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

Shaan Puri 0:00 All right, Sam, I gotta tell you about this. There is a guy in Japan [laughs] who I read about who is making $80,000 a year for doing nothing. [laughs] [upbeat music] They call him the Do Nothing Man. Have you ever heard of this guy?

Sam Parr 0:22 No. Where'd you read about this?

Shaan Puri 0:24 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. [laughs] And he, like, it was insulting him as, like, "Dude, you're- you just do nothing. You don't really add anything. You don't provide any value." And he says that he thought to himself, and he goes, "Hmm, 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." [laughs] And it's 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, and 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 $80,000 in a year renting himself out, and he... Then he wrote a book, a memoir called Rental People Who Do... The, The Man Who Did, Did Nothing, or Rental People Who Do Nothing. And he's continued to do this now for years. So he did it before COVID. Then COVID hit, so he 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 $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." [laughs] 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 wanna do with him, and, uh, this is what this guy does. Isn't this fascinating?

Sam Parr 2:14 What... I'm, I'm reading the, uh, comments on his Goodreads account for his book.

Shaan Puri 2:20 Yeah.

Sam Parr 2:20 What were the reasons why people wanted to hang out with him?

Shaan Puri 2:23 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, hikikomori?

Sam Parr 2:39 You know, I haven't.

Shaan Puri 2:40 [laughs]

Sam Parr 2:40 I have not heard that term.

Shaan Puri 2:41 Has it come up in Connecticut? [laughs]

Sam Parr 2:43 No, I have not heard that word before. That's a new word for me.

Shaan Puri 2:46 So it's a word that they have for severe social withdrawal. It's total withdrawal from society. So typically, uh, it'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, a estimated two million men in Japan that are in this category. For six months, they basically have not engaged with anybody in society. Uh, so that's, like, kinda one problem is this tr- growing trend of hikikomori. And then there's another word, I think it's 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. Like, I 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 households, so, you know, no, no wife, no, no family members, no friends, just living alone by yourself is now 38% of the population, which is... It w- That's, like, triple where it was, like, I don't know, 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.

Sam Parr 4:20 Dude, let me explain something to you that's very similar to this, and I'm gonna... I wanna

Sam Parr 4:23 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 consider them family.

Shaan Puri 4:40 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 Parr." What is going on? W- This is wealth? W- W- What new era have you entered?

Sam Parr 4:57 I've e- I've entered a very special era.

Shaan Puri 5:00 [laughs]

Sam Parr 5:00 And let me ex- Well, listen. 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 reali- I'm kind of, like, going all in to this, like, emotional side of, like, caring about others, whatever, all that stupid shit.

Shaan Puri 5:12 Yeah. [laughs]

Sam Parr 5:14 Uh, but listen, so [laughs]

Shaan Puri 5:18 We, like, can't even say it. It, like, hurts-

Sam Parr 5:19 Yeah

Shaan Puri 5:20 ... to say the sentence, but we, we believe it.

Sam Parr 5:22 Yeah. [laughs] 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 Medora, he lived there. And I had this conversation with him 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 wanna be with you. I wanna be near you. Would you be willing to-"

Shaan Puri 5:41 I wanna be in you.

Sam Parr 5:42 I wanna be in you, you could say.

Shaan Puri 5:43 [laughs]

Sam Parr 5:44 You could say. I, I-

Shaan Puri 5:45 I didn't know where you were going with that one. [laughs]

Sam Parr 5:46 Yeah. [laughs] It goes a better way than, than that one way.

Shaan Puri 5:52 Okay.

Sam Parr 5:52 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?"

Shaan Puri 6:19 [laughs]

Sam Parr 6:20 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, a s- 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 s- you know, talk about-

Shaan Puri 6:36 Take a vow

Sam Parr 6:37 ... yeah, you take-

Shaan Puri 6:37 Public vow

Sam Parr 6:38 ... 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 in 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-

Shaan Puri 6:59 [laughs]

Sam Parr 6:59 ... by the way, obviously. But after a, a few minutes, the men in, in particular, they're like, "Oh, I kinda get this, and it kinda feels nice."

