The guy who gets paid $80K/yr to do nothing

All right, Sam, I gotta tell you about this. There is a guy in Japan Who I read about, who is making eighty thousand dollars a year. For doing Nothing.

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to And they call him the Do Nothing Man. Have you ever heard of this guy? No, what you read about this? 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 work. And his Boss. called him a do nothing man. And he like it was insulting him.

as like, dude, you you just do nothing, you don't bring add anything, you don't provide any value. And he says that he thought to himself and he goes Hm. Is there value in society for a man who does nothing? And he went online and he posted a tweet. Saying I'm car I'm starting a new service. It's called

Rental people who do nothing. And it basically was like I will be A 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 and he Says nothing. It's pretty much a silent companion. Completely

Non physical, non sexual 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 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.

He won't really say anything. And if you ask him a question, he'll give you a simple answer, but It's really just the presence of another human body. And this guy made eighty thousand dollars in a year renting himself out. And he Then he wrote a book, a memoir, called Rental People Who Do the The Man Who Didn Did Nothing or The Rental People Who Do Nothing. And he's continued to do this now for years. So he did it before Covid.

That Covid hit, so we couldn't do it. And then he started it back up again. And now he doesn't even charge for the hangout. He used to charge sixty eight dollars for a session. And now he just says, just cover the food and travel. And then I'll hang out with you for free. And so he travels around and he gets paid to go he gets paid for his food and his his his event tickets and all all the things that people want to do with them.

And uh this is what this guy does. Isn't this fascinating? What I'm I'm reading the uh comments on his Goodreads account for his book. What were the reasons why people wanted to hang out with him? 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 there's a Loneliness epidemic. It's kinda crazy. They have words for this that we don't even have words for. So have you ever heard this term like

Hikiko Mori. You know, I haven't. I've not heard that term. No. I've not heard that word before. That's a new word for me. So it's a word that they have for severe social withdrawal. It's total withdrawal from society. So typically That's kinda like incel. in the States. So typically it'll be um it's mostly men.

who are living at home, still in their parents' home. But they are completely recluse. They don't work. They don't socialize. And there are like Estimated two million men in Japan.

that are in this category. For six months they basically have not engage with anybody in society. Uh so that's like kind of one problem is this tr growing trend of Hikiko Mori. And then there's another word. I think Kodokushi, which is

Uh It's basically death without being cared for. 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 nobody knew that they passed away. And This is like a number that the last 10 years has doubled. I can think 70,000 people died this way, where they're found.

Weeks or months later. And These trends are all like very concerning. So like in Japan single person household. So you know, no no wife, no no family members, no friends, just living alone by yourself. is now thirty eight percent of the population.

Which is It was that's like triple where it was like five or seven years ago. They appointed a minister of loneliness in Japan because This has become such a big problem. And so this guy Doing this is almost like a an art statement in a way.

about this to bring awareness to this huge problem that people are just really freaking lonely in Japan everywhere, but really in Japan it's even more heightened. Dude, let me explain something to you that's very similar to this. And I'm gonna I wanna hear your opinion of this premise that I have. And I also I think it's a good premise and I think a lot of people can learn from. So I don't live in Austin anymore. I went and visited it again for a wedding. And I realized how lucky I was to have a community there of just the the best people on earth. They I considered them family.

Dude, I saw your Live, laugh, love. post where you posted a picture with your friends and you said This is wealth. And I thought he's not wrong.

He's not wrong, but he's also not Sam Par. What is going on? W this is wealth? What new era have you entered? I've I've entered a very special era. Let me explore. It's weird. Ever since having a kid, the things that I thought I cared about I don't care about as much. And so I realize I'm kind of like going all into this like emotional side of like caring about others, whatever, all that stupid shit. But listen. So I can't even say it. It's like her saying the sentence, but we we believe it. Yeah. So before uh so I basically lived in San Francisco and I moved from San Francisco to Austin. My best friend at the time, Neville Madora, he lived there. And I had this conversation with her before I moved. I go, Neville, I'm thinking about moving to Austin. One of the big reasons I'm moving is because of you. I want to be with you. I want to be near you. Would you be willing to be in you.

