Review of Johnny Berba’s 6 week transformation program

If you are seriously considering taking the 6 week coaching program with Johnny Berba, or want to do any day game in general then I strongly recommend you read this first. I give a detailed account of what it is like from someone who has already done it. This blog is NOT intended to undermine or attack anyone, it is a review of my own experience which I would like to pass on to anyone who, like me, have not had much luck in the world of women and relationships and have resorted to gurus and PUAs for help in this aspect of their lives.

I am specifically giving an account of what this program is about, what I was hoping to achieve, the contents of the program and what was actually achieved and learnt. I will also give an account of the events that took place after the 6 week program was over. 

What is the 6 week program?

Johnny Berba advertises this as a transformation program. What is meant by transformation is that 6 private coaching sessions with Johnny spanning across 6 weeks is all that is required to transform from a man who has anxiety approaching and talking to women to someone who is confident with women and is able to attract a large number of women by cold approach in the streets. This is specifically focused on picking up women, getting their numbers, getting dates and, depending on what you are looking for, either sex with as many women as you want or a long term girlfriend. This review is for street/day game and nothing to do with the night scene, i.e nightclubs, bars, parties etc.

Johnny demonstrates how he does this himself and how this is successful with his “in-field” footage mostly on his Youtube channels.

What I was hoping to achieve:

So what led me to cross paths with Johnny Berba and this 6 week program? Well, the causes of this go way back to a few years ago when I had a crush on a particular girl at my place of work, but had no clue on how to approach her, even though I could tell she was flirting with me every time we saw each other. Being inexperienced and shy around women, this situation made me rather anxious but at the same time I had this uncontrollable urge to do something to meet this girl otherwise I could lose her forever. Looking for an answer to this dilemma I ended up resorting to Googling things like “how to get a girlfriend” or “how to approach a woman”, which in turn led to websites and Youtube channels of certain PUAs. I ended up signing up and paying for online courses with PUAs from the USA. The search engine results directed me to PUAs by the name of Carlos Xuma and Christian Anderson (aka “the social man”). They made it out as though they had the miracle solution. I was however not satisfied with the results of these programs as they were impractical and mostly focused on approaching women in bars and pubs, a detail which was overlooked and was not something I was interested in because my objective was to meet that girl at work. With regard to this girl I eventually found out from a friend who knew her that she is already in a relationship with someone. I of course was heartbroken and furious at this news. I got over it eventually and no longer paid any attention to to her again. I also got back to those PUAs in America and told them I did not achieve the results I was hoping for and asked for my money back. To my surprise they actually refunded me the full amount, all the way from America! I was very impressed as that showed true honesty and integrity on their end. However still looking for an answer to the big question of how to get an amazing girlfriend and what the big secret was that other guys knew that I didn’t, I ended up becoming engaged in the PUA community over the years that followed, reading various websites, blogs, watching Youtube videos etc. Still not satisfied, I started searching for PUAs more local to me in the UK, which I didn't know existed until recently, and that’s how I stumbled on Johnny Berba. I was amazed and shocked at his in-field footage and could not believe that it was actually possible to so easily walk up to any “hot” girl in the street and walk away with her number and a potential date with her. Unlike the other PUAs he was demonstrating it work in real life. At first I rejected what he was doing, but at the same time was still intrigued until I got hooked to his Youtube videos.

So one day I was heading back home from work in the underground and there was a pretty girl who could not take her eyes off me and kept on smiling. Now under the influence of Johnny's Youtube videos I pulled up the courage and approached her, something completely unthinkable before in my life. I told her she looks really nice and wanted to meet her. I introduced myself and she did as well.... and then my mind went blank; I could not think of what else to say after that. I suppose I was shocked at myself that I approached a complete stranger, something I would have never dreamed of doing before, that I lost focus and was unable to continue the conversation...

