Hey guys, how's it going? I'm Benji. I'm going to tell you a little bit about why we have Ambassadors, what they're for and what you can do if you want to get involved in the same.
So why do we have Ambassadors in the first place? What do ambassadors do? The reason that we have ambassadors from the first place is because.
. . When you have a person running an event, they can look after 10 people, 20 people, no problem, maybe even 30 people.
But by the time you get to 40 people, 50 people, 60 people, 300 people, by that point it becomes not possible. Not possible for you to talk to every single participant, not possible for you to learn everybody's name. Not possible for you to help with every single shy person that turns up.
So we need a team of people who are there who can help to distribute that community feeling around the event and make sure that everyone feels welcome and that everybody gets exactly what they need to have a good time. What's the primary mission of the Ambassador? The primary mission of Ambassadors is to combat shyness.
We do this by connecting people, which is kind of like your second mission anyway. We connect people just by, you run up to one person, then somebody else, you check that they want to meet each other, and then we'll go through that a little bit later. Another way that ambassadors are helping out is by spreading the format.
The format, in case you don't know, is: Strongest language at the top, weakest at the bottom, order of fluency. Stand to mingle or sit to quit. Stand if you want to meet people.
. . sit down if you want to have a more private conversation.
There are three types of Ambassadors. Cupids, Vulture Hunters and Flaggers. Cupids are for connecting people.
Vulture Hunters are looking for vultures. We'll talk about that in a minute. And then we have flaggers.
Flaggers are there to hand out the flags but also to welcome participants making sure that they feel welcome and letting them know about the format of the event So what exactly does it mean to connect people inside the events? Well we could just randomly grab people and try and pull them together but that can have mixed results. We do have a suggested way for how you can do it in a way that's just the best way, the easiest way to make people feel comfortable in that situation.
Number one, you approach, let's say we have two people, you have a loner and you have the potential match. The loner being somebody who's just on their. .
. . .
you've seen them playing with their phone, they or maybe they seem shy or maybe they. . you can see from a country that has a language that's not very common so maybe they're not finding it so easy to connect with people inside the event.
You can go up to that loaner and be like hey you having a good time you okay and the Loner will be like well you know I'm a bit bored or I didn't get to meet anybody yet . . .
okay great so let's begin. I would say to the Loner well I can see other people I know that there are some other people around this around today that speak your language would you mind if I connect you with some of those people. If the Loner says yes I'll say wait here Don't follow me, wait here, I'll be right back And you go off and you go and find a person who we refer to as the "Match".
When you find that Match, you just say, "hey, there's somebody. . .
" . . let's imagine it's somebody that speaks Japanese, right?
A Japanese person in the event, they're the only Japanese person there, and they wanna practice Spanish. So you go and find the Match, The match is a Spanish speaker who just happens to have a Japanese flag down there somewhere. So you kind of go like, "hey.
. " ". .
I know somebody here tonight that speaks Japanese or is Japanese. Can I introduce it to them? " And if they say yes, then that's great.
We have like a way to match these two people. . and you wait.
. . tell them, "just wait here, don't follow me.
. " ". .
I will bring them to you. " And you go back to the Loner and you say, "hey, great, please follow me. " And then you get that, the Loner to follow you and go back to where the Match is and say, "Hey, Match, this is Loner, this is Match.
And here's the really important part: When we introduce the Loner with the Match, we don't hang around like a third wheel. It's actually the best thing you can do is just excuse yourself and get out of there as quickly as possible. you don't even have to excuse yourself actually you can just walk away It's okay it's really the best way to do it You will see that the Loner and the Match they're kind of like a little bit icy or awkward so they're like: "Oh hey.
. nice to meet you. .
" whatever, it doesn't matter, they will figure it out after you've left and it's better that you've gone so that they can figure it out because if they can feel that you're watching it just adds to the weirdness of the situation it's better If you really feel like you have to say something, just say like, "Hey, I'll be right back" or "I just got to go do my rounds" whatever it is. . .
Just get out of there. It's really the best way. It's a tried and tested way to make it work.
Now, this situation with the finding The Loner and the Match, why do we say, don't follow me here, don't follow me there? It's just because if you go and get the loner and then you bring them over, to random people around the event, you get them to follow you around, you know, "Hey, can I introduce this Japanese person? " These people might feel pressured because the Japanese person is watching you and watching them to see their reaction.
They might feel pressured to say, yes, come and join our group, when actually they're having a private conversation and they don't want to be interrupted. So that's why it's better to keep them separated. It's also a really good technique if we see that somebody is sitting down.
This is a great way to get them standing up. You see they're sitting down, you say: "Hey, you having a good time? " They're probably going to be like, "well, I didn't meet many people today".
Go figure. And you can say, "well, can I introduce you to somebody and I can help you get started? " In that moment, you go and find your match who is somebody who is standing or a group of people who are standing.
Bring the sitting down person to the group of standing people and obviously they will feel socially obliged to stand. So, that just about covers the art of introducing people and if you are good at that, if that's like your skill then you can call yourself a Cupid. If you're not so hot at that that's, okay, there's something else you can do as well which is to be a Vulture Hunter.
Now "Vulture Hunters" are people who go and look for those who we refer to as "Vultures" and Vultures are people who are there for the wrong reasons. Usually, not always, but quite often, they tend to be men who are trying to get telephone numbers or these days Instagram handles of women in the events sometimes it's the other way around or whatever combination you like. .
. To be clear, we don't have a problem with people falling in love at Mundo Lingo, that they meet at Mundo Lingo. If sparks start flying, it's fantastic that they get together and we really want that.
That's actually something that we'd be really proud of it happening. We are proud of it happening. It does happen.