Shaan Puri 7:07 [laughs]

Sam Parr 7:07 "It kinda feels nice to, like, talk about how we're gonna do life together, how we can count on each other, or, like, to set, uh, you know, to define the relationship."

Shaan Puri 7:14 And what is it that you're saying? The, let, let's, what, let's, let's make this real.

Sam Parr 7:17 Yeah. So-

Shaan Puri 7:17 What are, what are you actually saying?

Sam Parr 7:18 So here's what I'm saying. What I'm saying is what this guy about, uh, in J- in, in Japan is experiencing is this lonely thing. And you're talking about people living by themselves, uh, 38% of the time. You're talking about 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 50s and 60s, you basically never make a new friend again. Uh-

Shaan Puri 7:44 [laughs]

Sam Parr 7:45 ... 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 just for, for the sole reason of, like, this friend being there. Do you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri 8:01 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 F- you guys... He was in San Francisco, right? That's where you guys originally became friends?

Sam Parr 8:14 No. No, he would spend his summers in San Francisco, uh, and we would, like, hang out and then he would go back to Austin, 'cause Austin was unbearably hot in the summer.

Shaan Puri 8:19 All right. 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."

Sam Parr 8:28 Exactly.

Shaan Puri 8:28 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 asking about going into business with his brothers, and he goes, "W- 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- 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 5 or 10 years.

Sam Parr 8:57 I've only done it o- once so far. And I just kinda like [laughs]

Shaan Puri 9:02 I hope they're listening.

Sam Parr 9:03 Dude, it, it's weird. Like, it's definitely, like, it, it's definitely weird, but I'll 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 wanna 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-

Shaan Puri 9:40 [laughs]

Sam Parr 9:40 ... made me feel really good. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 9:43 This is, like, how swinging starts. Um, so, so actually I have a, a sort of related story. One time I was doing a, a, a angel investment, a deal

Sam Parr 9:52 By the way, we need, we need a word for this. You were saying in Japan they have a word for-

Shaan Puri 9:55 We need a Japanese word for it, by the way

Sam Parr 9:57 ... we need a Japanese word for this because-

Shaan Puri 9:59 [laughs]

Sam Parr 9:59 ... 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 rec- reciprocity or, like, I'm willing to give more than 50% y- to this relationship. Do you know what I mean? Like, this idea of, like, a good relationship, you have to be willing to overgive.

Shaan Puri 10:18 So I just went into Google Translate and I wrote male friends that don't have sex, and it says sekusu no otoko tomodachi. So I think that's the-

Sam Parr 10:25 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 10:26 ... current phrase for it. Tomodachi for short. [laughs]

Sam Parr 10:29 Um... All right. So a lot of people watch and listen to this show because they wanna hear us just tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. And really a lot of people who are listening, they have a full-time job and they wanna start something on the side, a side hustle. Now, a lot of people message Shaan and I and they say, "All right. I wanna start something on the side. Is this a good idea? Is that a good idea?" And again, what they're really just saying is, "Just give me the ideas." Well, my friends, you're in luck. So my old company, The Hustle, they put together 100 different side hustle ideas, and they have appropriately called it The Side Hustle Idea Database. It's a list of 100 pretty good ideas, frankly. I went through them. They're awesome. And it gives you how to start them, how to grow them, things like that. Gives you a little bit of inspiration. So check it out. It's called The Side Hustle Idea Database. It's in the description below. You'll see the link. Click it, check it out. Let me know in the comments what you think. All right. What were you saying about angel investing?