I would have been you, you could say. You could say. Yeah. It goes a better way than than that one way. Uh and so uh 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, 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 Let's live life together, like you can count on me, I'll count on you, whatever. And when you think about that, that's strange, but if you really dive deep, it's actually not that weird because that's what you did with your girlfriend, probably. Like you're like, Hey, so uh should we put a label on this? You know what I mean? And you do a girlfriend, a boyfriend, and then you make a whole huge ordeal to where you Uh get engaged. You get down on one knee. And there's like a there's like a big like epic thing where like you were boyfriend and girlfriend, now you are officially

a fiance and then you get married where you basically you know talk about you take a vow in front of people who have flown from around the world to witness This vow. And that's normal. But we don't really do that with friends. And so I've recently moved in order to be closer to family. And so now I'm trying to like develop friends at a new town. And I'm starting to go to them and I'm having this formal conversation and it it it really weirds people out.

Uh right away, by the way, obviously. But after a a few minutes, the men in in particular, they're like Oh, I kinda get this in Kinda feels nice. It kinda feels nice to like talk about how we're gonna do life together or how we can counter each other or like to set uh you know, to define the relationship. Let's make this real. So here's what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is what this guy about uh in J in Japan is experiencing is this lonely thing. And you're talking about people living by themselves. uh thirty eight percent of the time people dying and for weeks not being found. What I'm saying is I think a lot of people experience loneliness. And I think one key way to uh get over it, particularly men, men in particular, once they approach their fifties and sixties, you basically never make a new friend again. Uh, just like you never go to the doctor, you don't go to the dentist, and you don't make new friends. But I think there are ways around this.

And it's around having these formal conversations. And in particular, one extreme example is to move places Час For for the sole reason of like this friend being there. Do you know what I mean? I know exactly what you mean. Uh, but I guess what I'm saying is what is the conversation you're having with people, especially new people. So I get the the Neville one because he was already A really close friend from San

You guys he was in San Francisco, right? That's where you guys originally became friends. No, he would spend his summers in San Francisco, uh, and we would like hang out and then he would go back to Austin because Austin was unbearable. So you guys were already really close, and you're like, Hey, I wanna move there. And I really like I'm kinda moving there for you, or I wanna move right really close to you and like let's do life together. And I'm a big fan of this. I th I've 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 Um I was asked about going into business with his brothers, and he goes, Well, that's to me, that's the point of life. You you find the people you love and you do life with them. And that became like a A very simple

operating philosophy for me. So I I'm a definite be deep believer in that. What are you doing now with new people? Cause I'm curious how that conversation goes when it's not somebody you've already been friends with for for five or 10 years. I've only done it well once so far. And I just kinda like I hope they're listening. Dude, it it's weird. Like it's definitely like it's definitely weird. But I'd be like, hey, so um

You know, I'm looking to like have like close friends who I can rely on. And I wanna let you know that like you are that to me right now, where Uh, I hope I can rely on you for important things and I'm gonna let you know that You can rely on me for stuff and like whatever I have, it's you can use whatever I have. I got your back no matter what. And I know this sounds weird and everything, 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. And I make jokes about it and I realize how silly this sounds.

But it was actually really great. It made me feel really good. This is like how swinging starts. Um, so so actually I have a a sort of related story. One time I was doing a uh Uh angel investment, a deal. By the way, we need we need a word for this. You were saying in Japan they have a word for Japanese word for it. We need a Japanese word for this because when you don't have words to label these things, we need to define this word. It's gotta be explicitly heterosexual, explicitly not involving swinging. It's gotta be like some type of reciprocity or like I'm willing to give more than fifty percent. to this relationship. Do you know what I mean? Like this idea of like a good relationship you had to be willing to overgive.

So I just went into Google Translate and I wrote male friends that don't have sex and it says Sikusu No Otoko Tomodachi. So I think that's the current phrase for it. Tomodachi for short. All right, what were we saying about agile investing? So I was I was trying to do an angel investment. This was maybe I don't know. twelve years ago or something. And I had no money.

And I wanted to invest in this company and I finally realized like oh I have friends who have money And I could probably go to them and I could probably pitch them a deal and if they do the deal, they'll probably give me a little piece of the of the of the upside if it works out. And so I go to a friend I go to my buddy Sulli and I say, um, hey, I wanna invest in this company. He's like, All right, great, let's do it.

