumnavigated the oceans. And I was with a crew of thirty forty people, so it was really not isolated. It was like living in a sardine can. I haven't been that close to people for that long for ages and ages and I haven't had to take orders and be plugged back into any kind of matrix for ages. So I had to adapt and it was it was difficult to find your own space actually on the ship because you were tripping over each other quite literally sometimes with the motion of the ocean. So I've actually had more freedom here in Salvador to walk around and stretch my legs, check out these beautiful Brazilian asses, just soaking these colorful Salvador vibes, this West African Portuguese mix. It's it's really really interesting. It's really really hot. It's 37 degrees here today, I think. But sadly, I've got to fly home. I've got some teaching to do in London and then on to Japan. So I promise myself, I will be back to Brazil. It's I wasn't expecting to like the girls as much actually, especially not in Salvador because I heard it was a very African influence, but now stunning. What I saw yesterday and today, absolutely stunning. I've had no phone signal or Internet obviously while I was on the Atlantic. No news from the outside world. It was a cocoon. It was a microcosm, which was nice. Gave me a lot of time to crack on with my new project, which I hope to be ready by the end of the year. Did three or four hours work on that a day when I was not on my not on my watch or not relaxing on deck. But if you're thinking about doing it, bear in mind that it's a it's a lot of work and what got to me was that inability to be able to have a proper sleep cycle. So just you catch an hour or two of sleep here or there, you never really get your solid eight hours. So if you're someone like me who loves deep sleep, a solid seven eight hours a night, it screws you over and everything starts becoming surreal. People were irritable. On top of that, people being sick and yeah. Physical work of climbing the rigging. So bear in mind, it's it's perhaps not as pretty as it looks in the video, but I don't regret doing it. It was one of my my dreams come true. Anyway, the topic of today's podcast is charisma or you could say charm. I'm gonna use both terms interchange them. Charisma and charm. Can we define it? Can we learn it? How do we apply it to our game? Why is it useful? What are one of the little secrets, of the little hacks that we can learn to become more charismatic, whether that's with girls obviously and cold approach daygame street hustling or you've got an interview to do or you want social leverage at work or influence in any social sphere. Anything to do with social dynamics where you want some va va voom, you want that what seems enigmatic charisma or charm. Okay? And people say it's indefinable. Most people say it's enigmatic. Most people say in true creationist form, you're born with it. This is where the natural game movement says, you know, be yourself. You can't learn it. You can't change. All you need to be is yourself. Well, if that was the case, then it would be totally based on genetics. Either you had charisma and charm or you didn't because it's unlearnable. But I obviously beg to differ. I'm with Darwin all the way in that change over time. You can learn it. You can adapt. You can learn from your mistakes. And I'm gonna define charisma very simply. I'm gonna break it down at the beginning of this podcast and then kick off from there. The formula you could say for charisma and charm is simply power plus warmth. I'll say that again. You can write it down if you feel like being back at school. Charisma equals power plus warmth. You can't have one without the other. It's this yin and this yang. It's combining what seems to be juxtaposed things until you hit a sweet spot or fractionating between them in true badass Buddha style. If that rings a bell, you probably seen my badass Buddha, which is no longer available, but you understand this idea of fractionation being on and being off, having intent and freedom. And it's the same thing with charisma. Yep. In terms of your frame, in terms of universal game, you need both things. Some people have more of one than the other. Some people have neither. I remember a quote. I can't remember who said it, but it was something along the lines of, there's no such thing as good and bad people, just charismatic and dull people. So it obviously applies to social dynamics, marketing, sales, hustling, persuasion, influence, picking up women, which is what we're doing. Yeah? So we're looking for the sweet spot. And if you fractionate between the two, that means if you keep switching between being powerful and then being warm and then being powerful and then being warm, you keep people guessing. It's very addictive that it's what a good parent does, what a good teacher does, what a good seducer does, what a good, what a good tradesman does who's selling his wares. You give people both, but you don't let them know which way is coming. So we're gonna talk about that, how to apply that to your game. Looking at having this strong frame, that's the strength, that's the power, but with a personal human touch. That's the warmth. Okay? And if you can hit the sweet spot, you're there. You're gonna be described as charismatic people are gonna be drawn towards you. Whether that's a girl on a date or somebody at work or you giving a speech and people feeling that connection. You making a video and people subscribing. Okay? This is obviously universal. Now, some great examples from the ship. We had a captain. He's been a captain of that ship for about twenty, twenty five years. Before that, he was in the the navy. He sailed every ocean. Extremely experienced, just this intuitive understanding of currents and wind and weather. Somebody completely reliable, someone you could put your complete trust in. He had