Onboarding a Sweet Place

As planned, this morning I woke up, made myself a strong cup of joe, and headed over to our local bakery. I’m of the idea that if I’m going to facilitate a hub of sorts, it has to start in a place where a lot of people naturally gather. Well, this bakery seems to be that place.

I drove there quite early, as I had agreed to meet Jerson (the owner) before 9 a.m. He was still getting things up and running, but shortly after, he came out with his laptop and we sat down to talk.

Unlike some of the recent onboardings I’ve done, this one was mostly just conversation. I’m of the mindset that before I offer a solution, I need to be able to clearly communicate the problem I’m trying to solve. So first, we talked about the issues here. In our little towns, we have a serious cash flow problem. There’s not much money circulating, and we depend heavily on people from the city coming in and spending their greens.

That’s probably why most of the year this place is awfully quiet—a feature I personally like. But as a business owner, as someone who has to meet payroll, those slow months can be devastating. The adoption of crypto—Hive specifically—can lubricate, if you will, some of this friction. It can help ease the lack of physical cash in circulation.

There are little to no point-of-sale systems in our towns. Processing credit or debit cards makes little sense for small businesses. But this is where Hive, and more precisely HBD, can really shine. That was the core of my message this morning.

“Imagine,” I said.

“Someone comes to your bakery and says, ‘Give me five buns,’ and pays you with HBD… 50 cents. All done with an app. No fees. No friction. Quick and beautiful—in seconds.”

“No need for you to provide change—that’s always an issue here. Everyone can pay the exact amount. They could even buy a 10-cent bun without draining your cashier’s coin stash.”

I saw Jerson’s eyes light up a bit. This issue is very real here. Just this week alone, I’ve been unable to make purchases more than once because the small shop didn’t have change for a twenty-dollar bill. Yes, that’s how it works in these micro-economies. And that’s exactly what we can supercharge with our blockchain.

At any rate, I felt like I was giving Jerson too much to chew on. So the onboarding wasn’t completed—but I feel optimistic. It feels like we made progress, like his understanding of the problem suddenly became clear.

I told him I’d reach out later. We could talk some more. Maybe I’ll bring my laptop and show him some Hive action—how easy it is to transact.

The next step is to clean up his old laptop and install Brave Browser and Hive Keychain. Hopefully I can do that this afternoon.

At any rate, I’m feeling pretty pumped right now. I don’t know if I can keep up this intensity forever, but I’ll try to go as long as I can.

Cheers.

MenO