[This article originally appeared on AOL Personals in June 2009.]

Guys, if you’re going out to bars after work with your male buddy (read: wingman) and aren’t having much success meeting women, it might not be your shirt, haircut, or body spray that’s the problem. You may, in fact, need to trade in your trusty wingman for a wing girl.

While it can be comforting to go out to an intimidating nightspot with the presence of your trusted guy friend, you may find yourself content to hang out and drink with your buddy all night, instead of approaching and meeting women (assuming that’s what you want). In that case, your support may be more of a hindrance than a help.

Instead, ditch your wingman for a few nights and invite one of your trustworthy, platonic girlfriends to go out with you – specifically to help you meet women. If you open up to your gal pal and sincerely ask her for her help, chances are she’ll jump at the opportunity to help you out. Women love to play matchmaker and are quite generous with their love advice. Provided you pay for their drinks, most of your girl friends will gladly wing for you.

And if you can’t find a friend to do this, you can always hire a pro.

Marni is a professional wing girl. Her company, The Wing Girl Method, gives advice to guys over the phone, online, and in person through individualized training to help them become more comfortable with themselves and with approaching women. Marni and her girls – of which she employs 23 – will even wing for guys at bars and clubs, when the time comes.

“The only guys who approach me and my friends are cocky jerks,” explains Marni, “Which is why my friend and I started the company. It’s hard to find good men, because most of them don’t know how to meet women.” And that’s why Marni trains men on how to improve themselves and improve their game.

Through phone coaching, immediate feedback online, and practiced mock pickups, Marni and her girls analyze how their client is presenting himself and provide him with immediate feedback – from a girl’s perspective – on what he’s doing wrong.

“We help them with their body language and train him on how to decipher our body language.” During a typical outing, the wing girls will approach sets of girls and bring the client into the conversation, or simply encourage him to open his own sets. After each interaction, the client receives immediate feedback. “We’ll tell him if he wasn’t listening to what the girl was saying, or if he wasn’t keeping eye-contact with her,” Marni explains, “We’ll open sets for him, but that’s not a good long-term strategy. They need to learn how to do it themselves.”

The major issues Marni sees time and again in men is their penchant for setting themselves up. “When I ask them what they were thinking during a failed approach, they say ‘Oh, she probably has a boyfriend.’ Why in the world are you psyching yourself out?! Men tell themselves these things to justify not trying. Instead, you should be thinking, ‘Okay, I just want to approach this woman and see what her story is. If she’s got a boyfriend, that’s cool. We’ll just chat.'”

Another self-sabotaging thing men do is put women on pedestals. “Just because she’s attractive doesn’t mean her life is perfect. Everyone is going through the same stuff. We’re all in the same boat.”

Marni concludes, “Men don’t need to be afraid of women anymore. They just need to respect themselves and believe they have worth. Only then will others value them.”

So, whether you hire a wing girl, or have a rad friend who’ll act as one, you’ll find her advice on all aspects of your game (appearance, attitude, communication, and approach aptitude) to be an invaluable resource for improving your game.

For more information on Marni’s wing girl services, please visit www.winggirlmethod.com and tell her Michael sent you!