power and when he spoke people listened. When he appeared people gathered round. He spoke few words. He wasn't sociable. He didn't really mingle with the crew. He didn't eat with the crew. Traditional sailor liked his own space, but was in complete control. Wasn't being negative or he wasn't trying to play games or be a dick in his distance from everybody else. That's just who he was. So he had a lot of power, but he lacked the warmth. Okay? Whereas next one down in terms of a ship's hierarchy, the first mate, he was the complete opposite. He was like the friendly teacher at school, very smiley, very chatty, very warm, very approachable, very sociable, drank beers with us, told tales and stories. And again, very, very experienced sailor. But if there was a storm, if there was a crisis, overboard, whatever, everyone would look to the captain, not the first mate. And when the captain was off and the first mate was in control, you you still felt that if you needed really to get something solved or you needed to notify somebody, people would go to the captain. So the first mate had warmth, but he lacked real masculine power. So when you lack the power, that can come across as weak. Being too warm, being too friendly, remember that teacher at school or the the boss at work, he tries too hard to be friendly, try hard to that definition of supplication, being needy, it comes across as weak or sometimes it can. In terms of power, too much power, the captain didn't have this, but think of the teacher or the boss you've had who's just too strong, too militant. That can come across as cold, and there's there's no empathy there. You don't bond with that person. So we're looking for the sweet spot. The strong frame, that's the power with a personal touch. Yep. That's the one. Now, when you read books on charisma and charm or you watch analytical videos, the name that most people use in their case studies is mister Bill Clinton. The president of The USA is obviously very powerful. Whatever your political leanings, I want you to just think of him as a man. He had that power because obviously he was president, but he had that warmth. He had that understanding of social dynamics with the twinkle in his eye, the touches on the elbows and the shoulders when he was meeting and greeting people. That assumes familiarity. You know, he wasn't afraid to play saxophone in a jazz club in Prague when he visited as the president of The United States. But he was neither one nor the other. He wasn't too warm. He wasn't too powerful. So people were drawn to him. And you don't need to bully somebody into following following you then. You've seduced a nation into following you, which inspires loyalty, inspires love, and you you become a legend. I'm not saying Bill Clinton will become a legend, but these kind of people often become folk heroes or legends with massive following, massive loyalty, massive love from the people. You might remember a teacher or you might be lucky in that your parents, one of your parents, or both of your parents hit the sweet spot. And that they held the frame, but they were warm with it, which inspires, like I said, that great love. When I was on the ship, I read the biography of Pablo Escobar written by his brother, Roberto Escobar, and the book's called Escobar Drugs, Guns, Money, and Power. It's a great read about the the days of the Medellin cartel and cocaine trafficking between Colombia and America and even Europe. Yeah. Great read. Obviously, little bit biased in that Roberto's his brother. So paints a merry picture of him, but he doesn't hide the kidnappings and the torture and the murder and the the dark side, the extremely dark side of Pablo Escobar. But what comes through in the book is this warmth that the people felt with Pablo Escobar. When he died, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people mourned and he's still celebrated as this kind of folk hero. And in the book, you get a sense of him being being almost like a child. Somebody with this extreme power when people met him one to one. He was pretty shy. He was very warm. He was very hospitable. He was very polite. If you think about a lot of classic gangster cliches, there's always that loyalty to the mother, loyalty to the family. Think of good fellows. Think of the godfather. Loyalty to each other. Rules within the hierarchy, perhaps not outside the gang itself, but within a very structured controlled warm brotherly love. And this comes across with Pablo Escobar and what he did for the people of Colombia. Yet, you could say it was one big PR campaign building hospitals and schools and football pitches in shanty towns. But he had this childlike nature to him, whether he knew it or not, which gave him the warmth, which balanced the power, and which has now made him a folk hero, a bit like Robin Hood. There's a folksiness to Pablo Escobar, which draws people to his story. Another book I read on board in a similar fashion see if we can spot a trend in books I'm reading at the moment, was called Blood Aces, The Wild Ride of Benny Binion, spelled b I n I o n. He was the Texas gangster, the Texas cowboy who created the world series poker in Las Vegas. And again, a murderer, cold blooded kidnapper, torturer, killer, but also a showman, a hustler, a politician with this folksiness. Him as well, he's become a a folk hero in Las Vegas. There's a statue of him on a horse. Again, a family man much loved by his people. Even loved by the FBI and the police for his charm and charisma. So he had massive amounts of power, but he knew how to balance it consciously or unconsciously with this childlike nature, with this warmth. I feel my saw on the ship. I feel my rewatch rather, which is a really good illustration of this. It's James Dean's Rebel Without a Cause. You gotta see it for many many reasons. But it really portrays well a man who has charm and