Shaan Puri 11:24 So I was, I was trying to do an angel investment. This was maybe, I don't know, 12 years ago or something. And I had no money, and I wanted to invest in this company, and I'd 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 Suli, 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 wanna 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 10, 15% of my carry, but you know, we could do whatever you want." And I was like, "Well, you know, I just wanna make sure you're, you know, it's fair." I was kind of thinking transactional. 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 20 years." And first of all, it, 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. He just perf- you know, did that on, on, on his own. The second was the way he signaled that like, "Hey, I'm looking for 20 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, went great. Wanna do another project together? We did another project together. It 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 20 years. So let's basically only make decisions that will increase the likelihood of us doing this together for 20 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 wanna 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 could 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.

Sam Parr 13:45 Just a bunch of guys being dudes.

Shaan Puri 13:46 [laughs]

Sam Parr 13:47 You know? [laughs] That's, that's what it comes down to. We just, uh, it's just a bunch of us guys, we wanna be dudes, you know?

Shaan Puri 13:54 Tomodachi, baby.

Sam Parr 13:55 But-

Shaan Puri 13:55 Tomodachi, okay? [laughs]

Sam Parr 13:57 [laughs] Let's just be bros.

Shaan Puri 13:59 I'm gonna-

Sam Parr 13:59 You wanna be bros?

Shaan Puri 13:59 I'm celebrating that.

Sam Parr 14:00 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 14:00 Um, okay, so here's some, I guess like related things to this. So,

Shaan Puri 14:06 uh, so back to this guy, by the way, this Sho- Shoji Morimoto. So this guy, 39 years old. Look at his Twitter. His Twitter has 420,000 followers. He's gotten like very famous off of this. He said that before COVID he was making $300 a day, so he's doing this $68 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. [laughs] Um-

Sam Parr 14:27 Dude, he's hard... It's, Twitter's hard to... These Japanese, I tell you what, they got a different word for everything.

Shaan Puri 14:31 [laughs] 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 in Ja- only in Japan thing. Obviously it's everywhere. And actually there are some things like this. So go to rentafriend.com. I don't know if you've ever seen this.

Sam Parr 14:53 Rent a... No. You know what, Shaan? I'm proud to say I haven't actually been on this website yet.

Shaan Puri 14:58 Friends 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?

Sam Parr 15:18 And it actually has a lot of traffic. Th- you know, this is a little sus. Uh, uh, there's a lot of pretty women with full body shots on here.

Shaan Puri 15:27 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 [laughs] they're, they're laundering other things besides clothes here. [laughs]

Sam Parr 15:38 Like-

Shaan Puri 15:38 Uh, so I, I don't know exactly-

Sam Parr 15:40 Yeah

Shaan Puri 15:40 ... the, the social norms here, but I'm gonna take it at face value that this is Rent a 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, a, an event, or to go to a concert together or whatever it is. Didn't wanna go by myself, but I still wanted to go. They were like, but the other side of it was it w- had this like weird dynamic where it was like-

Sam Parr 16:06 Wait, by the way, does rent a friend mean I pay them money?

Shaan Puri 16:09 Yeah. You pay them money to hang out.

Sam Parr 16:11 Uh, Shaan, this is like where you get a hooker. This is, like there's Valerie on here is like in a bikini, and she's 20 and like really good-looking.

Shaan Puri 16:19 It might be, but I read this article on like whatever, Vox or whatever. Somebody went, 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 paid for this person to come hang out with me." They're like, you know, one of the things, a- and they talked 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 terms."

Sam Parr 16:48 Right.

Shaan Puri 16:49 "I'm gonna, we're gonna do what I want. We're gonna..." And they're like, "There were some downsides to..." Like there was upsides of, wow, this companionship on demand, and on the other side there was some downsides, which was like the power dynamic was off. It, it, you know, I was too aware, at least the journalist was like, I was too aware of the, the, the, the differentiation. So that's one, one business. There's another one that you've probably heard of called Papa. Do you know Papa?

Sam Parr 17:09 No, what's Papa?

Shaan Puri 17:11 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 kind of 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, a little easier to move around. And this was a Silicon Valley startup that was basically like you pay for-

Sam Parr 17:33 Ooh.

