Attention: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding!

Pat White: [00:00:05] Hello and welcome to Crypto with accountants powered by Bitwave, where we talk with technologists and crypto enthusiasts and discuss current events, economy, politics, technology and digital assets with thought leaders from around the world. My name is Pat White. I'm your host alongside Trevor Ward. This week we have an exciting co-host who's going to be joining us, a special guest host Amy Kownacki, who happens to be my co-founder at Bitwave because we have a really exciting panel for you today talking about ESG and die in all across the entire board of all things in the in the world, but especially with the focus on cryptocurrency and accounting. That's obviously what we talk about here. So, you know, we're here with this amazing panel to talk about different different elements of ESG and policy strategy, the way the world is evolving and everything happening around it in in crypto and and elsewhere. So we're really excited to be here to to chat with it. Really quickly, I'll introduce our panelists. So first is Donny Shimamoto. Donny is the founder and managing director of Enterprise Technologies A LLC. And advisory focused CPA firm Accelerating Innovation and Business Transformation for Small Businesses, mid-market organizations and Nonprofits. Donny is a recognized thought leader and educator in the field of accounting technology, IT risk management and performance management. His dedication to helping accountants and organizations leverage strategic technologies while proactively managing their business and technical risk is paramount. Donny, welcome, sir. Thanks for being on.

Donny Shimamoto: [00:01:26] Thanks for having me. And you did a great job going through that word soup.

Pat White: [00:01:31] It's it's my my superhero power. My second career was going to be one of those credit card guys, but. Oh, well, I don't think I quite have the the beautiful baritone for it. Next, joining us is Alec Koretzky is the co-founder and CEO of Layer Learn, build and scale your web3 business before founding. Hey Layer also spent 15 years working as a buyer in luxury fashion, e-commerce and subscription business startups. Bridging gaps between branding, marketing and product development. Her love for technology led her to discover blockchain in 2019, when she was blown away by how this can solve the issues with supply chain transparency. And that would be a big thing about ESG when we get into it. Like, I love talking about fashion ESG, because it's that like real surprising part of like, you know, the biggest polluters in the world. But that's. Sorry, that's an aside. Her mission is to make this technology available to the masses and to make sure women continue to grow and representation in this new user owned Internet. All are welcome. Thanks for being.

Alla Koretsky: [00:02:20] On. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. You know, looking forward to providing some value and adding some interesting conversation.

Pat White: [00:02:28] Wonderful. Next up, we have Matthew Hegeman. Matthew is the founder and CEO of 10-K Creators.com, a social enterprise whose mission is to help 10,000 creators achieve financial freedom through mentorship, training and access to critical resources. As both an artist and entrepreneur, this work is personal. After having survived the life of a New York City starving artist and navigating his way through the world of small business, he created this company to share the lessons learned along the journey, served on many types of advisory boards across the world and often as a speaker at many accounting conferences. He's also the founder of Accounting Alchemy Network Empowering Accountants to Transform the World. Matthew, welcome.

Matthew Heggem: [00:03:01] Thank you, Pat. Happy to be here.

Pat White: [00:03:02] So, Donnie, let's start with you. And and I want to just start by by laying the groundwork for a little bit around. You know, one of the things that you focus on is business transformation. And and we are at present going through this enormous upheaval of, you know, the world in general, I think it's fair to say. But certainly the accounting profession is one that we're seeing this just enormously changing across the board here. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, the changing landscape, how that's impacting businesses? And let's let's put up a bit of a slant on this on on Dei, which is as as you have people leaving, like are we seeing overrepresentation of women leaving, of men leaving, of younger people leaving? Like what are we seeing as as we see the great resignation, this sort of world change here?

Donny Shimamoto: [00:03:50] Actually, it's kind of interesting that you in the way that you phrased it and part of what we're I'm actually questioning is, are we actually seeing this? There's been a ton of talk recently. There's a ton of articles that are talking about like the path to CPA and this 150 hour rule that we have and everything that's going on. And you hear a lot of anecdotal stories around, well, you know, so-and-so is no longer an accountant or they've left the profession. But what I was looking for was actual data that showed who's actually exited the profession. And a lot of people equate the industry from the profession. So the public accounting industry, which is the accounting firms compared to the profession, which also includes controller CFOs and I think finance professionals, there's a lot of the your listeners are as well. And so I've kind of been wondering like, is this really occurring? Because one of the statistics that Gusto provided as part of their economic update last fall was that there's a ratio of 6 to 1 in terms of number of job openings within the professional areas, which which accounting is part of those. Six job openings to one accountant per se. And so even with people leaving, is there really is is it maybe now 3 to 1.

