Why I started walking people | Chuck McCarthy | TEDxUCLA

We've all heard of dog walkers. How about People Walkers? Crazy idea? The more you think about, the larger the implications and the more you may want to throw on some sneakers and take a walk.

Chuck McCarthy is a thinker and creator who takes a problem-solving approach to innovation and invention. Chuck is the original People Walker and is the co-founder of People Walker Inc. He has been featured by many media outlets for his theoretical ideas, inventions and of course, People Walker.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Three years ago, I started jokingly saying

that I was going to start
walking people for money.

(Laughter)

Yeah.

But the more I made that joke,
the more reasons I came up with

that someone would actually want to
or need to hire someone else

to walk with them.

I came up with too many reasons
for the joke to be a joke anymore.

I ruined my own joke.

(Laughter)

I started a business walking people.

There was almost no overhead
or capital investment involved,

beyond some flyers,
a T-shirt, fabric markers,

maybe having to buy shoes more often

and my time.

The last thing on my list was my time
because I thought I had plenty of it,

which looking back at it now
seems ridiculous

since I was literally
offering people my time.

But at the time,
I had everything I needed.

I put up flyers, I made a shirt,
I made a web page

and started forcing my friends
to go on walks with me.

(Laughter)

Not only did people respond with interest,

but news and media outlets
around the world went crazy for the idea.

I've done dozens and dozens of interviews

with almost every news outlet
you can imagine.

I was on TV in Germany.

Yeah, I'm basically the David Hasselhoff
of walking at this point.

(Laughter)

It's true.

This response was totally unexpected.

Why did people around the world care
about me walking people?

I believed in my idea,

but I didn't think this many people
would be interested,

not just in LA,
not just in the United States,

but around the world.

Something so simple - walking people -

struck this deep chord
that resonated on a global scale.

I asked myself why,

but most people's questions
were more direct and pragmatic.

When you start walking people,

one of the questions you get asked
over and over again besides,

"Do you use a leash?"
and, "Will you pick up my poop?"

(Laughter)

is, "Why? Why would someone pay to walk?"

Well, the first two questions
are an easy no and no -

(Laughter)

but as to why, it depends.

It could be for the main reasons

that I thought
people would use the service,

the reasons that ruined my joke:
motivation and safety.

Most of us need motivation
and accountability

to exercise or do almost anything,

and accountability is at the heart
of almost every fitness success.

Safety is pretty obvious:
it's safer to walk with someone else.

Most people don't know this,

but the US Army actually invented
the "buddy system,"

not your kindergarten teacher -

(Laughter)

sorry, Mrs. Beardsley.

If it's safer for trained soldiers
to walk around together,

then it's safer for you and me.

Some people walk
to learn about a new place

or because they just want someone
to chat with while walking.

People who work from home
or are unemployed

don't have that water cooler gossip.

People walk just to meet someone new
because that could be fun and exciting.

There are many other reasons,

and to be honest, I don't think
I even know them all,

because I didn't come up with them all.

I know at least one woman used my service

as leverage to get her husband
to walk with her.

"Oh, you don't want to walk with me?

That's fine, that's fine,
stay sitting down.

I'll just hire this guy."

(Laughter)

Of course, her husband said,
"Oh no, you don't.

I'm going to walk with you.

I just have to find my shoes."

So, what have I learned
walking a few hundred strangers

a couple of thousand miles?

The first thing I learned

is that strangers don't stay
strangers long on a walk,

because a walk, long or short,
is a shared experience,

and shared experiences
bring people together.

Just walking out in the world
triggers some hardwired instinct in us

to look for and evaluate danger

so that when we're walking with someone,

they become part
of our family, pack or tribe

on some level deep in our animal brains.

This may or may not be
the instinctual experience,

but every walk is definitely
a shared experience.

On a walk with someone,

you're seeing the same:
funny dog, cool car, scary house.

I've seen funny dogs,
cool cars, scary houses.

I've seen rattlesnakes, deer, horses.

I found wounded birds.

I've almost been hit by cars.

I've seen houses being torn down
and buildings being built.

I have literally stopped
to smell the roses.

And I've shared these experiences
with the people I was walking,

giving us something in common

the same way you might have
something in common

with someone you went to school with

or worked with,
played on a sports team with

or just went to a concert with.

Were you at Woodstock, man?

No, no, no!

Were you at Coachella, man?

No?

Oh, I got it! Were you
at Burning Man, man?

(Laughter)

(Whispers) I know you.

(Laughter)

Another thing I learned is that name tags
really do help break the ice.

Whenever I'm wearing my company shirt,

people constantly stop me
and say stuff like,

"Hey, you're that guy,"

or, "Hey, are you that guy?"