And he's like, Cool. So for the economics of this, like how do you want to do this? And I was like, I I don't really know. What's the norm? He's like, Well the norm is probably this where you would get, you know Like ten, fifteen percent of my carry. 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, it's fair

I was kinda thinking of transaction. I was like, I just wanna make sure this is fair, like I don't wanna I don't want this to be you know, one sided or the other. He goes, Let's make it one sided in your favor. And he goes, I don't care what happens on this deal. What I care about is us doing deals together for the next twenty years. And

First of all, i it was not just hollow words,'cause he was giving more action on the deal to me that he did not need to. Uh I wasn't asking for it. You know, did that on on On his own. The second one was the way he signaled that like, hey, I'm looking for twenty years of doing stuff together.

was kind of intentional and new in a way that I hadn't really uh heard. And then I started doing that with other people. So when I met up with Ben and I was like, Ben, hey, you wanna do this project together? He's like, Yeah, we did a project together. It went great. do another project earlier. We did another project together. Went great. And I was like, hey, let's start a business together. But I what I told him was I was like I think you're awesome and I think we work really well together. I want to

Like I wanna be in business with you for twenty years. So let's basically only make decisions that will Increase the likelihood of us doing this together for twenty years. And That really changed the game. So that one little way of being intentional that this I want this relationship to go beyond this transaction, this

this moment in time and saying, like, I think you're awesome and I want to Be doing stuff with you for a long time. That has really uh helped me or changed the way that I viewed things, but also the way that other people receive it. Because then they know They they know that I'm putting my foot forward and saying, Yes, I think you're awesome and I can see us doing plenty of things together. Let's do this for the long haul, which I think settles everybody down and gets everybody out of a sort of selfish or short term uh mindset.

Just supposed to guys being dudes. You know? That's what it comes down to. We just uh it's just much uh us guys. We wanna be dudes. Tomodachi baby. Tomodachi. Okay. Let's be bros. You want to be bros. Here's some, I guess, like related things to this. So uh

So back to this guy, by the way, this Shoji Moremoto. So this guy Thirty nine years old. Look at his Twitter. His Twitter has four hundred and twenty thousand followers. He's gotten like very famous off of this. He said that before Covet he was making three hundred dollars a day. So he's doing this sixty eight dollars a session, whatever whatever.

And he was just going to coffee shops and playing video games and doing, you know, random stuff with each other. Twitter's harder these Japanese, I'll tell you what, they got a different word for everything. Okay. So uh his service is called rental people who do nothing. So I started thinking, do we have this here? Because loneliness is not a Only a ja only a Japan thing, obviously it's everywhere. And actually there are some things like this. So go to rent a friend dot com.

I don't know if you've ever seen this. No, you know what, Sean, I'm proud to say I haven't actually been on this website yet. Friend seeking friends. Okay, so now type in like just type in San Francisco. and click search. And then you're gonna see just like a huge list of

Totally platonic friends who are down to hang out and just have a day together. It's pretty wild that there's this whole I didn't even know this existed. It's Craigslist for Friends. It's pretty pretty cool, right? And it actually has a lot of traffic. The you know

This is a little sus. Uh uh there's a lot of pretty women with full body shots on here. Yeah, this might be like I found a laundromat and I'm like, this place is doing a huge amount of business. And it's like, well, it's not just a laundromat, right? Like they're laundering other things besides clubs here. Like so I I don't know exactly the the social norms here, but I'm gonna take it at face value that this is rent to friend, that this is truly for for friendship. And I've read some articles of people doing this. And what they said was they were like, you know It was actually in some ways kinda nice.

To have Just Someone on demand that I could go do this thing with, maybe a plus one for a uh an event or to go to a concert together or whatever it is. Didn't want to go by myself, but I still wanted to go. They're like, but the other side of it was it was had this like weird dynamic of Wait, by the way, does rent a friend mean I pay them money? Yeah. You pay the money to hang out.

Uh this is like where you get a hooker. This like there's Valerie out here is like in a bikini. And she's twenty and like really good looking. It might be, but I read this article on like whatever, Vox or whatever. Somebody w went and they did this. So they rented a friend on this site. And so they what they said was they were like, Yeah, it was uh you know, I pay for this person to come hang out with me.

