Google “Adam Lyons” and you’ll see why Amanda Lyons’ mother was leery of her daughter dating the guy three years ago.
“Adam Lyons — the great seducer” blares one headline. “Adam Lyons’ ‘Make out in 60 seconds’ video,” says another. “Adam Lyons, PUA [pickup artist] Training.” And so on.
“My mom was like, ‘Who is this guy and what are you doing?’ ” says Amanda. “I told her, ‘It’s not as bad as it seems, I promise.’”
When Amanda, 23, first met the suave Brit in a nightclub in London where she was studying, he was hooking up with her friend.
“It was definitely not love at first sight!” Amanda admits with a laugh.
Pickup artists — men who study the art of hooking up and use an arsenal of pick-up lines to score with women — weren’t entirely new to the pretty Texan. She’d been hit on by plenty of guys who subscribed to the routines-and-lines method later chronicled in Neil Strauss’ book “The Game.”
Adam was famous in the UK as a teacher of pickup artistry. Shortly after meeting Amanda, he invited her to come to one of his classes, to help out as his female assistant.
Curious, she agreed — and by the time the workshop ended, Amanda was smitten, citing the mysterious power of chemistry. “From there, I saw him every single day that I was in London for [the next two months].”
Adam felt it too. “One coffee sitting down with Amanda is worth a million other girls in bed, as far as I’m concerned.”
How did Amanda know she wasn’t getting gamed? Well, she didn’t. “I would wonder, ‘Is he saying stuff to other girls that he says to me?’ We did everything we could to cut it off
. . . yet we somehow couldn’t.”
But after a year of long-distance dating, Adam moved to Amanda’s home base in Austin, which made the difference. “He’s the one who picked up his life and moved,” she says. “He wasn’t asking me to change anything.”
They got engaged right after, married three months after that, and soon Amanda started teaching with him full-time. Now the couple conducts pickup workshops all over the US and Europe. Their three-day “PUA Training” weekend “boot camp” in New York costs $1,300, and runs today until July 11 at Midtown’s Pearl Studios. (Sorry guys, it’s all sold out — limited to 14 dudes — but they’ll be back Sept. 3-5 for another round.)
Adam, 29, is no Brad Pitt. But as he sits holding hands with his gorgeous wife of one year, you can see why he’s been so successful with the ladies. There’s just something . . . strangely magnetic about him.
He hasn’t always been this way.
“I was a big geek,” he admits. “I had no idea how to talk to women. I would be sitting quietly in the corner, alone. I used to play Dungeons & Dragons!”
Two years before he met Amanda, he took a pickup class in London. But he found the traditional style of cheesy pick-up lines insincere and fake. So he created his own method, focusing on the psychology of attraction and creating a rapport — and the couple insists it works. Adam says their method is a “self-help movement for men.”
“Essentially, we’re trying to take the a**holes out of nightclubs and replace them with eligible bachelors who can actually hold a conversation, cook a meal and be taken home to your parents,” he says. “But they’re also amazing in the bedroom. They can turn you on in the drop of a hat.”
There are two types of men who come to their workshops, Amanda says: the “shy geeks, who sit in front of computers all day,” and arrogant guys who think bragging about their money is a good strategy. “New York is our biggest market,” she adds. “There are a lot of guys who need help here. I would say 50 percent of them are cocky finance guys.”
So, how did the biggest pickup artist in the world come around to monogamy?
“I [no longer] need the validation of banging some hot blonde to see if I still can. It gets to a point where you’ve slept with so many different girls that it’s not fun anymore,” Adam says. “You do two [women] at once, three at once, four at once, and then you videotape it all, and then . . . Where’s the challenge? It isn’t there. And you realize that all of it’s hollow.”
What’s more, Adam eventually won over Amanda’s parents. “Now he and my mom are BFFs,” Amanda says, rolling her eyes. “They talk all the time. My mom loves him.”
They’ve got game: Lyons’ tips for scoring
* Texting isn’t sexy. “Of course, you aren’t going to grow anything [with a woman] over text messages,” says Amanda. “Unless you’re actually with her, you can’t make it fun and sexual and flirty between you.”
* Don’t travel with a wolf pack. Go out to the club or bar with female friends, not a bunch of dudes on the prowl. You’ll instantly come across as less threatening, and “nobody thinks you’re desperate,” says Amanda.
* Canned pickup lines like “Are you a model?” don’t work. Instead, find common ground, then shut up and let the girl open up and talk about herself — it’s all about creating a real connection.
* Observe something that’s going on around you. For example, if you’re watching the ice-skaters at Bryant Park and someone takes a fall, you could turn to the girl next to you and say, “Wow, that guy just totally wiped out . . . how embarrassing, right?”
* Don’t ramble on about yourself and how great you are. No one cares, and it shows insecurity.
* Turn the conversation sexual ASAP. “For example,” says Adam, “you might start by asking her: ‘What’s the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done?’ ‘What’s the riskiest thing you’ve ever done?’ ‘OK, when was the last time you went out in public without your underwear?’ ”
* Then initiate low-key physical contact like a light touch on the arm. “Suddenly, you’re talking about sex, and they’re like, ‘Shh, someone might hear!’ So you take it into a corner, just the two of you. The next thing you know, you’re talking about the darkest sexual fantasy you’ve never lived out.”