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

Shaan Puri

Alright, Sam, I gotta tell you about this. There is a guy in Japan who I read about who is making $80,000 a year for doing nothing. They call him the "Do Nothing Man." Have you ever heard of this guy?

Sam Parr

No, what did you read about this?

Shaan Puri

Well, I originally saw it... I don't even know where I saw it, but I was fascinated. What happened is this guy was at work, and his boss called him a "do nothing man." He was insulting him, saying, "Dude, you just do nothing. You don't really add anything; you don't provide any value." He thought to himself, "Is there value in society for a man who does nothing?" He went online and posted a tweet saying, "I'm starting a new service. It's called rental people who do nothing." Basically, he said, "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. He says nothing; it's pretty much a silent companion—completely non-physical, non-sexual. Basically, an introvert for hire. What people do is they either have a task they need to run, like an errand, or they just feel really lonely and want somebody to have some tea with them. He'll come, sit, and he won't really say anything. If you ask him a question, he'll give you a simple answer, but it's really just the presence of another human body. This guy made $80,000 in a year renting himself out. He then wrote a memoir called "Rental People Who Do Nothing." He's continued to do this now for years. He did it before COVID, then COVID hit, so he couldn't do it. After that, he started it back up again. Now, he doesn't even charge for the hangout. He used to charge $68 for a session, but now he just says, "Just cover the food and travel, and I'll hang out with you for free." He travels around and gets paid for his food, his event tickets, and all the things that people want to do with him. Isn't this fascinating?

Sam Parr

I'm reading the comments on his Goodreads account for his book. What were the reasons why people wanted to hang out with him?

Shaan Puri

Well, this was pretty fascinating. I was wondering, why is there a need for this? I guess in Japan, there's a loneliness epidemic. It's kind of crazy; they have words for this that we don't even have words for. So, have you ever heard this term, "hikikomori"?

Sam Parr

You know, I haven't heard that term.

Shaan Puri

Has it come up in Connecticut? No.

Sam Parr

I have not heard that word before. That's a new word for me.

Shaan Puri

So, it's a word that they have for severe social withdrawal. It's total withdrawal from society. Typically, it's kind of like "incel" in the States. It’s mostly men who are living at home, still in their parents' home, but they are completely reclusive. They don't work, they don't socialize, and there are an estimated 2,000,000 men in Japan that are in this category. For six months, they basically have not engaged with anybody in society. So, that's one problem: this growing trend of **hikikomori**. Then there's another word, I think it's **kodokushi**, which is basically "death without being cared for." 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 they had passed away. This is a number that, in the last ten years, has doubled. I think 70,000 people died this way, where they're found weeks or months later. These trends are all very concerning. In Japan, single-person households—meaning no wife, no family members, no friends, just living alone by yourself—now make up 38% of the population. This is like triple where it was five or seven years ago. They even appointed a **Minister of Loneliness** in Japan because this has become such a big problem. So, this guy doing this is almost like an art statement in a way 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

Dude, let me explain something to you that's very similar to this. I want to hear your opinion on this premise that I have. I think it's a good premise that 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 best people on earth. I consider them family.

Shaan Puri

Dude, I saw your "Live Laugh Love" post where you posted a picture with your friends and you said, "This is wealth." I thought, "He's not wrong, he's not wrong." But he's also not Sam Parr. What is going on? This is wealth? What new era have you entered?

Sam Parr

I've entered a very special era. I'd love to explain. It's weird. Ever since having a kid, the things that I thought I cared about, I don't care about as much. I realized I'm kind of going all into this emotional side of caring about others... whatever, all that stupid stuff. Yeah, but listen, so...

Shaan Puri

We can’t even say it. It’s like hers to say this sentence, but we believe it.

Sam Parr

Yes, so before... I basically lived in San Francisco, and I moved from San Francisco to Austin. My best friend at the time, Neville Madora, lived there. I had this conversation with him before I moved. I said, "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...?"

Shaan Puri

I want to be in you.

Sam Parr

In you, you could say... I know where.

Shaan Puri

You're going with that one? Yeah.

Sam Parr

It goes a better way than that one way. So, if I do this, would you like to commit to living a life together, like with our families? I know that sounds weird, but I did that, and it worked wonderfully. There were about four other couples where we had this conversation. We were like, "Let's live life together. You can come on me, I'll come on you, whatever." When you think about that, it sounds strange, but if you really dive deep, it's actually not that weird. Because that's what you did with your girlfriend, probably. You were like, "Hey, should we put a label on this?" You know what I mean? Then you go from girlfriend to boyfriend, and you make it a huge ordeal where you get engaged. You get down on one knee, and there's a big, epic moment where you were boyfriend and girlfriend, and now you are officially a fiancé. Then you get married, where you basically talk about...

Shaan Puri

A vow... yeah, you take a vow.

Sam Parr

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. I have recently moved in order to be closer to family, and now I'm trying to develop friendships in a new town. I'm starting to go to them, and I'm having this formal conversation. It really weirds people out right away, by the way. But after a few minutes, the men in particular are like, "Oh, I kind of get this." It kind of feels nice to talk about how we're going to do life together, how we can support each other, or to define the relationship.

Shaan Puri

Let's make this real. So, what are you actually saying?

Sam Parr

So here's what I'm saying. What this guy in Japan is experiencing is this loneliness. You're talking about people living by themselves; 38% of the time, there are a lot of people dying and for weeks not being found. What I'm saying is, I think a lot of people experience loneliness. I think one key way to get over it, particularly for men, is that once they approach their fifties and sixties, they basically never make a new friend again. 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 about having these formal conversations. In particular, one extreme example is to move places just for the sole reason of having that friend there. Do you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

I know exactly what you mean. But I guess what I'm saying is, what is the conversation you're having with people, especially new people? So I get the Neville one because he was already a really close friend of yours. He was in San Francisco, right? That's where you guys originally became friends.

Sam Parr

No, he would spend his summers in San Francisco, and we would hang out. Then he would go back to Austin because Austin was only there very briefly.

Shaan Puri

Guys were already really close, and you're like, "Hey, I want to move there." I really like, I'm kind of moving there for you, or I want to move right close to you, and like, let's do life together. I'm a big fan of this. I've said this before: one of the most impactful things that came out of this podcast was a guy named Mike Brown. He came on the pod and he was asked about going into business with his brothers. He said, "Well, to me, that's the essence of life. You find the people you love and you do life with them." That became a very simple operating philosophy for me, so I'm a definite deep believer in that. What are you doing now with new people? I'm curious how that conversation goes when it's not somebody you've already been friends with for 5 or 10 years.

Sam Parr

I've only done it once so far, and I just kind of like...

Shaan Puri

I hope they're listening.

Sam Parr

Dude, it's weird. Like, it's definitely weird. But I'd be like, "Hey, so you know I'm looking to have close friends who I can rely on." I want to let you know that you are that to me right now. I hope I can rely on you for important things, and I want to let you know that you can rely on me for stuff. Whatever I have, you can use. I got your back no matter what. I know this sounds weird and everything, but I'm looking to do life with someone. It seems like you and your wife might be that person for me and my wife. I make jokes about it, and I realize how silly this sounds, but it was actually really great. It made me feel really good.

Shaan Puri

This is like how swinging starts. So, actually, I have a sort of related story. One time, I was doing an angel investment deal.

Sam Parr

By the way, we need a word for this. You were saying in Japan they have a word.

Shaan Puri

For we need a...

Sam Parr

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 got to be explicitly heterosexual, explicitly not involving swinging. It's got to be some type of reciprocity or like, "I'm willing to give more than 50% to this relationship." Do you know what I mean? Like this idea of a good relationship, you have to be willing to overgive.

Shaan Puri

So, I just went into Google Translate. I wrote "male friends that don't have sex," and it says "sekusu no otokotomodachi." So, I think that's the current phrase for it. "Tomodachi" for short.

