In this episode, we shine a spotlight on Michael Sartain, a performance coach and creator of the game-changing “Men of Action” program.
Michael’s journey is a tapestry woven with diverse experiences – from his days at the University of Texas to a successful tenure in the United States Air Force as a KC-135 navigator. His achievements include being named Navigator of the Year for his squadron in 2008 and receiving an Air Force Achievement Medal for his planning efforts during the Summer Surge in Afghanistan in 2009.
Post-military life saw Michael’s pivot to the vibrant city of Las Vegas, where he transitioned into hosting events, becoming a milionaire, and eventually became a self-help coach. You probably know him more from this era since his social media content has a lot of preselection with women. The culmination of his life lessons led to the creation of the “Men of Action” program in 2019.
“Men of Action” is more than a dating program; it’s a comprehensive guide to building an abundant lifestyle by becoming a better man and leader while teaching you how to network with high-quality women and high-status men. Michael’s expertise extends beyond dating, incorporating elements of social networking, leadership, entrepreneurship, mindset, and finance. This episode takes a closer look at the program “Men of Action” and his coaching from the inside and compares it to another awesome program called Personal Brand Creator Pro by Corey Chaloff. Spoiler alert: Both programs are amazing. You should get both. They’re different programs although they have some things in common.
Corey is a professional videographer who used to work for the world’s largest dating and pick up artist organization Real Social Dynamics. He has transitioned to working as professional videographer and social media director. He has traveled to over 15+ countries and crafted content for prominent figures such as Vegas Dave, Michael Sartain, Bravo, Black Tape Project, Tao Group, Playboy Maxim, Connected Cannabis, Alien Labs, Real Social Dynamics, leading self-development companies, Steve Aoki, 2 Chainz, G Eazy, Tory Lanez, stock trading experts, and numerous others. He has a lot of experience in dating advice, social media strategy, videography, photography, and personal branding, that all combine in a unique way to be one of the only ones who know how to take the type of photos that will improve your dating life and status.
Contents
What Is Men of Action?
Michael Sartain has described MOA the most comprehensive personal development program and community for men in the modern world. It’s a very comprehensive set of video courses. When I include the bonus recorded group call videos associated with each module topic, it took me eight months to complete the course, working on it several hours per week.
The course has a large dating advice section, a large social circle networking section, a leadership advice section, a finance and stock trading section, a communications skills section, an event hosting and inviting section, and a lot more. There’s probably over 300 hours of videos, and I had to listen to a lot of it at 1.5 and 2x speeds.
Depending on the package you purchase, you get access to a Skool forum with other members and an active community and network of members living in almost every major city in the English-speaking world, several group coaching calls per week, (if you choose the higher tier) 1 on 1 calls with Michael, and if you want all the bells and whistles, access to other programs they offer such as the Social Media Bootcamp which gives you photoshoots that uplevel your dating apps and social media quickly and Immersion which teaches you how to behave normally around very attractive women by immersing you in the Vegas nightlife scene. There’s even a live-in program with Michael offered.
The program and coaches teach a range of topics depending on the students interest, from how to take and edit high-status photos for Instagram, how to build a podcast or personal brand online, how to build a social circle from scratch in a new city where it’s filled with tons of attractive women, and how to build high-status to succeed in business and career.
The course also has laws and tenets that you learn and follow, such as “I will not tolerate anyone who lies, cheats, or steals” and “Look at someone’s actions, not their words.”
The program focuses on certain areas that other dating advice programs and PUA programs lack, such as how to build your status and prestige locally to get access to higher quality women, men, and events, how to network with such people so they like you, and how to be a great leader (and thus attract people).
The community is a huge but overlooked benefit to the program. You get access to a whole network of members living in every major city and some minor cities across the world who you can reach out to and chat with any time within the forum or on your own. You can help each other out, organize events together, meet up together, and so on. It’s unlike any other dating advice program I’ve experienced because rather than the cohort of 2 to 6 classmates you typically encounter, it’s a network of ~2,000 men you can stay in touch with.
Plus, if you’re in a major city in the USA that holds big events, like NYC, Miami, LA, or Vegas, Michael and his team will often share events they’re apart of for you to attend and network.
MOA is also unique in that he’s one of the few to truly believe and teach in the value of having a lot of female friends. Most men and other dating coaches will say in their content that they don’t think you can be friends with a single woman. Because of this brutish type of thinking it really stifles the potential of all the benefits of having female friends (social proof, preselection, a bunch of advice from women, getting introduced to her friends, finding out about exclusive events, getting into them easier, getting access to things from high-status men when they see you with them, women giving you feedback on things you’re doing wrong you’re unaware of that only women can spot, and a lot more).
