AI transcript
0:00:07 All right, Sam. I got to tell you about this. There is a guy in Japan who I read about who is making $80,000 a year
0:00:09 for doing
0:00:23 They called him the do nothing man. Have you ever heard of this guy? No, what you read about this?
0:00:31 Well, I originally saw it. I don’t even know where I saw it somewhere and I was fascinated because what happened is this guy was at
0:00:35 Work and his boss called him a do-nothing man
0:00:40 And he like it was insulting him as like dude, you just do nothing
0:00:45 You don’t really add anything you don’t provide any value and he says that he thought to himself and he goes
0:00:52 Hmm. Is there value in society for a man who does nothing and he went online and he posted a tweet
0:00:56 Saying I’m car. I’m starting a new service. It’s called
0:00:58 rental people who do nothing
0:01:01 and it’s basically was like I will be a
0:01:07 Companion a friend who will do nothing. So what this guy does is you rent him out and he’ll go hang out with you
0:01:10 And he says nothing. It’s pretty much a silent companion
0:01:12 completely
0:01:14 non-physical non-sexual
0:01:21 basically an introvert for hire and so what people do is they will either they have a task they need to go do like an
0:01:27 Errand they need to run or they just feel really lonely and they just want somebody to have some tea with them and he’ll come and he’ll sit
0:01:30 He won’t really say anything and if you ask him a question
0:01:31 He’ll give you a simple answer
0:01:35 But it’s really just the presence of another human body and this guy made
0:01:43 $80,000 in a year renting himself out and he then he wrote a book a memoir called rental people who do the man
0:01:45 who didn’t did nothing or the rental people who do nothing and
0:01:48 He’s continued to do this now for years
0:01:53 So he did it before coven the coven hits we couldn’t do it and then he started it back up again
0:01:55 And now he doesn’t even charge for the hangout
0:02:02 He used to charge $68 for a session and now he just says just cover the food and travel and then I’ll hang out with you for free
0:02:09 And so he travels around and he gets paid to go he gets paid for his food in his his event tickets
0:02:11 and all all the things that people want to do with them and
0:02:14 This is what this guy does isn’t this fascinating
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0:02:54 What I’m reading the
0:03:00 Comets on his Goodreads account for his book. Yeah, what were the reasons why people wanted to hang out with him?
0:03:06 Well, so this was pretty fascinating. So I was wondering this too. I was like, why is there a need for this and I guess in Japan?
0:03:12 There’s a loneliness epidemic. It’s kind of crazy. They have words for this that we don’t even have words for so
0:03:14 Have you ever heard this term like Hikikomori?
0:03:18 You know, I haven’t
0:03:23 I have not heard that word before that’s a new word for me
0:03:29 So it’s a word that they have for severe social withdrawal. It’s total withdrawal from society
0:03:35 So typically it’s kind of like in cell in the States. So typically it’ll be it’s mostly men
0:03:41 Who are living at home still in their parents home, but they are completely recluse. They don’t work
0:03:44 They don’t socialize and there are like
0:03:46 Estimated two million men in Japan
0:03:52 That are in this category for six months. They basically have not engaged with anybody in society
0:03:58 So that’s like kind of one problem is this growing trend of Hikikomori and then there’s another word
0:04:03 I think it’s Kotokushi, which is it’s basically death without being cared for
0:04:10 so it’s like older people who are dying and then they find their bodies like five months later because they were so socially isolated that
0:04:12 nobody knew that they passed away and
0:04:20 This is like number that the last ten years has doubled like I think 70,000 people died this way where they’re found weeks or months later and
0:04:24 This trends are all like very concerning. So like in Japan
0:04:31 Single-person household. So, you know, no no wife. No no family members. No friends just living alone by yourself
0:04:34 is now 38% of the population which is
0:04:38 It was that’s like triple where it was like on a five or seven years ago
0:04:44 They appointed a minister of loneliness in Japan because this has become such a big problem
0:04:46 And so this guy
0:04:49 Doing this is almost like a an art statement in a way
0:04:55 About this to bring awareness to this huge problem that people are just really freaking lonely in Japan everywhere
0:04:58 But really in Japan, it’s even more heightened. Dude, let me explain something to you
0:05:03 That’s very similar to this and I’m gonna I want to hear your opinion of this premise that I have and I also
0:05:08 I think it’s a good premise that I think a lot of people can learn from so I don’t live in Austin anymore
0:05:16 I went and visited it again for a wedding and I realized how lucky I was to have a community there of just the best people on earth
0:05:18 I consider them family dude. I saw your
0:05:23 Live laugh love post where you posted a picture with your friends and you said
0:05:27 This is wealth and I saw it. He’s not wrong
0:05:34 He’s not wrong, but he’s also not Sam Park. What is going on? Well, this is wealth. What new era have you entered?
0:05:38 I’ve been I’ve entered a very special era. I love you
0:05:42 Listen, it’s weird ever since having a kid the things that I thought I cared about
0:05:48 I don’t care about as much and so I realized I’m kind of like going all into this like emotional side of like caring about others
0:05:50 Whatever all that stupid shit
0:05:53 But listen
0:06:01 You can’t even say it. It’s like her yeah say the sentence, but we believe it. Yeah, so before
0:06:07 So I basically lived in San Francisco and I moved from San Francisco to Austin my best friend at the time
0:06:11 Novel Madura he lived there and I had this conversation with him before I moved. I go Neville
0:06:15 I’m thinking about moving to Austin. One of the big reasons I’m moving is because of you
0:06:19 I want to be with you. I want to be near you. Would you be willing to be in you?
0:06:21 I want to be in you
0:06:23 You can
0:06:29 It goes a better way than than that one way
0:06:31 and so
0:06:38 If I do this would you like commit to like us like living a life together like with our families and like and that sounds weird
0:06:44 But I did that and it worked wonderfully. So we had there was about four other couples where we had this conversation where we’re like
0:06:48 Let’s live life together. Like you can count on me. I’ll count on you whatever
0:06:50 And when you think about that, that’s strange
0:06:54 But if you really dive deep it’s actually not that weird because that’s what you did with your girlfriend probably
0:06:57 Like you’re like, hey, so uh, should we put a label on this?
0:07:03 You know what I mean? And you do a girlfriend a boyfriend and then you make a huge ordeal until where you uh get engaged
0:07:08 You get down on one knee and there’s like a there’s like a big like epic thing where like you were boyfriend a girlfriend
0:07:12 Now you are officially a fiance and then you get married where you basically
0:07:19 You know talk about how yeah, you take a vow you take a vow in front of people who have flown from around the world
0:07:22 To witness this vow and that’s normal
0:07:24 But we don’t really do that with friends
0:07:27 And so I have recently moved in order to be closer to family
0:07:29 And so now I’m trying to like develop friends in a new town
0:07:34 And I’m starting to go to them and I’m having this formal conversation
0:07:38 And it really weird people out, uh, right away by the way, obviously
0:07:43 But after a few minutes the men in in particular, they’re like, oh, I kind of get this and
0:07:50 Kind of feels nice. It kind of feels nice to like talk about how we’re going to do life together or how we can counter each other or like to set
0:07:56 You know to define the relationship saying that let’s let’s let’s make this real. So what do you actually say?
0:08:03 So here’s what i’m saying what i’m saying is what this guy about uh in in japan is experiencing is this lonely thing
0:08:05 And you’re talking about people living by themselves
0:08:09 Uh 38 of the time you’re talking about people dying and for weeks not being found
0:08:15 What i’m saying is I think a lot of people experience loneliness and I think one key way to
0:08:20 Get over particularly men men in particular once they approach their 50s and 60s
0:08:22 You basically never make a new friend again
0:08:25 Just like you never go to the doctor you don’t go to the dentist and you don’t make new friends
0:08:30 But I think there are ways around this and it’s around having these formal conversations
0:08:37 And in particular one extreme example is to move places just for for the sole reason of like this friend being there
0:08:39 Do you know what I mean?
0:08:40 I know exactly what you mean
0:08:44 Uh, but I guess what i’m saying is what is the conversation you’re having with people especially new people
0:08:46 So I get the the nevel one because he was already
0:08:52 A really close friend from san- you guys he was in san francisco, right? That’s where you guys originally friends
0:08:54 No, he would spend his summers in san francisco
0:08:57 And we would like hang out and then he would go back to austin because awesome was unbearable
0:08:59 So you guys were already really close and you’re like hey
0:09:02 I want to move there and I really like i’m kind of moving there for you
0:09:06 Or I want to move right really close to you and like let’s do life together and i’m a big fan of this
0:09:13 I’ve said this before one of the most impactful things that’s come out of this podcast was a guy named mike brown came on the pod and he said
0:09:16 Um, I was asking about going into business with his brothers and he goes
0:09:23 That’s to me. That’s the point of life. You find the people you love and you do life with them and that became like a very simple
0:09:28 Operating philosophy for me. So I am a definite but deep believer in that
0:09:33 What are you doing now with new people because i’m curious how that conversation goes when it’s not somebody you’ve already been friends with for
0:09:40 Five or ten years. I’ve only done it once so far and I just kind of like I hope they’re listening
0:09:46 Dude, it’s weird like it’s definitely like it’s definitely weird, but I’d be like hey, so um
0:09:52 You know, I’m looking to like have like close friends who I can rely on and I want to let you know that like
0:09:54 You are that to me right now where
0:09:58 Uh, I hope I can rely on you for important things and I want you to know that
0:10:02 You can rely on me for stuff and like whatever I have it’s you can use whatever I have
0:10:06 I got your back no matter what and I know this sounds weird and everything
0:10:11 But I’m looking to do life with someone and it seems like you and your wife might be that person for me and my wife
0:10:14 And I make jokes about it and I realize how silly this sounds
0:10:19 But it was actually really great. Did you feel really good?
0:10:25 This is like how swinging starts. Um, so so actually I have a sort of related story
0:10:28 one time I was doing a
0:10:31 Uh angel investment a deal by the way, we need we need a word for this
0:10:34 You were saying in japan they have a word for a japanese word for it
0:10:38 We need a japanese word for this because when you don’t have words to label these things
0:10:42 We needed to find this word. It’s got to be explicitly heterosexual
0:10:48 Explicitly not involving swinging. It’s got to be like some type of reciprocity or like
0:10:52 I’m willing to give more than 50 to this relationship
0:10:55 Do you know what I mean? Like this idea of like a good relationship you had to be willing to over give
0:10:59 So I just went into google translate and I wrote male friends that don’t have sex and it says
0:11:03 Sekusu no otoko tomodachi. So I think that’s the
0:11:06 Tomodachi for short
0:11:10 All right, what were you saying about angel investing? So I was I was trying to do an angel investment
0:11:13 This was maybe I don’t know 12 years ago or something
0:11:18 And I had no money and I wanted to invest in this company and I’d finally realized like oh
0:11:20 I have friends who have money
0:11:23 And I could probably go to them and I probably pitch them a deal and if they do the deal
0:11:26 They’ll probably give me a little piece of the of the of the upside if it works out
0:11:32 And so I go to a friend I go to my buddy Sully and I say, um, hey, I want to invest in this company
0:11:34 He’s like, all right, great. Let’s do it
0:11:38 I mean, he’s like cool. So for the economics of this like how do you want to do this?