I told this girl to have a nice day and got off at the next stop. I was actually quite excited that I did it, but was oblivious to how my mind went blank and I could have asked for her number. It was at that very point I decided that I'm going to need some help to learn how to escalate and get a girls number and attract women and not go blank again. If I could do it once, I could do it again and with Johnny's help I can be that guy who gets all the women. I picked up my phone gave Johnny a call, we chatted for a bit discussing our backgrounds and then I agreed to do the 6 week transformation program with him.

I explained to Johnny that my objective was to transform into a guy who would be good with women, meaning I can attract almost any woman, seduce her, convince her that she wants to be seduced (if she doesn’t already) and ultimately get an amazing girlfriend just like that girl I failed with at my workplace several years back. More generally speaking to have the power and ability to sleep with any woman, particularly living in a city teeming with arguably the most gorgeous women in the world and I get to choose or reject them.

Contents of the course/what was achieved?

The general structure of the sessions was to have each of the six 2 hour sessions roughly divided in two: A one hour prep talk just with Johnny and the other hour practical walking around and approaching women in the streets.

With regard to the prep talk the general theme of what Johnny was saying was “to have honesty” and “trust in myself” and this carried on for pretty much all 6 sessions. They were more or less counselling sessions about life issues in general but did focus on the women and relationships aspect of life. However, as the course progressed I ended up finding that instead of having the ability to seduce these women and get the girlfriend of my dreams, we spent each session with me being kind of lectured that “I don’t trust myself” and that the reason I am failing with women is because “I blame the world and people for my failures” and how “I don’t trust God”*. Johnny would also tell me how he has made this new groundbreaking discovery since we last spoke, which always turned out to be themed around being "honest" and "congruent", but just worded differently so nothing really groundbreaking.

In between these counselling sessions we would go out in the streets and he would casually instruct me to approach some random girl walking or sitting somewhere, as long as she looked remotely attractive. Sometimes he would tell me to just say “hello” to her and other times to say that she "looks really nice today". There didn't appear to be any further structure, technique or method. As the basic gist of what he was trying to teach was to be myself and be honest and congruent, I at the same time desperately wanted an answer as to why I have no success with women. I wanted to believe that the reasons were indeed because of my “lack of trust in myself and God” and that “I blame the world”. I wanted to identify where the problem was so that I could fix it. However as the sessions carried on one week after the next and I kept being given the same generic psychological therapy lectures to psyche me up. By about the 3^rd session I started to realise that something was wrong. It just wasn’t working, I was not attracting any women with these cold approaches. I used to mistake a girls politeness for success at first and thought I was achieving the power to be good with women. But I noticed that there was no improvement and no change or transformation as the course progressed, I was not getting any telephone numbers with any of my approaches.

Before I proceed I actually tell a lie... Technically I did actually get 1 number from a girl in around week 2 of the course, but that was not in one of the sessions. I approached a Romanian girl sat on a bench in a park, complimented her and she invited me to sit down next to her, we had a nice long chat (maybe about 20 minutes) and towards the end she told me she had to go, at which point I asked for her number so we can stay in touch. She gave it to me but told me she can't promise me anything. When I got home I emailed Johnny to tell him about my first prize and was hoping to get a bit of advice as to what to do next, but he did not reply. I texted this girl the following day, thinking any delay will make her think I am a player or not serious. She replied and made it clear that she did not want to continue. Johnny eventually replied a couple of days later but it was too late, and even then I did not get any useful advice or tips as to what to do once I get this coveted prize called "the number". So this girl was a complete failure.

I tried to tell Johnny that something felt wrong but I wasn’t sure what it was, because at the end of the day I just wanted to succeed. Eventually I started to realise that these poor strangers who I was approaching were not mind readers, they don’t know and most likely don’t care whether “I trust myself” or not or that I blame the world for my so called woes. All these women were seeing was a guy who is approaching her, giving her a compliment by saying “you look nice today” and that’s it; or possibly seeing you as being a creep, which I did get from number of girls I approached.

