The book’s title How to Be a 3 Percent Man comes from the author’s claim that only 3% of men truly understand women. While this is an impossible proportion to actually quantify, my own personal life experience tends to back this estimation.

The book in extremely anecdotal, with almost all examples and stories coming from the author Corey’s own life. While many readers will be able to directly identify with being in similar situations, some may wish that the book’s core points were more directly summarized.

It’s clear that the author’s personal discovery of the book’s principles had a profound impact on his life, and that he is very passionate about the material. The author’s overall positive outlook and message of “Hey, check this out! If I can do it, so can you!” makes the book an excellent introductory point for those looking to enhance their understanding of social dynamics.

The following excerpt from the book is one of the most important core principles behind attraction, and one that Corey nails right on the head.

One of the most important things to understand when you meet a woman is that women love mystery. They love a guy that is his own man despite what others think about him or who he should be. They love a guy that is confident and goes for what he wants in life without fear. They want a man that is centered, one that is in control of himself, has purpose, and knows where he is going. A woman wants a man she can’t have her way with, and no matter what she says or does, she is not going to be able to sway him from his path or from his purpose in life.

A true Alpha Male, a man who goes for what he wants and has positive expectations that he will achieve his goals, will choose his purpose and his passion over a woman if faced with the choice. Masculine energy, after all, is about purpose, drive, mission, succeeding, accomplishing, breaking thru barriers, achieving goals, etc.

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The more you focus on and passionately pursue your purpose in life, the more attractive women will find you in general. A man pursuing a purpose and has a burning desire to accomplish it gives off a much happier, peaceful, relaxed, successful, inviting, confident and positive vibe than a guy who hates his job, his life and his circumstances.

Corey also gives the great advice of “becoming the person you want to attract.” Similarly, I always say that you attract what you are, and bring into your life only what you think you deserve. When you live your life in line with your personal values, you will bring others into your life who also share those values.

Additionally, Corey discusses the import point that one can’t bribe or barter with another person to earn their affection. Attraction must be naturally felt.

While I found the vast majority of Corey’s observations to be correct, he sometimes confuses the causation and correlation behind what actually generates attraction, ignores situational context and misses the deeper underlying principles from where one’s actions and behaviors should be derived.

You can read my article Causation vs. Correlation: Where Classic “Pick-Up” Advice Went Wrong for a more in depth analysis of some other common misconceptions that men have had regarding what actually generates attraction in women.

Overall, you want to be a person who embodies attractive qualities – which to Corey’s credit, he does point out multiple times. However, simultaneously he also advocates actively monitoring a women’s attraction level and then performing specific actions when you deem it necessary to get that level up.

Firstly, such advice deviates away from the core concept of being an attractive man rather than just acting like one. Secondly, it puts you into a reactive frame where your actions are no longer truly authentic, but instead purposely performed to illicit a specific response. Authenticity and honest communication are at the core of what generates lasting attraction. Deviating away from these core principles will only ever hurt one’s results in the long run.

Thus I disagree with Corey when he advocates playing games such as purposely delaying calling someone back, etc. Although, I understand how in the short-term doing this might help hide the neediness of a guy who is just starting out. However, a person who is truly self-secure, confident and successful with women would not consciously play such validation games. They would simply call a person when they felt like calling them.

Corey’s advice is primary meant to protect one against appearing too needy by overly texting and calling a person that they just met. And I agree with Corey that all non face-to-face communication should be limited solely for the purpose of organizing in-person interactions, and not as a medium for building a relationship.

You should primarily focus on having a solid initial face-to-face interaction, so that the other person will be excited to take your call whenever it may come. I talk about this in depth in my article The Reason Why People Flake on You.

Corey also advises that when a woman gives you her number, not to stand there and call it to see if it is legitimate. Again, I disagree with this. I personally always call or text the person immediately, both so that they have my number and as a way to validate that they entered their number correctly. What I think Corey meant to say was, don’t appear skeptical or surprised that a women would give you her real number. This would obviously signal to the woman that you don’t view yourself as being on her level. However, it would be dumb to miss out on a great connection just because you wanted to appear nonchalant by not verifying that the number was correctly entered.

Again, you attract what you are. So if you play validation games to attract women, you will disproportionately attract women who like to play validation games with men. When a man and a woman who are both craving validation meet, their combined insecurities lead to the playing of such unnecessary and time consuming games. A push-pull dynamic will often be established where they are constantly rewarding and punishing each another through the providing and withholding of validation. This is not the foundation of a healthy or happy relationship.

The other advice in the book that I primarily take issue with is the following.

A woman knows in about 3 seconds if you make the cut or not. You must be a 5 or better on a scale of 1 to 10 in order to have a chance to date her. If you are a 4 or below in her eyes, you ain’t got a chance. Move on.

I agree that one needs to move on when an interaction clearly isn’t going to go somewhere, but not within the first 3 seconds. This advice gives men, who are in need of pushing their comfort zones, an easy excuse to instantly eject from interactions with new people. You should not be seeking an instant positive reaction from a person in order to give yourself permission to continue talking to them. Many people will simply be focused on something other than you or perhaps just be having a bad day. In the end, a positive interaction with you could actually make their day.

If you follow Corey’s advice of bailing out of any interaction where your perception (which may be very inaccurate for a beginner) is that a woman is not initially rating you at a “5” or higher, you will almost never get dates with super attractive women. Since when you start a conversation with a complete stranger with no prior social proof, you will often be at a 5 at best. While women are incredibly good at measuring you up within moments of meeting you, it is by displaying attractive behaviors over time that they will come to view you as being attractive.

I would agree that if a person is clearly not interested after a solid interaction together, then of course move on. But if you are not incredibly handsome or have prior social proof, don’t expect a woman that you just met to be intrigued by you within only 3 seconds.

While the book How to Be a 3 Percent Man gives many good anecdotal examples of how one can change their behaviors to better attract women, it often fails to fully clarify the rational behind why women find certain behaviors attractive. For the reader who desires a more complete understanding of the core principles behind attracting women, I would recommend my own book: Fundamentals of Female Dynamics. It will nicely compliment Corey’s anecdotal evidence by providing a deeper explanation of the underlying principles that are at play.

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