Donny Shimamoto: [00:05:13] And so we still need people. But what you know, where are the actual statistics? So we're actually doing research. And one of the other things that wasn't in the bio is about two years ago, I started the Center for Accounting Transformation. And what we're doing through the center is we're actually doing research around these areas because we found there's a lot of storytelling, but there's not a lot of data. And so we're actually doing a survey on staffing strategies that's helping to quantify what is the actual staffing that's missing. Is it like general staffing, Is it lower staffing, Is it upper staffing? Is it specialized knowledge like in crypto, specialized knowledge, like what is actually missing and what are we trying to fill? Because we want to see and look at this from a broader perspective and say, you know, if we were actually able to include and this is getting towards the piece, if we were able to include everyone within the accounting profession, not just CPAs, let's include IAS, let's include CMAs, let's include internal auditors, right? Crypto finance people, Let's include everyone in this. Are we actually missing people and how much people are we actually missing or losing?

Pat White: [00:06:26] Yeah, this is a great question. So it's really interesting the way you phrased that because, you know, I think when we talk about Dei, it's a it's I wouldn't say it's a nebulous term, but it's a bit of a nebulous term that it means a little bit something different to everybody who talks about it. And I think for the most part, we tend to think about in terms of race and gender. And I'm not sure that's 100% fair. But like we do tend to say like, you know, how do we how do we improve race, gender and sexual orientation representation across the board? But what you're sort of saying is, is one other side of that which might actually even be and this is sort of silly, but in Sanford, I live in San Francisco and we've been there's all these billboards now that are about hiring people who don't have college degrees, which is a really funny you know, it's one of those things that I haven't spent a lot of my time thinking about because I work with engineers and every engineer has college degrees for the for the most part. And and I mean, like when we work with engineers, it's very meritocratic. So like, an engineer comes along without a college degree, no one cares. Like you just hire if they can code, they you hire them, it doesn't really matter. But I think sort of what you're talking about in terms of Dei here is it's it's not just gender, race, sexual orientation. You're also saying education, background and experience background. Is that is that a fair. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but is that sort of a fair way to think about it?

Donny Shimamoto: [00:07:38] God is that is a perfect description of it. Because when you look at a lot of the research that's done about the benefits of diversity, it's not simply having someone from a different race or ethnicity or gender. It's actually the diversity of thought and perspective that's being brought in, which is often tied back to race. But that is actually, I think, no longer distinctly true. And what you said as well is I think is important in accounting as well, because we look at CPAs and we say, you know, CPAs essentially five years, a lot of which is often a master's degree and all this experience. But it's about, you know, we can get people that haven't gone to college, they can become IAS and participate in the tax realm. We have non CPAs like Matthew who does a great job or I should say non accounting background, people like Matthew who who come in contribute a large amount of wealth into our knowledge and practices and experiences. And so yes, it's, it's beyond just the whole racial age gender thing. You know, there's also things like veterans status, there's things like neurodiversity, tons of different other aspects of diversity. And I should mention, too, one of the other things we're researching is diversity and the adoption of practices. So we just completed our data collection on a survey that had almost 500 responses throughout the US and internationally. That is now sitting with our researchers from DePaul University and University of Portland to actually go through that and look at how do we continue to accelerate the adoption of these diversity practices. And we're looking at all of the different aspects of diversity.

Pat White: [00:09:21] That's that's so interesting because you kind of think about this thing in terms of like if you have, you know, like three people of different race and gender that all grew up in Pasadena, go to a top tier college and then go into into professional, they are all going to tend to they're going to tend to sort of have one way of thinking versus, you know, different different socioeconomic backgrounds, different neurodiversity, things like that. With this, you know, this leads really nicely into Matthew, which you what you're working on here, because I think a big part of what you are working on is and I say, I guess I'll couch this as you as a former starving artist, is like how we start to empower not just white collar workers, not just college educated people, not just engineers in this space. But everybody across the board is that. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you think about that problem?

Matthew Heggem: [00:10:08] Yeah. I mean, I guess part of it is just helping people to understand that you can be in this profession even with a different background, right, an educational background. I mean, I have a degree in dance and I like to kind of joke that I'm probably the only person that made it on the practice advisor 40 under 40 list that has a degree in dance. And I think actually the truth is, is that probably works to my benefit, right? Because when I think about my early success in the career, I was helping to grow a bookkeeping and outsourced bookkeeping firm in New York City, turned it into a full fledged firm bookkeeping CFO, comptroller services, recruitment services and technology consulting services. The value that I added was asking sometimes the obvious question, right? Or the thing that people took for granted, and also the ability for me to say, okay, well that's a great idea, but what if we did this or what if we did this? I was comfortable asking the what if question, right? And that's because of my background in the arts. And I was able to connect the dots and subsequently, because art is all about communication and connecting and storytelling and connecting with people, I was able to then more easily relate to my customers and my sales leads and help them to understand why what we do is important, right? So that there was a huge capacity that I had that I think other bookkeepers and accountants and CFOs and CPAs just didn't have because of that background that I had a huge advantage for sure.