charisma, and that he's forced to man up when his father lets him down. It's a great it's a great textbook study of a lack of polarity in a marriage between his mother and his father, and he's encouraging his father to man up and take the frame, but his father can't. So James Dean takes it upon himself to to lead, to dominate, to gain power, but he never loses this vulnerability. He's very human in the film and maybe that's his character or maybe that's James Dean as he was in real life coming through. But you get dominance, but it's soft dominance. That's a term I've used before which describes this yin and this yang, this power and this warmth. Yeah? Mystery used to call it the flame and the ghost or the other way around, the ghost and the flame. You need both. Yeah? RSD Tyler, he calls it having intent and freedom from outcome. That's the yin and the yang, yin and the yang. I called it badass and Buddha. But once again, we come back to it with charming charisma power and warmth. Yes, soft dominance. And a lot of people when they get into pickup, they just focus on the one. They focus on the power. They focus on the two d kind of alpha, the action hero comic book alpha, and they forget about nurturing the warmth, the likability. And think of a salesman, think of a trader, think of those Middle Eastern hustlers if you've ever been to Morocco or Egypt or Turkey or Lebanon. Now, these people are very good at selling, but they're also very charming. They're also very friendly. So again, they understand that you can't have one without the other. If you're just trying to come across all the time as quote unquote and you ask everybody, is this alpha? Is my behavior alpha? You have a stony face. You you piss a lot of people off. You might feel like you're being alpha, but you've missed the point. You've missed the second half of the equation. You've missed the warmth. Now I understand why. Because when we get into game with most of us nice guys and we associate warmth with weakness. And like I said before, it can be if if the warmth is groveling, if it's if it's coming from that needy place, if it's that nice guy supplication. But if you're combining it with power and you understand the purpose of warmth, then it's extremely powerful. Right. Let's get practical and dive into how you can apply my waffle to your game because I don't want this to be totally mental masturbation. Let's look at both sides of the equation, power and warmth, and think how you can apply this to your daygame. I presume you're doing daygame. Alright. With power. That means holding the frame here. So how do we do it? Look at my nice bad boy videos. Look at my street hustling videos. You'll see common themes. Don't apologize. Own your words. Have conviction. Don't lean in. Don't over smile, stop your neediness and oneitis, have that VIP swagger, have that red carpet walk, pimp up your profile, pimp up your your look, Pass all her tests. Be ready for those. Yeah? Have a low slow voice. Lead, escalate, and more than anything, just act. Take action. Don't be passive. Be active. That alone is powerful in this world. Okay? And that goes way beyond trying to pick up women. Alright. The flip side warmth for all of you two d alphas. Don't forget to smirk. Think of Jude Law in alpha. Yeah? Don't forget the twinkling eyes. Think of Frank Sinatra. Have a playful positive vibe. Cultivate a good vibe. Alright? Stop being so negative and pessimistic and certainly don't hate women. Use a personal touch. Remember Starbucks writing your name on that coffee cup? Remember that market trader in Egypt offering you a tea as you look at his ware? This is all a personal touch. Yeah? Like using the name. Learn about deep rapport, not just like chitchat rapport, but learn about deep rapport certainly if you're looking to keep girls around. And remember to ground your daygame set. So after the attraction and the hook point, ground your sets during the investment phase, getting her to invest and you opening up, showing some vulnerability even, calling out the elephant in the room. Yeah. If you run out of things to say, you say, look, I'm nervous. I've run out of things to say. Fourth wall stuff. All of that I've talked about on YouTube. But you balance the yin and the yang and you hit this sweet spot and people will describe you whether that's at work or girls on a date will describe you as charming, as being able to get away with things. You can be the cad, you can be the player, but with a cheeky grin on your face. If you're just this stony faced hardened guy who pumps and dumps, girls will hate you and other people will hate you and you'll feel bad and it's it's lose lose for everybody. But if you're doing it from the right place with a with a cheeky grin on your face and you tell girls what you want and you're unapologetic, yet you still care about women. Now, I'm not talking about white knights, snake seduction, supplication. I'm talking about just being empathic with the women woman's sexual strategy, understanding the sexual marketplace and how she has to play the game with her sexual market value. All this stuff I talked about. After you've set with enough women, you understand, okay, well, you're playing the game and she's playing the game and may the best man or woman win. Alright? And don't take it personally. She's not having a go at you. A lot of guys panic. I've done a talk on this. That's when guys call women bitches and whores or gold diggers. They get extremely negative. They start reading red pill stuff, I. Game stuff, but they take it the wrong way because they're not acting, because they're not diving in and cold approaching when the rubber hits the road. They just read all this stuff and and think that there's this secret plan. There's this secret agenda. There's this conspiracy against men. They lose all the warmth and they walk around as these two d