Sam Parr

Alright, so a lot of people watch and listen to the show because they want to hear us tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. Really, a lot of people who are listening have a full-time job and they want to start something on the side—a side hustle. Now, many people message Sean and me and say, "Alright, I want to start something on the side. Is this a good idea? Is that a good idea?" What they're really saying is, "Just give me the ideas." Well, my friends, you're in luck! My old company, The Hustle, 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 and they're awesome. It gives you how to start them, how to grow them, and things like that. It provides 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, and let me know in the comments what you think. Alright, what were you saying about angel investing?

Shaan Puri

So, I was trying to do an angel investment. This was maybe, I don't know, 12 years ago or something. I had no money, and I wanted to invest in this company. I finally realized, like, oh, I have friends who have money. I could probably go to them and pitch them a deal. If they do the deal, they'll probably give me a little piece of the upside if it works out. So, I go to a friend, my buddy Sully, and I say, "Hey, I want to invest in this company." He's like, "Alright, great! Let's do it." I mean, he's like, "Cool. So, for the economics of this, how do you want to do this?" I was like, "I don't really know. What's the norm?" He's like, "Well, the norm is probably this: you would get, you know, like 10-15% of my carry, but we could do whatever you want." I was like, "Well, you know, I just want to make sure it's fair." I was kind of thinking transactional. I was like, "I just want to make sure this is fair. I don't want this to be one-sided or the other." He goes, "Let's make it one-sided in your favor." He said, "I don't care what happens on this deal. What I care about is us doing deals together for the next 20 years." First of all, it was not just hollow words because he was giving more action on the deal to me than he needed to. I wasn't asking for it; he just did that 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 heard. Then, I started doing that with other people. When I met up with Ben, I was like, "Ben, hey, you want to do this project together?" He's like, "Yeah, we did a project together. It went great. Want to do another project together?" We did another project together, and it went great. I was like, "Hey, let's start a business together." What I told him was, "I think you're awesome, and I think we work really well together. I want to 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." That really changed the game. That one little way of being intentional—that I want this relationship to go beyond this transaction, this moment in time—and saying, "I think you're awesome, and I want to be doing stuff with you for a long time," has really helped me. It changed the way that I viewed things, but also the way that other people receive it. 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 everyone out of a sort of selfish or short-term mindset.

Sam Parr

Just a bunch of guys being dudes.

Shaan Puri

You know.

Sam Parr

That's what it comes out to. We just... it's just a bunch of us guys. We want to be dudes, you know?

Shaan Puri

**Tomodachi, baby! Tomodachi.** Okay, let's just be gross.

Sam Parr

You wanna be gross?

Shaan Puri

Celebrating that! Okay, so here are some related things to this. Back to this guy, by the way, this is Shoji Morimoto. He is 39 years old. Look at his Twitter; he has 420,000 followers. He's gotten very famous off of this. He said that before COVID, he was making $300 a day. So, he's doing this for $68 a session, whatever. He was just going to coffee shops, playing video games, and doing random stuff with each other.

Sam Parr

Dude, it's hard. Twitter's hard too. He's Japanese. I'll tell you what, they have a different word for everything.

Shaan Puri

Okay, so his service is called "Rental People Who Do Nothing." I started thinking, do we have this here? Because loneliness is not only a Japan thing; it's obviously everywhere. Actually, there are some things like this. So, go to RentAFriend.com. I don't know if you've ever seen this.

Sam Parr

No, you know what, Sean? I'm proud to say I haven't actually been on this website yet.

Shaan Puri

Friends seeking friends. Okay, so now type in "San Francisco" and click search. Then you're going to see 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 thing—I didn't even know this existed. It's Craigslist for friends. It's pretty, pretty cool, right?

Sam Parr

And it actually has a lot of traffic. You know, this is a little sus. There are a lot of pretty women with full body shots on here.

Shaan Puri

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? They're laundering other things besides clothes here.

Sam Parr

like

Shaan Puri

So, I don't know exactly the social norms here, but I'm going to take it at face value that this is "rent a friend" and that this is truly for friendship. I've read some articles about people doing this, and what they said was, you know, it was actually, in some ways, kind of nice to have just someone on demand that I could go do things with. Maybe a plus one for an event or to go to a concert together or whatever it is. I didn't want to go by myself, but I still wanted to go. They're like, but the other side of it was it had this weird dynamic. It was like, wait...

