Right Here, Right Now

by Matt Mattson

I had a fun experience last night teaching Social Excellence that I’m pretty sure teaches a cool lesson about recruitment and college students in general…

As I was preparing to deliver a typical speaking engagement about Social Excellence, I noticed that while we had a nice little crowd, the room was big enough for us to have a crowd twice the size.  It was meant to be a small program anyway, but I got to thinkin’… and that’s dangerous.  So, I made a last second decision.

“Could I have everyone’s attention?” I began. “I’d like to try an experiment.  Tonight, as you know, you’re all here to learn about Social Excellence.  I’m so glad you’re all here, but I notice that we have room for more people.  What if instead of talking about Social Excellence, we just started off by trying it.”

I’m paraphrasing, obviously… I was a lot funnier.  Anyway…  We continued by briefly discussing the definition of Social Excellence and imagining people in our lives that exemplified that definition.  Then, I said, “You have 30 minutes.  Let’s see how Socially Excellent you can be.  Go outside, go to the union, go to your dorms, go wherever you want… just make a friend, and invite them to come back to this room and learn about Social Excellence with you.  Let’s see what happens.  Ready, set, GO!”

30 minutes later we had doubled the crowd with a lot of strangers that eventually became friends.  Fun.

I guess my point is this.  RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW you could go build a new relationship.  RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW you could go out into that big scary world out there and connect with people.  It turns out if you just ask, people are willing to come to an educational program they know nothing about (of all things) and sit there and learn alongside you even though they just met you… Because most people have nothing better to do and are all secretly waiting for something new, exciting, interesting, fun to enter their life.  Be that something.

There is a recruitment opportunity staring you in the face… Right Here, Right Now (Inspired by Jesus Jones).