"I heard this hundreds of times, 'I would never have a website, ever'... 'I would never put my credit card online'...[new technology is scary until you do it a few times, and then it becomes the norm] "

"There's hope, and this is just the risk of believing in ourselves and believing that, "what I want for myself, or what I want for my family, what I want for the people that I love is worth taking risks."

-Kiki

Please email comments/questions to Tali@OrangeHatter.com.

Mentioned in this episode:

Free Market Kids Short

Get your HODL UP ("The best bitcoin game ever!") at www.freemarketkids.com.

Hi everybody.

Welcome to Orange Hatter.

Today we will listen to part five of my conversation with Kiki.

I'm gonna talk about early adoption, and I experienced

that myself with the internet.

One of my close friends from high school, she went on to

study engineering, mathematics, architecture, like so many things.

And she was at Columbia University and she was doing graduate work,

and then she was working on campus.

She was working for this satellite education program.

So Columbia University was.

Very early in establishing a satellite education program.

And so she would talk about it and one day I was just like, "I really

dunno what you're talking about.

How can you do a satellite education program?"

And she said, "well, there's this thing called the worldwide web.

And it was created by the government and shared for the military, and

they realized that they could.

Extend, you know, how it served.

And so they extended it to universities.

So we broadcast these classes outta Columbia to students all over the

world through the worldwide web."

That was very early.

She has since obviously she's a pioneer in tech and she's

CTO, CIO in her, in her field.

Cut ahead few years.

I'm living in Los Angeles.

I'm working as an actress.

I have a, a yoga school too, and I'm, you know, teaching high-level,

one-on-one, you know, very famous fancy people, yoga and I went to visit my

girlfriend, I think for her wedding.

She had moved to Cleveland to work on a big project at the university.

She was like, "You don't have a computer?"

And I was like, "no I don't have a computer.

I, you know, I visit my agent's office, I get my scripts, I drive around, I go on

auditions, I, you know, answer the phone.

I go to my yoga school, whatever."

And she said, "well, we're retiring.

We have a whole room full of computers that we've retired because they're

building a brand new business school.

And I will..."

No, I think she said, "if you come visit me, I'll give

you a computer" or something.

She wanted me to visit her.

So, I visited her and we get this computer and we, we pack it up,

we take it to UPS and we pack it up, and then I get a computer.

So I'm kind of one of the first people I know with like a desktop

computer and it's like a dial, you know, a dial up line or whatever.

So meanwhile at my yoga school, I have some great students.

They work at Disney, they're.

Early digital animators, they're like, like, "do you want a website?"

You know, this is when like it cost like $20,000 to build a

website.I was like, "a website.

I don't know.

I really don't know what we do on websites.

I guess we just put our schedule on it and things like that."

But I was like, "sure I would have a website."

So they built me a beautiful website and had our schedule on it and it really

made me think about like how I wanted to communicate what yoga was, what I taught.

People disparaged me.

It was as though I was like a street hooker on the corner

turning tricks for drugs.

Other yoga schools, they thought I had sold out, trash advertising.

Like, "you have a website.

You have a website."

People said to me like, I would, people actually said this, I

heard this hundreds of times., "I would never have a website, ever.

Like the worldwide web is so dangerous that, you know, you're

just gonna get involved in like pornography, gun sales and drug sales.

You're gonna just be on some list for the FBI or something."

And I said, "it's no different than a business card.

Do you have a business card?"

"Yes, of course.

I have a business card."

"Well, it's no different than a business card."

If someone had a brick and mortar, I'd say, "do you have a brick and mortar?"

And they'd be like...

"Do you have a sign in front?

Is there a sign on the front of your store, law firm, medical office?"

They'd be like, "yeah."

I'd say, "It's just a sign.

It's just a sign on the internet highway of brick and mortars."

It was years before other people, you know, had websites.

So a lot of it has to do the adoption, has to do with the technology catching

up where it's easier to build a website.

It's cheaper to build a website.

It has to do with the affordable technology to have a computer.

I got my first computer for free, you know, and then eventually

obviously smartphone technology.

But so the other thing was in early internet you could shop online

and pay with things, credit card.

And people were like, "I would never put my credit card online."

I mean, hundreds and hundreds of people said that to me.

Other yoga schools would say like, "oh, how do you order your yoga rug?

Your yoga mats?"

And I would say, "actually, I get them really affordably.

I get them in a big roll, and I order them online at this company."

"No, I would never order them online."

I really can't help you there.

Like I guess you have to get on the phone and call them up...

Yeah, there's definitely, there's definitely that trust factor because

I remember the first time I ordered something, I don't remember what it

was, but I remember the first time I had to punch in my credit card number.

And I was so scared that somebody, somebody would steal my number and

it took years for my mom to feel comfortable ordering something.

But once you do it a few times, you know that, oh, it was mostly

the fear factor that was keeping you away from the new technology.

And so with Bitcoin, I think it's similar.

There's, there's that trust factor that's lacking for a lot of people

because they just haven't done.

And if they, if somebody will hold their hand and walk 'em through it

just once or twice just to gain the trust and the confidence, then they'll

realize, It's absolutely doable.

Yes.

Yes.

We have, like, such tech innovation.

You know, over the last, really I got involved in 2018 with Bitcoin, so you

know, obviously every year since then, we just have more and more innovations.

And hopefully we have more people that we can trust, more businesses

that we can trust, you know, inside.

I was super excited about the Blockfi credit card and of course

Blockfi filed for bankruptcy.

And people lost hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars, because they

were using Blockfi as a trading platform.

I only used it as credit card to get the Bitcoin points.

Maybe over the course of year, I got like 600 dollars in Bitcoin and when it would

hit about, you know, two or 300 bucks, we would pull it all and put it in a wallet.

And so when Blockfi went down, we had about $50 in points

in Bitcoin, which we lost.

So that's another thing.

We don't wanna keep our money on the exchanges.

Uh, even if we buy on the exchanges, we don't...

You might have an app on your phone, like a cash app or a strike app.

You might have a wallet on your phone.

Well, don't keep more money on that than you would wanna lose.

If you're scared, it's not your time!

You know, what can I say?

Yeah, it's okay.

Yeah.

Take your baby steps.

It's gonna be okay.

It's like, I, even, a few years ago, I kind of co-taught a yoga

retreat that a friend had set up and we took a, it was in Vermont, and we

took a beautiful hike and there was a waterfall with a, with like, a rock.

And people were jumping off and I was like, you know, other people, young

people, were jumping off the rock.

And I was like, that looks so fun.

Let's go!

I, you know, I wave on the...

people and I scrambled up the rock, like faster than everyone and I gotta the

end and I looked down and I was like, "how can it look so high from up here?"

Like, down there it looks like, I dunno, 15 feet, and up

here it looks like a hundred.

And I was llike, "well, girl...

got here and everyone's waiting for you and you're not gonna

turn around and crawl back down."

So I jumped in.

It was amazing.

And then I, you know, jumped again.

But it's scary.

You know, it's scary, but...

There's help.

There's help.

There's a lot of people out there.

There's hope, and this is just the risk of believing in ourself and believing

that, "what I want for myself, or what I want for my family, what I want for

people that I love is worth taking risk."

I hope listening to this conversation has piqued your

interest and inspired you.

If you would like to learn more about Bitcoin or to read

the show notes, please visit orangehatter.com for more information.

Or you can email me directly at tali@orangehatter.com.

Be sure to subscribe to the Orange Hatter Podcast so you'll be

notified when new episodes drop.

See you next time.

Thank you.