0:11:44 And I was like, I don’t really know. What’s the norm? He’s like, well, the norm is probably this where you would get, you know
0:11:47 Like 10 15 percent of my carry
0:11:52 But you know, we could do whatever you want and I was like, well, you know, I just want to make sure you’re you know
0:11:55 It’s fair. I was kind of thinking transaction. I was like, I just want to make sure this is fair
0:11:59 Like I don’t want to I don’t want this to be, you know, one side or the other and he goes
0:12:03 Let’s make it one sided in your favor and he goes, I don’t care what happens on this deal
0:12:07 what I care about is us doing deals together for the next 20 years and
0:12:14 First of all, it was not just hollow words because he was giving more action on the deal to me that he did not need to
0:12:19 I wasn’t asking for it. He just you know, did that on on on his own
0:12:24 The second was the way he signaled that like, hey, I’m looking for 20 years of doing stuff together
0:12:27 was kind of intentional and new in a way that I hadn’t really
0:12:30 Heard and then I started doing that with other people
0:12:33 So when I met up with ben and I was like, ben, hey, you want to do this project together?
0:12:35 He’s like, yeah, we did a project together went great
0:12:38 Want to do another project together. We did another project together went great
0:12:40 And I was like, hey, let’s start a business together
0:12:44 But I what I told him was I was like, I think you’re awesome and I think we work really well together
0:12:47 I want to
0:12:51 Like I want to be in business for 20 years. So let’s basically only make decisions that will
0:12:54 increase the likelihood of us doing this together for 20 years
0:12:56 and
0:12:58 That really changed the game. So that one little
0:13:06 Way of being intentional that this I want this relationship to go beyond this transaction this this moment in time and saying like
0:13:07 I think you’re awesome
0:13:10 And I want to be doing stuff with you for a long time
0:13:13 That has really helped me or changed the way that I viewed things
0:13:16 But also the way that other people receive it because then they know
0:13:19 They know that I’m putting my foot forward and saying yes
0:13:22 I think you’re awesome and I can see us doing plenty of things together
0:13:24 Let’s do this for the long haul
0:13:29 Which I think settles everybody down and gets everybody out of a sort of selfish or short-term mindset
0:13:31 Just supposed to guys being dudes
0:13:34 You know
0:13:41 That’s what it comes down to we just it’s just much us guys. We want to be dudes, you know, that’s maybe tomodachi. Okay
0:13:44 Let’s just be gross. You want to be gross?
0:13:47 Okay, so
0:13:50 Here’s some I guess like related things to this. So
0:13:56 So back to this guy by the way, this shoji morimoto. So this guy 39 years old. Look at his twitter
0:13:58 His twitter has
0:14:04 420,000 followers. He’s gotten like very famous off of this. He said that before kovati was making 300 dollars a day
0:14:07 So he’s doing this 68 dollars a session or whatever
0:14:11 And he was just going to coffee shops and playing video games and doing you know random stuff with each other
0:14:16 Dude, he’s hard. It’s twitter. It’s hard to these japanese. I’ll tell you what they got a different word for everything
0:14:24 So, uh, his service is called rental people who do nothing
0:14:30 So I started thinking do we have this here because loneliness is not a only in jet only a japan thing. Obviously, it’s everywhere
0:14:35 And actually there are some things like this. So go to rent a friend calm
0:14:37 I don’t think I ever see this
0:14:42 No, you know what shon? I’m proud to say I’ve been actually been on this website yet
0:14:47 Friend seeking friends. Okay. So now type in like just type in san francisco and click search
0:14:51 And then you’re gonna see just like a huge list of
0:14:55 Totally platonic friends who are down to hang out and just have a day together
0:14:58 It’s pretty wild that there’s this whole
0:15:02 I didn’t even know this existed. It’s craigslist for friends. It’s pretty pretty cool, right?
0:15:05 And it actually has a lot of traffic
0:15:11 You know, this is a little sus. Oh, there’s a lot of pretty women with full body shots on here
0:15:16 Yeah, this might be like I found a laundromat and I’m like this place is doing a huge amount of business
0:15:22 And it’s like, well, it’s not just a laundromat, right? Like they’re laundering other things besides clothes here
0:15:25 Like so I don’t know exactly that the social norms here
0:15:30 But I’m going to take it at face value that this is rent a friend that is truly for for friendship
0:15:33 And I’ve read some articles of people doing this and what they said was they were like, you know
0:15:36 It was actually in some ways kind of nice
0:15:38 to have
0:15:42 Just someone on demand that I could go do this thing with maybe a plus one for
0:15:46 An event or to go to a concert together or whatever it is didn’t want to go by myself
0:15:47 But I still wanted to go
0:15:51 They’re like, but the other side of it was it had this like weird dynamic was like wait by the way
0:15:53 Does rent a friend mean I pay them money?
0:15:55 Yeah, you pay the money to hang out
0:15:57 Sean this is like where you get a hooker
0:16:03 This is like there’s Valerie odd here is like in a bikini and she’s 20 and like really good looking
0:16:07 It might be but I read this article on like whatever vox or whatever somebody went and they did this
0:16:10 So they rented a friend on this site and so they what they said was they were like
0:16:13 Yeah, it was uh, you know, I paid for this person to come hang out with me
0:16:16 They’re like, you know, one of the things and they talked to them about like the other jobs that they’ve done
0:16:19 They’re like, yeah, it’s a lot sometimes for older people or it’s for
0:16:25 You know somebody who’s you know, just sort of been very busy with work hasn’t really developed their social life
0:16:27 and one of the things that they talked about was like
0:16:33 It made me a more rude person because they’re like, oh if I’m paying you then this is all on my terms
0:16:35 I’m gonna we’re gonna do what I want
0:16:40 We’re gonna and they’re like there were some downsides to like there’s upsides of wow this companionship on demand on the other side
0:16:42 There were some downsides which was like
0:16:47 The power dynamic was off. You know, I was too aware at least the journalists was like I was too aware of
0:16:53 The the the differentiation here. So that’s one one business. There’s another one that you’ve probably heard of called papa
0:16:54 You know papa
0:16:55 No, it’s papa
0:17:00 This is for your grandparents. So it’s basically a lot of people have, you know, grandparents who are alone
0:17:06 Both they’re both lonely, but also kind of need help like maybe the little errands that they can run or
0:17:10 Somebody to help them when they’re going to the store just in case anything happens or to make
0:17:13 You know a little easier to move around
0:17:17 And this was a silicon valley startup that was basically like you pay for
0:17:22 You pay for a basically I could task grab it specifically to help
0:17:27 The older people and it’s something less than kind of like a live in live in care
0:17:32 But it’s more than you know, me once a month calling my grandparents
0:17:37 And so that’s uh, this company was I remember when this came out it was sort of this crazy idea
0:17:41 And it was backed by some investors. I remember alexa sahanian the guy who created reddit. He backed it
0:17:44 He said something like uh, you know, there’s 11,000
0:17:46 You know
0:17:50 Boomers that are are retiring like every day or something crazy like that some some huge number
0:17:54 And he’s like the you know, our aging population is growing very fast
0:17:58 So we’re going to need services that are going to help them and this company is valued over a billion dollars
0:18:04 Holy sh*t. I’m looking at their funding. They’ve raised hundreds of millions, uh, 250 million dollars. 250 million. Yeah
0:18:09 Softbank put a bunch of money into and they were valued at 1.4 billion and it’s literally
0:18:13 A sort of like on-demand companionship for older people
0:18:19 Dude, have you ever met a sugar baby?
0:18:23 Have I ever met a sugar baby? I think I have but I
0:18:27 I don’t know if it was like official or if it was just like a
0:18:30 Like
0:18:34 You know, there’s like the the website where it’s like this is an official arrangement
0:18:37 And then there’s like, you know, just the they just happening in the wild
0:18:39 So I think I just met someone who is happening in the wild
0:18:45 So there’s sugar daddy.com where you like go and you meet someone and it gets a lot of traffic
0:18:51 And I was talking we got to go incognito for this one. Let me just make sure I don’t get targeted for ads for the rest of my life
0:18:54 I was talking to my wife about this the other day because she uh
0:19:01 Uh, somehow knew someone who was a sugar baby or or and I think there’s like reality tv shows about it too
0:19:05 Yeah, yeah, you definitely have seen because you guys have like the same tv taste
0:19:10 Uh, but but I actually think that this is like a fairly fair trade
0:19:16 Uh, as long as it’s consensual obviously, but I’m I’m shockingly on board with having a sugar baby
0:19:22 Like if you’re if you’re an old guy and you just want to and like a lot of these guys they literally just want a companion
0:19:27 They just want someone to be there for them and things like that and it’s not always like, you know, as weird as it sounds
0:19:31 It’s no different than wanting to rent this japanese guy to come hang out with you
0:19:36 Yeah, and you know, I don’t really have any judgments on this like I don’t I’ve never experienced this
0:19:41 I don’t really know the lifestyle. I’ll try not to be, you know, two judgmental things. I don’t really understand
0:19:42 what I’m
0:19:45 Fascinated by is just this phenomenon and again, like
0:19:47 Uh, I remember when I first moved to silken valley
0:19:53 I met the guy who was the first p.m at twitter. Um, and I asked him I was like
0:19:58 Man, that’s amazing. You picked twitter really early on there’s only 14 people there or something like that at the time
0:20:02 How’d you know like was was it obvious that twitter was going to be a big deal?
0:20:05 He goes no everybody thought twitter was weird
0:20:09 Stupid useless just like a strange thing to do
0:20:13 And he goes well, I remember when I joined somebody asked me why do you join he goes
0:20:16 Because you can’t deny the phenomenon
0:20:23 Meaning when you observe people doing a behavior that kind of makes no sense or seems odd seems strange seems weird to you
0:20:27 The natural inclination is to push that away and be like, oh, that’s
0:20:31 That’s stupid. That’s weird and you sort of resist it
0:20:36 And he goes as an investor or somebody, you know in where where we worked in the technology space
0:20:39 You want to lean into the phenomenon you want to understand?
0:20:42 Wow, why is it that people are watching other people play video games twitch, right?
0:20:48 Why is it that people are just texting out to a random group of strangers what they’re having for lunch twitter?
0:20:53 Why is it that people are getting into strangers cars instead of taxis uber, right?
0:20:56 Like the why are people sleeping on other people’s couches instead of hotels airbnb?
0:20:59 All of the biggest winners tended to be
0:21:06 These weird behaviors things. That’s you know, either broke a social norm or sounded a little sketch
0:21:10 And once you sort of wrap that into, you know, a more
0:21:15 Safe and acceptable behavior unlocked a pretty big market. And so I’ve always tried to have
0:21:19 I’ve tried to learn to have a more open mind about this stuff. And so
0:21:22 would I be surprised if
0:21:27 The way that getting into people’s you know sleeping on couches or getting into strangers cars
0:21:33 Like would I be surprised if companionship as a service like totally non-sexual companionship as a service was a big deal
0:21:39 I would absolutely not be surprised because I think that probably by default most people are are lonelier than they want
0:21:42 Yeah, and I actually think that this is not a new phenomenon
0:21:48 I think that it’s a phenomenon. It’s a thing that’s always existed. Now. Let me get let me get biblical on your ass
0:21:52 I was uh, I was uh raised catholic. So I went to catholic school my whole life
0:21:54 So I had to read the bible all the time
0:21:59 Did you ever read the the story about jesus how I was like carrying the cross up like the hill or something to like
0:22:05 You know to be executed. No, I didn’t read that one. Well. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s like part of culture a little bit
0:22:10 But like there’s a at one point. There’s like a line where like these
0:22:13 professional women or these women who are professional
0:22:15 I think they call them wailers
0:22:23 But basically these women who are hired to come cry at a funeral to grieve to make you feel like you’re not the only
0:22:26 One there to grieve for this person
0:22:29 And like he like dismisses them and he’s like, you know, don’t
0:22:31 Don’t get me get this out of here
0:22:35 His direct quote was like get that nonsense out of this out of here or something like that
0:22:39 No, but I actually think that is a thing at funeral home. By the way
0:22:45 A funeral home is where like you have like a griever who will come and and make and fill the room
0:22:46 You know what I’m saying
0:22:51 But these sites of things have been around forever. And so I don’t actually think it’s particularly a new phenomenon
0:22:56 I think we’ve always felt this way now. There’s just interesting platforms to help solve the problem
0:23:00 Right, right. It’s like those uh, there’s like these marketplaces now online to rent a crowd
0:23:05 It’s like, oh, you need a crowd people who either love you or protesting you push this button
0:23:07 I’ll get you 30
0:23:14 30 people in a crowd today, right? And you know politicians use this and brands use this like it’s a it’s a easy
0:23:16 Technology made it easier to coordinate
0:23:21 By the way, there’s a great tweet. Have you seen it where he’s like, uh, hey, I’m willing to show up
0:23:23 Looking like a mob boss at anyone’s funeral
0:23:27 Just so your friends and family feel like man, you really have some shit going on that they didn’t know about
0:23:33 Dude, I bet you the uh, rent a friend’s CEO or like company
0:23:36 They’re listening to this podcast and they’re like, oh, that’s so cute
0:23:41 Sean thought that we were just so you could meet friends and not for prostitutes friends is an air quotes
0:23:46 Oh
0:23:49 By the way, if it’s not friends
0:23:57 That’s just me being me naive old me just sucker for for for uh, for whatever you tell me. Okay. I believe in humanity
0:24:00 There’s hundreds of thousands of people right now collectively saying
0:24:02 Oh
0:24:06 Can I um
0:24:10 Can tell you about another thing that I saw that I think you might have seen as well because it happened at a ufc event
0:24:13 A few weeks ago that I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this. Yeah, what?
0:24:17 Did you see at the recent? I think it was at the sphere event
0:24:24 Did you see a very interesting advertisement on one of the on the post during the ufc?
0:24:28 Are you familiar with what I’m talking about? I saw what you were talking about, but I don’t know enough to like riff on it
0:24:35 I mean explain it and then maybe I’ll remember I’m watching the ufc pay-per-view and it’s their first event at the sphere
0:24:37 Uh in las vegas
0:24:39 And I heard you bought tickets for it
0:24:46 Yeah, that’s another story how I uh, I actually ended up paying $15,000 to not go to the sphere event
0:24:51 Which is a a big L for me. Wait, you made 15 grand for tickets
0:24:57 So speaking of friends, uh, I was like, hey, let me buy tickets for the sphere event
0:25:00 I heard Dana white talking about it and I was like, oh wow, he says there’s a one and done
0:25:03 It’s going to be something like you’ve never seen before blah blah blah
0:25:07 So months ago, I just go online and I buy six tickets to the sphere
0:25:09 I think it was like after the ticket master fee was like 25
0:25:12 27 grand or something like that. Oh my god. All right
0:25:16 And then I emailed a bunch of people who I haven’t hung out with
0:25:20 either ever or recently and I was like, hey
0:25:22 Uh, do you want to come to this event?
0:25:26 And they’re like, yeah, this is awesome
0:25:30 And so some some of them said yeah, some of them said, oh, I’ll try let me let me see if I can make it work
0:25:32 because there’s still months out
0:25:37 And then a bunch of things happened a two of the people couldn’t make it for like medical reasons
0:25:42 Uh, the card for the sphere got way worse than it was supposed to be. I got way worse
0:25:46 I myself had just gotten sick like the two weeks prior to it
0:25:49 And so I’d like had just come off of like not being helpful at home to like, oh wait
0:25:52 Now I’m going to go on a trip to las vegas after this
0:25:56 Not really the best game plan for me and the ticket prices dropped like crazy
0:26:00 So we ended up selling the tickets for like, you know, a third or something of whatever I paid for them. So
0:26:03 Yeah, not a good win for me
0:26:06 But uh, a great story that I got to tell here. So that was that
0:26:08 expensive
0:26:10 So then I’m watching it on tv
0:26:15 And I see on the post behind all the fighters that says invest like a politician
0:26:21 Invest like a politician. What is that? That is a kind of an amazing hook
0:26:27 And I realized oh, this is that app that um, I’ve been following for a little while this guy chris
0:26:29 He’s behind this app called autopilot
0:26:36 And he came and he he went on twitter and he explained this thing that they were doing this stunt that they did around the UFC
0:26:38 So they they sponsored the invest like a politician
0:26:45 But they did a lot more than that. I just think it was a badass marketing stunt that he did like the tesla the cybertruck
0:26:47 so so check out this thread so
0:26:53 Uh, look at the photos in this and if you’re listening on audio go to youtube and watch this thing because you’ve got to see
0:26:55 the clips of this. All right, so
0:26:58 What they did was
0:27:01 They hired so like it’s the premise of autopilot
0:27:03 I should say is it’s a investing app
0:27:08 But it’s kind of like you basically pick who you want to follow their portfolio and you will invest
0:27:11 It’s like let’s say I wanted to just mimic Warren Buffett’s portfolio
0:27:17 I want to mimic, you know, some famous traders portfolio. I could do that one of the traders that they follow is Nancy Pelosi
0:27:19 who everybody kind of knows is
0:27:25 You know a legendary a legendary trader in her own right and so what they did was for the sphere event
0:27:29 They found a fake Pelosi impersonator. Do you see her there?
0:27:32 they find her on tiktok
0:27:35 And they hire her and they put her through hair and makeup and then she
0:27:41 She goes to they fly her to vegas and she goes to the event and before the event
0:27:46 She starts interacting with all these influencers so they go get mike from, uh, you know the impulsive podcast
0:27:47 And she’s hanging out
0:27:50 Oh, she’s playing blackjack with mike and then she meets up with the milk boys and the milk boys are like
0:27:54 Oh, holy shit. It’s Pelosi and they’re playing blackjack with her and then she gets um
0:28:01 Then she’s in the crowd when sugar shalom alley walks out and she’s in this hot pink pantsuit power
0:28:05 Pantsuit like Pelosi and it gets freeze framed and everybody’s like holy shit
0:28:11 Is Nancy Pelosi at the ufc and all these people are tweeting about this and then she doesn’t look like her at all
0:28:16 This model or actress is way better looking. It’s like hot Pelosi. Yeah
0:28:20 She’s actually kind of like sarah palin and Pelosi together
0:28:26 It’s because Nancy Pelosi is like 80 years old or something. So yeah, this woman looks is like legitimately a model
0:28:33 But go ahead. So then they got a truck a cyber truck and they wrapped it and it says Pelosi 2024
0:28:38 And it says invest like a politician autopilot and they drove this around las vegas
0:28:44 Getting just honked at and there’s all these like tick tocks of people taking videos of this Pelosi 2024
0:28:49 Thing and if you look at their google trends, they go from like nobody searching for them to like, you know
0:28:55 It spiked and hit 100 interest on that day of the event and basically they were like, yeah
0:28:57 We just took a risk we spent a bunch of money on this
0:29:04 And uh, let’s give it a go and I just thought it was a amazingly well done marketing stunt
0:29:06 Did he say how much he spent on it?
0:29:09 Uh, I didn’t ask him that so I did talk to him
0:29:13 He goes he said we pulled it together in three weeks. We had the Pelosi idea
0:29:15 We came up with a bunch of research
0:29:18 They searched through tick tock for impersonators went through agents found an actress
0:29:24 They hustled their way into you know getting kind of like collabing with the milk boys and mike during that event because they knew
0:29:27 Where they like to gamble so they kind of arranged for them to bump into each other
0:29:31 And they’re like, we got a bunch of downloads. It’s more what he said was he goes
0:29:34 It was more expensive than just if we had just run, you know facebook ads
0:29:40 But um, you know our view is that we’re trying to like build the brand and make a statement about what are we all about and
0:29:43 That we believe that over time this is going to pay off
0:29:46 And if you’ve seen they’ve done this actually in a bunch of a bunch of interesting marketing things
0:29:51 So they did the Pelosi tracker on twitter, which has I don’t know hundreds of thousands of followers
0:29:55 They have an instagram account called politicians
0:29:58 politician trade tracker
0:30:04 Which has seven hundred and thirty thousand followers and the posts so like, you know like the last post was
0:30:07 They had called out weeks ago
0:30:16 That debbie schultz who is a politician had made a fifteen thousand dollar trade in her son’s name of one random small mining stock a silver mining stock
0:30:21 And they had flagged it as like, hmm. Here’s a politician trade that you want to be aware of
0:30:25 We you know, they don’t give financial advice, but they just tell you what the politicians are doing
0:30:29 And sure enough in a month. It’s gone up 30 percent
0:30:33 This like random small mining stock helco mining company
0:30:39 So, you know called it and and so they they follow these politicians and that’s what the whole account is and I think
0:30:41 they they tapped into some
0:30:44 feeling of
0:30:49 Like outrage or wrongness that people have about what’s going on like why why Nancy Pelosi?
0:30:54 You know outperforms hedge funds and Warren Buffett and her you know her trading track record
0:30:56 uh, they tapped into this feeling that like
0:31:01 This is wrong and they should not be allowed and they’re using it for their own growth, which I think is great
0:31:04 dude, have you um
0:31:09 AOC and uh, what’s parker or palm or lucky’s brother-in-law?
0:31:16 Do you know who palm or lucky’s brother-in-law is matt gates? Yeah him and uh, AOC have like joined hands
0:31:22 for this for like the one thing that they’ve come together on is the fact that they want, uh politicians
0:31:28 To not be able to trade or at least have all of their money in like a political etf or something like that
0:31:31 and uh, it reminds me of um
0:31:36 Have you seen that uh video go viral of AOC and Elon musk flirting?
0:31:39 Yeah, it’s so good. We gotta play that
0:31:45 Oh, we should play that right now. I need to just play that clip. It is whoever made this you’re an absolute genius
0:31:48 I’ve looked I’ve tried to look up who made this this is like some anonymous account
0:31:53 I watch that video like I’ve seen it a bunch of times and I rewatch it all the time
0:31:54 It’s so funny
0:31:59 It’s one of the funniest things and they needed they need to do on with AOC and this guy matt
0:32:04 Uh of them like fake flirting because it’s the one thing because I think he’s pretty far right
0:32:11 She’s pretty far left and they’ve come together on this one like idea that politicians should not be able to trade
0:32:13 Uh from individual accounts, and I think it’s pretty funny
0:32:18 Yeah
0:32:20 That’s uh, that’s pretty wild
0:32:24 Do you want to do uh one more thing? What’s this blue collar side hustle?
0:32:26 All right, so i’m bringing it back in old segment
0:32:30 We used to have called the blue collar side hustle of the month and this is
0:32:33 The goal here is these aren’t the biggest businesses
0:32:37 But they’re straightforward businesses that anybody could do if you were just willing to work hard
0:32:42 And so the blue collar side hustle is I saw forget who it was chris corner or somebody like that
0:32:44 They’re talking about this woman in dallas
0:32:50 Who has this big business awesome porch pumpkins. Have you seen this the bass the bass?