Pat White: [00:11:43] And what do you so what is okay. So so that's sort of establishes the problem we've talked about here is a lot of the problems. And I think, Matthew, what you're trying to work on are the solutions here. What are the solutions? And this goes for accounting firms that are listening. If you're a leader in an accounting firm or a leader at a company like someone here at Bitwage, what are some of the solutions that you start to come up with to to get better to actually to to attract these people? Like, how do you do it? Do you have to do you have to advertise for jobs in different places? Or is it about who you reach out to? Linkedin Like give me give us give us some practical tips here.

Matthew Heggem: [00:12:16] Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, I think I can tell you how I did it and actually have a lot to do with with this idea of that. The generations that I think came before the maybe the current set leaders within the profession, a lot of including myself and younger are drawn to purpose, drawn to social change, drawn to making a difference. And if you think about, for example, the challenges that everybody my age and older has, swapping out pronouns versus my age and younger, it's it's almost night and day. It's like it's like the younger generation has no no difficulty with it. They understand they can regardless of, of of personal belief or just beliefs around it, their brains are able to process that in a way that's like, oh yeah, sure, why not? People are different. I can use a different word for that. That's fine. Next right versus the the older generations where there tends to be. Yes, there's sort of a neurological component of wiring language and how that fits into the equation. But but what to to answer your question, Pat, what it what it boils back down to is when I was marketing my firm and talking about what was important to us, I led with the values, right? Innovation was important. Building community was important, connecting, you know, connecting people to needs that change their lives was important. I didn't start off by saying, you know, we need to make sure you save money on your taxes and and block you know, block you from, you know, whatever. Right? It wasn't it wasn't about compliance. It was about values and beliefs and what was important to people. And so so therefore, embedding that in your brand and and in terms of talent acquisition, there's a concept around embedding that into your talent acquisition process because communicating your brand values, that's what's going to attract people that actually care.

Pat White: [00:14:13] Did you did you also interview like interview or did you also have principles or do you have any advice for people around the interview process? Because I you know, I often think about this the SAT gap, which is sort of there's a there's a very clear socio economics gap and and especially on the language portion. And a lot of it comes down this the example I always remember from my when I when I took classes in college about this and learned about this, it was always like, you know, you ask a kid from the inner city, one of these word associations and it's like beef is to filet mignon as car is to X. If you don't know what filet mignon is and because you've never had it, because your family didn't have money to buy filet mignon like you suddenly given this kid an incredible like you've set them off on a bad course entirely based on kind of socioeconomic pressures around there. So I tend to think about that a lot when I'm interviewing is is am I like I always I say, am I asking filet mignon questions to myself? I don't know if that's a good way to phrase it, but, you know, am I asking a question that is that is assuming a level of socioeconomic or middle being middle class or whatever it is that might might not be a good question for the candidate that I'm interviewing. Do you have any advice about how to even interview to encourage diversity of thought and opinion and everything here?

Matthew Heggem: [00:15:35] Yeah. Yes. I have a few thoughts on that. First of all, I am not able to advise on the legal components of what to ask and what not to ask. I've got I've got to put that out there. Right. Because there are people who are experts in monitoring what you say and how you say it and all that stuff. So so that being said, I think for me there's two things that are important in the interview process when it comes to attracting diversity of talent. One is to understand that they are a whole person, right, to get to know what's important to them, why they chose to be here, what their story is, what what inspires them, what motivates them, what encourages them, where they, you know, where they find difficulty in their life. And some of the things that they're trying to overcome and persevere and and to get grounded in who they are as as people so that you can build empathy. Right. Because I think in order to create the space for diversity of thought, you need to have empathy. You need to be able to connect with people who have different backgrounds. And so to your point, Pat, the filet mignon example, right? I think part of that is understanding that your organization.

Matthew Heggem: [00:16:43] To do work right around its own implicit biases and help the organization to understand, you know, where some of those things could be showing up even in subtle interactions with people around the water cooler. You know, we all take for granted what we our backgrounds and we show up sometimes thinking that people can understand us. And actually we might be we might be triggering people or retraumatizing them because of the language that we use. So I think I think looking at the whole person doing the work within the organization, the last thing I'll say is I think it has to one of the things that I did that really helped was was actually understanding that my business is a stepping stone for them to their bigger picture or their bigger dream to the change that they want to make in the world. And so I would often ask them questions about their professional trajectory beyond the firm so that I could figure out, like, hey, like could I actually be be quote, the the wind beneath their wings somehow. Right. To elevate them and to support them beyond what our practice does. And I think that goes back to seeing the whole person and understanding something deeper about who they are and what motivates them.

