---
title: Episode 53 Rejections & Haters
episode_number: 53
era: early
source_file: Episode 53 Rejections & Haters.mp3
audio_size_mb: 51.6
duration_sec: 1691.4
duration_min: 28.2
language: en
provider: deepgram
model: nova-3
diarized: true
confidence: 0.998
transcribed_at: 2026-05-28T06:43:38Z---

# Episode 53 Rejections & Haters

**Speaker 0:** Tom Torero podcast 53 from New York City. Here we are in Manhattan. It's another sunny spring day. Too nice to be indoors recording a podcast, but I've got to do it before dashing back out, doing more coaching, doing more filming. It's just been a pleasure, an absolute pleasure this trip for the weather, for the daygame conditions, for the daygame itself, for the results, for the teaching I've done and, a couple of days left here and then off to Pennsylvania to see some family for a little bit before flying back next week to Europe. But enough about that. A detailed podcast today. A lot to say so we're going to just jump into the topic which sounds like two topics but really they're the same thing related to the same mindset and that is rejections and haters. Rejections and trolls, whatever you wanna say. Rejections as in going up to a girl you don't know during the day and she turns her back or she says something to the effect of that she's not interested. She chats for a little bit and then she pats you on the shoulder and she says, oh you're so sweet, here's my fiancee. Or she gives you the number and it's not a real number or she gives you the number and she doesn't text you back or you're texting and she vanishes. Even worse, she might come out on a date and friend zone you or you kiss, nothing happens, she comes back to yours, nothing happens or for some guys, she sleeps with you, you want to see her again but she's disappeared. So rejections in any form of daygame street hustling as a salesman knows, as a gambler knows. In street hustle I talk about this. Haters as in you putting your head above the castle walls, the parapet, the walls of your comfort castle and getting shot at in some form, whatever you do in business, in your daygame, with content that you're putting out, with things that you're putting out into the world. A group of people that simply go after you, that try to drag you back down into that comfort castle. Yeah. Because if you want nothing to happen to you in this life then yeah, keep your head below the parapet, say nothing, do nothing as the old saying goes and all will be well. Nobody will know you are there, you can hide in comfort and everything will be fine but the minute you step out of that, I say you're the black sheep, you're no longer willing to be herded into that pen. You want to go in a different direction by yourself, you stand out, people are going to notice and a subsection of society is not going to like it. I say in street hustle, yeah, people don't like the hustle. Casinos don't like hustlers getting away with it in Las Vegas legally or illegally. Girls don't like the first kind of hustle which I call bait and switch where you pretend to be the boyfriend, you get sex and then you run away. And society, both the structures in society and in particular men who try other routes don't like the second kind of hustle where you and the girl like Bonnie and Clyde are in the secret society and you're not having to pour money and gifts and time into her to get the sex. You're not having to do the relationship thing. You're not having to wine and dine her. You're not having to do Tinder or online or enter clubs. You just pick her up in Starbucks and her fiance never knows and she has casual sex with you because she wants to. So obviously even though you enjoy it and she enjoys it, society you could say is against that. You're going against the grain. So we're going to talk about rejections, how to deal with rejections because they're obviously a part of your daygame street hustling and how to deal with haters. Whether that's being in school now and you're being bullied, at college, at university, in your workplace, even from family members. If you start to stand up for yourself and say no, go in your own direction, yeah, you're gonna get some flack. Or like me, you're sticking your head above the parapet in terms of content and putting things out there into the world. Maybe you are a daygame coach too and you're getting shot at. So we'll talk about all of those things today. First of all, then rejections. You should know by now if you've done cold approach that there are yes girls, maybe girls and no girls. So yes girls are just gifts from God, they're just on, all you have to do is approach them with intent and they're good to go. That's a small subset of girls but thank God for them, they are the relief. Alright, maybe one a day if you do a lot of day games she's just on, tiger eyes, mesmer, bang, easy, nice and simple, instant date, bounce back, whatever. Most girls are maybe girls so that means yeah, she might have kind of a boyfriend. Yeah, she's kind of in a rush. She just wants to see if you're gonna stand your ground if you're the real deal. Watch my video on shit tests that I've just put out. She'll give you the number, she'll see how you text her. Are you gonna be a needy fucker? Are you gonna be overly keen? She might come out on the date, see what you like, see