This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Why did the Bitcoin cross the road? Because there was a fork ahead. There's a joke that's going to be appreciated by, I don't know, maybe three members of our audience. If you don't get it, it's okay. Like I said, nobody else does. But there is gold in the blockchain.
What does that even mean? Well, welcome to Silenceful School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. His listener wants to help a low tech audience understand and benefit from blockchain technology. How should she proceed? Now, I found this question really interesting because I've seen
a number of times the power of translation or adaptation, transformation, whatever you want to call it, helping a group of people gain access to a market or platform or opportunity that has otherwise eluded them, which is essentially what she wants to do here. However, I've also seen it done the wrong way. I'm reminded of someone who hopefully is not listening to this episode, but I'm reminded of someone who once dressed up in character as kind of a Luddite senior citizen. And this person was on a mission to help seniors with tech, which is a very admirable thing, of course. But the way she went about it, even though this woman herself was in the same demographic, I found it a little bit strange. It was very
exaggerated, just, you know, felt a little bit awkward, to me at least. And I'm pretty sure that a lot of the people she was trying to help felt the same way. So to succeed in your goal of translation or adaptation, to help a group of people gain access to something that has eluded them, you need to be very careful with your assumptions. And I also think there's a critical question to answer and make sure you have a good answer for it at the outset. All right, so let's dive in how to find the ideal audience to teach blockchain at technology. Hello, I'm Randy Givens from Long Beach, California, and I am so inspired
by all the awesome stories featured on the Side Hustle show. My side hustle is helping those who have no technical skills to enter into the ledger platform technology known as blockchain. Currently, I have several possibilities for accomplishing this goal. My question is how do I attract my ideal audience and get these solutions in front of them to test and validate any assistance or insight you can provide is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Randy. So glad you're enjoying the program. Shout out to Long Beach, California. Now in some new research news, a study shows that more people would use Bitcoin if they actually knew what it was. That is both a joke and an accurate observation. I personally
learned to understand it much better by reading an article where it was essentially Edward Snowden explaining blockchain to his lawyer in this long series of messages or emails. I will link that up in the show notes for anybody else out there who's like, "Man, I keep hearing about this all the time, but I don't actually know what it is." Now to Randy's question, as I alluded to, we desperately need translators in this world. We need translators for this kind of ledger technology in particular, but Randy runs the risk of selling something to people who don't know they need it. In other words, she'll have to educate her ideal audience before she can sell to them. So in this situation, which is not totally uncommon, the main pitfall to look out for is the classic features versus benefits comparison. What
I mean is when most of us talk about something that we're really excited about, we tend to emphasize the features and that's because we are obsessed or even if we're not obsessed, we're really into it. So we're all interested in the details. We already have a good understanding of it and we're kind of diving in further. The problem is that saying something like, "Hey, look at this cool thing. Look at this cool thing, blockchain technology or whatever it is." It doesn't really do a lot for people who aren't geeks or aren't into tech or whatever the topic is in the first place. Their main
question, whether it's stated or otherwise, is always going to be, "What's in it for me? Why should I care?" So that's why in this situation, you need to lead with the benefits, not the features. And the ideal audience that Randy is in search of has to know why it matters and what the benefit is for them. Could it have some practical application for their lives? I think it probably could, but that is the critical question to answer. So I don't
know exactly what Randy envisions. She's much further down this road than I am, but just off the top of my head, I thought of a couple things, especially when I thought about audiences who might not be familiar with it. One thing that came to mind was remittances, immigrants and migrants sending remittances, sending money back to home countries. There's so many people doing that. They often pay a lot of fees to do this using Western Union or some other service. And this ledger technology has the potential at least to create great
savings for them while still providing security. So you'll be able to transfer money securely to your family, you know, without paying a successive amount to some other company. How about for seniors? That was my other idea. I think about the critical topics of access to healthcare records, the ability to easily compare insurance and assisted living costs, communication with loved ones, something to do with legacy or estate planning, just to begin. Like those are a few things off the top of my head. So secondly, let's just keep
looking at that question of audience. People with no tech skills. That's something that Randy mentioned, if I'm not mistaken, it could mean a lot of things. I think she has to really narrow this down a lot more. And to do that, I would ask a question. Why did she get so
interested in this in the first place? She mentioned she has several possibilities. Well, most likely as she narrows down the audience, one of these possibilities will emerge as a clear winner, or at least the most likely candidate. And these answers are going to kind of guide her next steps. So no doubt, the blockchain technology offers a lot of potential with transparency, lower costs, and so on. But to teach it to a new audience,
you have to show them how it will change their lives. Listeners, do you have a question? Come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We'll be featuring them throughout the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch their projects. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1019. That is 1119. You can also get a free blockchain
in your choice of color. Thanks for listening. My name is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