Amy Kalnoki: [00:17:59] Yeah, absolutely, Matthew. I couldn't agree more. Connecting and really developing that empathy and understanding everyone as a person is such an important step. I'd love to chat with you. I know you're passionate about empowering women in the Web3 space. I'd love to get your thoughts on the efforts or lack of efforts of encouraging Dei in the crypto and web3 industry.

Alla Koretsky: [00:18:22] Yeah, great question, Amy. Thank you. Yeah, I've been in the space since 2019. Seeing the change evolve, seeing the space evolved quite a bit. You know, I remember being in the crypto spaces in 2019, you know, coming to events, you know, the Bitcoin conference and the art battles and really being like one of the very few women in the room and especially being a woman that is building the technology that is going to support a lot of the projects and a lot of the businesses that are considering coming into the Web3 space. I think it's very important to have a woman that's on that ground, you know, building product up with the technology team. I'm not the technical person, but I come, you know, from sort of the, you know, the marketing and the brand building and business partnerships and how do we include women in the conversations that are actually building the products within the Web3 ecosystem and seeing this the space change? You know, a bit. I'm not it's not it hasn't been like an a huge leap. But definitely seeing how the space has grown since I got involved in this. And I remember, you know, doing panel talks and, you know, the very first one I remember I had five women come up to me and say, we've been circling the space and, you know, for the past few years and have found really intimidating to launch our own projects.

Alla Koretsky: [00:19:55] And just seeing a woman in the sort of the CEO or the, you know, co-founder position that's actually building and being accessible to answer questions, was life changing for them that they were able to kind of pull the trigger and start creating projects? Right. And one of the interest things that that I've noticed is that from the time that we launched our marketplace, like day one, we had, you know, guys just minting random stuff without any thought just to experiment with the system, just to experiment with the technology. But we had, you know, just an influx of women reaching out to us and saying, okay, can we have a meeting to figure out what is the strategy, How are we launching, what is the marketing strategy look like? So just a lot more thoughtful in how they were launching these projects, which was an interesting kind of aha moment is that, you know, generally men are a lot more, you know, risk averse, right? So they're just willing to try things out and just see what happens. Right. And women are a lot more thoughtful and for the most part feel like they need to know something 95% of the time before pulling the trigger and going forward. Right. So it was just about, you know, figuring out who's our client.

Alla Koretsky: [00:21:08] Right. A lot of it was was women entrepreneurs that were coming to us or women from, you know, um, you know, black communities that were really kind of looking for like, how do I get started in this journey? And really they weren't finding the partners to do that. And so we actually launched when we launched later in 2020, we launched with a project called Satoshi, which took 20 international women artists and sort of their representation of what Satoshi Nakamoto would look like if it was a woman. And maybe it was, you know, we don't know that, but essentially it. As representations of what Satoshi could have looked like. We it was 20 women from all over the world, and we gave them a voice of kind of an opportunity to start experimenting with this technology and give them a platform to do that. And so I think it's very important to continue to put women in this leadership opportunities, right, where they're not just, you know, doing marketing roles, right, where they're mostly you'll find women right now in Web3 or, you know, social media roles. Right. But actually allowing them to sit on board of advisories and, you know, provide real value on how the product and where it's going and then have a, you know, the right even vocabulary list and web3 vocabulary is confusing.

Alla Koretsky: [00:22:31] If you're not on Twitter spaces on daily like you are falling behind, right? There's things that are constantly popping up. But the emergence of all the seats of knowledge, I mean, it's you know, there's a saying that it's, you know, a week in in Twitter space is like a year anywhere else. Like it's moving so quickly. And so I see how people, when they're coming in from the outside, they feel intimidated. Right. And so we have to we want to make sure that layer that we provide a very stable, you know, platform for education. Right. That you can very easily access the platform and go through your own learning section where if you're if you're intimidated or kind of having a lot of reaching out to us directly. So I think education is key there. We're very much you know, there's been progress made, but we're still a long way to go. And I think it requires just a collective commitment, right, Like an ongoing dialog and, you know, just proactive measures essentially to create an ecosystem that values diversity and promotes equity and embraces sustainability. So it's, you know, I think it's important for us to have conversations just like we are having today. But, you know, keep keep educating others. And it's going to happen. I'm positive.

Amy Kalnoki: [00:23:54] I'm so glad. I'm glad you mentioned education. I just wanted to let everyone know that actually today bit we've launched Bit Wave U, which is a free online certification and CPE credit earning classes for anyone in the accounting space to to learn more about digital assets. It's open to everyone. People can continue to learn about the space because you are right, it can be very intimidating coming into the digital asset space because there are a lot of terms and it it's I don't think it's as overwhelming as it seems once you dig into it. And so providing educational resources is something that is super, super passionate about. And you mentioned being on a panel, something I've really missed the industry embracing at a lot of the large conferences are events specifically focused or panels on encouraging women in Web3. So I'm hopeful about about the industry.