alphas. You've seen them in the gym, boys in gorilla suits, you know, there's really jacked up testosterone supplemented guys, steroided guys trying to be the movie definition of macho, trying to be the movie definition of alpha, missing the point because they're lacking a human touch, they're lacking warmth, they're lacking essentially charm and charisma. Now on the ship, we're lots and lots of interesting guys, all ages, guys on their gap years, guys my age who had quit their job and were flow mads, nomads, and obviously some retired guys because guys who now have time and money. They are fulfilling their dream of sailing the Atlantic or rounding Cape Horn or going to Antarctica, whatever. There was a guy in my cabin who was 72 years old from America and he was actually the guy I bonded with the most, spent most time with him. He was just fascinating. He was he was a soldier in Vietnam, then he was a pilot flying between Columbia and America during the Escobar years, say no more about what he was carrying. Then he became a a skydiver, almost a stuntman, and then he moved into the explosives industry for air shows where he he blew up things. And since then, he's rounded Cape Horn before. He's climbed peaks in the Himalayas. He rides motorbikes. He is married, but he doesn't have kids. He's just a badass. And it was so inspiring to to meet a guy like this with a lot of charm and charisma just from the university of life, you know, from all his experiences. I spent a lot of time with him. There's another cool guy I was on watch with who was 60 years old, and he was a bachelor until his mid fifties when he met a girl or he seduced a girl thirty years younger than him. God bless him. And now he's moved in with her and he's got a kid and he's happy because he had all his crazy bachelor years. He also was a a nomad and unplugged. This was way before it became popular. He was a cool guy to talk to about how long you can maintain sustain male sexual market value. So another great example, in his mid fifties and seducing a girl thirty years younger, say no more. The most alpha guy you could say, quote unquote alpha, real alpha guy on the ship who was naturally alpha. I'm not talking about natural in terms of natural game, but somebody who had had reference experiences throughout his life. So hadn't studied game, but just had an inherent understanding of it and oozed it was another cabin mate of mine, a Canadian ice road trucker. This big hairy guy covered in tats, long hair, Harley Davidson biker, 50 years old, loud, uninhibited, abrasive to most people, broke all the rules, challenged people, called out bullshit. I I was drawn to him immediately because he was a dirty fucker like me. But he had this lovely childlike warmth to him where people forgave him because he called the spade a spade and he did it with a big smile on his face. He was very lovable. And he flipped between being very powerful, you could say very grumpy, and then being very warm, doing really nice things for people buying the whole ship around the beers, you know. And he had so many stories from his Ice Road Trucker days. He is in the original series of Ice Road Truckers if you remember that. So, yeah, I learned a lot of stuff from him about his view of the world, his view on on life, certainly his view on women. We had some adventures in Cape Verde, which I'll tell you about another time. But it was nice to just chat to a guy who got it. He was very red pill, you could say, without knowing anything about this. So slowly, I told him about what I do and I told him my observations and how we do things and he completely agreed. He was like, yep. That's how he sees women. That's how he sees the world. He had a big love. Big love for kills, but he certainly didn't pedestalize them. He certainly didn't have oneitis. He's traveled all over the world. He's a dirty fucker like I said. Naturally seducing girls. Once again, naturally as in learned early on. So, yeah, it was good to learn from those guys and there were plenty more. There were plenty of nice guys on the boats. Guys that would, you know, be be chitchatting all day long, but lacked seduction skills. There was a guy who I hung out with, a British guy who was completely in the frame of his girlfriend. It was complete romantic. And I tried to preach the gospel of game to him, but but it was tough. He was so under her thumb. That's the topic for another podcast, a relationship podcast. But making all these mistakes and showing me her text and her messages and telling me how they met and told me telling me how it worked and how she was constantly away traveling and she constantly had the reigns of the relationship and he would buy her things and try and win her love back and let her trample all over him. So it was sad to see really because I haven't spent that long with so many different guys for ages. I've been hanging around, you know, pickup artist, daygamers for the past two, three, four, five years. So it's very interesting to to get a glimpse of that, but I'll I'll talk about that in another podcast. Anyway, I can see the clock approaching thirty minutes. My voice needs a rest, and I've got to go and find my gate. But that was podcast 35. Put some of those things into practice. Don't let this just be something you listen to. But write a list of your power qualities and your warmth qualities and see which you have more of. I'm guessing you're more warm at the moment than powerful and see if you can balance them. For a time, like I said in Badass Buddha, it's better to swing towards the badass. So go crazy, become a bit of a Pablo Escobar nut job, a control freak, have a really big ego, be a bit of a jock, be a bit of a dick, be a player, and then you can swing back to warmth. Alright? No longer the nice guy, but the nice, bad boy. Next podcast is gonna be from London, so I'll catch you then. Ta da.