They're like you know, one of the things and and they talk to them about like the other jobs that they've done. They're like, Yeah, it's a lot sometimes for older people or it's for you know, somebody who's, you know, just sort of been very busy with work, hasn't really developed their social life. And one of the things that they talked about was like It made me a more rude person because they're like, Oh, if I'm paying you, then this is all on my turn. I'm gonna we're gonna do what I want. We're gonna and they're like there were some downsides to like there's upsides of wow, this companionship on demand. And on the other side, there was some downsides, which was like

The power dynamic was off. I was too aware, at least the journalist was like I was too aware of the the the the differentiation here. So that's one one business. There's another one that you've probably heard of called Papa. Do you know Papa? No, it's Papa. This is for your grandparents. So it's basically a lot of people have, you know, grandparents who are alone. Both they're both lonely, but also kinda need help like

maybe little errands that they can run or somebody to help them when they're going to the store just in case anything happens or to make You know. A little easier to move around. And this was a Silicon Valley startup that was basically like you pay for this. You pay for a a basically like a task rabbit specifically to help older people. And it's something less than kind of like a live in live in care.

But it's more than You know, me once a month calling my grandparents. And so that's uh this company was v uh I remember when this came out, it was sort of this crazy idea. And it was backed by some investors. I remember Alexis Ahanian, the guy who created Reddit, he backed it. He said something like uh Yeah, there's eleven thousand

You know boomers that are are retiring like every day, or something crazy like that. Some some huge number. And he's like the you know, our our aging population is growing very fast, and we're gonna need services that are gonna help them. And this company's valued over a billion dollars. Holy shit. I'm looking at their funding. They've raised hundreds millions, uh two hundred fifty million. At least two hundred fifty million, yeah. Soft bank put a bunch of money into it. And they were valued at one point four billion. And it's literally

a sort of like on demand companionship for older people. Dude, have you ever met a sugar baby? Have I ever met a sugar baby? I think I have, but I I don't know if it was like official.

Or if it was just like a uh Like You know, there's like the the website where it's like This is an official arrangement. And then there's like you know.

Just the all the just happening in the wild. So I think I just met someone who is happening in the wild. So there's sugardaddy dot com. Where you like go and you meet someone. And it gets a lot of traffic. And I was talking to this one. Let me just make sure I don't get targeted for ads for the rest of my life. I was talking to my wife about this the other day'cause she uh

uh somehow knew someone who was a sugar baby or Or and I think there's like reality TV shows about it too. Which yeah. You definitely have seen'cause you guys have like the same TV taste. Uh, but but I actually think that this is like A fairly Fair trade.

Uh as long as it's consensual, obviously, but I'm I'm shockingly on board with having a sugar baby. 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. 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. It's no different than wanting to rent this Japanese guy to come hang out with you.

Yeah, and w you know, I don't really have any judgments on this. Like I don't I've never experienced this. I don't really know the lifestyle. I'll try not to be, you know. Two judgmental things I don't really understand. What I'm fascinated by is just this phenomenon. And again, like

Uh, I remember when I first moved to Silicon Valley I met the guy who was the first P at Twitter. Um, and he I t asked him, I was like Man, that that's amazing. You pick Twitter really early on. There's only fourteen people there or something like that at the time. How'd you know? Did you like Was was it obvious that Twitter was gonna be a big deal?

He goes, No, everybody thought Twitter was weird. Stupid, useless, just like a strange thing to do. And he goes, Well I remember when I joined, somebody asked me, Why do you join? He goes Because you can't deny the phenomenon. Meaning

When you observe people doing a behavior that kind of makes no sense or seems odd, seems strange, seems weird to you. The natural inclination is to push that away and be like, Oh, that's That's stupid. That's weird. And you sort of r resist it. He goes as an investor or somebody, you know, in in where where we worked and the

Technology space. You wanna lean into the phenomenon. You wanna understand, wow, why is it that people are watching other people play video games? Twitch, right? Why is it that people are just Texting out to a random group of strangers what they're having for lunch. Twitter. Why is it that people are getting into strangers' cars instead of taxis? Uber, right? Like

The why are people sleeping on other people's couches instead of hotels? Airbnb. All of the biggest winners tended to be These Weird behaviors, things that you know either broke a social norm or sounded a little sketch. And

Once you sort of wrap that into, you know, a more uh safe and acceptable behavior, it unlocked a pretty big market. And so I've always tried to have I I've I've tried to learn to have a more open mind about this stuff. And so Would I be surprised.

Yeah. the way that getting into people's, you know, sleeping on couches or getting into strangers' cars, like would I be surprised if companionship as a service, like totally non sexual companionship as a service was a big deal? I would absolutely not be surprised because I think that probably by default most people are are lonelier than they want. Yeah, and I actually think that this is not a new phenomenon. I think that the it's a phenomenon uh it's a thing that's always existed.