Frankly, a lot of the excuses and objections I’ll point out in this article are things I partially want people to keep bringing up because they’re going to shoot themselves in the foot and reduce my competition lol. Why convince someone something is gold when I can keep that gold to myself and they’re already telling themselves it’s not gold? Female friends is one of those unique ideas.
Why Do Men Join Men of Action?
Some members join because they want higher quality women and their past background with how they were taught to attract women, such as through pick up artist tips, only got them so far. This makes sense since no matter how charismatic your game is, the quality of people you meet are going to be capped when you’re only taught to cold approach strangers at shopping malls, on the street, or general admission at nightclubs and bars in your local town. Dating is a huge motivator for most members.
Some join because they just got out of a breakup or divorce and they’re older, but not used to the modern dating world. They’re not familiar with how the game has changed, and how things like Instagram change the playing field with how women find men or how men signal and attract women.
Some men join for business, networking, career, and wealth. This is one of the most refreshing groups to me. Any other dating program I’ve been in, everyone is almost a similar archetype looking for a dating goal. But this program has students with more variety. Some of them have already figured out dating, but they’ve joined because they’ve noticed how Michael has successfully built a lifestyle and personal brand that has helped him succeed financially and connect him with a lot of high-status, famous men and women.
And finally, some join because they’ve invested a lot of money in a previous pick up artist program, only to have it not work. They’ve been burnt, but they haven’t given up. They wanted to try something that’s not PUA.
There are other reasons, but those are the big ones. Some come in because they’re more interested in personal development topics, like being less nervous, speaking with more confidence, improving their communication skills, making money online, and so forth.
What is Men of Action Not?
It is not just an online course. They invest a lot of time into virtual coaching, which makes it much more custom-tailored and feedback-centric to the person, which makes it much more valuable than a self-guided course. Plus, there’s a thriving community and network. I’ve met many of the members over time as I have traveled and gone to events.
It is not a course that tells you or teaches you to rely on money. In fact, some members have a good amount of money already, which makes sense since it’s not cheap, and join because they still can’t get girls. The program teaches you why leading with money is never a good idea because you’re only seen as the money guy and it becomes your crutch.
It is not a one-dimensional program or set of simple steps that you can easily steal or replicate. It’s not just a scheme to throw photoshoots with girls and try to date girls at the photoshoot, which is an impression from some people who have never taken the program. There’s many avenues taught for how to throw amazing events. For example, Men of Action has a free Skool community and course that’s several hours long. That’s a drop in the bucket of what the real course is, with 300+ hours of content. I remember taking the free course and not seeing much progress for months. And no wonder. There’s a lot more nuance, details, and work needed. It’s not super complicated; it’s not neuroscience, but it’s not easy.
It’s not something where you can be lazy, not take action, swipe a credit card, and expect results (the exception being the done for you social media bootcamp). Michael has said what’s even worse than not joining is joining and taking 10% of the course, throwing your first event, screwing it up or not understanding the principles, and then not get anyone wanting to return to a second event or not knowing why no one you met during the event has developed anything more than a loose acquaintanceship with you. And then, giving up and going on and complaining about the program and giving it a bad review. If you’re not committed to actually doing the program to the fullest, then you’re going to be in the portion of members who just join and don’t even finish the course or do much.
It’s not a pick up artist program. It’s one of the few dating advice programs for men that are big right now that is against the PUA school of thought and will not teach it. Michael recommends against getting involved with that teaching. Now, there are some coaches and members who have a strong background with PUA, so if you want to talk shop with them, you can. But Michael himself is not going to recommend it when asked.
Join Men of Action program (affiliate link)
What Makes Men of Action Different?
Michael has been asked to summarize what it teaches you concisely, and one thing he says is it teaches you how to build and leverage your status and social circle. A lot of the men’s dating advice in the market right now is dominated by pick-up artist philosophies. One area they neglect is understanding and being able to build local recognition, trust, a bit of fame, and prestige within your local community. Instead, the other coaches focus predominantly on your social skills and game in the moment. Everything hinges on how verbally skilled you are and your gift of gab to create the right energy, emotions, and charisma for someone you just met.
While this is an important skill, it completely neglects other impactful attraction triggers and long-term strategies. Rather than planting seeds from the best fruit branches, the PUAs are eating or burning any fruit they encounter. Therefore, they have no real idea or system for how to build friendships and connections with women and men they met effectively. Instead, all they know is to burn it down with the women they just approached and expressed intent to either get rejected or somewhere romantically with a stranger they just met. It’s a useful skill, but it’s a narrow-minded view on how you can succeed.
