Apparently, the eccentric US rapper Kanye West tipped a bartender $15,000 for listening to him for four hours while he poured out his heart.
In proper money, that’s roughly £11,000 (at time of writing).
That’s one hell of a tip!
It happened when Kanye visited a club in Los Angeles a few years ago.
Kanye took a seat at the bar, ordered a drink of water on the rocks (does he not have a tap at his place?) and simply sat and chatted to the bartender.
The bartender spent around four hours listening to Kanye share his soul – between serving other customers I presume.
This had me thinking… why would he pay a complete stranger £11,000 to simply listen to him waffle on?
In a world where we are connected to more and more people thanks to the internet and mobile phone technology… it would seem that despite this incredibly connected world, more and more people are feeling lonely.
Superstars like Kanye who are in the public eye all the time, surrounded by people who they don’t know whether they can trust or have their best interests at heart, can often feel completely lonely and isolated.
They don’t know who to talk to or whether people will actually sit and listen without judgement… or worse, their heartfelt outpourings appearing in the papers the following day.
It would appear that Kanye just needed to offload and talk to someone who was completely impartial.
And this had me thinking further…
Could impartial listening be offered as a service online?
This would be a service similar to a therapist or counsellor but without any actual advice given.
Unless of course the person paying to be listened to, asked for your opinion, then you could offer it but you would need to clearly state that it isn’t professional advice or guidance.
Obviously, I am not suggesting that you will make £11,000 for a four hour stint of listening, but you could quite easily make money by simply listening to people talk about their problems.
In the 1990’s and 2000’s, it seemed all the rage in the USA for people to have their own therapist.
It seemed that if you weren’t seeing someone at least once a month to discuss the state of your life then you really wasn’t a ‘modern American’.
I don’t know what the trend is at the moment, but I do know that thanks to the coronavirus, lockdowns and the uncertainty of the world we are living in today, worries and mental health issues have become more prevalent.
Obviously, serious mental health concerns should be forwarded to people like the Samaritans and professional organisations who are better to deal with those situations.
But there are a lot of people who simply need to offload and say out loud what they are worried about and what is concerning them.
Talking to the wall is fine, but there is no humanity to it. No empathy or caring compassion being returned.
People not only like to be listened to, they need to be heard.
The simple act of being heard can really help people.
It helps with healing and it helps people to process their thoughts and fears.
Asking a few well chosen questions to help the person speaking to explore their concerns and figure out why they think and feel the way they do can really help them.
I think this could be a great way to make some extra money for those who are not technically minded and really do not want to create and sell any products or offer up any complicated hands on services.
In a previous email I shared with you a video I instructed Andi to record showing a simple two to three page website which would be ideal for a business model like this.
You can watch that video here:
Build A Six-Figure A Year Business Using A Client Qualifying Funnel
For this, you would really only need a website which has a simple front page where you offer a free product in exchange for an email address… for this you could offer a free 15 minute session where you listen to the person offload.
When the 15 minutes is over, you could then tell them that you are available for further sessions where you will listen without judgement.
You could offer 30 minute, 45 minute and/or 60 minute sessions in exchange for money. These sessions could be over the phone or face-to-face using one of the many face time apps or services like Skype or Zoom.
Andi’s good lady used to offer a therapy where clients would come to have aches, pains and injuries worked on through body manipulation but the one thing she noticed most, was that most of her clients came to ‘talk’.
Especially the older clients who struggled to get out and about.
Often the sessions would overshoot their allotted time because people were still offloading their problems… and very few were related to the actual aches and pains they were supposed to be there for.
It appeared that the actual therapy was second to the listening that she was doing.
When people asked her what she did for a living, she would often reply that she was ‘paid to listen’.
People need to be heard, it is as simple as that.
I cannot say how much you can charge for this service or how much you can earn… I doubt you will end up with a £11,000 tip, but like all things in life, what you earn is determined by factors you control such as how much effort you put into finding clients, how much time you spend promoting your service and what type of people you target.
Focusing on people who are more affluent than the general public can result in you charging more for your services.
That is where the money is… people who have money, are willing to spend it. Finding the right people and offering your service is the best way to make money.
Watch the video that Andi recorded showing how people attract the perfect clients using a simple two to three page website here: