If you had to create an app today that allows you to contact a specific phone by making it ‘ring’, stopping all other functionality on the device – besides the ability to answer your unscheduled call (or waiting until you give up) – the app would never be accepted to the App Store. Never. Ever.

That’s how outrageous phone calls are in today’s world – they break so many obvious privacy rules, I’m surprised it’s still legal.

Most of the phone calls I ignore are unknown numbers, or people I know want information from me, based on my skills, experience or network. And if those people don’t have the common decency to at least, respectfully, put the power in my hands by requesting a time that would suit me to speak on the phone, then you can be sure I won’t be answering. Because I swear I wasn’t hovering around my phone the whole day on the off-chance you might call.

Sometimes, even if I wouldn’t actually mind speaking to someone, I will purposefully ignore the call, as that level or arrogance (to call someone for advice without a care for my time and current focus) doesn’t deserve a helping hand. There is an imbalance of power there that the universe doesn’t understand. That’s why – just to prove my point – I usually return the phone call at another time convenient to me – like 5:30AM. Nine times out of 10 they can’t answer. Because, guess what, it’s not convenient for them.

Unscheduled phone calls would be perfectly fine, if you could pay that person a rate that suits them for the inconvenience. I’d love to call whomever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and simply pay them for the random inconvenience. That’s what TIMON does.

TIMON, the ‘gig economy’ app, lets you voice call (or text) a number of ‘gurus’ anytime that suits you, including Jack Parow, Euphonik, Thando Thabethe, Ard Matthews, Bruce Whitfield, hotshot lawyers, tax gurus, Tracy McGregor, John Smit and more.

You pay a small ‘gig fee’ rate, charged every three minutes for voice calls, and every six minutes for text.

All you do is download the Timon app from the app stores (Android and iOS), log in (passwordless and social media logins), and start calling.

Jack Parow’s rate is R200. His profile reads ‘Business at the front. Party at the back’, and says that he is “Amped to chat about music, braais, parties and pretty much anything lekker”. You can call him right now. Download the app here.

There’s a highly experienced commercial lawyer on TIMON, charging a rate of R150 for every three minutes of voice call. You can call her right now for a quick legal question. I’m absolutely fine with that.

Yeah – I’m there as well. Go ahead… pick my brain.

TIMON lets you save your payment card details in the app, so you only have to input the details once – like Uber.

Future dev will let you save a ‘speed dial’ list of favourite contacts, as well as video calls and appointment scheduling (currently the app is on-demand).

Welcome to the gig economy.

Download the app here.