Now let me get let me get biblical on your ass. I was uh I was uh raised Catholic, so I went to Catholic school my whole life, so I had to read the Bible all the time. Did you ever read the the story about Jesus how he was like carrying the cross up like the hill or something to like You know, to be executed. No, I didn't didn't read that one.

Well, yeah, yeah, I don't know. It's like part of culture a little bit. Uh but like There's a at one point there's like a line where like these Professional women. These women who are professional, uh, I think they call'em whalers.

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 uh one there to grieve for this person. Um and like he like dismisses them and he's like, you know, don't Don't. Get me get this out of here.

Uh his direct quote was like get that nonsense out of this out of here or something like that. Uh no, but I actually think that is a thing at funeral home, by the way. uh at funeral homes where like you have like a griever who will come and And make and fill the room. Do you know what I'm saying? But these types of things have been around forever. And so I don't actually think it's particularly a new phenomenon. I think we've always felt this way. Now there's just interesting platforms to help solve the problem. Right, right. It's like those uh there's like these marketplaces now online to rent a crow. It's like oh you need a a crowd?

people who either love you or are protesting you, push this button. You'll I'll give you thirty Thirty people in a crowd today, right? And you know. politicians use this and uh brands use this. Like it it's a it's a It's a easy technology made it easier to coordinate. Um

By the way, there's a great tweet. Have you seen it where he's like Uh hey, I'm willing to show up. Looking like a mob boss at anyone's funeral, just so your friends and family feel like, man, you really have some shit going on that they didn't know about Dude, I bet you the uh rent a friend CEO or like company They're listening to this podcast and they're like

Oh that's so cute. So I thought that we were just so you could meet friends. Friends is in air quotes. By the way, if it's not friends, that's just me being me. Naive old me, just sucker for for for uh for whatever you tell. Okay. I I believe in humanity. There's hundreds of thousands of people right now collectively saying Aww. Can I tell you about another thing that I saw that I think you might have seen as well,'cause it happened at a UFC event a few weeks ago and I've been meaning to talk to you about this.

Yeah, what? Did you see at the recent I think it was at the Sphere event. Did you see a very interesting advertisement on one of the uh on the post during the UFC? 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. I mean explain it and then it maybe I'll remember. I'm watching the UFC pay-per-view and it's their first event that at the sphere. Uh in Las Vegas.

And I heard you bought tickets for it. Yeah, that's another story how I uh I actually ended up paying fifteen thousand dollars to not go to the sphere event, which is a a big L for me. Wait, you paid fifteen grand for tickets? So speaking of friends, uh, I was like, Hey, let me buy tickets for the sphere event. I heard Dana White talking about it.

And I was like, Oh wow. He says this is a one and done. It's gonna be something like you've never seen before, blah, blah, blah. So months ago, I just go online and I buy six tickets to the sphere. I think it was like after the ticket master fee. He's like, Twenty five. twenty seven grand or something like that. Oh my God. All right. And then I emailed a bunch of people who I haven't hung out with. uh, either ever or recently, and I was like, Hey Uh

Do you want to come to this event? And they're like, Yeah, this is awesome. And so some some of them said yeah, some of'em said, Oh I'll I'll try. Let me let me see if I can make it work.'Cause it was still months out. And then A bunch of things happened. Uh two of the people couldn't make it for like medical reasons.

Um the card for the sphere got way worse than it was supposed to be. It got way worse. I myself had just gotten sick like the two weeks prior to it. And so I like had just come off of like not being helpful at home to like oh wait, now I'm gonna go on a trip to Las Vegas after this. Not really the best game plan for me. And the ticket prices drop like crazy. So we ended up selling the tickets for like, you know, a third or something of whatever I paid for them. So Yeah. Not a not a good win for me.

But uh a great story that I got to tell here. So that was that. Ex Anyways. So then I'm watching it on TV. And I see on the post behind one of the fighters it says, Invest like a politician. Invest like a politician. What is that? That is uh kind of an amazing hook And I re realized, oh, this is that app.

that um I've been following for a little while. This guy, Chris, he's behind this app called Autopilot. And he came and he uh he went on Twitter and he explained this thing that they were doing, this stunt that they did around the UFC. So they They sponsored the invest like a politician. But they did a lot more than that. I just think it was a badass marketing stunt that I wanted to do. Yeah, he did like the the Tesla, the Cybertruck uh so check out this thread. So 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 the clips of this. All right. So What they did was they hired So th I guess the the premise of autopilot, I should say. is it's a investing app, but it's kind of like you basically pick who you want to follow their portfolio and you will invest Like let's say I wanted to just mimic Warren Buffett's portfolio.