0:32:53 Wow, you’re really into this tell tell me more
0:33:02 All right, so so the the business idea here is uh every fall for you know, sort of halloween and thanksgiving people like to decorate
0:33:04 their front porch
0:33:06 with a bunch of pumpkins
0:33:11 And what she does is she will do that as a service so she’ll bring to your house a package
0:33:16 I mean you can go to her website and you can see she’s it’s popped up currently sold out
0:33:21 But you can see like three or four packages. There’s like the luxury package which is 1350 so
0:33:27 Uh, $1,300 there’s like kind of the medium one $750 and there’s a smaller one for like 300 bucks
0:33:33 And what she’ll do is she’ll come and she’ll decorate your front front porch the doorstep all that with
0:33:38 A bunch of really cool variety of of you know fall, you know harvest type pumpkins
0:33:43 And this is all she does and that the numbers that came out was that basically she’s done
0:33:48 900 jobs that range, you know from this 300 bucks to you know, 1500 bucks
0:33:52 And the estimate was that she might have done a million dollars in revenue in a year
0:33:56 off of uh off of those 900 jobs
0:34:03 And how cool is this just a you know a mom in dallas who is going to people’s porches and just putting out pumpkins
0:34:08 And wow you can kind of hustle your way into a pretty cool business for a very small window of time
0:34:10 I think that’s the other cool part about this is that uh
0:34:13 It’s only going to take place in a few months out of the year
0:34:18 And then she posted on instagram and that kind of drives the flywheel and then people like us talk about this
0:34:21 And it gets on the local news and then she’s built a kind of cool business here
0:34:23 And we talked about this last year
0:34:27 I think one of my blue color side also last year was the guy who came and did christmas lights at my house
0:34:31 And he did it for you know half the houses in our neighborhood and I realized like wow
0:34:34 In kind of a six to ten week period
0:34:38 You know this guy probably pulled in you know
0:34:42 60 to 100 grand of side income just by putting up lights him and and he had one guy working with him
0:34:46 And I think this is the extension of that it turns out that it wasn’t just christmas lights
0:34:50 You could also do it with fall pumpkins and I’m sure you could do it with halloween decorations as well
0:34:53 If you wanted to expand into that so to me this is an example
0:34:57 Of a blue collar side hustle now to be clear. I don’t think she made a million dollars
0:34:59 I think she might have generated a million dollars revenue
0:35:02 Apparently she’s got like 15 delivery guys and like a bunch of other stuff
0:35:05 Yeah, but even if she made 200 000 dollars
0:35:10 I would bet it’s like you know 100 grand is my my guess being conservative. I would sort of assume that
0:35:15 But that’s still pretty great for what’s probably a you work, you know
0:35:17 Two months out of the year or three months out of the year
0:35:22 Straightforward business that you could do that doesn’t require you know any special skills and it’s pretty fun
0:35:25 You know for somebody who’s got you know a little bit of design taste. I think this is great
0:35:31 All right, if you’re listening to this pod I already know something about you
0:35:34 You my friend are nosy
0:35:39 You want to know the numbers behind all of these things that we’re talking about how much money people make
0:35:44 How much money people spend how much money businesses make you want to know all of this people’s net worth all of it
0:35:49 Well, I’ve got good news for you. So my company Hampton. We’re a private community for CEOs
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0:36:21 It’s going to blow your mind. You’re going to love this stuff. Check it out now back to the pod
0:36:28 My wife’s uh, um, not working right now, you know, she we had a kid and she’s uh, quit her job
0:36:32 And like she’s thinking of these things that she can do she’s like, you know, I don’t
0:36:37 I can’t commit to a 40 hour work week or 50 52 weeks out the year
0:36:44 But I would love to have a project, you know, something that I can do and when I see projects like this, I’m like
0:36:50 That’s awesome. That could be perfect. Do you know what I mean? Uh, and and so she’s like looking for projects
0:36:55 But you know, you can’t like you can’t commit to a nine to five or at least you can’t commit to a nine to five for
0:37:01 The entire year, but you could for a little sprints. And so I love ideas like that that could satisfy that need
0:37:04 Yeah, yeah, exactly. My wife works only on Wednesdays
0:37:08 So she works one day of the week two works kind of like an eight hour day on that day
0:37:14 And it’s a super creative kind of job. I can’t go into all the details, but it’s very creative. So it’s fun
0:37:19 Um, it’s with somebody she really likes so co-worker comes over they work together for eight hours day
0:37:21 She’s no lot then she doesn’t have it doesn’t spill over
0:37:24 So like the next day and the next day after that she doesn’t have to like
0:37:27 follow through on all the deliverables from the meeting or anything like that
0:37:32 And we didn’t plan for that but that’s we kind of stumbled into but what is basically the perfect
0:37:37 amount of work for her because we got three little kids and she wants to be a stay at home mom, but also
0:37:40 It’s pretty easy to just go nuts
0:37:43 You know like to just be because it’s groundhog day when you have three little kids
0:37:47 You are doing the same routine every single day and as much as you love your kids
0:37:50 Like it is nice to have a small break
0:37:53 Some project you can put your creative energy into a person
0:37:57 that’s not your family member that you can get to talk to that day and
0:38:01 You know not have to deal with the kids for you know, eight hours is is a huge win for her
0:38:04 Dude after this problem be like babe
0:38:07 What do you what do you know about pumpkins open the trunk?
0:38:12 Like I love the homepage everything. It’s a trunk full of like 65 pumpkins
0:38:15 I love this shit dude
0:38:16 I think this is fantastic
0:38:20 And I’m sure that there’s like some type of like artful like aesthetic or you know
0:38:23 Like you got to have like some type of eye, but uh
0:38:26 And it would be silly of me to like be like anyone could do this
0:38:30 But it definitely seems learnable. This seems very learnable
0:38:33 Anyone can do this not anyone will do this
0:38:36 But but I do think this is not like
0:38:37 above
0:38:41 You know most people’s means to be able to do to be able to pull this off
0:38:46 You know what I would do let’s say I wanted to do this. How would you how would you approach this? You know, I would not
0:38:48 Go into the pumpkin business right away
0:38:55 What I would do is I would go door to door and I would have basically like three photographs of what the front can look like
0:38:59 Uh, what what packages you have and I would just go to door go door to door
0:39:01 And I would say I’m going to knock on a hundred doors
0:39:05 I’m not gonna hundred doors in my neighborhood and I’m basically going to say hey
0:39:09 Um, just wanted to let you know I do this for families in the area
0:39:12 I can make your porch look really great. Is this something you’d be interested in?
0:39:16 Um, and then try to see does anybody is anybody interested in basically if people are interested
0:39:22 That’s the your preorder and then you basically go buy the inventory you need to go fulfill just that demand
0:39:26 And then as soon as I get some I would take photos of that I would ask them
0:39:29 Can I uh, you know, would you mind if I use this for my website for my marketing?
0:39:30 They would say yes
0:39:35 And if they say yes, then I would go to I would now have better marketing material that I would go to the next door with
0:39:41 And I would say, um, you know, we did this there and I would try to have something if I could maybe one branded pumpkin
0:39:45 That’s kind of like this was done by the you know
0:39:49 The local pumpkin queen or whatever it is right and like have my my domain on one of them
0:39:53 If I if I could try to get people to be able to go find me from there
0:39:57 And then go and upcharge them when they fucking start to rot and you got to get rid of them
0:40:01 Well, there is a there is a pickup or like a cleanup fee, right that you do at the end
0:40:02 Same thing with the Christmas lights guys
0:40:05 Like yeah, then you pay me up you pay me to put them up and you pay me to put them take them down
0:40:08 And so you get both sides of it
0:40:14 I also think that this is one where you could if you ever go read like these pr books that were like local pr news jacking
0:40:19 So like local news is pretty much devoid of good stories
0:40:23 And so you can see this if you ever turn on like your local news channel
0:40:26 There y’all this restaurant you know got flagged for this thing
0:40:30 They’re looking for you know good local feel-good stories
0:40:32 And so as soon as you get a little bit going and then you could say
0:40:40 Whatever single mom who’s making thousands of dollars decorating their you know their neighbor’s porches
0:40:42 And so as soon as I get just enough momentum
0:40:47 My goal would be to get to the new local news and I would go them and make my pitch for the story
0:40:48 And I would try to get it
0:40:53 You know try to get my story on there for that local news and then what I would do
0:40:57 Is I would take that that news story right you’re stacking the marketing chips
0:41:01 And then you could even run ads on that local news story that article
0:41:03 In your area dude, I grew up
0:41:06 Like with a big steep driveway
0:41:09 And then after there was a small street and then there was like a park
0:41:12 And it was it was as if I was like the park was like a canyon
0:41:19 And one month after Halloween it was a tradition at my house and my parents
0:41:23 This was one of the more redneck things that my father has ever done
0:41:28 Which was we would take all 20 of our pumpkins and we would let them roll down our hill
0:41:36 Straight running of the bulls straight into the middle of the park and I up until like uh, I was like 25
0:41:38 I thought it was okay
0:41:41 Because if you have like a banana peel or something
0:41:46 I’m like you just like fucking toss it into the street like it doesn’t matter like we used to put our pumpkins like in the street
0:41:51 Like it doesn’t matter right that’s not littering. Turns out that is littering by the way like you can’t like just like
0:41:56 We’re all of like November or whatever. There’d be like the
0:41:58 20
0:42:01 Rotting pumpkins in the middle of the middle of this park
0:42:06 And I’m like if you’re gonna go play flag football that month like look out for the rotting pumpkins at the parks
0:42:13 Through in the middle of that fucking park. Yeah, you needed the opposite of the news story. It’s like local family terrorizes park
0:42:15 rotting pumpkins again
0:42:20 Dude, I thought I was like acceptable. It’s like it’s like, oh, just put it back to its home. I’m just throwing this
0:42:24 Throwing this fucking banana peel and all our garbage right in the middle of a park
0:42:26 um
0:42:28 Where do you want to go from here?
0:42:32 Uh, I think we wrapped this one. So we got the do nothing man the loneliness epidemic
0:42:38 We have uh the autopilot marketing stunt and then we got the blue collar side hustle that anybody could do door to door
0:42:40 All right, let’s do it. That’s it. That’s the pop
0:42:45 I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to
0:42:51 I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let’s travel never looking back
0:42:53 Bye
0:42:55 You
0:42:57 You
0:43:07 [BLANK_AUDIO]
0:00:09 for doing
0:00:23 They called him the do nothing man. Have you ever heard of this guy? No, what you read about this?
