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“Good thing I came here for answers. That’s why my husband insisted on me seeing you, isn’t it?”
She appeared confused. “You don’t think you need therapy?”
Her words cut like a razor. Even though they shouldn’t have. “What I think I need is answers from an objective, professional individual,” I replied with a shrug. “Now—how about we just cut to the chase and you give them to me?”
“Ah, now,” she said straight-faced. “Where’s the fun in that?”
I dropped by the office after my appointment. It was a bad idea, precisely the kind you know you have to follow through on anyhow. I had a sinking feeling that despite patient-doctor privilege, my shrink might spill the beans to my husband. I get it. In her eyes, he’s footing the bill, so surely he should get some benefit.
If anyone was surprised to see me, no one showed it. Everything looked the same. Shiny concrete floors, minimalist design, whitewashed walls. It felt good to be there, considering. Almost like stepping back in time. Before sick fathers and strained marriages. Before I began working mostly from home in the pre-dawn hours.
Being there reminded me that nothing is ever as bad as it seems. The glass wall had been replaced, proving all things can be fixed, which I knew. I’d signed off on the invoice.
In the early days, not long after renting the space, James and I painted it ourselves. We worked overnight, cramming it all into one weekend so as not to interrupt things during business hours. We’d ordered takeout and took breaks to make love on the floor, on the desks, on every surface that counted. I can still see the way he looked at me, when he said it would last. I had been nervous about leaving a sure thing for a startup, but James was certain, and he wanted me to be too. It was good luck, he said, what we were doing, christening the place. Marking it as our own. That way, he assured me, nothing could go wrong. Not that we needed luck then. Business had been booming, and even better, we’d finally shed ourselves of our prior entanglements. Things were looking up. It was a sure thing.
Stupidly, I believed him.
James started our business from his home office as a side gig. At the time, he’d been working in pharmaceutical sales. We were employed by the same company, and although we had different territories, our paths crossed often.
It was at a training conference over drinks that James told me of his idea. He explained with great passion how he wanted to leave repping drugs behind and focus solely on his side hustle. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was his charm, maybe I too was looking for a way out and he seemed as good a ticket as any—but I believed him. I believed in him. I’d never believed in anything or anyone more.
That’s how Beacon was born.
Back then, it was different. The idea had been to build a dating site for busy professionals. But like any business, it went through several iterations before we got it just right. It morphed. We morphed with it.
We’d both seen in our line of work how easy it was to find a hook-up. Not so easy to find something—or rather someone—serious.
What we came to find, through lots of trial and error, through excessive field-testing, was that busy professionals didn’t exactly want anything serious, nor the complications that came with it. It was evident, as with the two of us, that seriousness only led to trouble, to broken hearts, to relationships that needed to be dissolved. People got hurt. It was costly. In all ways.
So, over time, the site morphed until it eventually, and not exactly intentionally, became a site and later an app where professionals could find lovers, serious or otherwise. We broke it down to a granular level, giving members specific criteria they could select from. There are those that are DTF (down to fuck), those that are into FWB (friends with benefits), those that are looking for open relationships, and of course, for the perpetually optimistic, an option for those that are looking for love.
Surprisingly, or not so surprisingly to my husband, the app took off. Beacon went from being a dream to a wildly successful business.
I thought the evolution would stop there. But, of course, it didn’t.
One of my roles at our company is to write for the site. I write articles and handle communication in the forum, essentially coaching members on how to achieve what they’re looking for. Basic psychology. Common sense stuff. Although what’s common sense is not always common practice. That’s why it’s so successful.
I’m working on a piece right now about how to land the lover of your dreams using the psychology of favors.
Benjamin Franklin once famously stated, “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.” This so-called Franklin Effect, put to the test in several recent studies, flies in the face of what most people assume about favors.
It’s logical to assume that if someone else carries out a favor for us we feel gratitude toward them and like them better. If someone brings you coffee, or offers to watch your dog, you feel more positive feelings about him or her. But the findings of these studies showed that the opposite was true. When a person carries out a favor for you, it actually makes that person like you more. In other words, the person doing the favor for another feels more positive toward them because, in letting them go out of their way for your benefit, you’ve given them the opportunity to feel better about themselves. Who doesn’t want to feel good about themselves? Who doesn’t want to believe they look better in the eyes of the person they’re attracted to?
Of course, the Franklin Effect works as long as the favor you ask isn’t too out there, or demanding, and you display genuine appreciation. Favors work best if ramped up over time.
The moral of the story is this: people enjoy the validation they receive from being able to please someone else. When this effect occurs between two people with a mutual attraction, the result is intensified, because in asking someone to help you, you’ve helped to make them feel more bonded to you. It makes the person performing the favor feel chosen—selected—and who doesn’t want that?
Even if a full-on romantic relationship isn’t what members are looking for, the result is the same. Ultimately, they get more of what they’re seeking: pleasure.
That’s what keeps them coming back.
Finding a lover makes for a profitable business for the simple fact that most people live far below their potential. Not bec
ause they don’t have the capacity to achieve more, and not because they have not been given authority over their life. Most people are living like they’re living because they don’t believe they can have anymore than they have right now. They want to believe; they just can’t see past reality. It doesn’t help that history is a strong indicator. That’s where Beacon comes in.
There’s an old saying: If you can determine what a man will think, you never have to concern yourself with what he will do. If you can make a man feel inferior, you never have to compel him to seek an inferior status; he will seek it himself.
Jobs. Relationships. Finances. Take any area of a person’s life, look at their beliefs about those things, and it will show you the quality of that area.