I want to mimic, you know, some famous traders portfolio. I could do that. One of the traders that they follow is Nancy Pelosi, who everybody kind of knows is Uh you know, a legendary a legendary uh traitor in her own right. And so What they did was for the sphere event. They found a fake Pelosi impersonator. Do you see her there?

Uh, they find her on TikTok. And they hire her and they put her through hair and makeup and then she She goes to they fly her to Vegas and she goes to the event. And before the event, she starts interacting with all these influencers. So they go get Mike from uh you know the impulsive podcast. Yeah. And she's hanging out with she's playing blackjack with Mike. And then she meets up with the Nelk Boys and the Nelk Boys are like, Holy shit, it's Pelosi, and they're playing Blackjack with her. And then she gets um

Then she's in the crowd when Sugar Shawn O'Malley walks out. And she's in this hot pink pant suit. Power power pant suit like Pelosi. And it gets freeze framed and everybody's like, Holy shit is Nancy Pelosi at the UFC, and all these people are tweeting about this. And then she doesn't look like her at all. This model or actress is way better looking. It's like hot Pelosi. Yes, I'm not going to be able to actually kinda like Sarah Palin and Pelosi together is kind of what they got. Yeah, this boy looks is like legitimately a model. But go ahead. So then they got a truck a cyber truck.

And they wrapped it and it says Pelosi twenty twenty four. And it says invest like a politician, autopilot. And they drove this around Las Vegas getting just honked at and there's all these like TikToks. of people taking videos of this Pelosi twenty twenty four thing and if you look at their Google trends, they go from like nobody searching for them to like

You know, it spiked and hit one hundred. percent interest on that day of the event. And basically they were like, Yeah, we just took a risk. Spent a bunch of money on this. And uh let's give it a go. And I just thought it was a amazingly well done marketing stunt.

Did he say how much he spent on it? Uh I didn't ask him that, so I did talk to him. He goes he said We pulled it together in three weeks. We had the Pelosi idea. We came up with a bunch of research. They searched through TikTok for impersonators, went through agents, found an actress.

They hustled their way into m you know, getting kind of like collabing with the Delph boys and Mike during that event because they knew where they like to gamble. So they kind of arranged for them to bump into each other. And they're like, we got a bunch of downloads. It's more they're what he said was he goes, it was more expensive than just if we had just run, you know, Facebook ads. 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 then we believe that over time this is gonna pay off. And if you've seen they've done this actually in a bunch of bunch of interesting marketing things. So they did The Pelosi tracker. on Twitter, which has I don't know, hundreds of thousands of followers.

They have a Instagram account called politicians Politician trade tracker. Which has seven hundred and thirty thousand followers. And they'll post so like you know, like the last post was

They had called out weeks ago. 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. And they had flagged it as like hmm. Here's a politician trade that you want to be aware of.

We you know, they don't give financial advice, but they just tell you what the politicians are doing. And sure enough. in uh a month it's gone up thirty percent. This like random small mining stock Helcom mining company. So, you know, called it. And and and so they they follow these politicians, and that's what the whole account is. And I think They've they tapped into some

feeling of like outrage or wrongness that people have about what's going on, like why why Nancy Pelosi you know, outperforms hedge funds and Warren Buffett and her, you know, her trading track record. Um, they tapped into this feeling that like This is wrong and this should not be allowed. And they're using it for their own growth, which I think is great.

Dude, have you um Mm-hmm. Uh AOC and uh what's Parker Or Palmer Lucky's brother in law. Do you know who Palmer Lucky's brother in law is? Matt Gates? Yeah.

Him and uh AOC have like joined hands. for this for like the one thing that they've come together on is the fact that they want uh politicians to not be able to trade or at least have all of their money in like a political ETF or something like that. And uh it reminds me of um Have you seen that uh video go viral of AOC and Elon Musk flirting?

