How to exploit your friends and effectively leverage relationships in 2025

2025 is here! Start the new year on the right foot and sow your seeds of emotional manipulation now!

If you are planning a trip in 2025 or beyond, we highly recommend that you start developing your friendships now, in order to harvest their fruits when the time is ripe for you to leave.

Exploiting your friends can be a great way to raise badly needed funds. It can also provide much needed storage space while you are away and if you do it right, it can even be fun.

We have spent the last few months leveraging our strategically important relationships, and reaping the benefits of their resources and insecurities. Here are some simple guidelines to follow and some tips and tricks we picked up on the way.

Step 1. The mark:

All good cons need a good victims, and good friends make good victims…

The stronger the emotional bond that you can form with your victim the better. When the time comes to leave, the higher the victims perception of the relationship, the more exploitable/useful they become.

A good victim could take literally years of work. We know that at times it can be a slog, but just keep your end goal in mind and the time will fly by.

What really worked for us, was to find common interests with our victims. Developing friendships can be less bothersome if you couple it with parties, frisbee, festivals, excessive-alcohol, exercise, BBQs etc.

Everyone is different and our approach will not work in every instance, but if you stick to our advice you should start to see the results almost immediately.

Step 2. The set up: 

“O.K. I have my friends, now what?”

At first having friends can seem rather pointless, but trust in the process and you will be making monetary gains in no time.

To reap your just rewards, you need to get creative. 

Luckily, most people are pretty one-dimensional and very susceptible to food and alcohol. We recommend herding your friends together in your house and regularly plying them with varying delicacies.

There are many ways to benefit from your newly found friendships. For us money and storage were top priority, which gave us a clear objective.

Next up you need to lay your trap:

• Plan a going away party.
• Send out your invites.
• Arrange your house to maximise your sales opportunities.
• Obscure the exits.
• Remove any furniture that might allow them to rest (studies show that a slightly agitated mark can spend 15% more then an comfortable one).
• Alcohol.
• Small talk.
• Sell, Sell, Sell.

Pro tip: Serve your food late, to keep your audience captured.

Step 3. The con:

Now it is time to spring your trap. Harass people into buying your unwanted items and guilt them into storing your possesions. The more persistent you are the better. 

This is also a great way to measure the success of your friendship, and a noteworthy K.P.I.

Pro tip: It can be helpful to slip in a few actually valuable and practical items to make your friends forget the caveat of their spendings and commitments.

With some luck, you should now be ready to jet off on your self indulgent trip, while your friends spend the next year or so realising that the items they bought were a mistake and that their very limited storage space has been drastically reduced, but it won’t matter to you, because you are literally on the other side of the world.

Dedicated to our dear friends – we love you and appreciate all your support and help!

Conor & Alina