Pat White: [00:24:49] Do you do you have any other advice for for women looking to get into? So if you're a woman listening to this podcast right now and you're looking to get into into crypto, any advice for them? I think that you kind of mentioned Twitter, although that could be perhaps a bit of a double edged sword. Uh, venturing into the Twitter sphere as a newbie to crypto can perhaps be perilous at best, not.

Amy Kalnoki: [00:25:11] As not as inclusive as it should be.

Pat White: [00:25:13] Maybe not as inclusive as it should be. What other what other thoughts would you have for for women looking to get into this?

Alla Koretsky: [00:25:18] I think it very much depends on how do you best learn, right? I think there are some people that absorb and learn in different ways. I'm a big visual learner, so for me, if I am, you know, I need to learn a specific topic. I probably like Dive down into Rabbit Hole. And that's how I sort of came upon. Well, I got an intro into blockchain space from my CTO and, and I said, I don't know what this is. I've heard you talk about it. I've drawn tables. He's my younger cousin. I've heard you talk about this at dinner tables for years, but let me dive into it more. And then when I started kind of diving into that rabbit hole, I found out how this technology was perfect for the issues that I was having as a buyer for over 15 years sourcing, sourcing products and really seeing the discrepancies between the messages that we were told to consumers versus what was really happening in the back end. So I really kind of fell into the space for the love of blockchain technology, right? And saw this as a team for us to now deal with in a more transparent and sort of trustworthy way in this global economy. So when I fell down the rabbit.

Pat White: [00:26:26] That's actually well, that's the perfect transition because I wanted to ask you about I wanted to sort of start to move that we've been talking about a lot here. I want to move the transition, the conversation a little bit over to to the ESG side. So that's the perfect transition. All so first and foremost, not everyone. Knows this. But if you if you rank the polluters and and carbon impact in the world of fashion is one of the top there right. It's not I don't think it's the top it's like oil and then I think something else and then and then fashion. I think it's number three. But I could be wrong about that. Tell us a little bit. So A for people that don't know, kind of give everyone a little overview of why fashion does tend to be incredibly impactful from a from a greenhouse gas and and pollution, all that kind of stuff. And then talk about kind of, you know, how you're thinking about ESG in a crypto world now and how we're thinking about the environmental side of all of this.

Alla Koretsky: [00:27:16] Yeah, I mean, fashion is a huge polluter because we we're living in consumerism, economy where and fashion, you know, where we just have the urge to consume. Right? And the way the fashion industry is set up is that it's very cyclical. Right? We can't in order for any brand to make money, they have to constantly reinvent and, you know, they cannot sell the same, you know, skinny jeans all the time because if you already own a skinny jean, you're not you don't need another ten pair of skinny Jean. But if it's a skinny jean and then next season, you better believe it's going to be a wide leg. Jean, you as a fashion consumer, you know, and you're seeing all the magazines and everything's pushed down our throats that you are now uncool to wear a skinny jean, you're now going to go about and go out and buy a wide leg. Jean Right. And so the fashion industry has been like this for the best. You know, I want to say really since 1960s, I want to say prior to that, we really were clothing as a utility, utilitarian type of thing. You know, we needed to get, you know, get up, get dressed and go. Right. But really, since sort of, you know, the advertising age and that's really when fashion kind of started getting escalating and when fashion is a big contributor, you know, like contributor to to the waste that's out there, the amount of samples that are being produced. Just to very quickly, I don't want to get this could be an hour conversation, but the amount of samples that are produced by the fashion houses that actually never make it out to the stores is incredible.

Alla Koretsky: [00:28:46] That probably is a huge contributor on its own right now. You're able to all this the buyers then make the purchases to put into the retail stores. Now, these you know, these buyers are the ones that are making decision what's going to sell and what's not going to sell. Now they have to push this initiative to the consumers to say, go out and buy it. Now, whatever is not being bought out now goes to the landfills because it's easier for them just to get rid of this waste. Right. So can you imagine just the amount of waste that get, you know, that gets back into the earth without even us touching it? Right. So we're just just ever, like, ever evolving, consuming, throwing away. We wear it a few times, it gets wasted. And we have now, you know, companies like Sheen, which is, you know, paying, you know, $0.30, you know, an hour for for the workers. Right. And the fashion industry is a very dirty, dirty industry. Right? It all looks pretty in the fun. And we see the sparkles on Vogue magazines. But when you start really digging down, we don't want to know where our stuff comes from. You know, the reality is most of the time what I realize is that when I started reaching out to a lot of the fashion companies in my Rolodex, when I was like, Hey, we're building this product is the fact is that no one actually wanted to show where the product was coming from. Right. Listen, our our consumers are just fine reading our website, right? Our consumers are just fine.

