Inside a Miami Pick-Up Artist's 'Seduction Bootcamp' That Teaches Guys the Art of the Hook-Up

Matt Artisan's company hosts workshops that teaches men the art of the hook-up.

ByABC News
November 25, 2015, 6:34 AM

— -- It was a Friday night in South Beach, Miami, and the clubs were thumping, the ladies were dancing, and an entourage of men were on the prowl.

But this particular group of guys were there as part of a three-day bootcamp to teach them how to pick up women.

It’s an intense workshop led by Matt Artisan through his company, “The Attractive Man,” designed to teach men how “to approach,” how “to engage” and how to “close with confidence.” A three-day workshop with Artisan can cost about $1,000 up to $2,500, plus food and drink.

“The cool thing is when guys come to me or my company, we’ve done all that trial and error and we know what works and what doesn’t work,” said Artisan, noting he has approached at least 3,000 women in the last six years.

“Because every time I see someone I want to talk to I talk to them,” Artisan said. “That could be one woman a day. ... In Miami, they’re everywhere. It could be 10 a day.”

The first exercise Artisan has his participants go through is perfecting their body language, intonation and technique with talking to women in a classroom-type setting. He then brings in a model and has them has them go through the motions with her, before he takes the group out on the town to practice in public.

ABC News' “Nightline” followed Matt Artisan and a group of guys he was working with during one of his three-day sessions to see if Artisan was successful in scoring dates for his bootcamp participants. Watch what happened HERE.

Even with the rise of dating apps like Tinder and Bumble in the $2 billion a year online-dating industry, so-called “seduction bootcamps” for men continue to be popular. Artisan said that while dating apps can help make the initial connection, his workshops teach men what to do after meeting a woman.

“Those sites can put you in front of the girl but then you still have to present yourself, you still need to attract her,” he said.

To “attract her,” many bootcamps encourage men to be assertive and own their swagger, but the tactics of some have come under fire, such as infamous pick-up artist Julien Blanc, who has numerous videos online giving men what he says are tips on how to get women into bed.

But Artisan claims his bootcamps offers a softer, more authentic approach, and said he got his start from being really shy and awkward.

“High school was tough. ... [I] didn’t have a lot of friends,” he said. “Ever since high school ... it was something I just obsessed over it, like I wanted to be able to the get the hottest girl.”

But the success these seduction bootcamp companies promise, not to mention the high price tag, has created an online community of pick-up artist haters, dissatisfied costumers calling the industry fake and others saying pick-up artists degrade women.

Harris O’Malley is a self-proclaimed “reformed pick-up artist” who is now happily married. He said he owns up to his past, but no longer embraces it.

“I was very manipulative,” O’Malley said. “I was using a lot of techniques that at the time were very similar to compliance provoking techniques used by high-pressure sales tactics.”

O’Malley said he used to teach men to think of women in terms of numbers and “points.”