0:00:31 Well, I originally saw it. I don’t even know where I saw it somewhere and I was fascinated because what happened is this guy was at
0:00:35 Work and his boss called him a do-nothing man
0:00:40 And he like it was insulting him as like dude, you just do nothing
0:00:45 You don’t really add anything you don’t provide any value and he says that he thought to himself and he goes
0:00:52 Hmm. Is there value in society for a man who does nothing and he went online and he posted a tweet
0:00:56 Saying I’m car. I’m starting a new service. It’s called
0:00:58 rental people who do nothing
0:01:01 and it’s basically was like I will be a
0:01:07 Companion a friend who will do nothing. So what this guy does is you rent him out and he’ll go hang out with you
0:01:10 And he says nothing. It’s pretty much a silent companion
0:01:12 completely
0:01:14 non-physical non-sexual
0:01:21 basically an introvert for hire and so what people do is they will either they have a task they need to go do like an
0:01:27 Errand they need to run or they just feel really lonely and they just want somebody to have some tea with them and he’ll come and he’ll sit
0:01:30 He won’t really say anything and if you ask him a question
0:01:31 He’ll give you a simple answer
0:01:35 But it’s really just the presence of another human body and this guy made
0:01:43 $80,000 in a year renting himself out and he then he wrote a book a memoir called rental people who do the man
0:01:45 who didn’t did nothing or the rental people who do nothing and
0:01:48 He’s continued to do this now for years
0:01:53 So he did it before coven the coven hits we couldn’t do it and then he started it back up again
0:01:55 And now he doesn’t even charge for the hangout
0:02:02 He used to charge $68 for a session and now he just says just cover the food and travel and then I’ll hang out with you for free
0:02:09 And so he travels around and he gets paid to go he gets paid for his food in his his event tickets
0:02:11 and all all the things that people want to do with them and
0:02:14 This is what this guy does isn’t this fascinating
0:02:25 All right, let’s take a quick break to talk about our sponsor today HubSpot with smaller budgets and sky high expectations growth is feeling pretty painful right now
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0:02:54 What I’m reading the
0:03:00 Comets on his Goodreads account for his book. Yeah, what were the reasons why people wanted to hang out with him?
0:03:06 Well, so this was pretty fascinating. So I was wondering this too. I was like, why is there a need for this and I guess in Japan?
0:03:12 There’s a loneliness epidemic. It’s kind of crazy. They have words for this that we don’t even have words for so
0:03:14 Have you ever heard this term like Hikikomori?
0:03:18 You know, I haven’t
0:03:23 I have not heard that word before that’s a new word for me
0:03:29 So it’s a word that they have for severe social withdrawal. It’s total withdrawal from society
0:03:35 So typically it’s kind of like in cell in the States. So typically it’ll be it’s mostly men
0:03:41 Who are living at home still in their parents home, but they are completely recluse. They don’t work
0:03:44 They don’t socialize and there are like
0:03:46 Estimated two million men in Japan
0:03:52 That are in this category for six months. They basically have not engaged with anybody in society
0:03:58 So that’s like kind of one problem is this growing trend of Hikikomori and then there’s another word
0:04:03 I think it’s Kotokushi, which is it’s basically death without being cared for
0:04:10 so it’s like older people who are dying and then they find their bodies like five months later because they were so socially isolated that
0:04:12 nobody knew that they passed away and
0:04:20 This is like number that the last ten years has doubled like I think 70,000 people died this way where they’re found weeks or months later and
0:04:24 This trends are all like very concerning. So like in Japan
0:04:31 Single-person household. So, you know, no no wife. No no family members. No friends just living alone by yourself
0:04:34 is now 38% of the population which is
0:04:38 It was that’s like triple where it was like on a five or seven years ago
0:04:44 They appointed a minister of loneliness in Japan because this has become such a big problem
0:04:46 And so this guy
0:04:49 Doing this is almost like a an art statement in a way
0:04:55 About this to bring awareness to this huge problem that people are just really freaking lonely in Japan everywhere
0:04:58 But really in Japan, it’s even more heightened. Dude, let me explain something to you
0:05:03 That’s very similar to this and I’m gonna I want to hear your opinion of this premise that I have and I also
0:05:08 I think it’s a good premise that I think a lot of people can learn from so I don’t live in Austin anymore
0:05:16 I went and visited it again for a wedding and I realized how lucky I was to have a community there of just the best people on earth
0:05:18 I consider them family dude. I saw your
0:05:23 Live laugh love post where you posted a picture with your friends and you said
0:05:27 This is wealth and I saw it. He’s not wrong
0:05:34 He’s not wrong, but he’s also not Sam Park. What is going on? Well, this is wealth. What new era have you entered?
0:05:38 I’ve been I’ve entered a very special era. I love you
0:05:42 Listen, it’s weird ever since having a kid the things that I thought I cared about
0:05:48 I don’t care about as much and so I realized I’m kind of like going all into this like emotional side of like caring about others
0:05:50 Whatever all that stupid shit
0:05:53 But listen
0:06:01 You can’t even say it. It’s like her yeah say the sentence, but we believe it. Yeah, so before
0:06:07 So I basically lived in San Francisco and I moved from San Francisco to Austin my best friend at the time
0:06:11 Novel Madura he lived there and I had this conversation with him before I moved. I go Neville
0:06:15 I’m thinking about moving to Austin. One of the big reasons I’m moving is because of you
0:06:19 I want to be with you. I want to be near you. Would you be willing to be in you?
0:06:21 I want to be in you
0:06:23 You can
0:06:29 It goes a better way than than that one way
0:06:31 and so
0:06:38 If I do this would you like commit to like us like living a life together like with our families and like and that sounds weird
0:06:44 But I did that and it worked wonderfully. So we had there was about four other couples where we had this conversation where we’re like
0:06:48 Let’s live life together. Like you can count on me. I’ll count on you whatever
0:06:50 And when you think about that, that’s strange
0:06:54 But if you really dive deep it’s actually not that weird because that’s what you did with your girlfriend probably
0:06:57 Like you’re like, hey, so uh, should we put a label on this?
0:07:03 You know what I mean? And you do a girlfriend a boyfriend and then you make a huge ordeal until where you uh get engaged
0:07:08 You get down on one knee and there’s like a there’s like a big like epic thing where like you were boyfriend a girlfriend
0:07:12 Now you are officially a fiance and then you get married where you basically
0:07:19 You know talk about how yeah, you take a vow you take a vow in front of people who have flown from around the world
0:07:22 To witness this vow and that’s normal
0:07:24 But we don’t really do that with friends
0:07:27 And so I have recently moved in order to be closer to family
0:07:29 And so now I’m trying to like develop friends in a new town
0:07:34 And I’m starting to go to them and I’m having this formal conversation
0:07:38 And it really weird people out, uh, right away by the way, obviously
0:07:43 But after a few minutes the men in in particular, they’re like, oh, I kind of get this and
0:07:50 Kind of feels nice. It kind of feels nice to like talk about how we’re going to do life together or how we can counter each other or like to set
0:07:56 You know to define the relationship saying that let’s let’s let’s make this real. So what do you actually say?
0:08:03 So here’s what i’m saying what i’m saying is what this guy about uh in in japan is experiencing is this lonely thing
0:08:05 And you’re talking about people living by themselves
0:08:09 Uh 38 of the time you’re talking about people dying and for weeks not being found
0:08:15 What i’m saying is I think a lot of people experience loneliness and I think one key way to
0:08:20 Get over particularly men men in particular once they approach their 50s and 60s
0:08:22 You basically never make a new friend again
0:08:25 Just like you never go to the doctor you don’t go to the dentist and you don’t make new friends
0:08:30 But I think there are ways around this and it’s around having these formal conversations
0:08:37 And in particular one extreme example is to move places just for for the sole reason of like this friend being there
0:08:39 Do you know what I mean?
0:08:40 I know exactly what you mean
0:08:44 Uh, but I guess what i’m saying is what is the conversation you’re having with people especially new people
0:08:46 So I get the the nevel one because he was already
0:08:52 A really close friend from san- you guys he was in san francisco, right? That’s where you guys originally friends
0:08:54 No, he would spend his summers in san francisco
0:08:57 And we would like hang out and then he would go back to austin because awesome was unbearable
0:08:59 So you guys were already really close and you’re like hey
0:09:02 I want to move there and I really like i’m kind of moving there for you
0:09:06 Or I want to move right really close to you and like let’s do life together and i’m a big fan of this
0:09:13 I’ve said this before one of the most impactful things that’s come out of this podcast was a guy named mike brown came on the pod and he said
0:09:16 Um, I was asking about going into business with his brothers and he goes
0:09:23 That’s to me. That’s the point of life. You find the people you love and you do life with them and that became like a very simple
0:09:28 Operating philosophy for me. So I am a definite but deep believer in that
0:09:33 What are you doing now with new people because i’m curious how that conversation goes when it’s not somebody you’ve already been friends with for
0:09:40 Five or ten years. I’ve only done it once so far and I just kind of like I hope they’re listening
0:09:46 Dude, it’s weird like it’s definitely like it’s definitely weird, but I’d be like hey, so um
0:09:52 You know, I’m looking to like have like close friends who I can rely on and I want to let you know that like
0:09:54 You are that to me right now where
0:09:58 Uh, I hope I can rely on you for important things and I want you to know that
0:10:02 You can rely on me for stuff and like whatever I have it’s you can use whatever I have
0:10:06 I got your back no matter what and I know this sounds weird and everything
0:10:11 But I’m looking to do life with someone and it seems like you and your wife might be that person for me and my wife
0:10:14 And I make jokes about it and I realize how silly this sounds
0:10:19 But it was actually really great. Did you feel really good?
0:10:25 This is like how swinging starts. Um, so so actually I have a sort of related story
0:10:28 one time I was doing a
0:10:31 Uh angel investment a deal by the way, we need we need a word for this
0:10:34 You were saying in japan they have a word for a japanese word for it
0:10:38 We need a japanese word for this because when you don’t have words to label these things
0:10:42 We needed to find this word. It’s got to be explicitly heterosexual
0:10:48 Explicitly not involving swinging. It’s got to be like some type of reciprocity or like
0:10:52 I’m willing to give more than 50 to this relationship
0:10:55 Do you know what I mean? Like this idea of like a good relationship you had to be willing to over give
0:10:59 So I just went into google translate and I wrote male friends that don’t have sex and it says
0:11:03 Sekusu no otoko tomodachi. So I think that’s the
0:11:06 Tomodachi for short
0:11:10 All right, what were you saying about angel investing? So I was I was trying to do an angel investment
0:11:13 This was maybe I don’t know 12 years ago or something
0:11:18 And I had no money and I wanted to invest in this company and I’d finally realized like oh
0:11:20 I have friends who have money
0:11:23 And I could probably go to them and I probably pitch them a deal and if they do the deal
0:11:26 They’ll probably give me a little piece of the of the of the upside if it works out
0:11:32 And so I go to a friend I go to my buddy Sully and I say, um, hey, I want to invest in this company
0:11:34 He’s like, all right, great. Let’s do it
0:11:38 I mean, he’s like cool. So for the economics of this like how do you want to do this?
0:11:44 And I was like, I don’t really know. What’s the norm? He’s like, well, the norm is probably this where you would get, you know
0:11:47 Like 10 15 percent of my carry
0:11:52 But you know, we could do whatever you want and I was like, well, you know, I just want to make sure you’re you know
0:11:55 It’s fair. I was kind of thinking transaction. I was like, I just want to make sure this is fair
0:11:59 Like I don’t want to I don’t want this to be, you know, one side or the other and he goes
0:12:03 Let’s make it one sided in your favor and he goes, I don’t care what happens on this deal
0:12:07 what I care about is us doing deals together for the next 20 years and
0:12:14 First of all, it was not just hollow words because he was giving more action on the deal to me that he did not need to
0:12:19 I wasn’t asking for it. He just you know, did that on on on his own
0:12:24 The second was the way he signaled that like, hey, I’m looking for 20 years of doing stuff together
0:12:27 was kind of intentional and new in a way that I hadn’t really
0:12:30 Heard and then I started doing that with other people
0:12:33 So when I met up with ben and I was like, ben, hey, you want to do this project together?