Sam Parr

By the way, does "rent a friend" mean I pay them money?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you pay the money to hang up.

Sam Parr

Sean, this is like where you get a hooker. There's Valerie on here, she's in a bikini, and she's 20 and really good looking.

Shaan Puri

It might be, but I read this article on Vox or whatever. Somebody went and they did this; they rented a friend on this site. What they said was, "Yeah, it was, you know, I paid for this person to come hang out with me." They talked to them about the other jobs that they've done. They mentioned that it's a lot sometimes for older people or for someone who's just been very busy with work and hasn't really developed their social life. One of the things they talked about was that it made them a more rude person because they thought, "Oh, if I'm paying you, then this is all on my terms."

Sam Parr

Right.

Shaan Puri

I'm gonna... we're gonna do what I want. There were some downsides to this. On one hand, there are the upsides of "wow, this companionship on demand." On the other side, there were some downsides, which was like the power dynamic was off. I was too aware—at least the journalist was—of the differentiation. So that's one business. There's another one that you've probably heard of called Papa. You know, Papa.

Sam Parr

No, it's Papa.

Shaan Puri

This is for your grandparents. A lot of people have grandparents who are alone. They are both lonely but also kind of need help, like maybe with little errands that they can run or someone to help them when they're going to the store, just in case anything happens. It makes it a little easier for them to move around. This was a Silicon Valley startup that was basically like, you pay for...

Sam Parr

Yeah, I remember this.

Shaan Puri

You pay for basically like a TaskRabbit specifically to help older people. It's something less than a live-in care, but more than, you know, me once a month calling my grandparents. So that's what this company was. 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, backed it. He said something like, "You know, there are 11,000 boomers that are retiring every day" or something crazy like that. Some huge number. He's like, "Our aging population is growing very fast and we're going to need services that are going to help them." And this company is valued at over $1,000,000,000. Holy shit!

Sam Parr

I'm looking at their funding. They've raised $100 of $1,000,000 and $250,000,000.

Shaan Puri

$50,000,000. Yeah, SoftBank put a bunch of money into it, and they were valued at $1,400,000,000. It's literally a sort of on-demand companionship for older people.

Sam Parr

Dude, have you ever met a sugar baby?

Shaan Puri

Have I ever met a sugar baby? I think I have, but I don't know if it was like official or if it was just like, you know, there's the website where it's like this is an official arrangement. Then there's, you know, just the ones that are happening in the wild. So, I think I just met someone who is happening in the wild.

Sam Parr

So, there's SugarDaddy.com, where you go and meet someone. It gets a lot of traffic, and I was talking about...

Shaan Puri

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

I was talking to my wife about this the other day because she somehow knew someone who was a sugar baby. I think there are reality TV shows about it too.

Shaan Puri

Yeah.

Sam Parr

You definitely have seen this because you guys have the same TV taste. But I actually think that this is a fairly fair trade, as long as it's consensual, obviously. I'm shockingly on board with having a sugar baby. If you're an old guy and you just want it, a lot of these guys literally just want a companion. They just want someone to be there for them and things like that. And it's not always, 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