Shaan Puri 17:33 Um-

Sam Parr 17:33 Yeah, I remember this

Shaan Puri 17:34 ... you pay for a, a basically like a TaskRabbit 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 Ohanian, the guy who created Reddit, he backed it. He said something like, uh, you know, "There's 11,000, 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. Um-

Sam Parr 18:14 Holy sh- I'm looking at their funding. They've raised hundreds of millions, uh, $250 million.

Shaan Puri 18:19 At least $250 million, yeah. SoftBank put a bunch of money into them.

Sam Parr 18:22 Wow.

Shaan Puri 18:22 And they were valued at $1.4 billion, and it's literally- A sort of like on-demand companionship for older people

Sam Parr 18:29 Dude, have you ever met a, a sugar baby?

Shaan Puri 18:32 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 s- the website where it's like this is an official arrangement.

Sam Parr 18:46 Yeah

Shaan Puri 18:46 And then there's like, you know, just the o- the just happening in the wild. So I d- I think I just met someone who it was happening in the wild.

Sam Parr 18:52 So there's sugardaddy.com where you like go and you meet someone, and it gets a lot of traffic. And I was talk-

Shaan Puri 18:58 Hold on. Let me... We gotta go incognito for this one. Let me just make sure I don't get targeted for ads for the rest of my life.

Sam Parr 19:03 [laughs] 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-

Shaan Puri 19:13 Yeah, yeah

Sam Parr 19:14 ... which you definitely have seen 'cause you guys have like the same TV taste. Uh, but, [laughs] but I actually think that this is like a fairly fair trade, uh, y- as long as it's consensual obviously. But I'm, I'm shockingly on board with having a sugar baby. Like if you're-

Shaan Puri 19:29 [laughs]

Sam Parr 19:29 ... 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.

Shaan Puri 19:44 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 try not to be, you know, too judgmental of 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 PM at Twitter s- um, and he... I t- asked him, I was like, "Man, that, that's amazing. You picked Twitter really early on. There was only 14 people there or something like that at the time. How'd you know? Did j- Like was it, 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'd you join?'" He goes, "Because you can't deny the phenomenon." Meaning when you observe people doing a behavior that kinda makes no sense or seems odd, seems strange, seems weird to you, the natural incl- inclination is to push that away and be like, "Oh, that's, that's stupid. That's weird," and you sort of re- resist it. And he goes, "As an investor or somebody, you know, in, in where, where we worked in 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 w- 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's, you know, w- either broke a social norm or-

Sam Parr 21:17 Yeah

Shaan Puri 21:17 ... sounded a little sketch. And once you sort of wrap that into, you know, a more, uh, safe and acceptable behavior, it, 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 if 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 'cause I think that probably by default most people are, are lonelier than they want.

Sam Parr 21:52 Yeah. And I actually think that this is not a new phenomenon. I think that the... It's a phenomenon, uh, or it's a thing that's always existed. Now let me get, let me get biblical on your ass. I was r- [laughs] 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?

Shaan Puri 22:14 No, I di- didn't read that one.

Sam Parr 22:15 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 or these women who are professional, uh, I think they call 'em wailers. But basically these women who are hired to come cry at a funeral to grieve-

Shaan Puri 22:32 [laughs]

Sam Parr 22:32 ... 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... Give me, get this out of here." Uh, g- [laughs] g- His direct quote was like, "Get that nonsense out of this, out of here," something like that.

Shaan Puri 22:47 [laughs]

Sam Parr 22:47 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.

Shaan Puri 23:01 Yeah.

Sam Parr 23:01 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.

Shaan Puri 23:08 Right, right. It's like those, uh, there's like these marketplaces now online to rent a crowd. 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 get you 30, 30 people in a crowd today," right? And, you know, politicians use this and o- other brands use this. Like it, it's a, it's a, it's a easy w- Technology made it easier to coordinate, um, to hu-

Sam Parr 23:29 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." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 23:41 [laughs]

Sam Parr 23:41 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. Shaan thought that we were just so you could meet friends and not for prostitutes."