0:12:35 He’s like, yeah, we did a project together went great
0:12:38 Want to do another project together. We did another project together went great
0:12:40 And I was like, hey, let’s start a business together
0:12:44 But I what I told him was I was like, I think you’re awesome and I think we work really well together
0:12:47 I want to
0:12:51 Like I want to be in business for 20 years. So let’s basically only make decisions that will
0:12:54 increase the likelihood of us doing this together for 20 years
0:12:56 and
0:12:58 That really changed the game. So that one little
0:13:06 Way of being intentional that this I want this relationship to go beyond this transaction this this moment in time and saying like
0:13:07 I think you’re awesome
0:13:10 And I want to be doing stuff with you for a long time
0:13:13 That has really helped me or changed the way that I viewed things
0:13:16 But also the way that other people receive it because then they know
0:13:19 They know that I’m putting my foot forward and saying yes
0:13:22 I think you’re awesome and I can see us doing plenty of things together
0:13:24 Let’s do this for the long haul
0:13:29 Which I think settles everybody down and gets everybody out of a sort of selfish or short-term mindset
0:13:31 Just supposed to guys being dudes
0:13:34 You know
0:13:41 That’s what it comes down to we just it’s just much us guys. We want to be dudes, you know, that’s maybe tomodachi. Okay
0:13:44 Let’s just be gross. You want to be gross?
0:13:47 Okay, so
0:13:50 Here’s some I guess like related things to this. So
0:13:56 So back to this guy by the way, this shoji morimoto. So this guy 39 years old. Look at his twitter
0:13:58 His twitter has
0:14:04 420,000 followers. He’s gotten like very famous off of this. He said that before kovati was making 300 dollars a day
0:14:07 So he’s doing this 68 dollars a session or whatever
0:14:11 And he was just going to coffee shops and playing video games and doing you know random stuff with each other
0:14:16 Dude, he’s hard. It’s twitter. It’s hard to these japanese. I’ll tell you what they got a different word for everything
0:14:24 So, uh, his service is called rental people who do nothing
0:14:30 So I started thinking do we have this here because loneliness is not a only in jet only a japan thing. Obviously, it’s everywhere
0:14:35 And actually there are some things like this. So go to rent a friend calm
0:14:37 I don’t think I ever see this
0:14:42 No, you know what shon? I’m proud to say I’ve been actually been on this website yet
0:14:47 Friend seeking friends. Okay. So now type in like just type in san francisco and click search
0:14:51 And then you’re gonna see just like a huge list of
0:14:55 Totally platonic friends who are down to hang out and just have a day together
0:14:58 It’s pretty wild that there’s this whole
0:15:02 I didn’t even know this existed. It’s craigslist for friends. It’s pretty pretty cool, right?
0:15:05 And it actually has a lot of traffic
0:15:11 You know, this is a little sus. Oh, there’s a lot of pretty women with full body shots on here
0:15:16 Yeah, this might be like I found a laundromat and I’m like this place is doing a huge amount of business
0:15:22 And it’s like, well, it’s not just a laundromat, right? Like they’re laundering other things besides clothes here
0:15:25 Like so I don’t know exactly that the social norms here
0:15:30 But I’m going to take it at face value that this is rent a friend that is truly for for friendship
0:15:33 And I’ve read some articles of people doing this and what they said was they were like, you know
0:15:36 It was actually in some ways kind of nice
0:15:38 to have
0:15:42 Just someone on demand that I could go do this thing with maybe a plus one for
0:15:46 An event or to go to a concert together or whatever it is didn’t want to go by myself
0:15:47 But I still wanted to go
0:15:51 They’re like, but the other side of it was it had this like weird dynamic was like wait by the way
0:15:53 Does rent a friend mean I pay them money?
0:15:55 Yeah, you pay the money to hang out
0:15:57 Sean this is like where you get a hooker
0:16:03 This is like there’s Valerie odd here is like in a bikini and she’s 20 and like really good looking
0:16:07 It might be but I read this article on like whatever vox or whatever somebody went and they did this
0:16:10 So they rented a friend on this site and so they what they said was they were like
0:16:13 Yeah, it was uh, you know, I paid for this person to come hang out with me
0:16:16 They’re like, you know, one of the things and they talked to them about like the other jobs that they’ve done
0:16:19 They’re like, yeah, it’s a lot sometimes for older people or it’s for
0:16:25 You know somebody who’s you know, just sort of been very busy with work hasn’t really developed their social life
0:16:27 and one of the things that they talked about was like
0:16:33 It made me a more rude person because they’re like, oh if I’m paying you then this is all on my terms
0:16:35 I’m gonna we’re gonna do what I want
0:16:40 We’re gonna and they’re like there were some downsides to like there’s upsides of wow this companionship on demand on the other side
0:16:42 There were some downsides which was like
0:16:47 The power dynamic was off. You know, I was too aware at least the journalists was like I was too aware of
0:16:53 The the the differentiation here. So that’s one one business. There’s another one that you’ve probably heard of called papa
0:16:54 You know papa
0:16:55 No, it’s papa
0:17:00 This is for your grandparents. So it’s basically a lot of people have, you know, grandparents who are alone
0:17:06 Both they’re both lonely, but also kind of need help like maybe the little errands that they can run or
0:17:10 Somebody to help them when they’re going to the store just in case anything happens or to make
0:17:13 You know a little easier to move around
0:17:17 And this was a silicon valley startup that was basically like you pay for
0:17:22 You pay for a basically I could task grab it specifically to help
0:17:27 The older people and it’s something less than kind of like a live in live in care
0:17:32 But it’s more than you know, me once a month calling my grandparents
0:17:37 And so that’s uh, this company was I remember when this came out it was sort of this crazy idea
0:17:41 And it was backed by some investors. I remember alexa sahanian the guy who created reddit. He backed it
0:17:44 He said something like uh, you know, there’s 11,000
0:17:46 You know
0:17:50 Boomers that are are retiring like every day or something crazy like that some some huge number
0:17:54 And he’s like the you know, our aging population is growing very fast
0:17:58 So we’re going to need services that are going to help them and this company is valued over a billion dollars
0:18:04 Holy sh*t. I’m looking at their funding. They’ve raised hundreds of millions, uh, 250 million dollars. 250 million. Yeah
0:18:09 Softbank put a bunch of money into and they were valued at 1.4 billion and it’s literally
0:18:13 A sort of like on-demand companionship for older people
0:18:19 Dude, have you ever met a sugar baby?
0:18:23 Have I ever met a sugar baby? I think I have but I
0:18:27 I don’t know if it was like official or if it was just like a
0:18:30 Like
0:18:34 You know, there’s like the the website where it’s like this is an official arrangement
0:18:37 And then there’s like, you know, just the they just happening in the wild
0:18:39 So I think I just met someone who is happening in the wild
0:18:45 So there’s sugar daddy.com where you like go and you meet someone and it gets a lot of traffic
0:18:51 And I was talking we got to go incognito for this one. Let me just make sure I don’t get targeted for ads for the rest of my life
0:18:54 I was talking to my wife about this the other day because she uh
0:19:01 Uh, somehow knew someone who was a sugar baby or or and I think there’s like reality tv shows about it too
0:19:05 Yeah, yeah, you definitely have seen because you guys have like the same tv taste
0:19:10 Uh, but but I actually think that this is like a fairly fair trade
0:19:16 Uh, as long as it’s consensual obviously, but I’m I’m shockingly on board with having a sugar baby
0:19:22 Like if you’re if you’re an old guy and you just want to and like a lot of these guys they literally just want a companion
0:19:27 They just want someone to be there for them and things like that and it’s not always like, you know, as weird as it sounds
0:19:31 It’s no different than wanting to rent this japanese guy to come hang out with you
0:19:36 Yeah, and you know, I don’t really have any judgments on this like I don’t I’ve never experienced this
0:19:41 I don’t really know the lifestyle. I’ll try not to be, you know, two judgmental things. I don’t really understand
0:19:42 what I’m
0:19:45 Fascinated by is just this phenomenon and again, like
0:19:47 Uh, I remember when I first moved to silken valley
0:19:53 I met the guy who was the first p.m at twitter. Um, and I asked him I was like
0:19:58 Man, that’s amazing. You picked twitter really early on there’s only 14 people there or something like that at the time
0:20:02 How’d you know like was was it obvious that twitter was going to be a big deal?
0:20:05 He goes no everybody thought twitter was weird
0:20:09 Stupid useless just like a strange thing to do
0:20:13 And he goes well, I remember when I joined somebody asked me why do you join he goes
0:20:16 Because you can’t deny the phenomenon
0:20:23 Meaning when you observe people doing a behavior that kind of makes no sense or seems odd seems strange seems weird to you
0:20:27 The natural inclination is to push that away and be like, oh, that’s
0:20:31 That’s stupid. That’s weird and you sort of resist it
0:20:36 And he goes as an investor or somebody, you know in where where we worked in the technology space
0:20:39 You want to lean into the phenomenon you want to understand?
0:20:42 Wow, why is it that people are watching other people play video games twitch, right?
0:20:48 Why is it that people are just texting out to a random group of strangers what they’re having for lunch twitter?
0:20:53 Why is it that people are getting into strangers cars instead of taxis uber, right?
0:20:56 Like the why are people sleeping on other people’s couches instead of hotels airbnb?
0:20:59 All of the biggest winners tended to be
0:21:06 These weird behaviors things. That’s you know, either broke a social norm or sounded a little sketch
0:21:10 And once you sort of wrap that into, you know, a more
0:21:15 Safe and acceptable behavior unlocked a pretty big market. And so I’ve always tried to have
0:21:19 I’ve tried to learn to have a more open mind about this stuff. And so
0:21:22 would I be surprised if
0:21:27 The way that getting into people’s you know sleeping on couches or getting into strangers cars
0:21:33 Like would I be surprised if companionship as a service like totally non-sexual companionship as a service was a big deal
0:21:39 I would absolutely not be surprised because I think that probably by default most people are are lonelier than they want
0:21:42 Yeah, and I actually think that this is not a new phenomenon
0:21:48 I think that it’s a phenomenon. It’s a thing that’s always existed. Now. Let me get let me get biblical on your ass
0:21:52 I was uh, I was uh raised catholic. So I went to catholic school my whole life
0:21:54 So I had to read the bible all the time
0:21:59 Did you ever read the the story about jesus how I was like carrying the cross up like the hill or something to like
0:22:05 You know to be executed. No, I didn’t read that one. Well. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s like part of culture a little bit
0:22:10 But like there’s a at one point. There’s like a line where like these
0:22:13 professional women or these women who are professional
0:22:15 I think they call them wailers
0:22:23 But basically these women who are hired to come cry at a funeral to grieve to make you feel like you’re not the only
0:22:26 One there to grieve for this person
0:22:29 And like he like dismisses them and he’s like, you know, don’t
0:22:31 Don’t get me get this out of here
0:22:35 His direct quote was like get that nonsense out of this out of here or something like that
0:22:39 No, but I actually think that is a thing at funeral home. By the way
0:22:45 A funeral home is where like you have like a griever who will come and and make and fill the room
0:22:46 You know what I’m saying
0:22:51 But these sites of things have been around forever. And so I don’t actually think it’s particularly a new phenomenon
0:22:56 I think we’ve always felt this way now. There’s just interesting platforms to help solve the problem
0:23:00 Right, right. It’s like those uh, there’s like these marketplaces now online to rent a crowd
0:23:05 It’s like, oh, you need a crowd people who either love you or protesting you push this button
0:23:07 I’ll get you 30
0:23:14 30 people in a crowd today, right? And you know politicians use this and brands use this like it’s a it’s a easy
0:23:16 Technology made it easier to coordinate
0:23:21 By the way, there’s a great tweet. Have you seen it where he’s like, uh, hey, I’m willing to show up
0:23:23 Looking like a mob boss at anyone’s funeral
0:23:27 Just so your friends and family feel like man, you really have some shit going on that they didn’t know about
0:23:33 Dude, I bet you the uh, rent a friend’s CEO or like company
0:23:36 They’re listening to this podcast and they’re like, oh, that’s so cute
0:23:41 Sean thought that we were just so you could meet friends and not for prostitutes friends is an air quotes
0:23:46 Oh
0:23:49 By the way, if it’s not friends
0:23:57 That’s just me being me naive old me just sucker for for for uh, for whatever you tell me. Okay. I believe in humanity
0:24:00 There’s hundreds of thousands of people right now collectively saying
0:24:02 Oh
0:24:06 Can I um
0:24:10 Can tell you about another thing that I saw that I think you might have seen as well because it happened at a ufc event
0:24:13 A few weeks ago that I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this. Yeah, what?