if you're bit of a see if you're a bit of a wet fish, if you're a pushover, if you're like all the other guys. She might give you a shot at the goal. Yeah? So that's the maybe girls and that's where the game is really played. That's where you need technical game. That's where you need outer skill and obviously inner mindset from that outer skill. And coming back to the rejections, of course there are no girls, whatever your skill level, whoever you are, whatever you look like, certain girls every day, every daygame session are no. And they might be soft no's where she's kind of polite and then walks away. In London and New York you can have brutal no's where they push past you. During training I've had girls say to students, know, get the fuck away or just fuck off or no. Just saying harsh things like that. She's had a really bad day. She's just lost her job. Somebody in her family is ill or has just died, know, she's just coming on to her period. There's money problems, you look like the ex boyfriend jerk, whatever. You just don't know. And if you do sales, if you've ever seen those charity sign up people, chuggers we call them, charity muggers in The UK, you'll see how many rejections they face to get to their sign up, to get to their yes. And in sales I'm sure you've read articles and books or seen videos about getting to yes, battling through the no's. So think of the door to door salesman. There's a YouTube video on this channel, on my YouTube channel where I explain why sales is like cold approach. Cold approach is like sales. I talk about that in street hustling too. So obviously, every cold caller knows that they have to get through the no. Think of the movie, glengarry Glen Ross. Yep. Always be closing, pushing the sale, assuming the sale, battling it with the maybes but accepting the nose, taking them on the chin. The minute you're reactive to the nose and you sulk and you whine and you go online and you start getting really angry about this certain girl and why didn't it work and I did this but still it didn't work. I often get emails from guys in particular, I think last week or the week before, I had an email from a guy who said look I had the most perfect interaction and she seemed on and everything was fine and it was like magic, it was like a movie and I texted her and she didn't reply. What the hell? This game stuff doesn't work, the lines don't work, I can't believe it. Let me think about this girl, let me think about this girl some more, let me post more online about her. How can I get her back? Scarcity mindset, neediness, over investment from the guy, yeah? He doesn't have other options. He's still probably dreaming of the one. He's got those Disney romance ideals and ideas and he hasn't embedded this concept of flaking and rejections. And some girls will just be, no. If you're not getting rejected as a daygamer, if you're not getting flaky numbers sometimes, if you're not sometimes getting token LMR, then my friend you're not a daygamer. Right? You're not gaming hard enough. You're not pushing yourself enough because you are just avoiding the rejections with all these excuses of she's too busy, she's not my type, she's not hot enough, I don't feel like it. Watch my excuses, excuses, excuses video from actually here in New York many years ago I shot that. Listening all those excuses you come up with. What you're really doing, you're not being afraid of the approach, you're being afraid of the rejection, the sting from reality. Now you've got to battle through that, that's part of getting over AA and you'll soon learn as an effective daygamer that actually you're going to embrace the no's because not only do the no's take you to the yes's but they are feedback. As I said, feedback from reality. They sting a little bit but as I've said in my video and in the article, the girl is your mirror. So let's come back to rejections. Let's say one or two girls every day they're just rude nose. Do you need to listen to that as feedback? No. Okay. That's just like cold calling a couple of doors slamming in your face. No big deal. It's just part of the process. But if you go out today and you do daygame and every girl gives you the same kind of rejection, the same kind of look or you get to the same point in the model and something goes wrong or girls keep saying the same thing to you, then yes, that's not just saying to yourself, oh haters gonna hate, you know, or rejection's part of the game. No. You've got to look at that in the mirror, right? The girl is your mirror. So what is she trying to tell you? Is it something to do with the way you're dressed? Is it something to do with your health? Are you massively overweight? Do you have nostril hairs hanging down from your nose? Is your breath off? Are you speaking quickly? Are you speaking quietly? Are you needy? Are you leaning in? Are you weak at stopping these girls? Are you serious? Are you boring? Are you interviewing them? Are you scaring them with your serious scowl? Are you being a pushover and they just walk away every single time? Do you feel creepy about what you're doing and remember what you feel she feels so she also feels a bit creeped out by the fact that you're whispering and not stopping her properly from the front. Is it all friend to friend? So she's laughing all the