We know that many couples have met at Mundo Lingo, got married, have families, and we're all for it. That's fantastic. What we're not.
. . in favor of is people turning up to Mundo Lingo specifically with the game in mind to go person after person after person trying to find .
. using it like a Tinder. .
. trying to find somebody to go home with on the same night. that's not really what the event is for.
When these people come into your events, you're most likely going to be able to recognize them very quickly. You can see from the way that they are acting that they're up to no good. So we have a few strategies to deal with those people.
If you can see somebody's kind of like, usually you can see they get the phone out quite quickly. They're like, hey, like trying to get people's contact. They will generally go to the person who might look like.
. . are popularly considered to be the most attractive in the bar.
So usually they're quite easy to recognize. Once you see it's happening, there are three strategies for dealing with these people. #1 'Atmosphere' Obviously generally comes down to the manager of the event The Event Manager.
However, also you can discuss it together as a team and Atmosphere just generally means like the the lighting and the music, if it is dark with loud music, club-like music, well, we know what clubs, what generally happens in clubs is you get people that are going there for exactly the reason of hooking up. So if you, if we have a hookup environment in our event or a hookup atmosphere, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And those are the kinds of people that are going to feel comfortable and welcome to come into the event.
Um, so. we would suggest to keep the lights not too dark and keep the music not too loud. Now that has its own set of problems.
If it gets the lights too bright and the music is too low, then you get a classroom environment. That's for another video, but yeah, it's about finding that nice balance right in the middle. Also about the marketing, because it's the atmosphere that you have in your event, but it's also the atmosphere that you promote to the world through the photography of your event.
If you promote an image of being a place where people can go to hookup then that is gonna be also self-fulfilling prophecy and people will come to your event for that reason so look at the photographs do the photographs communicate an event where people go to meet new people when they're new in the city or does it communicate a great place to go and find a hookup for the night well that's what you want to ask yourself when you're looking at the photography. . So that was Strategy #1; Atmosphere and Marketing Strategy #2 is: "Vulture Crashing".
Vulture crashing means using the power of Mundo Lingo to go and ruin the vulture's night or just bog him down with mundane stuff. The power of Munda Lingo is that you can just go up to anybody and start a conversation. Nobody can reject you in a sense, starting that conversation so you go up to the vulture and the vultures "prey", let's say, and get into the conversation like: "hey guys how's it going, all good?
" . . .
and ask some really boring lame questions like "so. . .
what's your favorite color? " "what's your favorite fruit? " whatever it is super lame super like just have the vulture just being like "uh.
. ! " like frustrated like made them want to leave.
That's Vulture Crashing. The first time it happens, they'll be like, ". .
what? " And then when it happens, if it happens again, they're just gonna, they're gonna feel that the game is being destroyed. They're trying to hit on some girl and you keep coming along and asking like lame, nerdy questions.
. . Perfect 👍 They'll get sick of it.
They won't come back. And that's fine. They might even be brave enough to tell you "hey man, you're kind of killing my game here.
. I'm trying to, you know, chat with this girl. .
. " So if they tell you that then straight away you can move to Strategy #3 Strategy #3 is what we refer to as a "Nuclear option". That strategy #2 "Vulture Crashing" is, I would say, kind of soft like it's not too bad.
It's like a 'nice' way of doing it actually Strategy #3 is peer pressure, and yeah it's like a nuclear option Peer pressure means talk with the rest of your team and you get everybody making eye contact with the vulture. Get the whole team to be walking past, just make eye contact, don't even have to say anything. You can mix this with the vulture crashing as well just to make the whole of their event just really frustrating if they wanna succeed at taking somebody home that night.
With these strategies mixed together, you can definitely create an ambience that makes the vultures be the ones that feel uncomfortable coming to the event instead of usually women feeling uncomfortable to come to the event and that's the way around that we want to keep it. It's worth pointing out that once you have four, five or six vultures operating in your event It builds a social consensus that starts to make them feel like it's okay to do what they're doing because they can see they recognize each other straight away. They can see that there are other people doing the same thing, so they feel that it's okay.
So you really want to make sure that this never happens in the first place. You really want to make sure that this never, this culture can never appear. So it's even if you don't think there's a problem in your events with this right now, I would say start with that strategy right away.
Just the first time that you see people operating like this, get in there. Talk with your team, communicate with everybody about it, make sure that you know what you're doing. And finally, it's really important not to go down the road of being an authority.
We're not there to do that. Neither is the Event Manager, none of our team are authorized to do anything like kick somebody out or tell somebody that they're not welcome in the bar anymore. We can't do that and we shouldn't do that.
It's also a risk factor if we do that, The security of the venue is up to the venue staff. If we ever have a serious situation then we elevate it through the correct channels. If it ever becomes clear to you that somebody is there for the wrong reasons and they directly tell you like yeah I'm here because I want to pull some hot girls for tonight or something If you want to tell them something, just tell them that it is not well seen in the event.
That people will be looking at you and judging you. Not me, I wouldn't. We're friends.
Like, it's all good. But other people will be looking at you. Other people will be judging you.
It's not really like one of those events where it's considered to be okay. If you let people know that it's like a nice way of letting them know without it being you who's imposing in some form of authority. Like, oh, you can't do that.
Don't put yourself in that position. So if you remember all of this information, then you're about ready to be an Ambassador. Obviously you do need to be accepted by your local team.
If you haven't already done so, do apply for the website, MundoLingo. org and find the 'Join Us' page In the meantime, feel free to join the Collaborators group on Telegram. Give a self-introduction.
Connect with everybody there. and you can find a wealth of materials to learn about other aspects of the organization if you want to deepen your involvement with Mundo Lingo. Thanks for listening and have a great rest of the day.
