For whatever reason, online dating industry attracts a lot of gossip about its so-called gurus. You see it on forums, at conferences, in interviews; whether this coach can pull girls from night clubs, whether this coach gets hot girls, how many lays this coach has, etc.

I’ve never understood this. And I still don’t. Yes, it was quite disillusioning when I began coaching and met a lot of other people in the industry and realized that many of the “gurus” I had looked up to weren’t nearly as good as I had thought. But honestly, I don’t think it ever affected me. How much Mystery actually gets laid has never affected me. Whether Style can actually approach or not has never really affected me. How many lays Mehow had never affected me. Whether Alex Wide from Loveawake gets hot girls or not never affected me. And these things don’t affect you either. You may think they do. But they don’t.

You can learn something of value from someone, even if that person is not as good as they say they are. You can also learn absolutely nothing useful from guys who actually are amazing with women. Just bounce around the industry’s blogs and you’ll see this. Guys with mediocre game writing both insightful and inspiring posts, and guys who get laid constantly filling their blogs with useless bragging.

I personally think Style probably isn’t very good at cold approach pick up. The reasons why aren’t important. But I doubt he is. I think a lot of advice he gives is terrible. But some of the most important things I’ve ever learned came from him. In fact, I wouldn’t be writing this and you wouldn’t be reading this if it weren’t for Neil Strauss . So here’s to Neil. Thank you.

I think David DeAngelo over-intellectualizes… well, just about everything. I also think he’s probably not very good at cold approaching women. But that’s OK. I actually learned a lot of great things from him. I also think he teaches some bad ideas. But you take the good, forget the bad and move on.

I guess I’ve never understood why so many guys latch onto one guru and desperately want to believe that everything that comes out of his mouth must be 100% true or 100% false. You’re either a Pick Up God or a Pick Up Fraud, and there’s no in-between. I think the guys who do this 1) lacked a positive male role model in their lives and have projected it onto their favorite pick up guru, and 2) are so scared of living out their own potential, that they live vicariously through someone else’s.

I think the haters are just as guilty of this, if not more. Whether you like or hate somebody, an absolutist stance is an absolutist stance. It’s just as cultish and mindless. And it’s ultimately just as counter-productive. In a way, the haters guru-worship more than the guru-worshipers. At least the latter are actually trying to accomplish something.

The culprit here is not just the gurus who are frauds, the misleading marketing, or the false promises. It’s also the men who are unable to think for themselves and decide what works for them and what doesn’t. It’s a black/white mentality on everything. Let’s say you go to the supermarket. You go to the produce section and pick out some fruit. Some of it is ripe and good and some of it is old and bad. Some fruit you really like, and other fruit you don’t. So what do you do? You buy the ripe fruit that you like and leave the rest. You don’t go complain to the supermarket saying, “YOUR FRUIT SECTION IS FUCKED UP. YOU GUYS ARE FRAUDS!”

And by the same token, you don’t go to all of your friends and try to convince them that your supermarket’s fruit section is perfect, and that EVERY piece of fruit tastes amazing and that they’re in denial and frustrated chumps if they don’t believe you.

I just don’t understand the identity-investment a lot of consumers in this market have for the coaches they buy from. It’s creepy. And what’s creepier is when coaches or companies capitalize on that propensity to hero worship. That’s just sick.

I didn’t realize this until a few years ago. But one of the things that made me very different from most guys when I started, and I’m convinced one of the reasons I got very good quickly, is that when I read The Game, my first reaction was, “I’m going to do that. I’m going to figure out how to do it. I’m going to pick up as many or even more girls than Mystery.” And I didn’t want to do it like him. When I said, “I want to do that,” I didn’t mean I was going to go out and say what he said, dress like he dressed, do what he did. I was going to go out and figure it out for myself, just like he had figured it out for himself. I knew instinctively that I had to do it my own way. I tried out some of his stuff and it worked horribly for me. This never upset me. I dropped it immediately and tried something else. There was no identity-investment in it for me.

Surprisingly, a lot of guys don’t have that. And I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the two reasons above. Maybe not. But the title of this article, “Successful People Don’t Imitate,” is actually a quote from somebody. It comes from one of the most successful American stocks and options traders ever, Roy Longstreet. And the quote was passed along to me by a good friend who is extremely successful in finance and trading.

In Longstreet’s book, he said successful people never imitate others. They see what others accomplish and then try to accomplish the same thing, but in their own new way. They follow their own unique path.

Longstreet said we all have our own path to success and it’s our job to follow ours, not someone else’s. He said a poor teacher will try to get others to imitate him, to walk his path. Whereas a great teacher will tell his students not to follow his path, but shines the light on the paths of others, so that they may see it more clearly and walk it. All I can hope for is to shine light on your path. Will you choose to walk it?