Shaan Puri 23:52 It's like he didn't see the friends is in air quotes. [laughs]

Sam Parr 23:54 [laughs] Aw.

Shaan Puri 23:58 Yeah.

Sam Parr 23:58 This could-

Shaan Puri 23:59 By the way, if it's not friends, [laughs] that's just me being me. Naive old me. Just sucker for, for, for, uh, for whatever you tell me, okay?

Sam Parr 24:08 There's, there's-

Shaan Puri 24:08 I, I believe in humanity

Sam Parr 24:09 ... there's hundreds of thousands of people right now collectively saying, "Aw." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 24:15 [laughs] Could I, um,

Shaan Puri 24:18 kinda 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.

Sam Parr 24:25 Yeah. What?

Shaan Puri 24:26 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?

Sam Parr 24:37 I saw what you were talking about, but I don't know enough to, like, riff on it. I mean, uh, e- explain it and then maybe I'll remember.

Shaan Puri 24:43 So I'm watching the UFC pay-per-view, and it's their first event at, at the Sphere, uh, in Las Vegas. And-

Sam Parr 24:50 I heard you bought tickets for it.

Shaan Puri 24:51 [laughs] Yeah, that's another story, how I, uh, I a- actually ended up paying $15,000 to not go to the Sphere event, [laughs] which is a, a big L for me. [laughs]

Sam Parr 25:01 Wait, you paid 15 grand for tickets?

Shaan Puri 25:04 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 Ticketmaster fee, it was like 25, 27 grand or something like that.

Sam Parr 25:23 Oh my God. All right. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 25:24 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 wanna come to this event?" And they were like, "Yeah, this is awesome." And so some, some of them said yeah, some of them 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.

Sam Parr 25:53 It got way worse.

Shaan Puri 25:55 I myself had just gotten sick like the two weeks prior to it, and so I'd, 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 dropped 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.

Sam Parr 26:18 [laughs] Expensive.

Shaan Puri 26:19 Anyway. 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." [laughs]

Sam Parr 26:29 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 26:29 And it's invest like a politician. What, what is that? That is a 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, or he went on Twitter and he explained this thing that they were doing.

Sam Parr 26:46 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 26:46 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, and I just think it was a badass marketing stunt that I wanna go into.

Sam Parr 26:54 Yeah, he did like the, the Tesla, the Cybertruck, uh, stunt.

Shaan Puri 26:57 So, 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, 'cause you've gotta see the clips of this. All right. So what they did was [laughs] they hired... So, like I said, the premise of Autopilot, I should say, is it's a investing app, but it's kind of like you basically pick who you wanna follow their portfolio, and you will invest. It's like, let's say I wanted to just mimic Warren Buffett's portfolio, or I wanna mimic, you know, some famous trader's 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 legendar- a legendary, uh, trader 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.

Sam Parr 27:51 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 27:52 And before the event, she starts interacting with all these influencers. So they go get Mike from, uh, you know, the Impaulsive podcast.

Sam Parr 27:58 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 27:58 And she's hanging out with him. 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 Sean O'Malley walks out, and she's in this hot pink pantsuit. Power-

Sam Parr 28:13 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 28:13 ... power pantsuit 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 on top of that-

Sam Parr 28:22 Dude, she doesn't look like her at all. This f- model or actress is way better looking.

Shaan Puri 28:27 It's like hot Pelosi.

Sam Parr 28:28 Yeah, she's like way hot. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 28:29 It's actually kind of like Sarah Palin and Pelosi together-

Sam Parr 28:32 Yeah

Shaan Puri 28:32 ... is kinda what they got. [laughs] 'Cause Nancy Pelosi's, like, 80 years old or something, so you know.

Sam Parr 28:36 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 28:36 No way around that.

Sam Parr 28:36 This woman looks l- is, like, legitimately a model. But go ahead.

Shaan Puri 28:39 [laughs] So then they got a tr- a Cybertruck, and they wrapped it, and it says, "Pelosi 2024," 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 2024 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 100% interest on that day of the event. And basically they were like, "Yeah, we just took a risk. We 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.