(Laughter)

Yeah.

And I say, "Yes."

(Laughter)

This might sound
like inane chatter or small talk,

but is small talk really small
and unimportant,

or is it much more important
than most people think?

Most of us look down on small talk,

and of course,
if everything was small talk,

we'd go crazy.

But what I realized from walking
and talking with so many people

is that small talk
serves an important purpose.

It's almost like a calibration.

When you make small talk
with someone you're just meeting,

you're basically establishing
a shared reality.

"Man, is it hot today!"

"Oh yeah, tell me about it.
I've had my AC cranked up all day."

"Was traffic as bad for you getting here?"

"Terrible! I think
there was some construction."

There's always construction.

(Laughter)

It's true, yeah.

So yes, these interactions can feel inane,
but they establish a shared reality.

If it's cold outside,
you're shivering and you say,

"Brrr, it's cold. Winter is coming,"

(Laughter)

and the other person says,
"No, not really. Mnh-hnhmmm,"

(Laughter)

you'd probably be thrown off.

These interactions are important

for building the foundations
of deeper conversations

and deeper relationships.

You can't build a pyramid
from the top down,

and nothing ever started off big.

You have to start with the small talk
to get to the big talk.

Speaking of small talk, here's a cliche
I hope you have heard before

because otherwise,
it's not much of a cliche, right?

No pain, no gain.

(Laughter)

Just because something rhymes
doesn't make it true.

(Laughter)

It doesn't, no.

Here's an example:
the Earth's flat, and that's that.

(Laughter)

It must be true, it rhymed.

No pain no - the Earth's not flat -

(Laughter)

"no pain no gain" isn't true either.

There are plenty of activities

that you can do to get healthy
and stay healthy

without putting yourself in terrible pain.

Walking and talking is one of them.

In fact, walking and talking

can be so enjoyable
you might forget about your pain.

I've seen this over
and over again walking people.

Early on in my journey,

a woman was very excited
about my walking service.

She really wanted to walk with me.

(Laughter)

She paid me upfront.

But when I showed up for our walk,

she said that she had a bum leg,
she didn't know if she could walk,

it might not be worth it,
she could only go a mile or so maybe.

I told her that was fine.

I told her we'd take it easy,
we'd just walk and see.

We got to walking and talking.

And how far do you think we went?

It was more than a mile, yeah.

Good guess, good guess.

We walked five miles.

(Audience) Whoop, whoop!

Yeah.

(Applause)

I can't tell you what we talked about,

but I can tell you
what we didn't talk about: her pain.

I saw her the next day.

She didn't say anything about
being in terrible pain from our walk.

All she wanted to talk about
was how far we had gone.

Of course, walking
isn't some sort of magic cure-all.

Even though Hippocrates did say,
"Walking is the best medicine,"

he said that over 2,000 years ago,

and we know that it can't fix everything.

But when you're out walking
and talking and in the moment,

it is much harder to focus
on stress and pain

or whatever is bothering you,

the same way you can
if you're just sitting around.

Is this because we're not
the amazing multitaskers

we want to think we are?

Hippocrates has another
great quote about walking:

"If you're in a bad mood, go for a walk.

If you're still in a bad mood,
go for another walk."

It's pretty good.

(Laughter)

Two thousand years ago.

We know from studies

that physical exercise
can change human brain chemistry,

that the very act of walking
can change your mood.

But is it just this chemical change
that's making us feel better,

or is it also that
walking out in the world

gets us out of our houses

and away from physical reminders
of stress and pain:

that pile of dirty laundry,
that pile of dirty dishes,

that pile of bills?

And piles are bad news.

(Laughter)

Really.

Besides getting us away from piles -

(Laughter)

this walking also makes us feel better

because walking and talking
takes up all of our attention

and forces us to be present and mindful.

"Mindfulness" is a word
that people have thrown at me

and attached to my walking.

And after going
on all the walks I've been on,

I can tell you that walking and talking

does push people
to be more present and mindful,

and paying for the experience
almost guarantees it.

That's true, that's true.

(Laughter)

When you think about the future
or consequences or results,

it takes you out of the moment,
it kills mindfulness.

But walking is a physical
manifestation of moving forward.

Every step is a step into the future,

and talking engages us in the now.

So, you're here and now
and stepping into the future,

seeing what's next, where you're going,

which is important

because what most people
fear most about the future

is the unknown, the uncertain,
the unexpected.

(Laughter)

When I say paying for the experience
almost guarantees mindfulness,

you might imagine someone
handing me a lot of cash

and me handing over
a three-pound bag of mindfulness.