time but she has absolutely no idea of your dick, of your sexual intent. So take this on the chin. It's the same with haters, we'll come back to this at the end but if you're getting a few small comments, whatever, thumbs down, yeah that's just part of the process but if everybody including people that know and love you are saying look, this is not right, this is not right, this is not right, then you've got to take it. You've to take it like a man, take feedback from reality and adjust your behaviors accordingly. And the more you do day game, the more you'll see that not only did the no's take you closer to the yes but the more you polarize your game, I. The more you're not just doing nice guy day game but you're doing sexualized day game, the lover daygame, the escalation daygame, the secret society daygame, then you don't want this soft middle ground, right? You'd rather find out pretty quickly if she's a no or a strong lead, a possible maybe or even a yes. But a long friendly chat I. Kind of indirect game of 2007, 2008 when that was popular, That's not polarizing. So it's like with clients, you might stand there trying to sell somebody a phone in a phone shop and just chitchat for an hour about holidays and the weather and politics but that's not getting you closer to the sale. Yeah. So don't forget polarization is good and the more you polarize, the more badass you become, you're gonna get more rejections. Simple question to ask yourself which sounds cheesy but it's very very significant. How many times have you been rejected this week by girls from cold approach? Now if you're saying none, then that means you haven't been out daygaming. If you're saying once or twice, then you've probably only done a very small number of girls. If you're saying you're being rejected two, three, four times every day game session and you've done three or four day game sessions this week then bang, you are spot on. Remember the old saying, if you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate. That doesn't mean spam approaching by the way, you're not just going to run around Manhattan or Oxford Street spam approaching and not taking feedback but it means you're going to put your head further and further above the parapet. Alright? You're gonna get shot at. And yesterday I put out a video with me walking into Victoria's Secret here in Manhattan quite ready willing to be shot at. It was an okay basic number close just to show you about social pressure and the spotlight effect and anxiety but it was fine. So that's me putting my head a little bit further than I would normally go, you know, a street stop or a cafe or a museum because that's what's stretching you. Yeah. I was ready just to take the failure and film the failure because that would have still been an interesting experiment because it would make me less afraid next time I saw Rukhil go into Victoria's Secret. Alright. Zooming out a little bit. Thinking of rejections, flakes, and haters. It's interesting that our brain, of course, is wired to focus on the negatives. So this has an evolutionary explanation obviously because you can't just walk around being happy and thinking that everything is fine and dandy because you've always got to be on alert caveman one point zero, you know. He can't take anything for granted, he can't relax, always has to be ready for the next crisis. So we're wired to think about the negative, we're wired to think about criticism because of tribal structures and how all that worked. So day gamers obviously go home and they moan about those two or three girls that blew them off or there was a bit of a dodgy interaction. They forget about the girls that smiled, the girls that hooked, the girls that gave them the numbers. They forget about their past dates and lays and successes and they just focus on these particular girls. Now, for good or for bad, I've always had it in me to be able to delete, selectively delete bad things that have happened to me. This is both useful and not useful but in terms of game and business it's been very useful. So I move on. My brain is always focusing on the positive things that are going to happen or have happened. You could call that delusional but I call it useful. Alright, zipping up those memories in a bag, dropping them into the river. A psychologist might say that's repression and they're all going to come out as some terrible monster one day but I don't see any other option, know, dwelling in the past, sinking into that toxic kind of bitter negativity, anger, poison, all of those things which are bad for you and bad for attracting girls, they're all pussy repellent. And if you're thinking about how to make friends and influence people, they're a disaster because you're stuck in the past, alright. Your moaning glass is always half empty. I'm always thinking about what's coming up, what's the next project, what's the next thing I have to do. I refer back to successes in the past. I don't do any kind of visualization stuff as in life coaching but I think about what I've achieved in the past. The girls I've chatted up, the places I've been to, the things that have gone well, the achievements. And I walk out and I think, yeah, Tom you can do it. Alright, remember those positive reference experiences, real world, not self help book shit but