8 Ways to Approach and Impress Women: Exclusive Boot Camps Teach Men How to Behave; ASS rule, 'nice guy' image and more

The CNN crew followed Matt Artisan’s three-day scouting camp in Nashville. Reporters followed every session, from classroom presentations to live street approaches.

Artisan, The Attractive Man, organizes such boot camps in Europe, Asia, Central America and the United States. Here’s what the coaches actually teach their participants about how to approach and impress women.

Approach women personally

The whole philosophy of these camps is based on face-to-face interaction. Artisan and his coaches believe that dating apps have fundamentally damaged spontaneous human connection. The rise of digital courtship has left many men unable to hold a real conversation with a stranger.

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Getting out into the real world and talking directly to women is presented as both a learnable skill and an urgent necessity. The camp exists precisely because that skill has eroded and needs to be deliberately rebuilt.

Work on physical presentation

An Artisan trainer bluntly told one attendee that his loose clothing actively turns women away. He refused to allow the man to approach anyone until he dealt with his appearance.

The message was straightforward: how you present yourself physically conveys confidence and self-esteem before you even utter a single word. Investing in how you look is not vanity. It is a basic requirement to be taken seriously in any social interaction.

Always say something

The craftsman’s so-called “ASS rule,” Always Say Something, is a core teaching of the camp. Overthinking and hesitation are consistently cited as the primary enemies of true connection. Men who wait for ideal conditions never act.

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The camp repeatedly forced participants to trust their instincts and move forward rather than standing frozen in their own heads. An attempt at an imperfect approach is always more valuable than a perfect approach you imagine.

The Quiet Trust Project

Coaches have repeatedly identified rising vocal pitch and nervous body language as habits that need to be corrected. The energy required has been described as composed and grounded rather than frantically friendly. Artisan cited James Bond as a benchmark for the relaxed and confident presence he wanted his participants to develop.

A certain amount of calm tension, he said, was far more convincing than the breathless over-enthusiasm that many of these men avoided when nervous.

Lose Image ‘Handsome Guy’

Artisan identified an overeagerness to please as a self-defeating pattern shared by most of his clients. Men who constantly seek approval and prioritize women’s comfort over their own sense of self are unwittingly signaling low self-worth.

Having some advantage, he argues, is not rudeness or aggression. It is simply the visible expression of a person who values himself. He thinks that without it, even the most sincere man with good intentions will become invisible.

Embrace emotional openness

This lesson came about organically rather than as a planned part of the curriculum. When participant Steve Crook broke down in tears during a long exercise of silent eye contact with a hired model, the response was overwhelmingly positive. The model told him directly that his emotional sensitivity was rare and deeply admirable.

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According to her, most men try to be so present and open. The coaches recognized this moment as one of the most important breakthroughs of the camp. It turns out that suppressing emotions in pursuit of ostentatious toughness did far more harm than good for these men.

Rejection as practice repetition

The whole structure of the camp is built on the assumption that rejection loses its power with repeated exposure. Participants logged dozens of hits over three days precisely to experience rejection in volume. Coaches labeled each failed interview as useful data, rather than a reflection of a man’s worth.

The rejection, participant Crook later said, was not nearly as devastating as he had feared. Each release made the next step a little easier.

Start taking action

Throughout each session, the single most consistent coaching message was to stop analyzing and simply act. Crook summed it up as the camp’s most important lesson. Some wait for certainty, for the right moment, or for guaranteed success, before attempting something.

This habit is the real barrier between these men and the connections they seek. The deepest learning of the camp was not technique. It was permission to act despite the uncertainty and to continue regardless of the outcome.