A Weird Business Idea That Actually Became Successful

Nik Business, Culture, Quora, Society, Travel

Rent-A-European.

Meet Balazs. Balazs is a Hungarian exchange student in Shanghai. He’s tall, white and has a beard.

This makes him very desirable in a mainly Asian city, because he’s, well, a foreigner. Every weekend, club owners pay Balazs $35/hr to hang out. Access to the VIP lounge, food and drinks are free.

The idea is simple: Places where Europeans hang out must be good, so Balazs and his fellow foreigners-for-rent act as social proof to attract more Chinese customers.

The women flirt with him, the men spend more money. The club owner’s happy and so is Balazs, because it’s the best student job he’s ever had.

The idea isn’t new, Chinese companies commonly rent white guys to pose as experts and realtors will pay foreigners to pose as celebrities or in property photographs to raise the price of an estate.

Strange? For sure. But that’s just how the world works. You can either complain about it, or make the most of it.

Now excuse me, I have to book a flight.

Nik

Niklas Göke writes for dreamers, doers, and unbroken optimists. A self-taught writer with more than a decade of experience, Nik has published over 2,000 articles. His work has attracted tens of millions of readers and been featured in places like Business Insider, CNBC, Lifehacker, and many others. Nik has self-published 2 books thus far, most recently 2-Minute Pep Talks. Outside of his day job and daily blog, Nik loves reading, video games, and pizza, which he eats plenty a slice of in Munich, Germany, where he resides.