do you remember that girl you took on a date? Do you remember that lecture you gave? Do you remember you did that bit of traveling? Do you remember you took that risk and it paid off? Do you remember you, successfully wrote that etc. And that's really rewiring my brain to say, it's okay, you can do it. Go on Tom, it's okay, you can do it. Coming back to that point, if you've got more success references than failure references, you're on the right track. Just focus on those success references. If like I said, all the girls are giving you the same bad feedback and you've only had more bad feedback than good feedback then okay, take stock. Something's going wrong. You have to listen to real world feedback. And it's the same with the haters. So when you put your head above the parapet, you get shot at. If you're getting way more hate, so let's say it's a YouTube video and you're getting hundreds and hundreds of dislikes and only a few likes, then yeah, you've really got to listen to what's going on. Listen to the majority. Okay? Because that's real world feedback. But if you're putting out a YouTube video or an article or you're putting out a book and you're getting 95, 98% glowing reviews, thanks, praise, positive feedback, thumbs up, it's very tempting to look at those bad comments, thumbs down, angry emails, whatever and think, oh my god, this is what the whole world thinks. This video is a failure. Again it's the brain focusing on the negative when you have to zoom out, take stock and think look, the more you put your head above that comfort castle wall, the more people don't like it, okay. Now if those people are on your level, I. E. A good friend, a family member, a fellow wing, a fellow daygamer and they're giving you some critical feedback, then yeah, be man enough like I said to take it. But if those people are not even on your level, I. E. It's just a random girl in a coffee shop who's having a bad day, don't take her feedback as representative of what's going on in real life. It's the same as one angry email that I might get or one weird kind of troll comment. Now the brain wants to focus on that troll comment but why? That guy is in his bedroom. Yeah. That guy is watching your stuff. The old saying is haters are just people who secretly want to be you. You've got something they want. I like it that old saying when it says, have you ever met a hater doing better than you? You could rephrase that as have you ever met a troll online doing better than you? So no, so why are you putting weight? Why are you giving significance to that and responding to that person, getting into a flame war with that person, spending days and days trying to battle that person. It's just like battling, trying to win that girl that just brushed you aside on 5th Avenue. Do you really care? You shouldn't care. Being reactive, that's the worst thing to do. So non reactivity in game, non reactivity in life because life is game. Yeah and the irony is that just like that one girl who brushes you aside, she might lead you to the next girl who you do another one and it's on and it's amazing and you end up dating her or she's the hottest girl you lay that year. So you push through the no to get to the yes. The irony is that those haters actually fuel me in a positive way. I've always had that as well. So when people have said no, you can't do it or no, this is shit or those few guys have said oh this is rubbish, what's he doing? I can't believe he's doing this, how dare he? It just pushes me on because I know that if I get, this is a good sign by the way that these people are paying attention, they're actually discussing me, I'm very flattered that I'm a discussion topic in somebody's life and I've had that thing in me, I guess because of the bullying in school, that thing which says okay when I'm gonna prove you wrong. So if I get pushed aside in Whole Foods by one girl I'll say okay, I'm gonna prove you wrong. Onto the next girl, onto the next girl, onto the next girl. So when you get a troll comment or a hateful email or a weird kind of spammy thing against you, you say okay I'm gonna prove you wrong. So it fuels me and the weird thing online is that the more people talk about you even if it's complete hatred, the more that just raises your profile. This is one of the weird things about how Google works and the internet works. You just get more eyeballs, more clicks, sales go up. It took me a long time to realize that. If people are talking about you and it's a good thing, your reaction is to go, oh no, I don't want any negative press coverage. Well, as a celebrity knows, as anybody knows who puts themselves in the limelight, people are gonna like you and people are gonna hate you. And like I said, polarization is good. The middle ground where people go, Tom, he's a yeah, he's alright, he's a nice sweet guy. No, that's not what you want. You want your followers to love what you do and in business they're gonna buy from you, yeah, or take coaching from you or watch your stuff and you're gonna get hate and it's in direct proportion. So the more successful you are, the more hate you're gonna get. You just have to accept it. Same with daygame, the more daygame you do, the more of the lover role, the cad, the jerk boy thing that you put on, the more swagger you have. Some girls