MOA isn’t trying to turn you into an A-list celebrity, which is difficult. It’s helping you become higher status with a local area, which is more attainable. And this is an area where most people think they understand how, but they don’t and screw it up. In fact, many PUA coaches flounder in this department and obtain the opposite effect get canceled by the public for doing something shady like filming infield content without consent. Similarly, many of these coaches have no Instagram or a minimal Instagram focused purely on generating leads and clients for their business. They’re not fully knowledgeable on how to build a social attractive IG for dating and status, even though they claim to because they’ve never done it for themselves. If they do teach about Instagram or status-building, they’re going to be mixing in some ineffective tactics and opinions with the good stuff because they don’t know any better.
If you’re tired of the PUA stuff and want to try something new, join the Men of Action program (affiliate link)
Also, it’s a community, hopefully for your life or however long you decide to pay and stay a member. Other dating programs are usually structured in a way to maximize the expert’s money and minimize their time, which means it’s usually weekly zoom calls for a month and you’re done or it’s a one week or weekend bootcamp. But how much can you expect to change in such a small period of time? With MOA, the first package when you join lasts six months. Then, you can purchase a one-year alumni package to stay on board and renew that as long as you want. The friendships you make you can keep. Any former MOA members you are free to talk to or reach out to.
There’s a lot of public MOA members who have Instagrams that you can reach out to directly and ask if the program is a fit. Just look at their long testimonials page. I reached out to a few and asked them if the program was worth it before joining and they responded and said positive things. Many other programs will keep all students anonymous and only highlight the good reviews. If someone doesn’t like it, they won’t say anything and stay anonymous because they’re embarrassed to admit they took a class or bootcamp. MOA members almost all have an Instagram because it’s part of the process.
The founder Michael Sartain actually has a long background for ten years in PUA and many more years with social circle skills, so he can speak to the effectiveness of both and why social circle yields much better fruit more efficiently in the long run. A lot of his competitors have only done PUA. Therefore, they’re only speculating and guessing about social circle game effectiveness. They think they’ve done social circle, but they’ve only dabbled in or guessed at it. Many were previously bad at making friends and getting girls, which is what set them on this journey to become a coach to begin with, so they never developed those social circle skills to a high level. They claim it’s bad or ineffective only because they suck at it when they think they’re decent. They don’t understand the levels to it because they’ve never got close to bringing 50 women to an event before or networked with high status people like Dan Bilzerian.
Also, there’s been a lot of foreshadowing about this already, but it’s one of the very few programs that actually understands and can teach you how to build a successful Instagram profile that shows off your attractive traits to women without bragging. The only others who have this idea down are Personal Brand Creator Pro by Corey Chaloff and Sigma Society.
The sad reality of the current era is that many dating coaches don’t teach you how to use an Instagram at all. Trust me, I’m very familiar with this market. Many of the students and classmates in these programs don’t have an Instagram. If these other coaches talk about Instagram, it’s a very quick part of their program, and they don’t fully understand it or can explain it. Yet Instagram is an incredible tool for connecting, staying in touch with, mass messaging girls to invite them out, bringing more girls into your network, and more. I don’t want to give away all Michael’s secrets, but he does things I’ve never seen anywhere else. As a little teaser, he has over a thousand open threads with girls on IG, which lets him message them and show up in their Primary inbox. He tells us in the program how to build these open threads quickly even if you barely have any followers.
Additionally, MOA teaches a few areas that other dating programs neglect but are effective in the dating world, such as leadership and building a high status. Various other experts and teachers don’t understand or value status or prestige much, so instead, they teach their students to run around in public venues, like in a grocery store, Target, or in the streets of a city approaching strangers, which they call “day game.” It doesn’t take much time to realize that their entire world of thinking revolves around low-status, every day lifestyles. This is a way of meeting average people in publically accessible places, which means the level of women they have access to is, on average, going to be average looking and not high quality. Plus, this methodology focuses on just your looks, style, game, charisma, and body language while playing at a disadvantage because you’re approaching women who are going to be on guard already as they get approached a lot by salespeople and other men.
For some people, this works enough for them, and they’re happy or claim it’s the best way or gospel truth. We cling onto one method that works, which sometimes blocks other methods that could work better. But for those who are still dissatisfied and want to reach for a higher quality of lifestyle and people with a different method, you can try MOA, which emphasizes other neglected attraction triggers, including becoming a strong leader in life and building some local status. Put another way, one MOA member I met told me he had the charisma and outgoing social skills already, but he just wasn’t meeting the people he wanted until MOA unlocked the set up and events to meet those people. He was doing all the cold approach stuff like approaching girls at Whole Foods, but he wasn’t satisfied with the level he was at before joining MOA.