Alla Koretsky: [00:30:08] Like telling like trusting what we tell them. Right. Did you know, guys, that the ingredient list on your products, on your shampoos or your new baby you know, or your baby products was not mandatory until 1970. So prior to 1970s, which is really not that long ago, we had no idea what went into the, you know, the baby diaper creams. Right. We had no idea what diaper creams. Right. And we accept it for like to be okay. So until consumers start demanding better, the fashion industry is not going to change on its own. We have some key players like, you know, Everlane, for instance, that are doing an incredible job and showing where their products are coming from, being transparent in terms of, you know, the manufacturing process. But I think there's there's tools that are available now, such as, you know, NFC tags, right? That allows you to tag each ingredient as it moves on to the supply chain. Right. And it's a very easy technology that could be incorporated into every business that produces products. Right? And essentially, you as a consumer can trust where your product is coming from. If you're saying that your ingredients are organic ingredients, there's proof of that. If you're saying that this is a woman owned company, there's proof of that. If you're saying that, you know, you're paying your workers, you know, living wage, there's proof of that, why not put all of these documents onto the blockchain? So now it's fully transparent and we really become a circular economy. Right. But I think.

Pat White: [00:31:40] If anyone is.

Pat White: [00:31:41] Any. When doing this yet? Is there is there a company that's actually putting this on the blockchain yet or are we still. Are we still kind of waiting for those first few kind of bold, visionary companies who are willing to actually go and do that?

Alla Koretsky: [00:31:53] Yeah. So there's a few companies. There's there's a company called provenance.org, if you guys want to look into that. They've been doing a great initiative and putting company documents and showing sort of efforts from the companies in terms of their sustainability efforts and putting these documents on the blockchain. They're specifically focusing on health and wellness products. So they've been doing this for a while, I'm going to say since 2017. So probably make the most leeway. And now on websites, you can see their specific company websites that they're partnered up with where you can see sort of the entire blockchain record, right? So I want to say that we're specifically working with a few fashion companies. I don't want to disclose yet, but I'm also part of a blockchain Dao, which works with retail and fashion professionals and trying to see how we can incorporate these new technologies within fashion sector. So I think you're going to see more and more coming. There are brands, you know, I think Prada, I think Nike was trying to do something. They're trying to incorporate pieces here and there. But I think we still have a long way in educating the consumers of what they should be expecting. Right. And what they're willing to pay for. A lot of times the consumers that say, you know, we want, you know, green products, we want sustainable products, we want we want to work with companies that practice, you know, you know this and this and this.

Alla Koretsky: [00:33:16] But when it comes down to actually paying for the service, right, because that comes with a cost. So if you if you say, okay, I've got a product that has a blockchain record, it's going to be more expensive because there's all of this cost that has been put into it. So obviously the company has to, you know, upcharge for that and incorporate that into the into the product. And so most of the time what I found is that, you know, there's very limited amount of consumers that are willing to pay more for a product that actually comes with, you know, a fair practices. And so I think we have a bit more to go, you know, and it's going to take time. But I think, again, it's important for us to start having these conversations. And hopefully once we see these big sort of powerhouses, you know, the the Johnson and Johnson's of the world. Right. Take sort of the wheel and say, okay, now it's a must. Right? I don't think it's going to happen, you know, until we have these big sort of Fortune 500 companies. Totally. And we have to incentivize them to do that. Right. So, yeah, thank you.

Speaker7: [00:34:15] Ola. Yeah, that's I think those are all really great insights just in how blockchain can be used and really how it all starts with us having the conversation. Changing gears a little bit. And I think this will sort of bring us home here. Donny Something I'm really interested in as a as a CPA is just talking about some of the opportunities and maybe more importantly, the challenges with ESG, particularly in the accounting profession. I know you've spent a lot of time studying this, so I'd love to just hear your thoughts on some of the biggest challenges in that area.

Donny Shimamoto: [00:34:55] Sure. And I think we should frame this by picking up kind of where a lot of what Ola was talking about, which is that if you listen to what she was saying, she's basically talking about business reporting on purpose. She's saying business reporting rather than financial reporting, because these are not dollars and cents necessarily. Right. It's about supply chain. But there is the whole I'm what is, for example, my carbon outputs, which is part of accounting. It's not accounting for dollars, it's accounting for carbon instead. And so there's there's the standards around that, which is part of the challenges. What's the right standard to follow? There's a whole bunch of different standards. One of the biggest challenges we've had in in this in particular is that there are there were like, I don't even know the number like numerous. It's not in the hundreds, but it's definitely more than ten different standards that you might look at for this. And so that is actually going through a consolidation already under the different accounting. I'm going to put it in air quotes, accounting bodies. It's the standards bodies. So there is the International Sustainability Standards Board. So the Iasb, there's the Sasb, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, which is the equivalent or the parallel, I should say, to the FASB that we all know and love for accounting GAAP. So we're starting to see this stuff start to get more consolidated, start to become more clear and standardized, not just nationally but internationally.

