My youngest student was 42. My oldest was 94.
I ran smartphone classes for seniors for a year. What I thought was one audience turned out to be seven completely different people — all in the same room.
This is when I understood what "persona" actually means.
The Mistake I Made at First
I designed one curriculum. Assumed "seniors who want to use smartphones" was a sufficient description of my audience.
Week one was chaos.
The 42-year-old was frustrated I was going too slow. The 94-year-old was frustrated I was going too fast. The retired engineer wanted to understand why things worked. The retired homemaker wanted to know exactly what to press and nothing else.
Same product. Wildly different needs.
Building Actual Personas
I started observing instead of teaching.
Persona 1 — The Reluctant Joiner (avg age: 78)
- Came because family made them
- Goal: not embarrass themselves at family video calls
- Fear: breaking something
- Key insight: they needed permission to go slowly
Persona 2 — The Curious Explorer (avg age: 65)
- Came because they genuinely wanted to learn
- Goal: independence — no more asking kids for help
- Fear: being condescending or talked down to
- Key insight: treat them as intelligent adults, not patients
Persona 3 — The Reluctant Engineer (avg age: 70)
- Former technical background
- Goal: understand the system, not just use it
- Fear: being stuck in surface-level instruction
- Key insight: give them the mental model, not just the steps
Three different curricula. Same class.
Retention went from 60% to 94%.
What This Changed About My Marketing
When I later started marketing Growl — an AI tool for small business owners — my first instinct was to describe it to "small business owners."
Wrong. That's not a persona. That's a category.
"A restaurant owner who hasn't touched Instagram in 6 months because every time they try to post, they stare at the blank screen for 20 minutes and give up" — that's a persona.
One sentence. The person reads it and thinks: that's me.
Growl generates marketing actions for exactly that person. Every week.
Free to try — no signup: growl-app.vercel.app
Built solo, Kanagawa, Japan. Former restaurant owner and senior IT instructor. Day 365.
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