In fact, the very last session was downgraded to not even attempting to make any flirtatious compliments, but he instructed me to approach women and tell them that “I’m practising being sociable and wanted to say hello”. On a number of occasions he pushed me to approach women in completely inappropriate situations. I don’t think Johnny was aware of who he was telling me to approach and what they were doing, he just told me to approach for the sake of it. Examples include:

• Women who were over aged (much older than me).
• Women in a group with a man with them.
• Women sitting down trying to eat at a cafe or restaurant who did not want to be disturbed.
• Women with their boyfriend walking with them!
• Women who were standing watching a loud music performance in Trafalgar square and we could not hear each other talk and I had to shout to get her to hear me.

I had this belief that it is something that should be working because I saw Johnny prove it can be done on his YouTube videos and it was me with the problem and that there was still much for me to learn. Johnny is the guru after all who is going to teach me the secrets on how to succeed with women. But something was just not adding up.

Now with regard to the actual approaches a good number of the women were actually polite when I approached them and sometimes I would just have a brief chat with them. I would usually attempt to start the conversation by asking them what they were up to this day or where they were from, after the opening compliment of “Excuse me, I just wanted to say you look nice today”. But most of them just looked like they did not want to talk to some random stranger and many would just stop the conversation, go quiet or just tell me they had to go. Each approach was a nerve wracking experience and the fact that Johnny was there made me feel a bit better in case anything went wrong, I felt like at least he was there to back me up as a wingman.

Here is an example approach I did: In Trafalgar Square Johnny told me to approach a woman walking roughly in our direction and tell her she looks nice today, my heart was pounding but I tried to sound as confident as possible. The woman looked distracted and confused and as she mumbled "thank you" I realised a big guy was also walking towards her just behind me, he was her boyfriend. I immediately got the hell out of there feeling extremely embarrassed and headed back to Johnny who was standing there watching the whole ordeal. I was lucky there that thankfully nothing happened with the boyfriend because he was much bigger than me. My heart sank and I felt terrible, whereas Johnny just shrugged it off and said it happens to him all the time.

I will be fair and give a slightly more positive example as well... this was in the very first session also in Trafalgar Square where Johnny spotted a nice looking blonde woman standing around being a tourist and told me to go and say hello to her. She was a cheerful, chatty and quite pretty Scottish girl and was happy to chat with me for a few moments, but when she sensed I was building up to ask her for her number she told me she had to get going and didn't give me a chance to ask to meet her again. She just wasn't interested to progress this further.

*Please note that Johnny was not lecturing about religion or trying to preach his faith. We had a mutual respect in that regard.

What I learned:

After the end of the course it started to hit me that I was in fact never lacking trust in myself and that I blame the world etc. I also started to work out what Johnny’s business model was and how he appeared to have success. Which I will describe as follows:

1.                   Fill up the course sessions with generic therapy discussions by convincing the student that their problem is lack of trust, fear and hatred of the world.

2.                   Get the student to mass spam approach women in the streets.

3.                   If a woman gives a polite response then the student will interpret that as a success (70% of approaches).

4.                   If a woman is rude, wants you to fvck off or gets creeped out with your approach then explain that away by saying “rejection is part of the process” (29% of approaches).

5.                   If a woman has nothing better to do that day and is happy to talk to you then you may have a chance of getting her number (1% of approaches). More on this later.

So you see how every approach is incorrectly interpreted as a success.

To illustrate what I mean, suppose you get one number out of 70 approaches, which means you had to go through 69 rejections to get that one number. Not only does this seem impractical and far-fetched but that many rejections is emotionally and physically exhausting. For someone who struggles in the world of women getting that number may (or may not) seem like a great achievement, but I shit you not this is a very short lived feeling of success and you had to go through loads of rejections just to get there. Once you get the number you will now have to deal with the girl flaking on you of which there is a very high probability that she will. This is understandable because to her you are just a stranger and she will look at this as a high risk to just commit herself to a total stranger from the streets. This may well be an even greater disappointment than taking the 70 rejections just to get that 1 number. This is exactly what happened with me. You might argue that I was just unlucky… but it did reached a point where luck just had nothing to do with it as I was supposed to transform into one of those guys who are good with women due to Johnny’s expertise training. If you are someone who respects himself then receiving this many rejections can really be damaging. I thus learned that day game is something that is not done in society and there’s a very good reason why society has not accepted it as the way to hook up with women or get a girlfriend.