are gonna love it and some girls, guys and society, they're gonna hate it. Alright, to finish, some practical outer game things for the core daygamers listening, the guys that go out and do this stuff day in day out. Talking about rejections, alright. So some practical things. First one's the worst one, remember my mantra. So if you've watched my New York City infield montage that I put up this week where you see a Monday morning two, two and a half hour session, you see how you've just got to jump in. So the clock started at 10:00 and two or three minutes later I'm into my first set. So don't walk around, don't let those voices in your head get loud, get the first rejection out of the way. Embrace the first rejection, make the first approach a hot girl or a high pressure situation. Walk towards the fear. Get slapped by the fear. Walk into Victoria's Secret as your first approach and hit on a shop assistant or a very pretty girl and get rejected. And if you're with your wing, obviously it's easier to laugh about it. You say, oh that was a good one. Do you see how she rejected me? Fantastic, woke me up like a bucket of cold water or a wet fish in the face. Or if you're on your own, I just smile to myself and as soon as I've done the first one, I relax physically. So all that tension in my face, my in shoulders, in my arms, I often carry tension weirdly in my hands. So even though I've been doing it for years and years and years, I feel my fingers clenching into a fist and after the first or the second approach, you can shake it out. I say shake it out in street hustle. So even before the session, if you're feeling tense, shake your shoulders, scrunch up your shoulders to your head and drop them down, rotate your shoulders forwards and backwards. Shake out the tension in your arms, even in your feet. Do some deep breathing. But more important than all that self help bollocks is to jump in. Get rejected as quickly as you can. Build momentum. As Tyler from RSD says, minimize time between interactions. So do daygame in high volume areas. That's why most daygamers, yep, should stick with rush hour either lunchtime or after 05:00 in very busy areas. If you just stand by Flatiron at 05:30 in New York City or up in Midtown by that Victoria's Secret by Macy's, yeah, could do approach after approach after approach. It's just desensitization through repetition. Rejections, think about the pattern of that day. Come home and think, what were the main kind of rejections I was getting? Which point in the model was I reaching? And try and pinpoint why. So coming back to girl is your mirror. Not just the odds one or two rejections but think about what's the pattern that day and that week. Are you not speaking loud enough like I said? Is it something to do with the way you're stopping them? Is it the stacking? Most likely this is true. Is it the stacking, the flirting and the storytelling to get to the hook? Are you not being persistent? Are you being too friendly? Etcetera etcetera etcetera. Take it on the chin, look at it, write it down. I used to keep a a blog. It was a locked blog when I started game. I think I had the blog 2009, maybe even earlier and I would put down what happened, the good stuff and the bad stuff. Yep, I would focus on the good stuff but I would write down to do lists and things I had to improve on. Record yourself. So as you know I'm doing my stealth seduction recording right now and I'm learning a lot from it. It's like having a coach because I can watch the sets back, you can record yourself on your iPhone, in your pocket, whatever with a dictaphone. Listen to yourself back. Listen to those just meaningless rejections but listen to the sets that were pretty good and then something happened and take it. Okay? And zooming out over that week, over that month, over that year, you'll see change. That's intelligent learning. Alright, you do something, you take feedback from it, you adjust, you try again. Do you now need a day game coach? I keep saying no. Like there's so much on YouTube. There's how to do the daygame, there's how to do the texting, there's how to do the dating, there's even how to do the relationship stuff, there's how to overcome shit tests, there's stuff on fashion. Every aspect really of daygame is covered at least for beginners, intermediates and upper intermediates. So with all this material, can be your own coach, you can be an intelligent learner and you can use those rejections. Just like in business, you can use the haters. Yeah? Ignoring just the the irrelevant stuff but listening to negative comments if you own a coffee shop or if you're doing something online. Listening to clients that matter, listening to repeated clients or people saying the same thing all the time. Imagine reviews for a hotel on TripAdvisor. Yeah. Ignore the spammy ones, but if they keep saying the same thing, if reviewers kept finding the same thing in your hotel, listen and adapt. I hope that made sense. It made sense in my head when I was thinking about this podcast, and I think it's useful because it's the same thing in my mind. Rejections, haters, trolls, whatever. Embrace it and learn from it. That was podcast 53 from New York City. The next one's gonna be back in Europe. But for now, keep grabbing life by the horns. Speak to you next week.