Donny Shimamoto: [00:36:20] So that's one of the big challenges is working through all that which is happening. One of the other things though, as we kind of look at and again, Ali was talking about, for example, fair wage practices and, you know, those types of things which are actually controls their controls within the human resources in the people area. And so when you kind of look at it, there's data that we are putting forth as companies. There's also controls that we're seeing that we have. And to translate that back into our accounting language, those are assertions that we are making that this is this reporting is complete and accurate around our carbon emission, that we do actually have controls in place to prevent slave labor and other types of of things that may be going on. And when we start to bring the concept of assertions into play, now we're like, well, how do we know that that's true? And that's going to. Come back to the auditor's role in that. Right? So now you can see the tie back into the finance role. Actually, I don't like to call it finance department. I like to call it the accounting department because finance implies money and we're working with way more than money. So the accounting department's role, the auditor's role, there's tons of tax incentives and things that are coming out as well, especially in the last set of legislation that came through.

Donny Shimamoto: [00:37:38] So there's actually a role for tax professionals in this, too. But all of this is evolving quite a bit. And all of this is actually, again, kind of going through this, which is the right framework to follow what is the right thing to do. Right? And so a lot of this is there is challenges. The other big challenges that come into play is that these are not related to dollars. And so we as accountants or auditors have to actually partner with a scientist for greenhouse emissions, with an HR person to understand slave labor and labor practices and all this other type of stuff. Right? We have to partner with all these people or these other professionals to really make sure that we're properly understanding what is happening, what's being reported upon, and then to apply our professional judgment around is this accurate, is this complete, is this the correct way to report on this? And also, is this the right intention? Because that's the other thing I think that we look at is, you know, the intention of preventing slave labor, preventing child labor, all of that stuff. Is that actually being upheld or is the company merely putting forward, Oh, yeah, we do this, we do this. But when you look at the underneath, they're really not conforming to that, right? So there's a ton of challenges because this is not as simple as dollars.

Speaker7: [00:39:01] Yeah, I think that's fascinating. And and to really tie this back to everything we've talked about, even kind of the angle of this, is I think the accounting profession will need to change because we're not just accounting for numbers anymore, right? We're and you can go and find someone and say, hey, you're you're passionate about ESG issues. We are an accounting firm that specializes in accounting for carbon credits or, you know, pick any number of issues and things that just need to be verified. You can train accountants to do that. And I think I mean, for example, at bit wave, we love it when we stumble across someone that has a background in computer science, blockchain, digital assets, but also accounting, right? Whereas before it's like, hey, if you have an accounting degree, come join us. But now it's like you're a scientist and an accountant. Great. You know, so I think you hit on a really great point. I think we're just about at time here. Amy, Pat, did you guys want to have any any other questions you want to end with here?

Pat White: [00:40:12] Yeah, I'd like I'd actually like to ask Amy a question here from the perspective if you'd be so kind. So as you know, we've we have folks here from the you know, obviously all is an operator and CEO. But you know, when you're thinking about about the operations of an organization which includes the hiring policies and all those kind of stuff like how how do you think about about and even on the environmental side, which includes like, you know, where you are putting your like, where are you putting your dollars and what you're investing in from an environmental side, What are some of the challenges that you that you see coming down or that you see right now around these two these two topics?

Amy Kalnoki: [00:40:49] Well, one thing I would like to say is, you know, we're a work from home first company. Everybody works from home. And that has really allowed us to be so broad in our hiring and where we hire people. And no one has to commute if they don't want to. No one's driving their car every morning. And so I think it helps a little bit too, in environmental terms. But I it was kind of because our company grew up so much during the pandemic, it really shaped our hiring practices and in such a positive way because I'm not sure we would have been a remote work friendly work from home first company if if we hadn't grown up during that that moment in time. And it has really allowed us to be thoughtful in our in our hiring and be really inclusive and open up. And so for me, that's that was one of the biggest benefits. Yeah, that's.

Pat White: [00:41:43] A great that's a great point. We didn't we didn't talk about that much. But but that actually is the ability, more flexible working, working options is a really good way to encourage diversity to your organization. That's geographic diversity and and economic diversity and all that kind of stuff.

Amy Kalnoki: [00:41:58] So the hours, yeah, we're really flexible on on time zones and hours and when people can log on and yeah, it really helps achieve a lot of those goals.

Pat White: [00:42:08] Well, I'll open it up for just one. One last thing. If anyone has any last thoughts they'd like to share after all the. The conversation. It's been it's been phenomenal. I feel like I've learned. I've thought about things. Yeah. Matthew I'd love to love to hear some last thoughts from you.