When I told Johnny that I am not achieving the results I was hoping for, his response would be: “it’s because I hate the world” etc. No real and substantial reason or solution was provided.

For Johnny it appears to work well because this is what he does, I cannot stress this point enough. He mass approaches women - records both his rejections and successes and shows it on Youtube, but NOT because he necessarily wants to hook up with the woman he is approaching, this is actually more of an added bonus to him, but rather to video record these approaches and show them to the public in order to draw customers in by making them believe that this is the way it is supposed to be done. Whereas in fact, this is NOT the way it is supposed to be done unless you are a street PUA and that is all you do with your life. In other words, he (and other PUAs) have made this their career and getting rejected is just an aspect of their “job”.

Google it yourselves… the most common way couples meet is by:

• Social circle/friends.
• Parties and events.
• Online dating/social media.
• Bars/clubs.

Nowhere is it listed that people hook up with cold street approach and if so it is very rare. It only works with mass street approach PUAs who are doing this for a living.

It started to become apparent that the big secret of how this cold street approach appears to work is basically to mass approach as many women as possible and over time you will learn to pressurise stranger women in the street to have a conversation with you and give you her number. This is something that you will have to do non-stop all day every day. This is fine if you have no job/career and no real life commitments and basically nothing better to do with your life. If this is you and you don’t mind starting out by receiving 50 to 80 rejections to get 1 number, which theoretically over time may improve to perhaps a 15:1 success ratio once you become a pro, and I stress on the “theoretically” here, then by all means this program might be for you. On paper this may not sound too bad, but when you are out there in the field achieving these results is far from an easy task. Given all the trouble and amount of time it takes to reach the level of being a pro it's just not worth it and there are easier and cheaper options to hookup, get a girlfriend etc. Johnny says so himself, it took him 11 years and counting to reach where he is now.

To illustrate my own experience with street approach: The build up to approach a girl is hell, this is because you just don’t know this person and how they are going to react. You are approaching a girl because you want something from her. You have no reason to talk to her other than the fact that you want her number, you want to date her and eventually sex. This is an awful lot to ask from a stranger, so naturally you are going to be nervous as hell. This is going to be nerve wracking no matter if you are good with women or not. Furthermore, if the girl outright rejects you after you build up the courage to approach her then that hell is doubled. Throughout the 6 week course 20 to 25% of girls I approached got freaked out, looked at me as though I was a creep, a pervert, a womanizer, a crazy man, and some literally ran away from me in disgust. At least one of these things had to happen in every single session. I speak for myself when I say that I am an educated, self-respecting man who respects people and respects women and now I will be remembered by some of these strangers as one of those above horrible things. I put up with these rejections, which really do spoil your day and your mood, all while patiently waiting for Johnny to reveal what this big secret is so that I can transform and be good with women.

You might find that many women are still considered the fairer sex and are more vulnerable and weak. Also, society is generally polite and most of these women are simply being pressurised into having conversations and giving their number just to get rid of this guy who is approaching her and she will most likely just ignore and not respond to his texts and telephone calls later. I could see it in their faces… 99% of these women are just not interested. They don’t know who you are. They have safer and more trustworthy options to get a boyfriend. Cold street approach rarely works. These rare success stories happen because a woman wants you to approach her and couldn’t care less what you say in your approach because she has already taken a liking to you. I could give many real life examples of this but that would take another blog post all together. So when I signed up for Johnny Berba's 6 week program I just assumed I was going to learn some big secret that other successful men knew that I didn’t.