Sam Parr 29:16 Did he say how much he spent on it?

Shaan Puri 29:19 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, you know, getting, kinda like collabing with the Nelk Boys and Mike during that event, 'cause 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 th-" And 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 that we believe that over time this is gonna pay off." And if you've seen, they've done this actually in a bunch, 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, politiciantrade tracker, which has 730,000 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 $15,000 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 wanna 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 30%, [laughs] this, like, random small mining stock, Helika Mining Company. So, you know, called it. And, and so they, they follow these politicians, and that's what the whole account is. And I think they f- they tapped into some feeling of r- 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.

Sam Parr 31:14 Dude, have you, um, [laughs] uh, AOC and, uh... What's Parker or Palmer Luckey's brother-in-law... Do you know who Palmer Luckey's brother-in-law is?

Shaan Puri 31:23 Matt Gates?

Sam Parr 31:24 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.

Shaan Puri 31:40 Right.

Sam Parr 31:41 And, uh, it reminds me of, um... Have you seen that, uh, video go viral of AOC and Elon Musk flirting?

Shaan Puri 31:48 [laughs] Yeah, it's so good.

Sam Parr 31:50 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 31:50 We gotta play that. And go to-

Sam Parr 31:52 Oh, we should play that right now

Shaan Puri 31:53 ... on YouTube, just play that clip. It is... Whoever made this, you're an absolute genius. I've looked, I've tried to look up who made this. It's, like, some anonymous account.

Sam Parr 32:01 I watched that video. Like, I've seen it a bunch of times [laughs] and I re-watch it all the time. It is so funny. It's one of the funniest things. And they need a d- they need a duo with AOC and this guy, Matt, uh, of them, like, fake flirting because this is the one thing... Because I think he's pretty far right and she's pretty far left, and they've come 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.

Shaan Puri 32:25 [laughs] Yeah. [laughs] That's, uh, that's pretty wild.

Sam Parr 32:32 Do you wanna do, uh, one more thing? What's this Blue Collar Side Hustle?

Shaan Puri 32:37 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 Collar Side Hustle is I saw, I forget who it was, Chris Corner or somebody like that. They were talking about this woman in Dallas who has this bu- business-

Sam Parr 32:58 Awesome

Shaan Puri 32:58 ... called Porch Pumpkins. Have you seen this?

Sam Parr 33:00 Uh, the best. The best.

Shaan Puri 33:02 [laughs] Wow, you're really into this. Tell m- [laughs]

Sam Parr 33:05 Yeah

Shaan Puri 33:05 ... tell me more. [laughs] 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 a pop-up, currently sold out. But you can see, like, three or four packages. There's, like, the luxury package, which is $1350, so you know, uh, uh, uh, $1,300. There's, like, kind of the medium one, $750, and there's the smaller one for, like, 300 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, you know, fall, you know, harvest type pumpkins. And this is all she does. And the, the numbers that came out was that basically she's done 900 jobs that range, you know, from this 300 bucks to, you know, 1,500 bucks, and the estimate was that she might have done a million dollars in revenue in a year off of, uh, off of those 900 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 kinda drives the flywheel, and then people like us talk about this, and it gets on the local news, and then she's built a kind of cool business here. And we talked about this last year. I think one of my Blue Collar-

Sam Parr 34:36 Christmas lights

Shaan Puri 34:36 ... Side Hustles 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, [lip smack] in kind of a 6 to 10-week period, you know, this guy probably pulled in, you know, 60 to 100 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.

Sam Parr 35:09 Right.

Shaan Puri 35:09 I think she might have generated a million dollars revenue. Apparently, she's got, like, 15 delivery guys and, like, a bunch of other stuff.

Sam Parr 35:15 Yeah, but even if she made-

Shaan Puri 35:16 I would bet-

Sam Parr 35:16 ... $200,000.