Yeah, and you know, I don't really have any judgments on this. I've never experienced it, and I don't really know the lifestyle. I try not to be too judgmental about things I don't understand. What I'm fascinated by is just this phenomenon. I remember when I first moved to Silicon Valley, I met the guy who was the first Product Manager at Twitter. I asked him, "Man, that's amazing! You picked Twitter really early on. There were only 14 people there or something like that at the time. How did you know? Was it obvious that Twitter was going to be a big deal?" He replied, "No, everybody thought Twitter was weird, stupid, useless—just like a strange thing to do." He continued, "I remember when I joined, somebody asked me, 'Why did you join?' I said, 'Because you can't deny the phenomenon.'" He explained that when you observe people doing a behavior that seems odd or strange, the natural inclination is to push that away and think, "Oh, that's stupid, that's weird," and you sort of resist it. However, as an investor or someone in the technology space, you want to lean into the phenomenon. He asked, "Why is it that people are watching other people play video games on Twitch? Why is it that people are just texting out to a random group of strangers what they're having for lunch on Twitter? Why is it that people are getting into strangers' cars instead of taxis with Uber? Why are people sleeping on other people's couches instead of hotels with Airbnb?" All of the biggest winners tended to be these weird behaviors—things that either broke a social norm or sounded a little sketchy. Once you wrap that into a more safe and acceptable behavior, it unlocks a pretty big market. So, I've always tried to learn to have a more open mind about this stuff. Would I be surprised if the way of getting into people's homes, sleeping on couches, or getting into strangers' cars—would I be surprised if "companionship as a service," like totally nonsexual companionship, became a big deal? I would absolutely not be surprised because I think that, by default, most people are lonelier than they want to be.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and I actually think that this is not a new phenomenon. I think that it's a phenomenon—it's a thing that's always existed. Now, let me get biblical on you. I was raised Catholic, so I went to Catholic school my whole life. I had to read the Bible all the time. Did you ever read the story about Jesus? How he was carrying the cross up the hill or something to, you know, be executed?

Shaan Puri

No, I didn't read that one.

Sam Parr

Well, yeah... I don't know. It's like part of culture a little bit, but there's a line where these professional women, or these women who are professional, I think they call them "wailers." Basically, these women are hired to come cry at a funeral, to grieve, to make you feel like you're not the only one there grieving for this person. And he dismisses them, saying, "Get that nonsense out of here." I actually think that is a thing at funeral homes, by the way. Funeral homes where you have a griever who will come and fill the room, you know what I'm saying? But these types of things have been around forever. I don't actually think it's particularly a new phenomenon. I think we've always felt this way; now there are just interesting platforms to help solve the problem.

Shaan Puri

Right, it's like those marketplaces now online to rent a crowd. It's like, "Oh, you need a crowd of people who either love you or are protesting you? Push this button, and I'll get you 30 people in a crowd today." You know, politicians use this, and brands use this. It's an easy technology that has made it easier to coordinate. By the way, there's a great tweet. Have you seen it? It says, "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.'"

Sam Parr

Dude, I bet you the Rent a Friend CEO or like the company, they're listening to those podcasts and they're like, "Oh, that's so cute. Sean thought that we were just for you to meet friends and not for prostitutes."

Shaan Puri

"Friends" is in air quotes. Oh yeah, by the way, if it's not friends, that's just me being me—naive old me, just a sucker for whatever... hundreds of thousands.

Sam Parr

Of people right now.

Shaan Puri

Can I tell you about another thing that I saw?

Sam Parr

That.

Shaan Puri

I think you might have seen it as well because it happened at a UFC event a few weeks ago. I've been meaning to talk to you about this. Yeah, what did you see at the recent event? I think it was at the Sphere. Did you see a very interesting advertisement on one of the posts during the UFC? Are you familiar with what I'm talking about?

Sam Parr

I saw what you were talking about, but I don't know enough to riff on it. I mean, explain it, and then maybe I'll remember.

Shaan Puri

I'm watching the UFC pay-per-view, and it's their first event at the Sphere in Las Vegas. I heard you bought tickets for it. Yeah, that's another story. I actually ended up paying $15,000 to not go to the Sphere event, which is a big loss for me. Wait...

Sam Parr

You paid $15 for tickets.

Shaan Puri

So, speaking of friends, 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 went online and bought 6 tickets to the Sphere. I think it was like after the ticket masterpiece, around $25 or $27 or something like that.

Sam Parr

Oh my god. Alright.

Shaan Puri

And then I emailed a bunch of people who I haven't hung out with, either ever or recently. I was like, "Hey, do you want to come to this event?" They're like, "Yeah, this is awesome!" So, some of them said yes, while others said, "Oh, I'll try. Let me see if I can make it work," because it was still months out. Then a bunch of things happened. Two of the people couldn't make it for medical reasons, and the card for the sphere got way worse than it was supposed to be.