Join Men of Action program (affiliate link)
Misconceptions About Social Circle & MOA
Some detractors say it’s impossible or too hard because you have to become a celebrity. They say it won’t work because you can’t be a celebrity like Michael Sartain. In fact, the program aims to teach you how to achieve oa much lower level of local celebrity recognition and status, let’s say a 2 out of 10. Someone who gets recognized a bit more than the girl you want to date in your local community. That level is easier to get to than you think, and he shows you how.
Some have no real substantial idea what it’s like from the outside, which is fair because it’s like guessing at what a fire is just from a fire’s shadow without ever having seen a fire. So, they’ll infer from what they’ve seen and heard that it’s about throwing a photoshoot or charity gala, but usually, it doesn’t lead anywhere but being seen as an acquaintance or low-status photographer or glorified event host since you have to remain professional with everyone you meet. Michael will mention in calls that if this is happening to you, it’s because you didn’t fully follow or understand the whole program and you’re too focused on one event type. He only focused on photoshoots during the pandemic when everything was closed and there was nothing else you could do. Since then, he’s not emphasized photoshoots at all, and there’s a variety of other events he encourages doing. He discourages and recommends against getting hung up on one event type. He also has a lot more to say in the program about how to develop real friendships with people.
Another common belief is “oh, it just teaches you how to throw a photoshoot and then try to date women from a photoshoot.” Once again, this is usually coming from people guessing about what the program is from the outside. But obviously, when there’s hundreds of hours of video content, it’s not true. There’s a variety of event types you can throw. There’s various steps to making something go well. It’s not that easy. There’s also a lot of steps and principles that go into this. Making female friends. Staying in contact with them via instagram. Opening a thread with someone on Instagram so you don’t go to the Requests folder. Building a list. Learning how to have good game since many people throw photoshoots and can’t get it done.
But the most important issue with this is it fails to account for all the other valuable modules in the program about leadership, networking with high-status men, standing out from others when talking to people, personal development principles and mindsets, the finance and stock trading module, and learning how to make a lot of female friends. A lot of men have a hard time believing or understanding you can be platatonic friends with women. It’s also not giving credit for the principles it teaches about how building a social circle and making friends can build a system where it’s much more efficient to meet attractive women and have these women treat you a lot better versus cold approaching strangers on the street, which means you’re just resetting and starting over every night. Labeling it as just photoshoots is disrespectful because it completely underemphasizes the power of having a social circle that builds your value over time.
Another belief is “oh, it’s just telling or teaching you how to pay women and use your money to succeed with women.” If that were true, there wouldn’t be members joining every week who have money, but still suck with women. These men usually have led with money their whole lives, and it’s not working as well as you expect. In fact, MOA, once you’re actually in the program, teaches you never to lead with money because then, you get labeled as the money guy. Instead, the program teaches you how to use value arbitrage and network your way to high-status situations without the use of money. Sure, money helps a bit, but the program emphasizes networking and social circle a lot more, which is much more about stuff you can do without being rich. It’s more about learning how to find, access, and befriend these hard-to-access people you can’t easily meet and then building that into a social circle or network that gets you into more hard to access places that build your social media until it becomes a fly wheel.
Anthony DiRico is a star student of MOA and a testimonial. He’s a prime example of someone who has leveraged MOA to success, despite not having much money. He often talks in the group coaching calls about how he has been able to get into very exclusive parties and events in Los Angeles despite being the poorest person at the party. He often hosts or contributes to parties in LA where he got in for free because he brought a lot of women while every other attendee had to pay $1,000 or a high-ticket price. Unlike other programs, you can reach out to many MOA members directly via Instagram DM and ask them if they think the program is worth it, and they will say yes. Anthony often talks about how he’s often at these parties, and everyone else around him is a multi-millionaire/billionaire or director/producer for a big movie but him; he’s often in shock that he’s there. He’s someone who has leveraged networking and other non-monetary value to raise himself out of a small town to become a highly connected individual in LA.
A small misconception is that “oh, this other program teaches leadership. Leading is all about just leading a girl to another location or leading her to another activity during a date, right?” Well, anyone who has spent time around a real leader knows being a true leader is more than just what you do on a date. It’s about being a leader with a team, with a business, and with women. Therefore, these other programs usually only very briefly touch on leadership within the lines of leading when interacting with a woman rather than fully embodying a leader.
Join Men of Action program (affiliate link)
Why Can’t I Just Get The Content For Free With Michael Sartain’s Social Media Content?