A further thing to point out is that if "honesty" and "congruence" is all that is required to be good with women then there really should be no need to go on a coaching session with any sort of dating guru. If that was really the big secret on how to be good with women then gorgeous women will be falling at my feet non stop on a daily basis. Anyone who has reached a point in their lives where they need a dating "guru" to teach them how to be honest and congruent has an issue going back into their personal life history. Johnny is actually quite good at addressing these issues as he discusses them with you and attempts to help. However, this has no relation with being successful with women. For the insanely high fees he charges you may as well see a professional for much cheaper or for free if you are on the NHS. I am sorry to burst everyone's bubble but women do NOT think "wow this guy is being honest and congruent... he is so sexy now and I am completely seduced and going to sleep with him". This is something that I had to learn the hard way. 

The last session and what happened after the 6 week program?

In the very last session, far from now being an approach master and being a new and transformed man who can get any woman from the street, the contents was downgraded to Johnny telling me to approach women and telling them that “I am practising being sociable and wanted to say hello”. For example, there was one particular French woman who was walking on the other side of the road in the Trafalgar Square area and Johnny told me to go after her and approach her. I literally had to run after her across the street through the crowd of people and shout “excuse me” several times until she heard me and stopped. I then quoted the above sentence… thankfully she wasn’t too defensive but she wanted to know why I was doing this. I had to think quickly and I told her I wanted to see how strangers react to being approached in public. This was on the last session people!!! I should have transformed by now and be able to seduce her! I know you are all thinking that I could have just asked for her number or said this and said that, but believe me it’s different when you are actually doing it, because you can see the reaction and expression on her face that she was just not interested in anything like that. She seemed to be more concerned about why this random stranger is stopping her. She was likely thinking that this guy is just some crazy man who may have just got out of a mental hospital for all I know... and I wouldn't be surprised.

Right after this approach Johnny told me to approach another English woman and that’s where I got my standard issue horrible rejection where she bluntly told me she “doesn’t have time for this” and walked off shaking her head in an annoyed way. This of course spoiled my day and made me feel terrible. This was my very last approach in this 6 week program. I lay no blame on these women, they have every right to want to be left alone. I could not do anymore approaches after this, I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I told Johnny we need to sit down somewhere.

We went and sat in a nearby coffee shop and this is where Johnny started trying to sell another 6 week program to me. Given that there was no success in this 6 week program I was very hesitant and reluctant and I expressed this to him. His response was that the next 6 weeks will be a “more advanced” course and told me how other students of his also did more than one 6 week course. I told him I will need to think about it and let him know. In his usual style he put pressure and said he will need an answer in the next few days and to make sure I transfer the £1250 in advance to guarantee me a slot on his busy schedule.

I started to feel appalled that he not once told me that more than one 6 week program may be required and that he conveniently only mentions this at the end of the last session. I was appalled that no “transformation” happened, as promised, and by the last session the approaches were downgraded and I was still being rejected. The examples I gave above were typical of each session I did. The more friendly women who bothered to stop and respond to me just did so out of politeness and there was no way they wanted to proceed to give me their number or anything further.

I did not reply to Johnny or get back to him at all… about 1 week later he emailed both me and my brother (who by the way also did a 6 week program and had very similar bad experiences) wanting us to continue “working” with him. I replied to him and told him I don’t have the money he is asking for. He then replied to me and said to pay him whatever I can afford. I was not impressed at all with this behaviour and then wrote him a long email complaining to him that this is all out of order, outrageous and how this 6 week program was a complete failure, pointing out that this really just a numbers game. I asked him for my money back, which he declined to do. He replied saying that I paid him for his time and that was not for free. The obvious counter to this was that I paid for him to transform me into a new person who is successful with women, which completely did not happen. He then tried to convince me to meet again, no doubt to attempt to get me to give him more money for more programs… I just did not respond. A few weeks later I had the misfortune of actually running into him in the street where I tried to avoid him, but he stopped me and he continued to try and convince me that “I hated the world” and that I apparently admitted to this myself… we ended up having a debate in the street. I was actually starting to get worried this guy might start getting more aggressive as he kept on persisting that he was right and I was the one to blame no matter what I told him. The argument was getting nowhere but we just parted ways in the end.

A few weeks later I wanted to take another look at what other people were commenting on one of his Youtube videos. Here is the link to this particular video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAiQHkjvHIQ. There was one guy on there making a comment wondering how to overcome approach anxiety. I replied back to him basically saying that the novelty of approach wears off very quickly and that I did the 6 week program and that it did not get me the results I was hoping for. This guy then replied asking what I learned from the program and “what are we supposed to do instead”? I replied back saying that I learned that these stranger women in the street will generally be polite but that’s where it ends and basically to not expect to get a girlfriend this way and advised to lead your own life and a decent woman will come naturally. My comments seemed pretty harmless.

That same evening the entire conversation between me and that guy mysteriously disappeared. Johnny had deleted it. A few days later I made another comment on this same video wondering what happened to that conversation where I was giving my experience and feedback. (This comment is still there and have taken screenshots of it in case it gets deleted as well). Johnny then emails me accusing me of being unprofessional by making these comments and that I am affecting his reputation, also asking me to meet him again. I replied telling him that deleting honest feedback is what is unprofessional. I told him that if he doesn’t want me to give any more feedback then he can give me my money back because I am a very unhappy customer. Unfortunately to my great shock and dismay this email conversation did not end very well as he ended up threatening to press charges on me with the police if I give any more feedback on my experience with the 6 week program. He falsely told the police I was harassing him.

The email conversation is available in my inbox as evidence as to who was harassing who.

It is obviously completely preposterous that I was doing anything to warrant police action and my comments on Youtube were not directed at him but I was merely talking about my experience with the 6 week program to another Youtube commenter who was asking me what I learned from the 6 week program. I never emailed Johnny first nor was it me who stopped him in the street. He emailed and contacted me first and deleted my comments which I have every right to make in a public forum. I went to see a solicitor about this and explained the whole situation just to get some professional legal advice, even though it was obvious already but it confirmed that I have done absolutely nothing wrong.

My comments were in no way offensive nor directed at him. I have seen significantly worse comments made by other people which were offensive (one on that particular Youtube video if you would care to notice) yet strangely he does not delete these? Why is this? I wanted to settle this issue with him in a professional manner and he had to resort to going to the police and giving them false information. That is if he went to the police at all! Regardless it is still dishonest behaviour. This is from someone who preaches honesty and spirituality in his videos and to his students the 6 week program.

Dear readers, I will leave it to you to decide:

Is this the behaviour of someone who is running a professional business claiming to help people?

Does a successful business refund its customers if they are unhappy and did not get the product or service they asked for?

Does a successful business delete honest feedback and threaten their customers with harassment and police just because the feedback is negative?

Can you imagine Tesco or Costa going to the police because a customer left honest feedback about the product or service offered? Both the police and the successful business have better things to do, right? On the contrary professional businesses consistently ask for feedback from their customers to see how they can improve their business. But instead Johnny Berba goes to the police and hides “little” provisos that other 6 week programs will be required without bothering to mention this at the beginning.

It was these very actions of his that prompted me to write this blog, I assumed I was dealing with someone who is running a successful and professional business, but to delete honest feedback and to lie to the police that I have been harassing him, when his constant emailing me and contacting me can easily be classified as harassment on me. These actions have demonstrated a lack of honesty, professionalism and integrity on his part so I have felt it my duty to let his followers and fans know of my experiences with him. It is most unfortunate that I have had to write this damning report. I have tried to be as fair and objective as possible. But there are very few positive things to say about the 6 week program. It was overpriced, lacking in structure and the promised transformation was not delivered. I have nothing personal against the man, I am just an unhappy customer who did not get what I paid for and to add insult to injury to threaten me with the police while he has my hard earned money and did not deliver on what he promised. So I ask where is this honesty that Johnny Berba consistently preaches to his fans and followers?