Some loved ones need more than a pamphlet. We collect them quietly, settle them somewhere comfortable, and stay as long as it takes — an afternoon, a month, a season — until they see the light. Nobody goes home early.
We begin with exposure. The subject is seated at a comfortable distance from a lectern and asked to say nothing about it. Most cannot manage the full hour. This is expected, and it is data.
Week two introduces attendance. The subject sits in the back row while somebody speaks about a topic of no interest to them, and is asked afterward what they heard. Almost everyone discovers they heard more than they expected. That discovery is most of the work.
By the closing phase the subject is invited to stand behind the lectern themselves. We do not require this. We have never once had to.
Comfortable. Genuinely — this is not a euphemism and we are tired of the assumption. Private room, good mattress, three meals, and a window that opens. The door is not locked. It has never been locked. People ask about the door constantly and nobody has ever tried it.
An afternoon for the merely skeptical. A month for the entrenched. A season for the ones who have been saying "not this again" for eleven years, at which point we are no longer working on the podium question at all and both parties know it.
Involuntary, in the sense that the subject does not enroll. You do. We ask for a name, a photograph, a schedule, and one sentence about what they said the last time the subject came up. That sentence tells us more than the rest of the file combined.
Everyone we have ever collected has been free to leave at any moment, and we tell them so on arrival, out loud, twice. That we have to keep explaining this is the least flattering thing about our reputation and the most flattering thing about our results.
They do not have to agree with you. They have to stop rolling their eyes when you stand up.
A name, a schedule, and one sentence about what they said last time. We will take it from there.