Yeah. We gotta play that. I've looked I've tried to look up who made this. It's like some anonymous account. I watch that video, like I've seen it a bunch of times, and I rewatch it all the time. It is so funny. It's one of the funniest things. And they need to do they need to do one with AOC and this guy, Matt. uh of them like fake flirting because it's the one thing because I think he's pretty far right. She's pretty far left. And they've cunned together on this one like idea that politicians should not be able to trade. uh from individual accounts. And I think it's pretty funny. Yeah. That's uh that's pretty wild.

Do you wanna do uh one more thing? What's this blue collar side hustle? All right, so I'm bringing back an old segment we used to have called the blue collar side hustle of the month. And this is The goal here is these aren't the biggest businesses, but they're straightforward businesses that anybody could do if you were just willing to work hard. And so the blue color side hustle is I saw I forget who it was, Chris Corner or somebody like that. They're talking about this woman in Dallas.

Who has his b business. Porch pumpkins. Have you seen this? Uh the best. The best. Wow, you're really into this. Tell me more.

All right, so so the the business idea here is Uh every fall. for you know, sort of h Halloween and Thanksgiving people like to decorate. Their front porch. uh with a bunch of pumpkins. Um, and what she does is she will do that as a service. So she'll

Bring to your house a package. I mean you can go to her website. And you can see she's It's popped up, currently sold out. But you can see like three or four packages. There's like the luxury package, which is thirteen fifty, so you know Uh uh thirteen hundred dollars.

There's like kind of the medium one, seven hundred fifty dollars, and there's the smaller one for like three hundred bucks. And what she'll do is she'll come and she'll decorate your front front porch, the doorstep, all that. With A bunch of really cool variety of of

Yeah, fall You know, harvest type pumpkins. And this is all she does. And then the numbers that came out was that basically she's done nine hundred jobs that range, you know, from This three hundred bucks to you know, fifteen hundred bucks.

And the estimate was that she might have done a million dollars in revenue in a year. off of uh off of those nine hundred jobs. 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 and Wow, you can kinda hustle your way into

a pretty cool business for a very small window of time. I think that's the other cool part about this is that Um It's only gonna take place in a few months out of the year. And then she posts it on Instagram and that kind of drives the flywheel. And then people like us talk about this and it gets on the local news. And then that she's built a kind of a cool business here. And we talked about this last year. I think one of my blue colour side also last year was the guy who came and did Christmas lights at my house and he did it for

You know, half the houses in our neighborhood. And I realized like wow. In kind of a six to ten week period. You know, this guy probably pulled in. you know, sixty to a hundred grand of side income just by putting up lights. Him and and he had one one guy working with him.

And I think this is the extension of that. It turns out that it wasn't just Christmas lights, you could also do it with fall pumpkins. And I'm sure you could do it with Halloween decorations as well. If you wanted to expand into that. So to me, this is an example. of a blue collar side hustle. Now to be clear I don't think she made a million dollars. I think she might have generated a million dollars revenue. Apparently she's got like fifteen delivery guys and like a bunch of other stuff.

Yeah, but even if she made two hundred thousand dollars. I would bet it's like, you know, a hundred grand. Is my my guess. Being conservative, I would sort of assume that. But that's still pretty great for what's probably a you work, you know, two months out of the year or three months out of the year. straightforward business that you could do that doesn't require, you know, any special skills. And it's pretty fun, you know, for somebody who's got

You know, a little bit of design taste. I think this is great. My wife's uh um not working right now. You know, she we had a kid and she's uh quit her job. And like she's thinking of these things that she can do. She's like, you know, I don't I can't commit to a forty hour work week or fifty week fifty two weeks out the year.

But I I I would love to have a project. You know, something that I can do. And when I see projects like this, I'm like That's awesome. That could be perfect. Do you know what I mean?

Uh, and s and so she's like looking for projects, 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 the entire year, but you could for little sprints. And so I love ideas like that that can satisfy that need. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. My wife works only on Wednesdays. So she works one day of the week.

She works kinda like an eight hour day on that day. And it's a super creative kind of job. I I I can't go into all the details, but it's very creative, so it's fun. Um It's with somebody she really likes, so a coworker comes over.

They work together for eight hours a day, she's no longer then she doesn't have it doesn't spill over. So like the next day and the next day after that, she doesn't have to like follow through and all the deliverables from the meeting or anything like that. And We didn't plan for that, but that's we kinda stumbled into what

What is basically the perfect amount of work for her. Because we got three little kids. And she wants to be a stay at home mom, but also It's pretty easy to just go nuts. You know, like to just be the'cause It's groundhog day when you have three little kids, you you are doing the same routine every single day. And as much as you love your kids,

Like it is nice to have A small break. some project you can put your creative energy into a person that that's not your family member that you can get to talk to that day. And you know, not have to deal with the kids for, you know, eight hours is is a huge win for her.

