Was It Something I Said?
Ward dispenses this kind of straightforward feedback as the host and executive producer of the hit VH1 reality TV show “Tough Love” (now in its fifth season) that features him counseling — or some may say chastising — a group of single women with relationship struggles. And he makes no apologies for it.
“I think that most of the things I say are things that a lot of people realize but don’t want to admit,” Ward says.
The show is a spinoff of Master Matchmakers®, a longtime business venture that his mother JoAnn started, and of which the 31-year-old and “electively single” Ward (for now his business is his love) is CEO. The business is what it sounds like: a real-life “I have someone I want you to meet.” Ward eventually became so successful in the business of love that VH1 thought he should be on TV.
It was never Ward’s intention to follow in his mother’s footsteps. He attended Drexel as an international business major and French minor with his sights on La Bourse (the French stock market). With enviable co-op placements at Amtrak, BlackRock and Susquehanna (as well as an internship at Merrill Lynch), he was well on his way until being in a car accident while in the back of a taxi with his girlfriend.
“I went back to work but couldn’t manage my physical therapy and my job,” Ward remembers. “At that moment, I decided that I never wanted to work for anyone ever again.”
He graduated as a mortgage broker in the midst of the 2003 refinance boom. While he enjoyed the autonomy and financial rewards that came with his commission-based career, he had greater aspirations. He wanted “to build something.” At this same time his mother’s ‘out-of-home’ matchmaking business was being threatened by the Internet. Her expertise was in making love connections, but she didn’t know a thing about technology and her clients’ expectations were changing due to emerging online dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony. The business had to adapt in order to survive.
The first thing Ward did was shorten the company’s name from It’s About Time! Master Matchmaker to Master Matchmakers. He acquired the domain name (mastermatchmakers.com) and built a brochure website. Then he created a database to store his clients’ information, “to free him from the shackles of (their) filing cabinets.” His latest initiative is to make all of their utilities accessible on mobile devices so his staff and clients could conduct their business from anywhere on the go.
“We needed technology to enhance the service we provided,” he says. “For the safety of our clients, we wanted to verify their information, conduct criminal and sex offender background checks, and eventually even make a limited portion of our database accessible to select clients in an area we call our Love Lab. It is a premium service we provide — our fees range anywhere from $2,500 to $5,000, and the service must be commensurate to the price.”
With his new website and the use of search engine marketing, Ward reduced expensive print advertising and direct marketing costs and “moved from a brick and mortar business to a web-based one to be more flexible and reduce overhead. This allowed our staff from all over the Philadelphia area to work from home and travel to clients, and once wireless Internet became available we then expanded our reach throughout the Mid-Atlantic.” More efficiency led to greater productivity and reduced costs that allowed Ward to more than double the gross revenue of this family boutique from $400,000 in 2004 to nearly $1 million in 2008. It is this kind of success that landed Ward the 2012 Philadelphia Business Journal’s 40 under 40 recognition for young professionals.
But it wasn’t technology alone that catapulted Master Matchmakers into the spotlight. In 2007 the Wards received a phone call from High Noon Entertainment, a production company based in Denver that saw one of their ads on Google and navigated to their website. Steve made it a habit to post their occasional local TV news segments on their website to give them greater credibility. A small cable network had asked the producers to find a male talent to provide his point of view in a dating reality TV show that he would eventually star in.
“A producer came and met with my mother and I to see if we were the real McCoy,” Ward says. “We had a great meeting, and after later putting together a short sizzle tape it was decided that we should be packaged with a celebrity. Drew Barrymore [yes, that Drew Barrymore] was interested. Her company, Flower Films, helped craft the concept and after finding a home with VH1, we created a pilot. It took a year and a half to develop the show, but we are now airing our fifth season.” The show’s initial success led to a book deal from Simon & Schuster that he and his mother co-authored called “Crash Course in Love,” and Steve has lectured at several universities including our very own. He has also been a spokesperson for Proctor & Gamble (Pantene), Intercontinental Hotel Group (Crowne Plaza) and more.
The concept of the TV show is fairly simple. Ward travels to a location — this year the show was set in New Orleans — to work with a group of single women in a boot camp situation, offering them straight-from-the-hip dating advice and coaching that can sound condescending at worst, complementary at best. Ward contends that he has only the best of intentions.
“I don’t think that there is a science to matchmaking but there is an art to it. A lot of it is intuition and instinct. I have it. I give advice in a constructive way. I just don’t sugarcoat it,” he says.
“I have the ability to say things to people they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. And I’m very accurate in my assessments. Some people may consider it mean. I consider it honest. There are people who go about their entire lives living in their delusions, and sometimes there is nobody there to smack them in the face and bring them back to reality. That’s my job.”