Good luck! You won’t even come close. I tried for months since the program isn’t cheap. Primarily, through Michael’s free MOA Skool community course that’s a few hours long. But that’s really just a drop in a bucket of the actual course. And it was only after joining that I realized there’s no way to even come close to understanding the systems because you don’t have access to all the structure, steps, details, systems, real world examples, and men coming on sharing their stories and successes and struggles behind the program. There is a clear structure and steps to the program. There are steps you follow, rules for the tribe, and 300+ hours of content if you included the recorded group calls associated with the program, not even the archive of recordings. So without that structure and steps, you’re getting a chaotic mess of random thoughts and ideas that Michael has on random interviews and shows.
Plus, social skills and social circle requires some nuanced understanding and details. It’s hard to really understand stuff unless you hop on the recurring coaching calls offered in the program. There’s individual coaches you can talk to and various group calls per week, including with Michael. Subtle things like the poses you make on your social media, whether or not to touch girls in preselection photos, whether or not to pour girls drinks, the tone of your voice, and how you invite girls out are things clarified and detailed in the program.
If you try to torrent the program or something, you’re also missing out. The community and group calls are a huge part to it. There’s 3 to 5 group coaching calls weekly by the coaches, a weekly call with Michael for the group, a weekly alumni call with Michael, and depending on your package, unlimited 1 on 1 calls with Michael. Then, you have a thriving forum, something I post in and get feedback from others every other day. And you have a network of members in every major city and some minor cities all across the world. There’s people in NYC, LA, Miami, Nashville, Vegas, London, Australia, Dubai, you name it… There’s an entire community of people, man of which I’ve met in person to collaborate together or because they’re in town or because we go to an exclusive event hosted by or shared with Michael that’s shared with the community.
Join Men of Action program (affiliate link)
Conclusion
If you don’t have time to listen to the whole podcast episode about the two programs, here’s the bottom line. PBCP and MOA are different schools of thoughts and different price points. PBCP, the core program, not the accelerator group coaching call, is three figures and a much lower-priced offer than MOA. MOA is four- to five-figures in price.
There’s some overlap, but there’s differences in philosophy. They both believe in the power of using Instagram to level up your status and perceived attractive value. Both programs understand that there’s more attraction triggers than just good looks, muscles, and style – unfortunately, a lot of other coaches only focus on “looks maxing” as a value trait. These programs focus more on local celebrity status, preselection, and other triggers you can show on social media.
PBCP doesn’t believe in preselection photos (photos showing other women like you) and is more focused on high-status photos and photos that show your value while exploring or visiting some place alone, and then heavily editing the photo via Photoshop and Lightroom. There is a light discussion on throwing photoshoots to meet women as well.
With MOA, it’s much more of a community with 2,000 members across the world. You have access a whole network to meet you and support you, which I’ve found to be a larger network than PBCP. There’s also a lot more recurring group coaching calls, including one with Michael every week. There’s going to be less focus on editing content with Photoshop and more focus and videos on learning leadership, social skills, networking, throwing events to meet women, and making female friends. MOA believes that showing other women like you on social media helps. There’s a lot of nuances to these things that will get missed from people who guess and don’t take the course. Small body language cues like how a women looks at you or how their arms are in a preselection photo can ruin the photo or make you look worse – these are things people don’t understand unless you learn from the program.
The long story short is I’d recommend buying both if you can afford it to flesh out all your skill sets. PBCP is more affordable and will help you level up your Instagram profile faster. While MOA teaches this, PBCP goes deeper and explains it in more detail. MOA is more holistic, comes with a lot more virtual coaching, and covers a lot more personal development topics to help you network for business or for dating. MOA is lightyears ahead of any other social circle or networking program out there. The dating advice coaching market is dominated by pick up artists that still have no substantial idea of how to build a social network filled with abundant women – any semblance of idea they have is usually stolen off hearsay from MOA and usually missing various parts to the program. So, if you’re sick of relying on cold approach where you have to reset and start from scratch every night or trying to get matches on dating apps, MOA is one of your best choices. And ask your female friends or attractive women – you’ll learn that a lot of them actually meet through mutual friends and social circle rather than a cold approach at a shopping mall or app.
Podcast Episode Resources Mentioned:
- Men of Action program (affiliate link)
- Personal Brand Creator Pro program (affiliate link)
- Men of Action website
- Michael Sartain’s Instagram
- Corey Chaloff’s Instagram
- My two previous articles on Personal Brand Creator Pro (I’ve already written a lot about Corey Chaloff’s program, so I won’t write about it here)
- Michael Sartain’s MOA case studies
The following are affiliate links, which mean I get a commission at no extra cost to you if you purchase through my links.
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