Matthew Heggem: [00:42:20] Yeah, for sure. I just I just have to say two things. One, to go back to the question that Trevor had asked Dani about why accountants. Right. If there's one thing that's true about and let me be. Why should accountants be having this? No, let me rephrase. Why should accountants be leading this Alchemy network referred to as the stewards of the money story? So all of the practices and beliefs that our clients have around money are reinforced by the things that we say and do with them. So if we lead in a conversation with them where we prioritize people and planet over profit and we help them to understand how that's a possibility, that creates a whole different relationship to money for our clients that has a lasting impact through their businesses. The second thing I want to say is why accountants and web3, right? Because we're in this space talking about the Web3 stuff. Let's be real. The person who's most likely to steal from you is your accountant, your bookkeeper. Right? And that's that's what fact, right? And you look at and then I attended a webinar on fraud and 42% of the CPA Academy, 42% of the fraud frauds were discovered by people who tipped off the the firm. Right. And so you're thinking like, okay, wait a second, why do we have all these accountants and all these agencies who are responsible for it when when it's the people who are doing the work? And so so the reason why I say web3 and the accountants is because of transparency and decentralization. Those two values are essential to addressing the technology. We can actually change the world. That's my soapbox.

Pat White: [00:44:03] Wonderful. Uh. All uh, I'll. Donny, any last words from you?

Alla Koretsky: [00:44:08] Yeah. I mean, I think I wanted to, um. I kind of touched upon about about how do we get more diversity into web3. And I said, you know, everyone works different a lot of times right now, we're kind of in this interesting space is that, you know, Web3 has been around and sort of the word of Web3 or this new Internet, right? And the tools surrounding it has been around for a bit. But I think, you know, there's still sort of this barrier of entry. Right? That's that's pretty high, especially for a lot of diverse communities. So I want to encourage just to be brave and to experiment. Right now is the time to do that because the community around is still very much kind of an open arms and you can still connect to a lot of the founders like myself, you know, a simple email or a LinkedIn message. And we're still very accessible and people are still very open to experimentation. So I urge anyone, any business leader who is, you know, at a at any sort of, you know, has any thought about how do I how do I do this? Surround yourself with the right mentors. There's plenty of people. This open source sort of community is very alive in Web3. We can reach out to anyone and you will have a mentor that can kind of guide you through the process and, you know, urge you just to kind of try and see if you know what works for your company and what doesn't. And obviously, like Matthew said, you know, having the right sort of financial understanding and having the right accounting and financial team, you know, like with partners like Bitwave, that you're kind of you have the right foundation and it's all about finding the right support to propel your your project forward. But don't be afraid to experiment. Right now is the time to do that. And I'll do.

Pat White: [00:45:56] This really quickly. How do people find you online?

Alla Koretsky: [00:45:59] Yeah, you can find me at Alakoski on LinkedIn. You can follow us at at Layer and you can find me on Twitter at Alec or one.

Pat White: [00:46:10] Matthew. How do people find you online?

Matthew Heggem: [00:46:12] Yeah, just go to ten k creators.com .10 k creators.com.

Pat White: [00:46:19] And finally, but certainly not least, Donny, how do folks find you online?

Donny Shimamoto: [00:46:23] For me, it's Donny Shimamoto. Donny is my handle on pretty much all the socials, and I'd really love to kind of just leave with a challenge back to it, which is I think we also have to be careful of being a solution, trying to find a problem. And I think I see that a lot in the crypto and blockchain communities. It's your solution trying to find a problem. What I want to challenge you with is to really think about what is the true problem. So for example, Amy gave an example that said, Hey, we allowed work from home. The counterpoint to the work from home argument is that now you have people running air conditioning in all of their homes instead of only in one office. And so there's a counterpoint and an interesting opposite There. Right? Oliver had brought up in her examples, Hey, we should be posting all this information on blockchain. Totally agree on the supply chain and the use of RFID tags in the publishing of information that one would question Do we really need blockchain for that? We don't publish financial statements on there. Edgar And the SEC doesn't run off of that. Does it need to be there? Technology, and particularly blockchain based applications is a very big contributor to the environmental and carbon outputs. I went and looked it up while we were talking. Fashion was number six in terms of top polluters in 2002. Technology's number seven, right? So be careful that we put everything into this and now we create a different problem. So what are we actually trying to solve? And are we also looking at the counterpoint to what we're solving? And that's my challenge. Back to all of you, because I love the work that you're doing. But don't be just narrow and looking at your blinders. Look at the whole diverse picture of what's happening.

Pat White: [00:48:07] Well, well put. Always, always worth thinking about problems and solutions in that way. Well, everyone, thank you so much for for being on. This has been an absolute joy. I learned a lot. I think we've had a lot of fun exploring this topic. We'll hopefully we'll have maybe in a year we'll have everyone back to talk about this all over again and see how the world's evolved over the next 12 months. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Have a great day, everybody.