Sam Parr

It got way worse.

Shaan Puri

I myself had just gotten sick like two weeks prior to it. I had just come off of not being helpful at home, and then, oh wait, now I'm going to go on a trip to Las Vegas after this. Not really the best game plan for me. The ticket prices dropped like crazy, so we ended up selling the tickets for like a third of whatever I paid for them. So yeah, not a good win for me, but a great story that I got to tell here. So that was that. Exactly. Then I'm watching it on TV, and I see on the post behind one of the fighters, it says, "Invest like a politician." Yeah, "Invest like a politician." What is that? That is kind of an amazing hook. I realized, oh, this is that app that I've been following for a little while. This guy Chris is behind this app called Autopilot. He went on Twitter and explained this thing they were doing, this stunt they did around the UFC. They sponsored the "Invest like a politician," but they did a lot more than that. I just think it was a badass marketing stunt.

Sam Parr

I went to the Tesla Cybertruck event.

Shaan Puri

So, check out this thread. 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. Alright, so what they did was they hired... So, the premise of Autopilot, I should say, is that it's an investing app. It's kind of like you basically pick who you want to follow their portfolio, and you will invest. It's like, let's say I wanted to just mimic Warren Buffett's portfolio. I want to 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, you know, a legendary trader in her own right. So, what they did was for the Sphere event, they found a fake Pelosi impersonator. Do you see her there? They found her on TikTok, hired her, and put her through hair and makeup. Then, they flew her to Vegas for the event. Before the event, she starts interacting with all these influencers. So, they go get Mike from, you know, the Impulsive podcast, and she's hanging out, playing blackjack with Mike. Then, she meets up with the Nelk Boys, and the Nelk Boys are like, "Holy shit, it's Pelosi!" They're playing blackjack with her. Then, she's in the crowd when Sugar Sean O'Malley walks out, and she's in this hot pink pantsuit—power pantsuit like Pelosi. It gets freeze-framed, and everybody's like, "Holy shit, is Nancy Pelosi at the UFC?" All these people are tweeting about this.

Sam Parr

and and

Shaan Puri

Then, on top of this, look.

Sam Parr

Like her at all? This model or actress is way better looking.

Shaan Puri

It's like hot Pelosi. Yes, it's actually kind of like Sarah Palin and Pelosi together. It's different what they got because Nancy Pelosi is like 80 years old or something. So, yeah.

Sam Parr

Yeah, this woman looks like she is legitimately a model. But go ahead.

Shaan Puri

So then they got a truck, a Cybertruck, and they wrapped it. It says "Pelosi 2024" and "Invest Like a Politician, Autopilot." They drove this around Las Vegas, getting honked at, and there are all these TikToks of people taking videos of this "Pelosi 2024" thing. If you look at their Google Trends, they go from nobody searching for them to, you know, it spiked and hit 100% interest on the day of the event. Basically, they were like, "Yeah, we just took a risk. We spent a bunch of money on this, and let's give it a go." I just thought it was an amazingly well-done marketing stunt.

Sam Parr

Did he say how much he spent on it?

Shaan Puri

I didn't ask him that, but I did talk to him. 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, and found an actress. They hustled their way into, you know, getting kind of like collaborating with the Elk Boys and Mike during that event because they knew where they liked 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... what he said was, 'It was more expensive than if we had just run, you know, Facebook ads.' But, you know, our view is that we're trying to build the brand and make a statement about what we're all about. We believe that over time, this is going to pay off. If you've seen, they've done this actually in a bunch of interesting marketing things. They did the Pelosi tracker on Twitter, which has, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of followers. They have an Instagram account called Politician Trade Tracker, which has 730,000 followers. They'll post, like, you know, 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. They had flagged it as, '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 a month, it's gone up 30% to this random small mining stock, Helica Mining Company. So, you know, they called it. They follow these politicians, and that's what the whole account is about. I think they've tapped into some feeling of outrage or wrongness that people have about what's going on. Like, why does Nancy Pelosi outperform hedge funds and Warren Buffett with her trading track record? 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

Dude, have you seen AOC? And what's Palmer Luckey's brother-in-law? Do you know who Palmer Luckey's brother-in-law is?