Shaan Puri 35:17 I would bet it's, like, you know, 100 grand is my, my guess. Uh, 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.

Sam Parr 35:38 Or, or, like, uh, 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 40-hour work week or 50 week, 52 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 9:00 to 5:00, or at least you can't commit to a 9:00 to 5:00 for the entire year, but you could for little sprints. And so I love ideas like that, that can satisfy that need.

Shaan Puri 36:18 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. My wife works only on Wednesdays, so she works one day out 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 lo- then she doesn't ha- it doesn't spill over, so like the next day and the next day after that, she doesn't have to like follow through on 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. 'Cause we got three little kids, and she wants to be a stay-at-home mom, but also-

Sam Parr 36:54 Blue collar

Shaan Puri 36:54 ... it's pretty easy to just go nuts, you know? Like, to just be th- '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, uh, some project you can put your creative energy into, a person, uh, that's not your family member that you can get to talk to that day, and n- s- you know, not have to deal with the kids for, you know, eight hours is, is a huge win for her.

Sam Parr 37:18 Dude, after this pod, we'll be like, "Babe-

Shaan Puri 37:20 [laughs]

Sam Parr 37:21 ... what do you, what do you know about pumpkins?"

Shaan Puri 37:23 Open the trunk. [laughs]

Sam Parr 37:24 [laughs] Yeah.

Shaan Puri 37:24 Like, I love the homepage of everything. It's a trunk full of like 65 pumpkins. [laughs]

Sam Parr 37:29 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.

Shaan Puri 37:45 Right.

Sam Parr 37:45 This seems very learnable.

Shaan Puri 37:47 Anyone can do this. Not anyone will do this. [laughs] But, but I do think this is not like above m- 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? You know, 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, 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 100 doors." I'm knocking on 100 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, y- and then s- try to see, does anybody, is anybody interested? And basically, if people are interested, that's your 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, 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 c- if I could to try to get people to be able to go find me from there.

Sam Parr 39:10 And then go and upcharge them when they fucking start to rot and you gotta get rid of them. I assume.

Shaan Puri 39:13 Well, there is a, there is a pickup or like a cleanup 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 them up, and you pay me to put them 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. [laughs] And so you can see this if you ever turn on like your local news channel. They, uh, this restaurant, it g- 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 neighbors' 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 o- on that local news story, that article, uh, in your area.

Sam Parr 40:18 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 [laughs] at my house, and my parents... This was one of the mo- more redneck things that my father has ever done, which was we would take all 20 of our pumpkins and we would r- let them roll down our hill-

Shaan Puri 40:44 [laughs]

Sam Parr 40:45 ... straight d-

Shaan Puri 40:45 It's the running of the bulls

Sam Parr 40:46 ... [laughs] straight into the middle of the park. And I, up until like, uh, I was like 25, I thought it was okay to just, if you have like a banana peel or something of like, you just like fucking toss it into the street. Like it doesn't matter. Like we used to-

Shaan Puri 41:00 [laughs]

Sam Parr 41:00 ... 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-

Shaan Puri 41:06 [laughs]

Sam Parr 41:06 Like there's like... [laughs] For all of like November or whatever, there'd be like the 20 [laughs] rotting pumpkins in the middle of this, in the middle of this park. And like if you're gonna go play flag football that month, like look out for the rotting pumpkins that the Parrs threw in the middle of that fucking park. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 41:24 Yeah, you needed the opposite of the news story. It's like-

Sam Parr 41:26 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 41:26 ... local family terrorizes park with rotting pumpkins again. [laughs]

Sam Parr 41:31 Dude, I thought it was like acceptable to like, it's like, "Oh, just put it back to its home. I'm just throwing this, [laughs] throwing this fucking banana peel and all our garbage right in the middle of a park." Um, where do you wanna go from here?

Shaan Puri 41:44 Uh, I think we wrapped 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 a- anybody could do door to door.

Sam Parr 41:54 All right, let's do it. That's it. That's the pod. [upbeat music]