Social Fluency co-founders (from left): Zach Browman, Nadeem Kassam, and Devon Ash.

Credit: supplied

SINGLE IN VANCOUVER: Do you speak social?

Vancouver’s ‘No-Fun City’ reputation goes hand in hand with what many locals and newcomers have been whining about for years: that it’s nearly impossible to meet people in this town. Indeed, the ice queens and kings of the Pacific Northwest are a mystifying force to be reckoned with, what with their tightly packed groups of friends with not a space to spare, their stoic poker faces, and their homebody habits that only become stronger as they age. But 29-year-old Devon Ash contends that long-held notions of Vancouver as a social dead zone are hardly indigenous to this city. He says people feel that way all over the world.

“I’m not sure if [Vancouver’s] any different than any other city. I think it’s any time you’re in a city for long enough, we have a tendency to put our eyes on the ground... and we just kind of get into our routines in life,” Ash says. “Every city I visit, the guys are saying the same thing, which is it’s so hard to meet women in this city! But I think we’ve started to make it hard to meet women, period.”

In other words, don’t hate the players, hate the game. And turning it around in your favour starts with gradual personal changes — giving yourself more opportunities to meet people, learning to act more assertively, becoming more aware of your needs — that will plant you firmly on the road to mate-dom. So says Ash and his colleagues at Social Fluency, a Vancouver-based social coaching company they founded with the aim of helping hetero men and women improve their social skills, thereby upping their chances of playing their cards right when faced with, say, an astonishingly attractive person with whom you could spend the rest of your life.

Ash and his colleagues, Zach Browman, 34, and Nadeem Kassam, 29, started working on Social Fluency full-time in 2008, after a few years spent working on it as a side project to other jobs. The three handle all business aspects of the company, including leading what they call ‘Social Mastery’ workshops that they advertise on Facebook, Craigslist, and in local singles meet-up circles. Most workshops consist of a $1,500 four-week course that includes working in a classroom environment to learn about social skills and tools, as well as personalized ‘in-field’ training where instructors coach students in real-life situations. The results, they say, are transformative — not just for landing more dates, but for improved social skills in general.

“I think a lot of people feel like their problem is that they’re not meeting the right person,” says Bowman. “Although we need to meet people that we’re compatible with, you really also have to have the skills and abilities to attract them and to communicate well once you’re in the relationship.”

Common mistakes, Bowman says, include acting out pop-culture clichés in an attempt to navigate the more nuanced terrain of real life. (Note: Holding a boombox over your head that plays her favourite song while standing outside her bedroom window is romantic in theory, creepy in practice.) “The concept of how to attract a partner that’s put forth in movies and on TV just leads people in the wrong direction, which is typically equating love with neediness, that convincing them of your need for them will make them attracted to you,” he says. “In the real world, that just doesn’t work.”

What works, Bowman says, has far less to do with physical attraction than one might think. “The attraction part is actually about 10 per cent of what we’re teaching,” he says. “Really, we are teaching social skills, because if you want to be attracting a partner, it’s not one isolated part of your life that you need to work on. You need to work on your whole self, in a sense.”

And as meeting people gets easier, so too will be finding a mate. “Our mandate is not necessarily to get you more dates,” says Ash of his company. “It’s to open your social life up, and, through doing that, you naturally start bringing good people into your life.”