– Herman Jagpal is trading from a paperclip to a house.
– After a dozen trades, he now has a $20,000 voucher for solar panels and heat pumps.
– Jagpal’s journey involves daily trades with strangers and is inspired by his Rejection Therapy challenge.
Can you buy a house in New Zealand with a paperclip? Social media influencer Herman Jagpal is trying to find out.
The 27-year-old from Hamilton started the unusual challenge two weeks ago and is already making headway, having traded his way to a $20,000 voucher for solar panels and heat pumps.
Jagpal told OneRoof that the first few deals happened pretty quickly.
On day one of the challenge, he traded the paperclip for a packet of gum, which he swapped for a faith box. That became a massage ball and then a pair of headphones.
By the end of day one, he had an Xbox, and by the end of day four, he had a 2008 Nissan Wingroad, which led to a $10,000 renovation voucher, which he then swapped for the solar panel and heat pump voucher.
“I made some really good progress when we started, and we made some huge trades early on, but I’ve just been stuck with this voucher for the past four days,” Jagpal told OneRoof at the end of last week.
Jagpal celebrates trading up to a car. Photo / Supplied
He said there were fewer people with something worth $20,000 that they were prepared to trade, he said.
“Every single trade I’ve done has been with someone I didn’t know. A lot of it has been me walking up to people and pitching a trade, or someone telling me to get in touch with this person or that person.”
Jagpal is used to rejection. This year, he started Rejection Therapy, which involves asking a random stranger for something every day. “I was expecting to get a no, but a lot of the time I got a yes, and I came to realise that I can kind of get anything I want in this life as long as I ask the right person at the right time.
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“I think people are very scared to ask, and they don’t want to deal with the rejection or embarrassment of hearing no. But I’ve been doing Rejection Therapy for 240 days so far, so it’s not that big of a deal to me. If I hear a no, I just keep going ahead with my life.”
He added: “I don’t see rejection as this huge loss or anything, I just see it as redirection.”
He had also learnt that it was more about the kindness than the rejections. “It’s really, really cool to just see how much kindness there is from people out there that want to see me succeed,” he said.
“They are losing value by doing this trade with me, but a lot of people just want to be part of the story, and they want to be part of getting me to that end goal.”
The idea to trade a paperclip for a house came to him after he attended a Farmers’ Market in Napier. He started with his trusty paperclip and by the end of the day had a block of award-winning cheese, which he gifted to the very first person who traded with him.
He had also amassed a group of loyal and growing followers who were also giving him ideas of how and what his next trade should be. A few of the trades had come to him through social media, including an offer of a transportable house, which he has yet to accept because he has no land to put it on.
“It’s growing pretty quickly, and it’s a bit of a race between if I’m going to reach one million followers [on Instagram] or get the house first.”
Jagpal said his focus right now was getting the house, and he would then decide what to do with it once he achieved it.
“That’s the last thing on my mind. I want to get closer and closer, and I don’t know how long it will take – a month, a year, or 10 years. I’m just going to keep going until I get to a house.”
He added: “I will travel anywhere and everywhere. I don’t mind where that house is, I just want to be able to say I traded that paperclip all the way to a house.
“If I can do this, I know it’s going to be such an amazing feeling, and I know it’s inspiring other people, and people are just so invested in it.”