Dude, after that's probably like Babe. What do you what do you know about pumpkins? Open the trunk. Like I love the homepage, everything. It's a trunk. Full of like sixty five pumpkins. I love this shit, dude. I think this is fantastic. And I'm sure that there's like some type of like artful, like aesthetic, or you know, like you gotta have like some type of eye.

But uh And and it would be silly of me to like be like anyone could do this. But it definitely seems learnable. This seems very learnable. Anyone can do this. Not anyone will do this. But but I do think this is not like

Above you know, most people's means to be able to do to be able to pull this off. You know, what what I would do, let's say I wanted to do this, how would you, how would you approach this? Yeah, I would not go into the pumpkin business right away. 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 it's a good idea.

uh what what packages you have. And I would just go to door, go door to door and I would say, I'm gonna knock on a hundred doors. I'm knocking a hundred doors in my neighborhood. And I'm basically gonna say, Hey, um Just wanted to let you know, I do this for families in in the area. I can make your porch look really great. Is this something you'd be interested in? Um

And then try to see does anybody is anybody interested? And basically if people are interested, that's their pre order. And then you basically go. buy the inventory you need to go fulfill just that demand. And then as soon as I get some, I would take photos of that. I would ask them, Can I uh, you know, would you mind if I use this for my website or for my marketing? They would say yes.

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 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 That's kind of like this was done by the you know, the local pumpkin queen or whatever it is, right? And like have my my my domain on one of them if if I could if I could to try to get people to be able to go find me from there.

And then go and upcharge'em when they fucking start to rot and you gotta get rid of them. Well there is a there is a pickup or like a clean up fee, right, that you do at the end. Uh same thing with the Christmas lights guys like yeah, they do pay me I mean you pay me to put'em up and you pay me to put'em d take them down. And so you get both sides of it. I also think that this is one where you could if you ever go read like these PR books that were like local PR newsjacking. So like Local news is

Pretty much devoid of Good stories. And so you can see this if you ever turn on like your local news channel. Yeah, oh this restaurant is you know got flagged for this thing. They're looking for, you know, good local feel good stories. And so as soon as you get a little bit going and then you could say Whatever. Single mom who's making thousands of dollars. decorating their you know, their neighbor's porches.

And so as soon as I get just enough momentum, my goal would be to get to the new local news. And I would go to them and I'd make my pitch for the story and I would try to get it uh you know, try to get my story on air. For that local news. And then what I would do is I would take that that news story right you're stacking the marketing chips and then you could even run ads uh on that local news story, that article

Uh in your area. Dude, I grew up, um Like with a big steep driveway and then at there was a small street and then there was like a park. And it was it was as if I was like the park was like a canyon. And one month after Halloween, it was a tradition at my house.

And my parents This was one of the more more redback things that my father has ever done. Which was we would take all twenty of our pumpkins and we would or let them roll down our hill. Running of the bulls. Straight into the middle of the park. And I up until like uh I was like twenty five, I thought it was okay. If you have like a banana peel or something like you just like fucking toss it to the street, like it doesn't matter. Like we used to put our pumpkins like in the street. Like it it doesn't matter, right? That's not littering. Turns out that is littering, by the way. Like you can't like there's like We're all of like November or whatever. There'd be like

The twenty The rotting pumpkins in the middle of this in the middle of this park. And if like if you're gonna go play flag football that month, like Look out for the rotting pumpkins at the pars through in the middle of that fucking park. Yeah, you needed the opposite of the news story. It's like local family terrorizes park with rotting pumpkins again. Dude, I thought it was like acceptable to like uh it's like oh I'm just putting it back to its home. I'm just throwing the Throwing the fucking banana peel in all our garbage right in the middle of a park. Um

Where do you want to go from here? Uh I think we wrap this one. So we got the do nothing man, the loneliness epidemic. We have uh the autopilot marketing stunt and then we got the blue collar side hustle that any anybody could do door to door. Alright, let's do it. That's it. That's the part. I feel like I can rule the world of no way

Be what I want to I put my law in it like my day's off On the road less travel never looking back

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