HS 189 – Hire Protesters for Your Next Movement with Crowds on Demand

In this episode, Jason talks with Adam Swart about his unique and important business model. Adam’s company Crowds on Demand allows anyone to hire real actors to protest and picket your next movement.

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Narrator: Welcome to the Holistic Survival Show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary for you to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival Show is your family’s insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to understand threats and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst case scenario, you’ll be ready. Welcome to Holistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host Jason Hartman.

Jason Hartman: Welcome to the Holistic Survival Show. This is your host Jason Hartman, where we talk about protecting the people places and profits you care about in these uncertain times. We have a great interview for you today. And we will be back with that in less than 60 seconds on the Holistic Survival Show. And by the way, be sure to visit our website at HolisticSurvival.com. You can subscribe to our blog, which is totally free, has loads of great information, and there’s just a lot of good content for you on the site, so make sure you take advantage of that at HolisticSurvival.com. We’ll be right back.

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Start of Interview with Adam Swart

Jason Hartman: It’s my pleasure to welcome Adam Swart to the show. If you think a business you’ve seen lately or your own business has a unique idea, I don’t know if it matches this one. This is pretty unique. What he does is he provides crowds for demonstrations, and this is a big part of living in America and having civil rights or freedom to assemble, and Adam can talk about that and some of the interesting stuff that his company has done to sway public opinion and get results with businesses or government. Adam welcome. How are you?

Adam Swart: I’m great, Jason. Thanks so much for having me on your show.

Jason Hartman: Well, I’ve got to tell you. This is about the most unique idea I’ve seen in a while, so…

Adam Swart: I appreciate that, I appreciate that.

Jason Hartman: Tell us about it. This show is dedicated for people who want to assert their rights, they want to make things happen, they want to make change, they want to get things going in the right direction. How can they use your company to do this?

Adam Swart: Well first of all Jason, there’s no bigger believer in the first amendment than me. Our company really relies on it, and we do all kinds of things to help people get the word out. We’ve worked on school board elections, made oral elections, ballot elections, various different labor protests and counter protests, charity protests, protests against stores. So we’ve really done a pretty diverse range of things and we have a really great crowd of trained actors of very diverse backgrounds, age, ethnicity, gender. So it’s really the perfect service if you want to protest a business you don’t like, a candidate you don’t like, or for a candidate you like or for an initiative that you’re supporting.

Jason Hartman: Amazing. so how is it done? Talk about the specifics of it. What happens?

Adam Swart: So sure. What happens is people give us a call and they let us know, this is what we’re looking for. We’re looking for a 20 person protest in Irvine or a 40 person protest in Trenton, New Jersey or whatever it is. We hear what it is that they’re looking for. Ideally our only rule is that we don’t work with hate groups. But any other group we’ll work with to help them get their message across. The way that I look at it is we really help people get the message across and get other people to listen to what it is that they have to say. We could have protestors there protesting a company, for example, that’s ripping its customers off saying no more rip-offs, don’t visit the store. I’ve seen pickets before that have been done by one or two people – frankly, even those serve some degree of effectiveness. So think about going to a store and seeing 15 people outside picketing. You’re going to think twice before going there. You’re going to think more than twice. You’re going to say wait, suddenly the context of this store changes. Suddenly it’s not the grocery store, suddenly it’s this bastion of controversy and concern.

Jason Hartman: Has anything ever turned violent?

Adam Swart: No, not at all.

Jason Hartman: Wouldn’t the store owner be incredibly upset?

Adam Swart: Well I think we stress that we always obey the law. In all of our protests, and all of our events and our rallies, we obey the law. So we don’t trespass on private property, we don’t block the streets, we’re not disrupting traffic. We’re just there exercising our first amendment rights. So yes, when we’ve done protests, are people occasionally upset? Yes. But there wouldn’t ever be a reason for violence or any concern like that, and the reason is that we’re obeying the law and being peaceful, respectful, of course we’re very lively but there is no reason for people to be upset or violent at any of our events. So we’ve never had them. People are very enthusiastic, very lively, but this is America. That’s what our system is all about.

Jason Hartman: But what I’m saying is what about the agency or entity or person who’s being picketed? They must get upset, right?

Adam Swart: Yeah, they certainly do. They don’t like it, but I think to me it’s often a wakeup call for them to change their policies. Because our crowd members often speak for a lot of other people who just don’t have the time or energy to go out there and picket themselves. So yes, some people will be upset by some of our events.

Jason Hartman: It’s you’re delegating picketing. What an incredible idea.

Adam Swart: Yes. Why should people…your ordinary person has a job to work, they have kids to spend time with or family to spend time with or significant other to spend time with, they don’t necessarily have the time to be out there picketing but as a result a lot of companies and a lot of organizations get away with doing very offensive things. We help people hold folks accountable without having to put in that kind of effort.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, very interesting, very interesting. Well tell us about some of the things specifically, like what’s happened at some of the events that you’ve done and what have been kind of some of the results.

Adam Swart: Well we did a big protest, for example, in Hollywood recently to raise awareness for a charity. The other thing about our events is they grow. I like to say nothing draws a crowd like a crowd. So we started with, I want to say, no more than a dozen of our people and basically the event grew and grew and grew and at the end of the event the head of the charity was addressing 200 people on the Hollywood walk of fame about her charity’s issues. So that’s the type of thing that we do. We don’t just provide you the people that you order, you’re also being provided that opportunity to reach so many more people. Because if your cause is good, which most of the people who we work with, their cause taps into the views of a lot of other people, then others will join in. Others will be like hey, I never heard about this but I’m going to get involved. So I really think we are stimulating democratic discourse.

Jason Hartman: Very true. I think you are too. So how much does it cost, and what do some of your people do at these pickets? I assume they pass out fliers, do they yell, do they have a loud speaker? Tell us more about what they do.

Adam Swart: They’ll yell, they do chants, they’ll hold up signs if online casino the client wants us to do that. They’ll wear the shirts, like if you want people to wear all yellow shirts or all green shirts, or a specific type of shirt, they do that. They’ll do the whole picket line march up and down, they’ll make speeches… a lot of them are very gifted public speakers. Remember, they’re trained actors, so a lot of them are very gifted public speakers so they really get into their roles a lot.

Jason Hartman: Fantastic. So they’re really actors, right?

Adam Swart: They are. They’re trained actors. A lot of them have appeared on TV shows and plays, so these guys know what they’re doing and they really love getting into a role. They create roles for themselves, like one of them is the fiery protest leader, one of them is the mom that sort of is stopping by and is sort of getting convinced. A lot of people what they like to do is not only have the real hard core activists there, but also have people who sort of seem like they’re coming in there and they’re being convinced by what they see. So it really looks very convincing if you see our events.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, that’s fantastic. Do they make up signs in advance, like picket signs?

Adam Swart: They do, yes. Sometimes the client has specific signs that they like to have us carry and other times they just say to use our discretion. So we work with both.

Jason Hartman: What is they typical amount of time that they spend doing this? Is it usually a four hour gig, or an all-day thing? I assume it’s whatever you want, right?

Adam Swart: It’s whatever the client orders. But typically three-four hours is the typical length of some of these types of events. Some of them are all day. So whatever it is that people order, but typically we’ve found that people like it short and sweet. It’s the best value for money that way, and in terms of costs, typically our protest packages tend to go upwards of $800, so yeah some of them a lot more, some of them on the lower range depending on how many people they want, whether they want us to bring more fancy gear, whether they want photographers there and videographers there. We’ve done like a whole fake reporter set-up to make it seem like there’s a news crew on the scene.

Jason Hartman: Oh wow, that’s very creative.

Adam Swart: So the more people want obviously, that increases the price but we work pretty carefully individually with clients. And the other thing is that all of our actors sign a non-disclosure agreement so people don’t need to worry that their event is going to be disclosed as a paid protest.

Jason Hartman: Right, right. And so, do you have a news van and a big professional looking news camera and a microphone and all of those props?

Adam Swart: We have a lot of that. We don’t have a news van, we do have news cameras and some other props like that. We have a couple vehicles that we can access that sort of look like they’re occupied by the news.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, fantastic. What a creative idea. Boy this is amazing. What will they think of next is what I think of when I hear you talk about this. Okay good, well give out your website if you would and tell people where they can find you.

Adam Swart: Well, our website is www.crowdsondemand.com we do exactly what the name implies.

Jason Hartman: And Adam, is there anything else people should know?

Adam Swart: The main thing that I like to tell everybody is we’re very accessible, we work hard on every event, even our smaller events and all of our clients really feel comfortable calling me personally even though I have a lot of coordinators out there. I am involved with the planning of every event and I try to even make it out to a lot of events myself, because I really believe passionately in what we do. It just makes me very happy when I see our client’s faces after or during the events when they’re really just like, I can’t believe how much benefit that we’ve brought to them and their organization.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, that’s amazing. It’s really quite a creative idea. I’ve got one more question for you. Do you carry insurance for your people? Because I assume they have to have worker’s comp. insurance and liability insurance. What if someone gets hurt doing this or something?

Adam Swart: Well, we really don’t have that. Again, we’re not putting people in really dangerous positions. You see a lot of stuff on the news about people lying on the streets or people blocking a freeway or people…

Jason Hartman: Handcuffing themselves to a tractor.

Adam Swart: We really don’t do that, and the reason why we don’t is exactly the reason that you mentioned. We are peaceful, we’re very lively but we’re peaceful and we follow the rules. We won’t get ourselves into trouble, and we won’t get you into trouble. That’s what I like to say.

Jason Hartman: So no insurance though, huh? And that’s been okay?

Adam Swart: Well, no we do have insurance but we haven’t had any incidents with that.

Jason Hartman: Oh, okay. Good stuff. Well hey, thank you so much for joining us today Adam and very interesting idea, and folks if you want to have some action in your town and influence some opinion, this could be the answer at the next school board election or whatever it is. If the city hall is doing something wrong, you could have an instant protest.

Adam Swart: Exactly. Local, national, state, family matters, whatever it is we’re there.

Jason Hartman: Okay, thanks Adam.

Adam Swart: Thanks for having me on the show.

Narrator: Thank you for joining us today for the Holistic Survival Show. Protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Be sure to listen to our Creating Wealth Show, which focuses on exploiting the financial and wealth creation opportunities in today’s economy. Learn more at www.JasonHartman.com or search “Jason Hartman” on iTunes. This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company, offering very general guidelines and information. Opinions of guests are their own, and none of the content should be considered individual advice. If you require personalized advice, please consult an appropriate professional. Information deemed reliable, but not guaranteed.

Transcribed by Ralph

The Holistic Survival Team

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