(Laughter)

But it's actually
more like going to a museum.

When I first started walking people,

some people thought I was doing this
as a performance art piece,

and although I wasn't,

the more people I've walked,

the more I realized that there is
something like art about it

because when we pay to go to a museum,

we really focus on the art
and give it more attention

and really consider it

in a way that we might not
if the art wasn't in a museum.

Even art in a gallery
gets more of our attention

because it has a value attached to it.

We ponder a red canvas
with a yellow square

because it's framed -

(Laughter)

it's on a wall, and it has a price tag.

Paying to walk
assigns a value to the walk,

and that value not only pushes people
to focus on the conversation,

to be present and to be mindful,

it also stops people
from thinking about other things.

Very rarely do people I'm walking
take out their cell phones,

because that would take time
away from our walk.

The most important thing I've learned
over the past three years

is that my time should not have been
the last thing I considered

when I started walking people

because I've learned
that time really is money

and not in the way
I thought about it before,

as translating to billable hours
or an hourly wage.

Time is literally money:
a currency, a commodity.

Time was the biggest
investment I had to make

when I started walking people,

and that's the biggest investment
I continue to make.

Why did people care so much
about my idea to walk people for money?

Why did so many people care
around the world?

I wasn't charging that much.

I wasn't trying to exploit anyone.

I didn't start walking people
because I thought it would make me rich,

and it hasn't.

(Laughter)

Yeah.

It's true.

(Laughter)

But charging for the walk
attached a value to the walk,

attached a value to my time,

the same way that people paying for that

draws attention to their lives,
to the present,

it makes them more mindful.

To sum it up, your mom didn't put
a swear jar on top of the TV

to become a billionaire.

(Laughter)

She did it to make you think
about what you're saying,

to be mindful.

Did my idea impact
so many people around the world

because I had inadvertently
assigned value to human time

in a way that made them think
about their own time?

Something else happened
when I started walking people,

and it had a huge impact on me.

When I started walking people,
other people wanted to walk people.

I got asked over and over
how I got started.

People wanted to work for me,
people wanted to walk for me,

and these people, they were amazing people
from around the world,

people with educations and experiences
that far surpassed mine.

Helping people get out and walk

is what kept me
moving forward with this idea.

But seeing these amazing people

that really wanted and needed
to help other people,

to feel like they were doing
something positive -

these amazing people
that were undervalued,

underemployed or unemployed,

that just wanted a job
that would let them connect,

let them share their knowledge
and experience,

value them as humans -

that's what made it impossible for me

to stop trying to move forward
with this idea.

Looking at these people, it made me ask,

"Are there other jobs like walking people?

Can we create other jobs,
other human jobs,

that value human time over productivity?

Are there other ways humanly possible
for us to be of service to each other

and help us value each other's time?

If we don't value human time, who will?"

This might sound like
a daunting task, making up jobs.

But basically every job
in existence was made up.

Why stop now?

(Laughter)

Really.

What's stopping us from inventing,
discovering, creating, making up

more human jobs for humans to do,

jobs that do connect us
and do value our human time?

You know a lot about cars,
but you're not a mechanic?

You could teach people about their cars

so that mechanics
can't take advantage of them.

Are you always asking interesting
and thought-provoking questions?

Well, maybe you could be
a professional thought provoker.

(Laughter)

Or could you? Hmmmm.

(Laughter)

How many more people might take the bus

if there was some sort of bus Sherpa
to show first-time riders the bus routes?

Do these seem like
silly ideas, small ideas?

Well, just like small talk,
nothing starts off big.

We're surrounded by jobs

that just a few years ago
would have been scoffed at:

personal stylist, life coach,
dog walker, manicurist, cuddler,

professional video gamer,
blogger, vlogger, influencer.

(Laughter)

The list goes on and on.

What's stopping us from adding to it,

adding human jobs?

Human.

Human time, human jobs,
human, human, human.

This might sound like some sort
of rallying cry against technology,

but it's not.

Technology is what makes so many
of these new human jobs possible.

But if you decide to create
a human job, to do a human job,

something that involves connecting
and spending your time on another person,

it doesn't have to start off as an app
or some new technology or a big company.

You don't even need a garage

like all the tech companies
when they were getting started.

(Laughter)

It can just be you offering your time

the way it was me offering my time

and a skill I had mastered
by the age of five.

(Laughter)

When I took my first steps -

(Laughter)

I didn't know where they would lead -

(Laughter)

I didn't know what it would grow into

or where it will go.

You'll never know
where your idea can take you

until you take the first steps.

Go take a walk, and find out.

(Applause) (Cheers)