Shaan Puri

Matt Gaetz

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

Yes, so good! We gotta play that.

Sam Parr

We gotta play that right now.

Shaan Puri

On YouTube, just play that clip. It is... whoever made this, you're an absolute genius! I've tried to look up who made this; this is like some anonymous account.

Sam Parr

I watched that video; 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. They need to do one with AOC and this guy Matt, like fake flirting. This is the one thing because I think he's pretty far right, and she's pretty far left. Yet, they've come together on this one idea that politicians should not be able to trade from individual accounts. I think it's pretty funny.

Shaan Puri

That's pretty wild.

Sam Parr

Do you want to do one more thing? What's this blue-collar side hustle?

Shaan Puri

Alright, so I'm bringing back an old segment we used to have called the **Blue Collar Side Hustle of the Month**. The goal here is that these aren't the biggest businesses, but they're straightforward businesses that anybody could do if you were just willing to work hard. So, the Blue Collar Side Hustle is a saw. I forget who it was, Chris Coroner or somebody like that, but they're talking about this woman in Dallas who has this business called **Porch Pumpkins**. Have you seen this?

Sam Parr

The best, the best.

Shaan Puri

Wow, you're really into this! Tell me more. Alright, so the business idea here is that every fall, for Halloween and Thanksgiving, people like to decorate their front porch with a bunch of pumpkins. What she does is offer this as a service. She'll bring a package to your house. You can go to her website and see that it currently says "sold out," but you can find about 3 or 4 packages available. There's the luxury package, which is $1,300; then there's the medium one for $750; and the smaller one for about $300. What she'll do is come and decorate your front porch and doorstep with a variety of cool, fall harvest-type pumpkins. This is all she does. The numbers that came out show that she's completed 900 jobs that range from $300 to $1,500. The estimate is that she might have done around $1,000,000 in revenue in a year from those 900 jobs. How cool is this? Just a mom in Dallas going to people's porches and putting out pumpkins! You can 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: it only takes place in a few months out of the year. Then she posts on Instagram, which drives the flywheel. People like us talk about it, it gets on local news, and she's built a really cool business here. We talked about this last year. I think one of my blue-collar side hustles last year was the guy who came and did Christmas lights at my house. He did it for half the houses in our neighborhood, and I realized, like, wow, in kind of a 6 to 10 week...

Shaan Puri

You know, this guy probably pulled in **$60 to $100** of side income just by putting up lights. He had 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. 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 **$1,000,000**. I think she might have generated **$1,000,000** in revenue. Apparently, she's got like **15 delivery guys** and a bunch of other stuff.

Sam Parr

Yeah, but even if she made $200,000...

Shaan Puri

I would bet it's like, you know, $100 is my guess, being conservative. I would sort of assume that, but that's still pretty great for what’s probably a business where you work, you know, 2 or 3 months out of the year. It's a straightforward business that you could do, which doesn't require any special skills, and it's pretty fun. You know, for somebody who's got a little bit of design taste, I think this is great.

Sam Parr

Or, like, my wife's not working right now. You know, she quit her job after we had a kid. She's thinking of things she can do. She's like, "I can't commit to a 40-hour workweek or 50 weeks out of the year, but I would love to have a project, you know, something that I can do." When I see projects like this, I'm like, "That's awesome! That could be perfect. Do you know what I mean?" So she's looking for projects, but you can't commit to a 9 to 5, or at least you can't commit to a 9 to 5 for the entire year. But you could for little sprints. I love ideas like that that can satisfy that need.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. My wife works only on Wednesdays. She works one day of the week, kind of like an 8-hour day on that day. It's a super creative job. I can't go into all the details, but it's very creative, so it's fun. She works with somebody she really likes, a coworker who comes over, and they work together for 8 hours. She's not locked into any events; it doesn't spill over. So, like, the next day and the day after that, she doesn't have to follow through on all the deliverables from the meeting or anything like that. We didn't plan for that, but we kind of stumbled into what is basically the perfect amount of work for her because we have three little kids. She wants to be a stay-at-home mom, but it can be pretty easy to just go nuts, you know? It's like Groundhog Day when you have three little kids. You are doing the same routine every single day. As much as you love your kids, it is nice to have a small break—some project you can put your creative energy into, a person that's not a family member that you can talk to that day. Not having to deal with the kids for 8 hours is a huge win for her.

Sam Parr

Dude, after this pop, I'd be like, "Babe, what do you..."

Shaan Puri

I know about pumpkins. Open the trunk. I love the homepage; everything is a trunk full of like 65 pumpkins.

Sam Parr

I love this shit, dude! I think this is fantastic. I'm sure that there's some type of artful aesthetic, or you know, like you gotta have some type of eye. It would be silly of me to say that anyone could do this, but it definitely seems learnable. This seems very learnable.

Shaan Puri

Anyone can do this. Not everyone will do this, but I do think this is not beyond most people's means to be able to pull this off. What I would do, let's say I wanted to do this, is approach it like this: I would not go into the pumpkin business right away. Instead, I would go door to door. I would have basically three photographs of what the front can look like and what packages I have. I would knock on a hundred doors in my neighborhood and say, "Hey, just wanted to let you know I do this for families in the area. I can make your porch look really great. Is this something you'd be interested in?" Then, I would try to see if anyone is interested. If people are interested, that's your preorder. You can then buy the inventory you need to fulfill that demand. As soon as I get some inventory, I would take photos of it and ask the customers, "Would you mind if I use this for my website and marketing?" If they say yes, then I would have better marketing material to go to the next door with. I would say, "You know, we did this there," and I would try to have something, maybe one branded pumpkin that says, "This was done by the local pumpkin queen," or whatever it is. I would also try to have my domain on one of them, if I could, to help people find me from there.

Sam Parr

And then go and upcharge them when they start to rot and you have to get rid of them. Well, there is...

Shaan Puri

There is a pickup or cleanup fee, right? You do that at the end. It's the same thing with the Christmas lights guys. You pay me to put them up, and you pay me to take them down. So, you get both sides of it. I also think that this is one where you could, if you ever read like these PR books about local PR and newsjacking, you would see that local news is pretty much devoid of good stories. If you ever turn on your local news channel, there’s this restaurant that got flagged for something. They're looking for good local feel-good stories. As soon as you get a little bit going, you could say, "Whatever single mom is making $1,000 decorating their neighbor's porches." So, as soon as I get just enough momentum, my goal would be to get to the local news. I would go to them and make my pitch for the story. I would try to get my story on air for that local news. Then, what I would do is take that news story. You're stacking the marketing chips, and then you could even run ads on that local news story or article in your area.

Sam Parr

Dude, I grew up with a big, steep driveway. Then there was a small street, and beyond that, there was a park. It was as if the park was like a canyon. One month after Halloween, it was a tradition at my house. My parents, this was one of the more redneck things that my father has ever done, would take all 20 of our pumpkins and let them roll down our hill.

Shaan Puri

Straight to running of the bulls.

Sam Parr

Straight to the middle of the park. Up until I was about 25, I thought it was okay to just toss things like a banana peel into the street. I thought it didn't matter. We used to put our pumpkins at the street, thinking it was fine. Turns out, that is littering, by the way. In November, there would be like 20 rotting pumpkins in the middle of the park. If you were going to play flag football that month, you had to look out for the rotting pumpkins in the middle of that park.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you needed the opposite of the news story. It's like, "Local family terrorizes park with rotting pumpkins... again."

Sam Parr

Dude, I thought it was acceptable. They're like, "Oh, just put it back to its home." I'm just throwing this... throwing this *fucking* banana peel of all our garbage right in the middle of a park. Where do you want to go from here?

Shaan Puri

I think we wrap this one up. So, we have the "Do Nothing Man," the loneliness epidemic, the autopilot marketing stunt, and then we have the blue-collar side hustle that anybody could do door to door.

Sam Parr

Alright, let's do it. That's it, that's the pod.