0:24:17 Did you see at the recent? I think it was at the sphere event
0:24:24 Did you see a very interesting advertisement on one of the on the post during the ufc?
0:24:28 Are you familiar with what I’m talking about? I saw what you were talking about, but I don’t know enough to like riff on it
0:24:35 I mean explain it and then maybe I’ll remember I’m watching the ufc pay-per-view and it’s their first event at the sphere
0:24:37 Uh in las vegas
0:24:39 And I heard you bought tickets for it
0:24:46 Yeah, that’s another story how I uh, I actually ended up paying $15,000 to not go to the sphere event
0:24:51 Which is a a big L for me. Wait, you made 15 grand for tickets
0:24:57 So speaking of friends, uh, I was like, hey, let me buy tickets for the sphere event
0:25:00 I heard Dana white talking about it and I was like, oh wow, he says there’s a one and done
0:25:03 It’s going to be something like you’ve never seen before blah blah blah
0:25:07 So months ago, I just go online and I buy six tickets to the sphere
0:25:09 I think it was like after the ticket master fee was like 25
0:25:12 27 grand or something like that. Oh my god. All right
0:25:16 And then I emailed a bunch of people who I haven’t hung out with
0:25:20 either ever or recently and I was like, hey
0:25:22 Uh, do you want to come to this event?
0:25:26 And they’re like, yeah, this is awesome
0:25:30 And so some some of them said yeah, some of them said, oh, I’ll try let me let me see if I can make it work
0:25:32 because there’s still months out
0:25:37 And then a bunch of things happened a two of the people couldn’t make it for like medical reasons
0:25:42 Uh, the card for the sphere got way worse than it was supposed to be. I got way worse
0:25:46 I myself had just gotten sick like the two weeks prior to it
0:25:49 And so I’d like had just come off of like not being helpful at home to like, oh wait
0:25:52 Now I’m going to go on a trip to las vegas after this
0:25:56 Not really the best game plan for me and the ticket prices dropped like crazy
0:26:00 So we ended up selling the tickets for like, you know, a third or something of whatever I paid for them. So
0:26:03 Yeah, not a good win for me
0:26:06 But uh, a great story that I got to tell here. So that was that
0:26:08 expensive
0:26:10 So then I’m watching it on tv
0:26:15 And I see on the post behind all the fighters that says invest like a politician
0:26:21 Invest like a politician. What is that? That is a kind of an amazing hook
0:26:27 And I realized oh, this is that app that um, I’ve been following for a little while this guy chris
0:26:29 He’s behind this app called autopilot
0:26:36 And he came and he he went on twitter and he explained this thing that they were doing this stunt that they did around the UFC
0:26:38 So they they sponsored the invest like a politician
0:26:45 But they did a lot more than that. I just think it was a badass marketing stunt that he did like the tesla the cybertruck
0:26:47 so so check out this thread so
0:26:53 Uh, look at the photos in this and if you’re listening on audio go to youtube and watch this thing because you’ve got to see
0:26:55 the clips of this. All right, so
0:26:58 What they did was
0:27:01 They hired so like it’s the premise of autopilot
0:27:03 I should say is it’s a investing app
0:27:08 But it’s kind of like you basically pick who you want to follow their portfolio and you will invest
0:27:11 It’s like let’s say I wanted to just mimic Warren Buffett’s portfolio
0:27:17 I want to mimic, you know, some famous traders portfolio. I could do that one of the traders that they follow is Nancy Pelosi
0:27:19 who everybody kind of knows is
0:27:25 You know a legendary a legendary trader in her own right and so what they did was for the sphere event
0:27:29 They found a fake Pelosi impersonator. Do you see her there?
0:27:32 they find her on tiktok
0:27:35 And they hire her and they put her through hair and makeup and then she
0:27:41 She goes to they fly her to vegas and she goes to the event and before the event
0:27:46 She starts interacting with all these influencers so they go get mike from, uh, you know the impulsive podcast
0:27:47 And she’s hanging out
0:27:50 Oh, she’s playing blackjack with mike and then she meets up with the milk boys and the milk boys are like
0:27:54 Oh, holy shit. It’s Pelosi and they’re playing blackjack with her and then she gets um
0:28:01 Then she’s in the crowd when sugar shalom alley walks out and she’s in this hot pink pantsuit power
0:28:05 Pantsuit like Pelosi and it gets freeze framed and everybody’s like holy shit
0:28:11 Is Nancy Pelosi at the ufc and all these people are tweeting about this and then she doesn’t look like her at all
0:28:16 This model or actress is way better looking. It’s like hot Pelosi. Yeah
0:28:20 She’s actually kind of like sarah palin and Pelosi together
0:28:26 It’s because Nancy Pelosi is like 80 years old or something. So yeah, this woman looks is like legitimately a model
0:28:33 But go ahead. So then they got a truck a cyber truck and they wrapped it and it says Pelosi 2024
0:28:38 And it says invest like a politician autopilot and they drove this around las vegas
0:28:44 Getting just honked at and there’s all these like tick tocks of people taking videos of this Pelosi 2024
0:28:49 Thing and if you look at their google trends, they go from like nobody searching for them to like, you know
0:28:55 It spiked and hit 100 interest on that day of the event and basically they were like, yeah
0:28:57 We just took a risk we spent a bunch of money on this
0:29:04 And uh, let’s give it a go and I just thought it was a amazingly well done marketing stunt
0:29:06 Did he say how much he spent on it?
0:29:09 Uh, I didn’t ask him that so I did talk to him
0:29:13 He goes he said we pulled it together in three weeks. We had the Pelosi idea
0:29:15 We came up with a bunch of research
0:29:18 They searched through tick tock for impersonators went through agents found an actress
0:29:24 They hustled their way into you know getting kind of like collabing with the milk boys and mike during that event because they knew
0:29:27 Where they like to gamble so they kind of arranged for them to bump into each other
0:29:31 And they’re like, we got a bunch of downloads. It’s more what he said was he goes
0:29:34 It was more expensive than just if we had just run, you know facebook ads
0:29:40 But um, you know our view is that we’re trying to like build the brand and make a statement about what are we all about and
0:29:43 That we believe that over time this is going to pay off
0:29:46 And if you’ve seen they’ve done this actually in a bunch of a bunch of interesting marketing things
0:29:51 So they did the Pelosi tracker on twitter, which has I don’t know hundreds of thousands of followers
0:29:55 They have an instagram account called politicians
0:29:58 politician trade tracker
0:30:04 Which has seven hundred and thirty thousand followers and the posts so like, you know like the last post was
0:30:07 They had called out weeks ago
0:30:16 That debbie schultz who is a politician had made a fifteen thousand dollar trade in her son’s name of one random small mining stock a silver mining stock
0:30:21 And they had flagged it as like, hmm. Here’s a politician trade that you want to be aware of
0:30:25 We you know, they don’t give financial advice, but they just tell you what the politicians are doing
0:30:29 And sure enough in a month. It’s gone up 30 percent
0:30:33 This like random small mining stock helco mining company
0:30:39 So, you know called it and and so they they follow these politicians and that’s what the whole account is and I think
0:30:41 they they tapped into some
0:30:44 feeling of
0:30:49 Like outrage or wrongness that people have about what’s going on like why why Nancy Pelosi?
0:30:54 You know outperforms hedge funds and Warren Buffett and her you know her trading track record
0:30:56 uh, they tapped into this feeling that like
0:31:01 This is wrong and they should not be allowed and they’re using it for their own growth, which I think is great
0:31:04 dude, have you um
0:31:09 AOC and uh, what’s parker or palm or lucky’s brother-in-law?
0:31:16 Do you know who palm or lucky’s brother-in-law is matt gates? Yeah him and uh, AOC have like joined hands
0:31:22 for this for like the one thing that they’ve come together on is the fact that they want, uh politicians
0:31:28 To not be able to trade or at least have all of their money in like a political etf or something like that
0:31:31 and uh, it reminds me of um
0:31:36 Have you seen that uh video go viral of AOC and Elon musk flirting?
0:31:39 Yeah, it’s so good. We gotta play that
0:31:45 Oh, we should play that right now. I need to just play that clip. It is whoever made this you’re an absolute genius
0:31:48 I’ve looked I’ve tried to look up who made this this is like some anonymous account
0:31:53 I watch that video like I’ve seen it a bunch of times and I rewatch it all the time
0:31:54 It’s so funny
0:31:59 It’s one of the funniest things and they needed they need to do on with AOC and this guy matt
0:32:04 Uh of them like fake flirting because it’s the one thing because I think he’s pretty far right
0:32:11 She’s pretty far left and they’ve come together on this one like idea that politicians should not be able to trade
0:32:13 Uh from individual accounts, and I think it’s pretty funny
0:32:18 Yeah
0:32:20 That’s uh, that’s pretty wild
0:32:24 Do you want to do uh one more thing? What’s this blue collar side hustle?
0:32:26 All right, so i’m bringing it back in old segment
0:32:30 We used to have called the blue collar side hustle of the month and this is
0:32:33 The goal here is these aren’t the biggest businesses
0:32:37 But they’re straightforward businesses that anybody could do if you were just willing to work hard
0:32:42 And so the blue collar side hustle is I saw forget who it was chris corner or somebody like that
0:32:44 They’re talking about this woman in dallas
0:32:50 Who has this big business awesome porch pumpkins. Have you seen this the bass the bass?
