Imagine standing outside the Board of Trade at lunch. A limo pulls up and 10 women wearing little black dresses and pearls get out of the car and beg you to join their party. All right, you’ve had that fantasy before, but this time it could really happen.
The Social Network (thesocialnetwork.com) is looking for a few good men–make that a few attractive, happy, financially stable men–to meet their guy/girl quota. The Network is made up of 30- to 60-year-old singles who are on an upwardly mobile track and eager to meet more of the same. It’s not a dating service, but everyone who belongs is in the market.
The rub is that there are far more women than men willing to pony up the $1,099 fee for the first six months–not good for an organization committed to a 60/40 ratio of women to men. So the network is reaching out to Chicago guys. That’s why it’s been advertising on the Golf Channel and ESPN football games. And that’s why, in September, a limo full of attractive women has been pulling up to downtown plazas and handing out recruiting cards to good-looking men.
If a guy joins, he get a hundred bucks off the initiation fee. After the first six months, the fees for everyone drop to about $500 a year.
The reason women are more likely to join has nothing to do with the biological clock or the hefty opening fee, according to network president Eileen Messier. It’s because women take the initiative about their relationships while men tend to procrastinate, she said.
“Our guys are used to paying for services,” she said. “They pay their financial guy, they pay their personal trainer, they pay us to take care of their love life.”
Of course, maybe some guys are slow to join because paying others to take care of their love life has gotten them into trouble before.
