Rob Lawless is defying every parent’s rule: Don’t talk to strangers.
The 28-year-old Philadelphia native is on a mission to meet 10,000 strangers, spending an hour with each and hearing about their lives. He has already met more than 3,000 people, and he’s currently on a quest to spend time with New Yorkers.
“Because there is no agenda, people are willing to lift their veil,” Lawless told The Post. “The thing I’ve learned is that no one knows what they are doing with their lives. They are just doing the best they can with the resources they have.”
The Penn State grad started his project in 2015, when he was working as a finance consultant and missed his college socializing.
“My goal was to meet 10,000 people in one year — 10 minutes at a time,” said Lawless. “But it wasn’t a good idea. It was naive.”
In his first year, he met 500 people, reaching out to people in creative fields he found interesting.
After he was laid off from his job in 2016, he made having coffee with strangers a full-time gig, convincing businesses to pay him in exchange for plugs on Instagram.
“My first partner was the company that laid me off. Then I met this guy who ran a mom-and-pop pharmacy and he sponsored me,” Lawless explained. Then came a dentist, a wedding band, a dog-walking service and WeWork.
For the past three years, he has lived rent-free, bouncing between a friend’s place in Los Angeles and his parents’ home outside Philly.
“I have very good friends, and that’s how I have gotten this far,” said Lawless.
He now finds his subjects through word of mouth and doesn’t reject anyone who reaches out, typically via Instagram (@Robs10kFriends) or Robs10kFriends.com.
He’s met everyone from a former gang member who became a ping-pong pro to a man who has 64 siblings to a boating accident victim who was told he would never walk again but defied the odds. Some stories have made Lawless shed a tear — like the woman who lost her brother to a drunk driver.
After each meeting, Lawless posts a photo of himself and the stranger he’s just met, along with a summary of their story. He is averaging about 800 people a year and expects the project to last another decade. He hopes to take it international and eventually do a 50-state tour.
Lawless’ 3,026th meeting, which happened Thursday, was with Queens resident Natasha Bhalla, a 40-year-old who works in the beauty industry. She heard about him through a friend.
“I feel like he is healing people because connecting with people is healing,” said Bhalla. “Neither of us picked up our phones [during the hour] and that was really nice.”
Lawless said he doesn’t believe he is healing anyone but he agrees that people want to be “seen and heard.”
He’s even landed the occasional date, although he doesn’t ask anyone out directly after their meeting.
“Some girls have kept in touch and we’ve decided to meet afterward,” he said. “I just want to get to know the person across from me as well as I can. It’s always entertaining.”