0:32:53 Wow, you’re really into this tell tell me more
0:33:02 All right, so so the the business idea here is uh every fall for you know, sort of halloween and thanksgiving people like to decorate
0:33:04 their front porch
0:33:06 with a bunch of pumpkins
0:33:11 And what she does is she will do that as a service so she’ll bring to your house a package
0:33:16 I mean you can go to her website and you can see she’s it’s popped up currently sold out
0:33:21 But you can see like three or four packages. There’s like the luxury package which is 1350 so
0:33:27 Uh, $1,300 there’s like kind of the medium one $750 and there’s a smaller one for like 300 bucks
0:33:33 And what she’ll do is she’ll come and she’ll decorate your front front porch the doorstep all that with
0:33:38 A bunch of really cool variety of of you know fall, you know harvest type pumpkins
0:33:43 And this is all she does and that the numbers that came out was that basically she’s done
0:33:48 900 jobs that range, you know from this 300 bucks to you know, 1500 bucks
0:33:52 And the estimate was that she might have done a million dollars in revenue in a year
0:33:56 off of uh off of those 900 jobs
0:34:03 And how cool is this just a you know a mom in dallas who is going to people’s porches and just putting out pumpkins
0:34:08 And wow you can kind of hustle your way into a pretty cool business for a very small window of time
0:34:10 I think that’s the other cool part about this is that uh
0:34:13 It’s only going to take place in a few months out of the year
0:34:18 And then she posted on instagram and that kind of drives the flywheel and then people like us talk about this
0:34:21 And it gets on the local news and then she’s built a kind of cool business here
0:34:23 And we talked about this last year
0:34:27 I think one of my blue color side also last year was the guy who came and did christmas lights at my house
0:34:31 And he did it for you know half the houses in our neighborhood and I realized like wow
0:34:34 In kind of a six to ten week period
0:34:38 You know this guy probably pulled in you know
0:34:42 60 to 100 grand of side income just by putting up lights him and and he had one guy working with him
0:34:46 And I think this is the extension of that it turns out that it wasn’t just christmas lights
0:34:50 You could also do it with fall pumpkins and I’m sure you could do it with halloween decorations as well
0:34:53 If you wanted to expand into that so to me this is an example
0:34:57 Of a blue collar side hustle now to be clear. I don’t think she made a million dollars
0:34:59 I think she might have generated a million dollars revenue
0:35:02 Apparently she’s got like 15 delivery guys and like a bunch of other stuff
0:35:05 Yeah, but even if she made 200 000 dollars
0:35:10 I would bet it’s like you know 100 grand is my my guess being conservative. I would sort of assume that
0:35:15 But that’s still pretty great for what’s probably a you work, you know
0:35:17 Two months out of the year or three months out of the year
0:35:22 Straightforward business that you could do that doesn’t require you know any special skills and it’s pretty fun
0:35:25 You know for somebody who’s got you know a little bit of design taste. I think this is great
0:35:31 All right, if you’re listening to this pod I already know something about you
0:35:34 You my friend are nosy
0:35:39 You want to know the numbers behind all of these things that we’re talking about how much money people make
0:35:44 How much money people spend how much money businesses make you want to know all of this people’s net worth all of it
0:35:49 Well, I’ve got good news for you. So my company Hampton. We’re a private community for CEOs
0:35:55 We do this thing where we survey our members and we ask them all types of information like how much money they’re paying themselves
0:35:58 How much money they’re paying a lot of their employees what their team?
0:36:03 My bonuses are what their net worth is what their portfolio looks like we ask all these questions
0:36:07 But we do it anonymously and so people are willing to reveal all types of amazing information
0:36:12 So if you really cannot google you can’t find anywhere else and you could check it out at joinhampton.com
0:36:16 Click the reports section on the menu. Click the salary and compensation report
0:36:21 It’s going to blow your mind. You’re going to love this stuff. Check it out now back to the pod
0:36:28 My wife’s uh, um, not working right now, you know, she we had a kid and she’s uh, quit her job
0:36:32 And like she’s thinking of these things that she can do she’s like, you know, I don’t
0:36:37 I can’t commit to a 40 hour work week or 50 52 weeks out the year
0:36:44 But I would love to have a project, you know, something that I can do and when I see projects like this, I’m like
0:36:50 That’s awesome. That could be perfect. Do you know what I mean? Uh, and and so she’s like looking for projects
0:36:55 But you know, you can’t like you can’t commit to a nine to five or at least you can’t commit to a nine to five for
0:37:01 The entire year, but you could for a little sprints. And so I love ideas like that that could satisfy that need
0:37:04 Yeah, yeah, exactly. My wife works only on Wednesdays
0:37:08 So she works one day of the week two works kind of like an eight hour day on that day
0:37:14 And it’s a super creative kind of job. I can’t go into all the details, but it’s very creative. So it’s fun
0:37:19 Um, it’s with somebody she really likes so co-worker comes over they work together for eight hours day
0:37:21 She’s no lot then she doesn’t have it doesn’t spill over
0:37:24 So like the next day and the next day after that she doesn’t have to like
0:37:27 follow through on all the deliverables from the meeting or anything like that
0:37:32 And we didn’t plan for that but that’s we kind of stumbled into but what is basically the perfect
0:37:37 amount of work for her because we got three little kids and she wants to be a stay at home mom, but also
0:37:40 It’s pretty easy to just go nuts
0:37:43 You know like to just be because it’s groundhog day when you have three little kids
0:37:47 You are doing the same routine every single day and as much as you love your kids
0:37:50 Like it is nice to have a small break
0:37:53 Some project you can put your creative energy into a person
0:37:57 that’s not your family member that you can get to talk to that day and
0:38:01 You know not have to deal with the kids for you know, eight hours is is a huge win for her
0:38:04 Dude after this problem be like babe
0:38:07 What do you what do you know about pumpkins open the trunk?
0:38:12 Like I love the homepage everything. It’s a trunk full of like 65 pumpkins
0:38:15 I love this shit dude
0:38:16 I think this is fantastic
0:38:20 And I’m sure that there’s like some type of like artful like aesthetic or you know
0:38:23 Like you got to have like some type of eye, but uh
0:38:26 And it would be silly of me to like be like anyone could do this
0:38:30 But it definitely seems learnable. This seems very learnable
0:38:33 Anyone can do this not anyone will do this
0:38:36 But but I do think this is not like
0:38:37 above
0:38:41 You know most people’s means to be able to do to be able to pull this off
0:38:46 You know what I would do let’s say I wanted to do this. How would you how would you approach this? You know, I would not
0:38:48 Go into the pumpkin business right away
0:38:55 What I would do is I would go door to door and I would have basically like three photographs of what the front can look like
0:38:59 Uh, what what packages you have and I would just go to door go door to door
0:39:01 And I would say I’m going to knock on a hundred doors
0:39:05 I’m not gonna hundred doors in my neighborhood and I’m basically going to say hey
0:39:09 Um, just wanted to let you know I do this for families in the area
0:39:12 I can make your porch look really great. Is this something you’d be interested in?
0:39:16 Um, and then try to see does anybody is anybody interested in basically if people are interested
0:39:22 That’s the your preorder and then you basically go buy the inventory you need to go fulfill just that demand
0:39:26 And then as soon as I get some I would take photos of that I would ask them
0:39:29 Can I uh, you know, would you mind if I use this for my website for my marketing?
0:39:30 They would say yes
0:39:35 And if they say yes, then I would go to I would now have better marketing material that I would go to the next door with
0:39:41 And I would say, um, you know, we did this there and I would try to have something if I could maybe one branded pumpkin
0:39:45 That’s kind of like this was done by the you know
0:39:49 The local pumpkin queen or whatever it is right and like have my my domain on one of them
0:39:53 If I if I could try to get people to be able to go find me from there
0:39:57 And then go and upcharge them when they fucking start to rot and you got to get rid of them
0:40:01 Well, there is a there is a pickup or like a cleanup fee, right that you do at the end
0:40:02 Same thing with the Christmas lights guys
0:40:05 Like yeah, then you pay me up you pay me to put them up and you pay me to put them take them down
0:40:08 And so you get both sides of it
0:40:14 I also think that this is one where you could if you ever go read like these pr books that were like local pr news jacking
0:40:19 So like local news is pretty much devoid of good stories
0:40:23 And so you can see this if you ever turn on like your local news channel
0:40:26 There y’all this restaurant you know got flagged for this thing
0:40:30 They’re looking for you know good local feel-good stories
0:40:32 And so as soon as you get a little bit going and then you could say
0:40:40 Whatever single mom who’s making thousands of dollars decorating their you know their neighbor’s porches
0:40:42 And so as soon as I get just enough momentum
0:40:47 My goal would be to get to the new local news and I would go them and make my pitch for the story
0:40:48 And I would try to get it
0:40:53 You know try to get my story on there for that local news and then what I would do
0:40:57 Is I would take that that news story right you’re stacking the marketing chips
0:41:01 And then you could even run ads on that local news story that article
0:41:03 In your area dude, I grew up
0:41:06 Like with a big steep driveway
0:41:09 And then after there was a small street and then there was like a park
0:41:12 And it was it was as if I was like the park was like a canyon
0:41:19 And one month after Halloween it was a tradition at my house and my parents
0:41:23 This was one of the more redneck things that my father has ever done
0:41:28 Which was we would take all 20 of our pumpkins and we would let them roll down our hill
0:41:36 Straight running of the bulls straight into the middle of the park and I up until like uh, I was like 25
0:41:38 I thought it was okay
0:41:41 Because if you have like a banana peel or something
0:41:46 I’m like you just like fucking toss it into the street like it doesn’t matter like we used to put our pumpkins like in the street
0:41:51 Like it doesn’t matter right that’s not littering. Turns out that is littering by the way like you can’t like just like
0:41:56 We’re all of like November or whatever. There’d be like the
0:41:58 20
0:42:01 Rotting pumpkins in the middle of the middle of this park
0:42:06 And I’m like if you’re gonna go play flag football that month like look out for the rotting pumpkins at the parks
0:42:13 Through in the middle of that fucking park. Yeah, you needed the opposite of the news story. It’s like local family terrorizes park
0:42:15 rotting pumpkins again
0:42:20 Dude, I thought I was like acceptable. It’s like it’s like, oh, just put it back to its home. I’m just throwing this
0:42:24 Throwing this fucking banana peel and all our garbage right in the middle of a park
0:42:26 um
0:42:28 Where do you want to go from here?
0:42:32 Uh, I think we wrapped this one. So we got the do nothing man the loneliness epidemic
0:42:38 We have uh the autopilot marketing stunt and then we got the blue collar side hustle that anybody could do door to door
0:42:40 All right, let’s do it. That’s it. That’s the pop
0:42:45 I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to
0:42:51 I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let’s travel never looking back
0:42:53 Bye
0:42:55 You
0:42:57 You
0:43:07 [BLANK_AUDIO]
Episode 634: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk about Shoji Morimoto, the Japanese guy who’s making $80k/yr renting himself out to friendless people, Autopilot’s viral marketing stunt, PLUS how to make $1M in 8 weeks.
—
Show Notes:
(0:00) The Do Nothing Man: $80K/yr for doing nothing
(4:23) The new male situationship
(11:24) Setting long term intentions
(14:06) Non-sexual companionship-as-a-service
(21:52) Professional grievers
(24:18) Autopilot’s badass marketing stunt
(32:37) Blue Collar Side Hustle: Porch Pumpkins ($1M in 8 weeks)
—
Links:
• Rent a Friend – https://rentafriend.com/
• Papa – https://www.papa.com/
• Sugar Daddy – https://www.sugardaddy.com/
• Autopilot – https://www.joinautopilot.com/
• Porch Pumpkins – https://porchpumpkins.com/
—
Check Out Shaan’s Stuff:
Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd
—
Check Out Sam’s Stuff:
• Hampton – https://www.joinhampton.com/
• Ideation Bootcamp – https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/
• Copy That – https://copythat.com
• Hampton Wealth Survey – https://joinhampton.com/wealth
• Sam’s List – http://samslist.co/
My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano